intrigue for the nomination of a new pontiff. He there succeeded in insinuating himself into the confidence of the Emperor, and returned to Rome with an imperial congé d'élire, conducting the prelate he had himself recommended, Gebeardus, Bishop of Aichstet, who, being canonically elected, was consecrated pope by the name of Victor II. in April 1055. In thus lending his influence to raise a German prelate to the Roman see, Hildebrand was acting in flagrant contradiction of his former principles of policy, but doubtless without any deviation from his ultimate purpose. His object was, in the first instance, to conciliate the Emperor, and to lay asleep his suspicions till his own plans were ripe.

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Benedict IX. is reported to have died most opportunely at the same time that Gebeardus reached Rome. It was not long before the good German found it convenient to send Cardinal Hildebrand on a transalpine mission. During his absence, while Victor was residing at Florence, where he had been holding a council, an awkward circumstance occurred. The Pope, while celebrating mass, was by some means apprised that the holy chalice was poisoned; and the culprit, a sub-deacon, is moreover reported to have confessed his detected crime with bitter lamentations. According to Bishop Bennone, a declared enemy of Hildebrand, and therefore not an unexceptionable authority, the 'sub-deacon was a certain Benzutus, an intimate friend of the 'late Benedict IX. and of Hildebrand; and who, enjoying the ' confidence of the powerful men of his time, had already poisoned six popes almost consecutively, with the connivance of Hildebrand. Victor pardoned the delinquent, out of respect to the 6 power and influence of his friends'; and in the following year, recalled Hildebrand, and placed him about his person; on the same principle, perhaps, that travellers in some countries have bee recommended to trust their fire-arms to guides of suspicious cha racter, as the best security against being robbed by them. This reminds us of the conduct of Ali Bey (Badhia) towards the chief of the holy well at Mecca, the official poisoner of those whom the Shereef wishes to get rid of; for, as it was deemed impious not to accept the miraculous water at his hands, this person became the arbiter of the lives of his visiters. I myself treated this traitor,' says Ali Bey, with the greatest marks of confidence. I accepted 'his water and his entertainments with an unalterable serenity ' and coolness. I took the precaution, however, to keep always ' in my pocket three doses of vitriolated zinc, to take the instant 'I should perceive the least indication of treason.' This Traveller asserts, that from time immemorial, the sultan-shereefs had 'maintained a poisoner at their court'; and that this was so well known both at Cairo and at Constantinople, that the divan had repeatedly sent on pilgrimage to Mecca, pashas and other persons,

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to be disposed of in this Italian manner. Mecca and Rome are both holy cities, and very much the same things are practised at both the chief difference lies in names, dialect, and costume.

Soon after the recal of Hildebrand, Pope Victor was summoned by the request of the Emperor into Germany; and while he was there, Henry II. expired in his arms. Not long after his return, Victor himself died. The Romans, weary of a German Pope, ' had long prayed for his destruction'; but whether his life was shortened by violence, does not appear. Hildebrand was at Florence at the time,-his present Biographer says, 'under surveil'lance', but intriguing with his partisans at Rome. The time was not yet come, however, for his obtaining the object of his ambition. The brother of the Duke of Tuscany was unanimously proclaimed Pope, with great rejoicings, and assumed the title of Stephen IX. (X. ?) He died suddenly in the May of the following year, 1058. Hildebrand was absent on urgent business in Germany, and does not seem to have been prepared for the event. The Romans proceeded immediately to choose a pope for themselves, who was styled Benedict X. Hildebrand was met on his return with intelligence of this election; and immediately resolved upon the bold measure of assembling a council at Siena, in concert with Duke Godfrey, at which the Bishop of Florence was raised to the pontifical dignity. Supported by a Tuscan army, he then marched towards Rome with the pope elect; and having frightened the Roman pontiff into abdication and penitence, caused Nicholas II. to be consecrated as the true and legitimate successor to the throne of St. Peter. Benedict died, of course, the next year, of grief or some other cause; and his party, consisting of a powerful Roman faction which included many noble families, took refuge in the Campagna, in their respective strong-holds, where they were attacked in detail by the Papal troops, and almost exterminated. Of all these transactions, Archdeacon Hildebrand appears to have been the director. Nicholas II. expired in June 1061, making the tenth pontiff who had died within fifteen years. We shall now avail ourselves of Sir Roger Greisley's narrative.

The turbulent spirit of the nobility and people was scarcely appeased in Rome, when the death of the pontiff was announced. Suddenly a great number of persons of all descriptions assembled, and agreed to send a deputation to the young king, Henry; charged with bearing him a crown of gold, and the dignity of Roman Patrician. The heads of this deputation were the Counts of Tusculum and Galeria, who then governed the political affairs of Rome. The knowledge of this deputation coming to Henry, he assembled a council of bishops at Basle, where he received it; and, by common consent, Cadolaus, Bishop of Parma, and chancellor of the Empire, was elected pontiff, as Honorius II. He himself afterwards accepted the gifts and honours which had been sent him by the Roman people.

'Whilst these scenes were being acted in Germany, Hildebrand was not idle. He assembled all the cardinals and people who were favourable to him, and proclaimed Anselmo da Badagio, Bishop of Lucca, as pope. Thus there were already two rival popes, one attached to the imperial party, the other to that of Godfrey and Hildebrand; both of noble birth and moderate abilities: but Anselmo was destitute of that、 elevation of mind which is requisite for governing, and was only capable of executing the designs of others. Cadolaus, on the other hand, son of the Count of Sabulano, having been left an orphan, had learned to arrive at the highest ecclesiastical preferment by dexterity and boldness; and was, undoubtedly, one of the ablest men of his time.

The two parties being thus separated, and Hildebrand having destroyed every remnant of popular government in the city, had now become the supreme regulator of spiritual and temporal matters in the Roman state; and no one dared to contradict his will. He sent an embassy to the imperial court, to acquaint Henry with the election of Anselmo at Rome under his auspices; and of his readiness to support him with the sword, if necessary. The cardinal deputy was not received by the emperor; and nothing was left but to have recourse to arms. Cadolaus got together an army of Germans and Italians, amongst whom were included all the Roman nobility, and departed for Italy. Hildebrand armed the lower orders at Rome, who seconded him wonderfully; sought allies in the Normans and from Tuscany; and lost no time in seating on the throne of St. Peter his beloved Anselmo, by the name of Alexander II.; a name worthy of a pope who had gained his dignity by conquest.

'Matters were at this point when Benzone, Bishop of Alba, presented himself at Rome on the part of Cadolaus, intimating to Alexander that he must descend from the throne which he had usurped. He reminded him of the ancient customs, and the decree of Nicholas himself, which required the approbation of the emperor for the legitimate inauguration of any pope. But Hildebrand silenced and compelled him to leave Rome. Cardinal Bennone here relates, that Alexander II., immediately on his enthronement, preached to the people, that he was willing to suspend the exercise of his functions until he had obtained the emperor's approbation; at which the enraged Hildebrand struck him, and shut him up in his apartments to repent and fast.

'Cadolaus now lost no time; but, informed of the unfavourable result of the Bishop of Alba's mission, marched straight to Rome, with an army full of enterprise and courage. On his arrival, he encamped in the neighbourhood of the city, and prepared for the most obstinate conflict. Hildebrand issued from the gates at the head of the infuriated multitude, and engaged with his rival on the plains of Nero, on the 14th of April, 1062. The battle was long and bloody; but the people, at length broken, sought safety in flight. The victorious Cadolaus entered Rome, occupied its fortified posts, and was on the point of enjoying the fruits of his victory, when he heard that Hildebrand and Duke Godfrey were advancing with a powerful army to renew the attack. He was not in a condition for a fresh encounter, after a day on which he had already lost the flower of his troops; but

he shut himself up in the city, with all his forces, with the determination to sustain a siege. Godfrey, then assaulting the city on all sides, overcame every obstacle; and Cadolaus, wishing to save himself, resolved to fly. The Tuscan army then invaded all the ancient Roman duchy, and conquered the hostile barons, amongst whom the Crescenzi and a certain Peter Leo, who, from a Jew, had become one of the most powerful lords, were distinguished. Many of their friends passed under the dominion of Godfrey; and the Dukes of Camerino and Spoleto were not exempt from his invasion. Rome, thus become the theatre of war, was a prey to all the horrors of civil contests. The populace, unloosed, forgave no one whom they met of an opposite faction; and Hildebrand could scarcely satisfy his thirst for blood. Alexander II. remained in possession of the throne, which he only nominally enjoyed.

Hymns of glory and jubilee were offered up to Hildebrand after his victory, and his courtiers strove to exalt him to the skies.'

pp. 141-145. Cadolaus was not yet subdued. Retiring to Parma, he collected a new army, by the assistance of the bishops of Lombardy, and in the following year, moved towards Rome, where he occupied the Leonine part of the city without opposition. Of the Roman nobility, the larger portion were in his favour; but Hildebrand had on his side a fanatical populace and the Tuscan army of Duke Godfrey. Cadolaus was defeated, and shut himself up with the son of the Prefect in the Castle of St. Angelo, where for two years he maintained himself. But at length, he escaped to Lombardy, leaving Hildebrand and Duke Godfrey masters of Rome. Meanwhile Pope Alexander, in whose name they ruled and ravaged, quietly remained at Lucca, far from the scene of war and violence. This Pope, a mere tool in the hands of the daring and ambitious Hildebrand, enjoyed an easy and indolent reign in the midst of public commotions, for the unusually long period of twelve years. Abandoning himself to pomp and pleasure, he surrendered the cares of government to those who had bestowed it upon him. Yet even his death, which took place in April 1073, is believed to have been unfairly hastened; and Bishop Benzone asserts, that it was brought about by means of Hildebrand and the above-mentioned deacon Benzuto, the Poisoner, who opened his veins.' It is at least certain, that, on the day after his death, in contempt of the canons which prohibited such hurried elections, Hildebrand was tumultuously elected Pope by the Roman populace, among whom he had distributed large sums of money; and, supported by the soldiers of the Countess Matilda, he accepted or assumed the pontifical dignity, taking the title of Gregory VII. in memory of Gregory VI., his early patron. To Henry, King of Germany, the self-made Pontiff represented, that he had been elected by the clergy and people against his own will, and that he should not have allowed

himself to be forced to undergo ordination, had he not been previously assured that the King and Princes of Germany had approved of it. With this monstrous falsehood, Henry was so far pacified that he sent an episcopal commissioner to assist, in the royal name, at the consecration of the papal usurper, which took place in June 1073. He is said to have been the last pope consecrated by the royal authority; but this is clearly erroneous.

Gregory VII., as we must now call him, had not waited for this ratification of his title, to exercise the pontifical authority in its fullest extent. In fact, he had long held the reins of government as the actual minister of his predecessor. But no sooner had he become the legitimate Pope, than he began to develop his ambition, his energy, and his fanaticism or wickedness in all their force. He might now seem to have attained the object of all his intrigues, the summit of his hopes; but his was no ordinary ambition that could content itself with the pageant of the papacy. The Pontiff of the Latin Church and Lord of Rome aspired to revive in another form the Roman empire; and the pontifical dignity was, in his view, but the stepping-stone to the conquest he meditated. He had the example of Mohammed before him, and he did not scruple to have recourse to the same means the sword: nay, he even called in the sword of the Saracen, for of Saracens the army of the great Norman brigand, Robert Guiscard, was in great measure composed.

But, high as was the aim, wide as was the range of this Great Monk's ambition, there was still a littleness in his project, arising from the pure selfishness of his object. He availed himself unscrupulously of all the instrumentality which the circumstances of the times supplied; and knew how to turn to account, in prosecuting his schemes, the feuds of the Roman nobles, the Italian hatred of the German and the Lombard, the dread of the imperial power, the forged authority of St. Peter, the decrees of suborned councils, the hired support of a fanatical populace, the intrigues of the monk, and the sword of the Norman. But, in employing these various means of prosecuting his ever shifting policy, the only respect in which he was consistent, was in seeking his own personal advancement. The quarrel between the empire and the holy see, between Germany and Rome, he found already begun, and he left it unfinished, and only inflamed by more bitter animosity. It supplied him with materials to work with; but he appears, if we may forestall history in using the terms, now as the Ghibelline, now as the Guelf, and true to neither party. He affected to reform the Church, and waged war against simonists and married priests; yet, he procured his own election to the pontificate by the most corrupt means, and the Church was scandalized by his intimacy with the ambitious and 'dissolute woman,' the Countess Matilda, who participated with