and a zealous friend of Clugny, accepted the appointment, on the condition that it should have the approval of the people and clergy of Rome, which, as was to be expected, was given with acclamation. He ascended the papal throne as Leo IX., A.D. 1049-1054. According to a later story conceived in the interests of Hildebrandism, Bruno is said not only to have made his definite acceptance of the imperial call dependent upon the supplementary free election of people and clergy of Rome, but also to have been prevailed upon by Hildebrand, who by his own request accompanied him, to lay aside his papal ornaments, to continue his journey in pilgrim garb, and to make his entrance into the eternal city barefoot, so that the necessary sanction of a formal canonical election might be given to the imperial nomination. Leo found the papal treasures emptied to the last coin and robbed of all its territorial revenues by the nobles. But Hildebrand was his minister of finance, and soon improved the condition of his exchequer. Leo now displayed an unexampled activity in church reform and the purifying of the papacy. No pope travelled about so much as he, none held as many synods in the most distant places and various lands. The uprooting of simony was in all cases the main point in their decrees. By bonds of gratitude and relationship, but above all of common interests, he was attached to the German emperor. He could not therefore think of emancipating the papacy from the imperial suzerainty. Practically Leo succeeded in clearing the Augean stable of the Roman clergy, and filled vacancies with virtuous men brought from far and near. In order to chastise the Normans, put by him under ban because of their rapacity, he himself took the field in A.D. 1053, when the emperor refused to do so, but was taken prisoner after his army had been annihilated, and only succeeded, after he had removed the excommunication, in getting them to kiss his feet with the most profound devotion. He demanded from the Greek emperor full restitution of the donation of Constantine, so far as this was still in the possession of the Byzantines, and his envoys at Constantinople rendered the split between the Eastern and Western churches irreparable (§ 67, 3). Leo died in A.D. 1054, the only pope for centuries whom the church honours as a saint. A Roman embassy called upon the emperor to nominate a new pope. He fixed upon Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstädt [Eichstadt], who now ascended the papal throne as =Victor II.=, A.D. 1055-1057. Here again monkish tales have transformed a single matter of fact into a romance in the interests of their own party. The Romans wished Hildebrand himself for their pope, but he was unwilling yet to assume such a responsibility. He put himself, however, at the head of an embassy which convinced the emperor of the sinfulness of his former interferences in the papal elections,