With a view to reforming the morals of the ecclesiastics, to re-establishing discipline and the liturgy, and to combat false doctrines and heresies, Leo IX. held a vast number of councils, some at Rome, some at Vercelli, and others at Paris; he travelled all through France, Germany, and Italy, taking note of all the abuses which he discovered, and showing himself determined to correct them. Thanks to imperial munificence, he had increased very considerably the pontifical power. Carried away by his zeal, he accompanied the troops sent him by the emperor against the Normans who were devastating Italy. His soldiers were defeated, and he himself was taken prisoner; but the Normans did homage to their captive, and begged him to accept the homage of all their possessions in Italy, so that Leo IX. actually obtained advantages greater than ever he could have expected. The nomination of his successor no longer came within the province of the emperor, and the illustrious Hildebrand, who was at that time almost supreme in the Roman Church, directed the election under the canonical form of four successive popes, who required neither the approbation nor the support of the holy empire. The last of them, Alexander II., died in 1072, after having reigned nine years, and the bishops were deliberating on the choice of a new pontiff, when a voice was suddenly raised from amongst the people, “Hildebrand for pope, St. Peter has chosen him.” This was as the voice of God, and Hildebrand, who had been pope _de facto_ for so many years, was enthroned under the title of Gregory VII. His first care was to arrange at a council the affairs of Italy and of France, and to contract alliances with Spain, Hungary, and various German principalities. He judged himself strong enough to undertake this severe and unwearied struggle, which he kept up throughout the whole of his reign, in the interests of the Church, against the sovereigns of Europe. He wished to obtain recognition of the independence of the Holy See, to dispossess the abbots and prelates who had been guilty of simony, reprimanding at the same time the emperors and kings who had trafficked in ecclesiastical dignities. He desired also to reform the loose morality of the clerks, at the same time that he condemned the careless indifference of the episcopate. He first attacked the Emperor Henry IV., he then threatened Philip I. with excommunication if he did not mend his ways; he launched an anathema against five of the principal members of the imperial household, and afterwards summoned the monarch himself to appear in person before a synod, to render account of what he had done. Henry IV., victorious over the Saxons, and irritated at the pope’s audacity, convoked a diet at Worms for the purpose of deposing him, and dismissed the legates whom he had sent. During this time a conspiracy was being hatched at Rome against the pope, the promoters of which were Cencius, prefect of the city, and Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna.