He went also to the Lateran School, where John Gratian, whom we described in the last chapter as buying the Papacy from his nephew Benedict IX., was a teacher. Gratian marked the ecclesiastical promise of the dark and ill-favoured little Tuscan, and, when he bought the title of Gregory VI., made him one of his _capellani_: at that time a body of lay officials. The work suited Hildebrand, who was even more of a soldier than a monk. The road to Rome was lamentably beset by brigands; the houses of many of the nobles in the city itself were, in fact, little better than the fortified dens of wealthy banditti, and the crowds of pilgrims might have their gifts torn from their hands at the very steps of Peter's altar. So Hildebrand organized a militia and made some impression on the robbers. Gregory VI. was a more religious man than his purchase of the See would suggest. He was conspicuous for chastity at a time when, a caustic contemporary said, it was regarded at Rome as an angelic virtue. There is every reason to believe that he bought the Roman See with the best of intentions. Unhappily, Benedict IX. exhausted his treasury and returned to claim his dignity; while another faction of the Romans set up a pretender under the name of Silvester II. Gregory ruled his flock--there was very little Papal ruling of the _world_ in those days--from Sta. Maria Maggiore: Silvester controlled St. Peter's and the Papal mansion on the Vatican: Benedict held the Lateran. This squalid spectacle must have sunk deep into the soul of the young reformer. But there were religious men in Rome, and the virtuous Henry III. was summoned from Germany. The remedy was almost as humiliating as the disorder. Henry scattered the rivals and, observing that there was no member of the Roman clergy fit to occupy the See, he put into it one of his German bishops, with the title of Clement II.