the grotesque garb of the cowled and mortified monk. She timidly
came back to the world as Scholasticism, persuading men to consider, by
the light of their own reason, that dogma which seemed to put common
sense at defiance--transubstantiation. Scarcely were her whispers heard
in the ecclesiastical ranks when a mutiny against authority arose, and
since it was necessary to combat that mutiny with its own weapons, the
Church was compelled to give her countenance to Scholastic Theology.

Lending himself to the demand for morality, and not altogether refusing
to join in the intellectual progress, a great man, Hildebrand, brought
on an ecclesiastical reform. He raised the papacy to its maximum of
power, and prepared the way for his successors to seize the material
resources of Europe through the Crusades.

[Sidenote: The three pressures upon Rome.] Such is an outline of the
events with which we have now to deal. A detailed analysis of those
events shows that there were three directions of pressure upon Rome. The
pressure from the West and that from the East were Mohammedan. Their
resultant was a pressure from the North: it was essentially Christian.
While those were foreign, this was domestic. It is almost immaterial in
what order we consider them; the manner in which I am handling the
subject leads me, however, to treat of the Northern pressure first, then
of that of the West, and on subsequent pages of that of the East.

[Sidenote: Foreign influence for reforming the papacy.] It had become
absolutely necessary that something should be done for the reformation
of the papacy. Its crimes, such as we have related in Chapter XII., Vol.
I., outraged religious men. To the master-spirit of the movement for
accomplishing this end we must closely look. He is the representative of
influences that were presently to exert a most important agency.

[Sidenote: Life of Gerbert.] In the train of the Emperor Otho III., when
he resolved to put a stop to all this wickedness, was Gerbert, a French
ecclesiastic, born in Auvergne. In his boyhood, while a scholar in the
Abbey of Avrillac, he attracted the attention of his superiors; among
others, of the Count of Barcelona, who took him to Spain. There he
became a proficient in the mathematics, astronomy, and physics of the
Mohammedan schools. [Sidenote: His Saracen education.] He spoke Arabic
with the fluency of a Saracen. His residence at Cordova, where the
khalif patronized all the learning