helped the popes greatly. Somebody, who took the name of Isidore, a
famous Spanish bishop who had been dead more than two hundred years,
made a collection of Church law and of popes' letters; and he mixed up
with the true letters a quantity which he had himself forged, but which
pretended to have been written by bishops of Rome from the very time of
the Apostles. And in these letters it was made to appear that the pope
had been appointed by our Lord Himself to be head of the whole Church,
and to govern it as he liked; and that the popes had always used this
power from the beginning. This collection of laws is known by the name
of the _False Decretals_; but nobody in those times had any notion that
they were false, and so they were believed by every one, and the pope
got all that they claimed for him.

But in course of time the popes would not be contented even with this.
In former ages nobody could be made pope without the emperor's consent,
and we have seen how Otho the Great, his grandson, Otho III., and
afterwards Henry III., had thought that they might call popes to account
for their conduct; how these emperors brought some popes before councils
for trial, and turned them out of their office when they misbehaved.[70]
But just after Henry III., as we have read, had got rid of three popes
at once, a great change began, which was meant to set the popes above
the emperors. The chief mover in this change was Hildebrand, who is said
to have been the son of a carpenter in a little Tuscan town, and was
born between the years 1010 and 1020.

[70] Pp. 184, 185.

PART II.

Hildebrand became a monk of the strictest kind, and soon showed a
wonderful power of swaying the minds of other men. Thus, when a German
named Bruno, bishop of Toul, had been chosen as pope by Henry III., to
whom he was related, and as he was on his way to Rome that he might take
possession of his office, his thoughts were entirely changed by some
talk with Hildebrand, whom he happened to meet. Hildebrand told him that
popes, instead of being appointed by emperors, ought to be freely chosen
by the Roman clergy and people; and thereupon Bruno, putting off his
fine robes, went on to Rome in company with Hildebrand, whose lessons he
listened to all the way, so that he took up the monk's notions as to all
matters which concerned the Church. On arriving at Rome, he told the
Romans that he did not consider himself to be pope on account of the
emperor's favo