But when we turn the page and come, four hundred years later, to the life of another Gregory, upon what a tumultuous world do we open our eyes: what blood, what fire, what shouts and shrieks of conflict: what cruelty and shame have reigned between, and still remained, ever stronger than any influence of good men, or amelioration of knowledge! Heathenism, save that which is engrained in the heart of man, had passed away. There were no more struggles with the relics of the classical past: the barbarians who came down in their hordes to overturn civilisation had changed into settled nations, with all the paraphernalia of state and great imperial authority--shifting indeed from one race to another, but always upholding a central standard. All the known world was nominally Christian. It was full of monks dedicated to the service of God, of priests, the administrants of the sacraments, and of bishops as important as any secular nobles--yet what a scene is that upon which we look out through endless smoke of battle and clashing of swords! Rome, at whose gates Alaric and Attila once thundered, was almost less secure now, and less easily visited than when Huns and Goths overran the surrounding country. It was encircled by castles of robber nobles, who infested every road, sometimes seizing the pilgrims bound for Rome, with their offerings great and small, sometimes getting possession of these offerings in a more thorough way by the election of a subject Pope taken from one of their families, and always ready on every occasion to thrust their swords into the balance and crush everything like freedom or purity either in the Church or in the city. In the early part of the eleventh century there were two if not three Popes in Rome. "Benedict IX. officiated in the church of St. John Lateran, Sylvester III. in St. Peter's, and John XX. in the church of St. Mary," says Villemain in his life of Hildebrand: the name of the last does not appear in the lists of Platina, but the fact of this profane rivalry is beyond doubt.