The Emperors of Germany, indignant at so many disorders, cleansed Rome with the sword. The empire, exercising its rights of superiority, drew the triple crown out of the mire into which it had fallen, and saved the degraded popedom by giving it decent men for heads. Henry III, in 1046, deposed three popes, and his finger, adorned with the ring of the Roman Patricians, pointed out the bishop to whom the keys of the confession of St. Peter were to be remitted. Four popes, all Germans, and nominated by the emperor, succeeded each other. When the pontiff of Rome died, deputies from that Church appeared at the imperial court, like the envoys from other dioceses, to request a new bishop. The emperor was even glad to see the pope reforming abuses, strengthening the Church, holding councils, inducting and deposing prelates, in spite of foreign monarchs; the Papacy, by these pretensions, only exalted the power of the emperor, its liege lord. But there was great danger in allowing such games to be played. The strength which the popes were thus resuming, by degrees, might be turned, all at once, against the emperor himself. When the viper recovered, it might sting the bosom which warmed it. This was what actually happened. Here a new epoch in the Papacy begins. It starts up from its humiliation, and soon has the princes of the earth at its feet. To exalt it is to exalt the Church, is to aggrandise religion, is to secure to the mind its victory over the flesh, and to God his triumph over the world. These are its maxims, and in these ambition finds its profit, fanaticism its excuse. The whole of this new tendency is personified in one man,--Hildebrand. Hildebrand, by turns unduly extolled or unjustly stigmatised, is the personification of the Roman pontificate in its power and glory. He is one of those master spirits of history, which contain in them an entire order of new things, similar to those presented in other spheres by Charlemagne, Luther, and Napoleon. Leo IX took up this monk in passing through Clugny, and carried him to Rome. From that time Hildebrand was the soul of the popedom, until he became the popedom itself. He governed the Church in the name of several pontiffs before his own reign under that of Gregory VII. One great idea took possession of this great genius. He wishes to found a visible theocracy of which the pope, as vicar of Jesus Christ, will be head. The remembrance of the ancient universal dominion of Pagan Rome haunts his imagination, and animates his zeal. He wishes to restore to Papal Rome all that the Rome of the Emperors had lost. "What Marius and Cæsar," said his flatterers, "could not do by torrents of blood, thou performest by a word."