successor of the most successful and aggressive of Popes. As Archdeacon of Rome, Hildebrand acted as chief minister to the Pope whom he had made. Henceforth till his death he dominated the papal policy. While previous reformers had sought salvation by calling the Emperor over the Alps, Hildebrand had found in Duke Godfrey and his wife champions as effective for his purpose on Italian soil. With the establishment of Pope Nicholas, through the arms of Godfrey and Matilda, the imperial alliance ceases to become a physical necessity to the reforming party in Italy. Hildebrand had won for the Church her freedom. Before long he began to aim at domination. Nicholas II. ruled as Pope from 1058 to 1061. Within those few years, three events were brought about which enormously strengthened the position of the Papacy, already possessed of a great moral force by its permanent identification with the reforming party, and the final abasement of the unworthy local factions, that had so long aspired to wield its resources. These events were the settlement of the method of papal elections, the establishment of a close alliance between the Papacy and the Normans of southern Italy, and the subjection of Lombardy to the papal authority. [Sidenote: Lateran Synod and reform in Papal elections, 1059.] In 1059 Nicholas held a synod in the Lateran which drew up the famous decree that set aside the vague ancient rights of the Roman clergy and people to choose their bishop, in favour of the close corporation of the College of Cardinals. The decree was drawn up in studiously vague language, but put the prerogative voice into the very limited circle of the seven cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian dioceses. These were to add to themselves the cardinal priests and deacons, whose assent was regarded as including that of clergy and people at large. A Roman clerk was to be preferred if worthy, and Rome was to be the ordinary place of election; but, if difficulties intervened, any person could be chosen, and any place made the seat of election. The due rights of King Henry and his successors to confirm their choice were reserved, but in terms that suggested a special personal favour granted of his own goodwill by the Pope to a crowned Emperor, rather than the recognition of an immemorial legal right. The decree did not, as was hoped, save the Church from schisms like those of Benedict X. Neither was the pre-eminence of the suburbicarian bishops permanently maintained. But henceforth the legal right of the cardinals to be the electors of future Popes became substantially uncontested. It is not likely that this involved any real change of practice. But in embodying custom in a formal shape it gave subsequent efforts to set up Antipopes the condemnation of illegality, and so stood the Papacy in good stead in the troubles that were soon to ensue. The council also witnessed the abject degradation of the Antipope and the recantation of the heretic Berengar of Tours.