If the tenth century closed with a gleam of hope in the elevation of Gregory V. (996-999) and Sylvester II. (999-1003), it was quickly remembered that the learning of the latter had been acquired among the Saracens; and his biographer attributed his attainments to magic and undue familiarity with the fiends in hell. In the early part of the eleventh century the papal chair was filled with the nominees of politicians, and from 1033 to 1045 disgraced by Benedict IX., who at the age of twelve was selected to pose as the Vicegerent of God. The lowest vices and caprices of unconscionable youth were enthroned in the place that was most sacred in the thoughts of men. One of his successors, Victor III. (1086-87), said of Benedict that he led a life so shameful, so foul and execrable, that it made one shudder to describe it. A man of such grovelling appetites naturally wearied with even the slight usages of decency which had come to be regarded as necessary in the papal palace; and after twelve years of irksome attempt to support its lessened dignity, he sold his tiara to Gregory VI. An unknown writer, about the middle of the eleventh century, attempting a review of the passing age, exclaimed, “Everything is degenerate and all is lost. Faith has disappeared. The world has grown old and must soon cease altogether.” As the debasement of the church could go no lower, a reaction was natural and inevitable, if virtue was not altogether decayed at the roots. The sentiment of human decency reasserted itself, and, since there was no power at Rome to inaugurate reform, an appeal was made to the German emperor. Henry III., in response to the call, deposed by force three rival claimants to the papal throne, and secured the ascendency of a line of German popes. It was not without the suspicion of poison that two of them died after brief power: Clement II. within the year, and Damasus II. in twenty-three days. With Leo IX. (1049) came a better era. The year 1033, the ultimate date set by the prophecy-mongers for the end of the world, being clearly past, and men becoming again possessed of hope in the continuance of mundane affairs, the best spirits dared to labor for the renovation of society, that the earth thus saved as by fire might become indeed “a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” From this time the commanding genius and pure purpose of Hildebrand guided, if he did not select, the occupants of the seat of St. Peter, until, in 1073, the great counsellor himself assumed the sacred sceptre. History, while it severely condemns the methods by which Hildebrand sought to attain his ends, credits him with rigid honesty and devotion to what he believed to be the will of Heaven. While it writes into his epitaph the charge of most inordinate ambition, it does not erase from it the record of his utterance as he lay dying, a fugitive at Salerno: “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile.”