s emperors and
kings could fill the rich bishoprics and abbacies with their creatures,
the papal dominion was weakened in its most vital point, and might
become a dream. This evil was rapidly undermining the whole
ecclesiastical edifice, and it required a hero of prodigious genius,
energy, and influence to reform it.

Hildebrand saw and comprehended the whole extent and bearing of the
evil, and resolved to remove it or die in the attempt. It was not only
undermining his throne, but was secularizing the Church and destroying
the real power of the clergy. He made up his mind to face the difficulty
in its most dreaded quarters. He knew that the attempt to remove this
scandal would entail a desperate conflict with the princes of the earth.
Before this, popes and princes were generally leagued together; they
played into each other's hands: but now a battle was to be fought
between the temporal and spiritual powers. He knew that princes would
never relinquish so lucrative a source of profit as the sale of
powerful Sees, unless the right to sell them were taken away by some
tremendous conflict. He therefore prepared for the fight, and forged his
weapons and gathered together his forces. Nor would he waste time by
idle negotiations; it was necessary to act with promptness and vigor. No
matter how great the danger; no matter how powerful his enemies. The
Church was in peril; and he resolved to come to the rescue, cost what it
might. What was his life compared with the sale of God's heritage? For
what was he placed in the most exalted post of the Church, if not to
defend her in an alarming crisis?'

In resolving to separate forever the spiritual from the temporal power,
Hildebrand followed in the footsteps of Ambrose. But he had also deeper
designs. He resolved to raise, if possible, the spiritual _above_ the
temporal power. Kings should be subject to the Church, not the Church to
the kings of the earth. He believed that he was the appointed vicar of
the Almighty to rule the world in peace, on the principles of eternal
love; that Christ had established a new theocracy, and had delegated his
power to the Apostle Peter, which had descended to the Pope as the
Apostle's legitimate successor.

I say nothing here of this monstrous claim, of this ingenious falsehood,
on which the monarchical power of the Papacy rests. It is the great
fraud of the Middle Ages. And yet, but for this theocratic idea, it is
difficult to see how the exter