Gregory VII., surnamed Hildebrand, ascended St. Peter’s throne in 1073. Though born in an obscure village and of humble parentage, he was a person endowed by nature with all the qualities necessary to make a successful master of men: strong and ambitious, and possessed of an ideal, he was a stranger to fear as to scruple. It was related of him that, whilst a lad in his father’s workshop and ignorant of letters, he accidentally framed out of little bits of wood the words: “His dominion shall be from one sea to the other.” To his contemporaries the story was prophetic (we may be content to regard it, true or not, as characteristic) of his career. Gregory’s dream was to deliver the papacy from the secular influence of the Emperor and to establish a theocratic Empire. This was the guiding principle of his policy, and, though his plans were flexible to circumstance, his purpose remained fixed. Like all great men, Hildebrand knew that, where there is a strong will, all roads lead to success. The first step to this end was the purification of the Church of the corruption into which it had sunk under his depraved predecessors, and the organisation of its soldiers under strict rules of discipline. This was effected by the suppression of simony and the enforcement of celibacy on the clergy. At the same time Gregory did not neglect that which was the main object of his life: to make Europe a vassal state to the pontifical see. The thunderbolts of excommunication, which Gregory, the son of Bonic the carpenter, wielded with Zeus-like majesty and impartiality, were freely hurled against his enemies in the East and West. In the Emperor Henry IV. the Pope met an adversary worthy of his heavenly artillery. But, undismayed by Henry’s power, and unrestrained by considerations of humanity, he plunged Christendom into that long-drawn strife between the Guelf and Ghibelline factions which makes the history of Europe for generations a melancholy tale of murder and outrage, ending in a blood-stained triumph for St. Peter.