Abbot Odilo, favourably impressed with the young monk's ability and piety, took him to Clugny, where he completed his studies, practised the severe discipline of the Benedictines, and became grave and puritanical. The life of a monk probably affected Hildebrand as later it did Luther. He seems to have travelled some in Germany--perhaps even visited the court of Henry III. for his order. He may have completed his novitiate at Clugny. From this reform atmosphere Hildebrand returned to Rome when three Popes were claiming the apostolic seat and the Papacy was in its depths of humiliation. Gregory VI., one of the trio, Hildebrand's old teacher, who had bought the office for 1000 pounds in silver, made the young monk his chaplain. Soon he saw the German Emperor, Henry III., come to Rome, hold a council, depose the three Popes, exile his master to a German monastery, and in 1046 elect a new Pontiff. True to his unfortunate friend, Hildebrand followed him to Germany to see him die in 1048 of a broken heart and then, apparently, he returned to Clugny.[434:1] Pope Clement II., raised to the papal chair by Henry III. (1046), died within a year and Damasus II. followed him in twenty-three days. The Roman people then prayed the Emperor to name a new papal sovereign and he chose his cousin Bruno Pope in the Diet of Worms in 1048 and had him assume the pontifical insignia. This was a new method of election and certainly a dangerous precedent. Bruno was a German, born at Alsace in 1002, well educated and at twenty-four elected Bishop of Toul. He joined the Clugniac reform party and enforced reformation in his diocese. He served the German king on several delicate secular missions, particularly to Burgundy and France, and gained a reputation as a good, clever, honest, brave, devout man. When elected to this high office he was a matured man, handsome, tall and stately, with a strong frank face, and was a general favourite. As a pilgrim he had often gone to Rome and was familiar with the conditions there. His biographer said of the times: "The World lay in wickedness; holiness had disappeared; justice had perished; truth had been buried; Simon Magnus lorded it over the Church, whose bishops and priests were given to luxury and fornication."[435:1] In Rome the churches were neglected and in ruins, sheep and cattle went in and out of the broken doors, and the monks and clergy were steeped in immorality.[435:2]