Leo IX.’s successor as Pope was another German, Gebhard, bishop of Eichstädt, who took the name of Victor II. (1054–1057). He continued to work on the lines of Pope Leo, though more in the spirit of a politician. During Victor’s pontificate, Henry III. made his second and last visit to Italy (1055). His presence was highly necessary. [Sidenote: Henry III.’s last visit to Italy, 1055.] His strongest Italian enemy, the powerful Marquis Boniface of Tuscany, was dead, leaving an only daughter Matilda heiress of his great inheritance. Boniface’s widow Beatrice soon found a second husband in Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Lower Lorraine, the chief enemy of Henry in Germany. In this union there was a danger of the German and Italian opposition to the Empire being combined. But the formidable league dissolved at once on Henry’s appearance. Godfrey fled from Italy, and Beatrice and her daughter were led into honourable captivity in Germany. Godfrey’s brother Frederick, hitherto a scheming ecclesiastic, renounced the world, and became one of the most zealous of the monks of Monte Casino. But the death of the Emperor and the long minority that followed, soon restored the power of the heiress of Boniface. The Countess Matilda, powerful alike in Tuscany and north of the Apennines, became the most zealous of the allies of the Papacy. [Sidenote: Position of the Countess Matilda.] Her support gave that material assistance without which the purely spiritual aims of the Papacy could hardly prevail. At the moment when the Papacy had permanently absorbed the teachings of Cluny, it was a matter of no small moment that the greatest temporal power of middle Italy was on its side. It was a solid compensation for Leo’s failure against the Normans. [Illustration: MIDDLE ITALY IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY] [Sidenote: Hildebrand’s early career and character.]