This great event inflamed people’s spirits and disposed them to adventurous expeditions in distant lands. It was the forerunner of the Crusades; although the latter had a nobler motive than the others, springing, as they did, from the enthusiasm of exalted piety. [Sidenote: [1066-1073 A.D.]] A great revolution was taking place at this time in the church. Nicholas II occupied the pontifical chair at this moment. He had for counsellor a monk who deplored the vices of the clergy and the degradation of the church as much as the encroachments of the temporal upon spiritual authority. This monk, this man so celebrated in ecclesiastical history, was Hildebrand. He resolved to deprive the princes and lords of every source of influence over the clergy, to strengthen the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and to raise the pope above the kings of the earth, hoping thus to regain for the church her virtue, her splendour, and all her power. Such a project of universal domination, which would seem like madness to-day, was in Hildebrand’s age a conception of genius. It was Hildebrand’s glory to have wished to free the church’s spiritual authority from all temporal bonds; it was his mistake to have listened too much to his own ambition in trying to enslave the political government of the princes to ecclesiastical authority. In 1073 Hildebrand was chosen by the people and clergy of Rome as successor to Pope Alexander II. He took the name of Gregory VII. [Sidenote: [1071-1099 A.D.]] Philip of France was leading a life filled with scandal and violence. To satisfy his unbridled desires he, like Henry IV of Germany, was carrying on, in contempt of Gregory’s prohibition, the most shameful traffic in clerical benefices. The angered pontiff threatened Philip with excommunication. The colossal structure raised by the pontiff did not perish with him; his successors bound it together. He founded the universal monarchy of the popes upon a durable basis and on the ruling spirit of the time, and this domination reached a century after him, its highest point. The Crusades contributed powerfully to hold it together. Gregory conceived the plan of these, but it was not given to him to carry it out. The first of these memorable events took place in the time of Philip I and in the pontificate of Urban II. Philip was not associated with the First Crusade; he took no part in any of the great enterprises which marked the age in which he lived, and his reign offers nothing worthy of remembrance.