ould be known to all posterity, that the Emperor of
Germany had bowed in submission to a foreign priest. The temporal power
had yielded to the spiritual; the State had conceded the supremacy of
the Church. The Pope had triumphed over the mightiest monarch of the
age, and his successors would place their feet over future prostrate
kings. What a victory! What mighty consequences were the result of it!
On what a throne did this moral victory seat the future pontiffs of the
Eternal City! How august their dominion, for it was over the minds and
souls of men! Truly to the Pope were given the keys of Heaven and Hell;
and so long as the ideas of that age were accepted, who could resist a
man armed with the thunders of Omnipotence?

It mattered nothing that the Emperor was ashamed of his weakness; that
he retracted; that he vowed vengeance; that he marched at the head of
new armies. No matter that his adherents were indignant; that all
Germany wept; that loyalty rallied to his aid; that he gained victories
proportionate with his former defeats; that he chased Gregory from city
to city, and castle to castle, and convent to convent, while his
generals burned the Pope's palaces and wasted his territories. No matter
that Gregory--broken, defeated, miserable, outwardly ruined--died
prematurely in exile; no matter that he did not, in his great reverses,
anticipate the fruits of his firmness and heroism. His principles
survived him; they have never been lost sight of by his successors;
they gained strength through successive generations. Innocent III.
reaped what he had sown. Kings dared not resist Innocent III., who
realized those three things to which the more able Gregory had
aspired,--"independent sovereignty, control over the princes of the
earth, and the supremacy of the Church." Innocent was the greater pope,
but Hildebrand was the greater man.

Yet, like so many of the great heroes of the world, he was not destined
in his own person to reap the fruits of his heroism. "I have loved
righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile,"--these
were his last bitter words. He fancied he had failed. But did he fail?
What did he leave behind? He left his great example and his still
greater ideas. He left a legacy to his successors which makes them still
potent on the earth, in spite of reformations and revolutions, and all
the triumphs of literature and science. How mighty his deeds! How great
his services to his Church! "