§4. HILDEBRAND AND HIS TRAINING. 11
He entered the Benedictine order in the convent of St. Mary on the Aventine at Rome, of which his maternal uncle was abbot. Here he had a magnificent view of the eternal city.1 Here he was educated with Romans of the higher families.2 The convent was under the influence of the re formatory spirit of Cluny, and the home of its abbots on their pilgrimages to Rome. He exercised himself in severe selfdiscipline, and in austerity and rigor he remained a monk all his life. He cherished an enthusiastic veneration for the Virgin Mary. The personal contemplation of the scandalous contentions of the three rival popes and the fearful immo rality in the capital of Christendom must have raised in his earnest soul a deep disgust. He associated himself with the party which prepared for a reformation of the hierarchy.
His sympathies were with his teacher and friend, Gregory VI. This pope had himself bought the papal dignity from the wretched Benedict IX., but he did it for the benefit of the Church, and voluntarily abdicated on the arrival of Henry III. at the Synod of Sutri, 1016. It is strange that Hildebrand, who abhorred simony, should begin his public career in the service of a simonist; but he regarded Gregory as the only legitimate pope among the three rivals, and fol lowed him, as his chaplain, to Germany into exile.
" Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni." 3
He visited Worms, Spires, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, the old seats of the empire, and spent much time at the court of
1 Giesebrecht (III. 12 sq.): "Das Marienkloster auf dem Aventin, jetzt unter dem Namen des Priorats von Malta bekamit, bietet eine entzuckende Aussicht . . . Ein hochbegabter Knabe, der hier erwuchs, musste die verschiedensten und machtigsten Eindrucke erhalten, die sich kaum in einem anderen Gedanken zusammenschliessen konnten, als in dem der unvergleichlichen Hoheit des ewigen J?oms."
2 So Martens, etc. Gregory speaks of having been brought up from child hood a pueritia by the prince of the apostles and " in the Roman palace."
3 The German historian, Otto von Freisingen, aptly applies this verse of Lucan to the relation of the two popes, thus comparing Hildebrand to Cato.
12 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1073.
Henry III., where he was very kindly treated. After the death of Gregory at Cologne, 1048, Hildebrand went to Cluny, the nursery of a moral reformation of monasticism. According to some reports, he had been there before. He zealously gave himself to ascetic exercises and ecclesiastical studies under the excellent abbot Hugo, and became prior of the convent. He often said afterwards that he wished to spend his life in prayer and contemplation within the walls of this sacred retreat.
But the election of Bishop Bruno of Toul, the cousin of Emperor Henry III., to the papal chair, at the Diet of Worms, brought him on the stage of public action. " Reluc tantly," he said, " I crossed the Alps ; more reluctantly I returned to Rome." He advised Bruno (either at Cluny or at Besangon) not to accept the triple crown from the hands of the emperor, but to await canonical election by the clergy and people of Rome. He thus clearly asserted, for the first time, his principle of the supremacy of the Church over the State.
Bruno, accompanied by Hildebrand, travelled to Rome as a pilgrim, entered the city barefoot, was received with accla mations, canonically elected, and ascended the papal chair on Feb. 12, 1049, as Leo IX.
From this time on, Hildebrand was the reigning spirit of the papacy. He understood the art of ruling through others, and making them feel that they ruled themselves. He used as his aide-de-camp Peter Damiani, the severe monk and fear less censor of the immoralities of the age, who had conquered the world within and helped him to conquer it without, in the crusade against simony and concubinage, but died, 1072, a year before Hildebrand became pope.1
1 See vol. IV. 787 sqq.