Such was the man, already abbot for more than forty years, under whose worthy protection young Hugues placed himself. The new-comer, elected abbot on the death of Odilon in 1048, soon showed himself to be of yet sterner stuff even than his predecessor. Humble as regards his personal pretensions, kind and charitable to the poor and needy, he had, nevertheless, an eye which could read in their faces the souls of men; and he was fired with a holy ambition for the glory of the church. [Illustration: Clunisian Ornament] In bringing about the realization of these dreams, he found a worthy ally in that Napoleon of the Church, Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), one of the four monks, who, from a cell at Cluny, passed to the throne of St. Peter.[75] We need not here deal at length with that long struggle--the most significant event of the eleventh century--between the civil and religious rules of Christendom, in which Gregory succeeded in enforcing, if only for a time, the most tremendous and all-embracing claims that the church has ever advanced; but I shall be excused for recalling again that extraordinary scene enacted, in 1076, on the castled summit of the craggy Apennine hills, the rock of Alba Canossa, where the representative of temporal power, Henry IV., King of the Germans, attired in a penitent's garb of coarse wool, waited barefoot, through three bitter winter's days, in the courtyard of the castle, upon the pleasure of God's vice-regent on earth. Hugh, then Abbot of Cluny, was present at that scene; and it was largely owing to his mediation, backed by the influence of the Countess Matilda, that Henry was at last admitted to the royal presence.[76] Remembering how brief was Gregory's pontificate--a span of ten years--and his bitter last words at Palermo: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile," it may appear to some readers that the triumph of this little, ill-shaped homuncio was short-lived; but we have to remember that, as Bishop Mathew has pointed out, his influence upon succeeding generations was greater than upon his own, and that without Gregory VII. there would have been no Innocent III. to become, in effect, "the king of kings, lord of lords, the only ruler of princes" in all Christendom. In many sublime and dramatic scenes, then being enacted throughout Europe, Hugues was called upon to play the part of peacemaker, but in none was his task more difficult than in that struggle between Gregory and Henry, to whom he was equally bound by ties of close friendship. That he remained on good, even on intimate terms, with both men, is strong testimony to his integrity of character. More than once, in later years, he allayed the storms that Gregory was raising; he defended Henry IV. against the ingratitude of his son; and it is to Hugues that we find the dethroned and fugitive emperor turning for consolation and advice concerning that revolt.[77]