The religious degradation of Christendom afflicted the soul of this truly great man; but whence could come reform? The age was too far gone in its demoralization to wait for recuperation through the slow process of education. Society could not endure another generation of its own putridity. The secular powers were utterly impotent to cope with the gigantic evils that were abroad in every land. Even had they possessed the disposition to champion the virtues, such sovereigns as the King of France, the Emperor of Germany, the new Norman King of England, were altogether engrossed in holding their precarious crowns, surrounded as they were by a multitude of feudal lords, some of whom could collect in their own names a larger force than that which would rise to defend the throne. To Hildebrand but one course seemed open, a desperate one, whose hazard showed the audacity of the genius that conceived it. It was nothing less than to declare the Papacy a world monarchy, and to force universal reform by the combined power of the secular and spiritual sceptre held in his own hand. In his bull against the Emperor Henry IV. he used these words: “Come now, I pray thee, O most holy Father, and ye princes [St. Peter and St. Paul], that all the world may know that if ye are able to bind and loose in heaven, ye are able on earth to take away, or to give to each according to his merits, empires, kingdoms, duchies, marquisates, counties, and the possessions of all men.... If ye judge in spiritual affairs, how great must be your power in secular! and if ye are to judge angels, who rule over proud princes, what may ye not do to these their servants! Let kings, then, and all the princes of the world learn what ye are and how great is your power, and fear to treat with disrespect the mandates of the church.” To practicalize this enormous claim, the Pope made two demands, which threw Europe into a state of turmoil, (1) He ordered the renunciation of all investitures of religious office by secular potentates. The clergy held of the empire cities, duchies, entire provinces, rights of levying taxes, coinage, etc., amounting to one half of all property. The sees thus held Hildebrand declared to be vacated until their occupants should again receive them from his hand under pledge of absolute obedience to the papal, as opposed to the imperial, authority. By this stroke the Pope would gather to himself the practical control of all countries. (2) Hildebrand forbade the marriage of the clergy—a custom wide-spread at the time—and commanded those who had entered into matrimony, however innocently and legally, to forsake their wives, as having been but concubines, and their children, since logically they were but bastards. By enforcing the celibacy of the clergy, he would have at his call an army of men without domestic ties, care, or encumbrance, and, so far as possible to human nature, divested of individuality, and thus the pliant agents of his single will.