66 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1073-1085.
devotion to the papal theocracy, it was Hildebrand. The eighth centenary of his death was celebrated in the Roman Church, May 25, 1885.
Gregory was, in his own time, and has been since, the sub ject both of the highest praise and of the severest censure. Modern historians agree in giving him credit for the honesty and courage of his convictions, and concede the purity and loftiness of his motives and aims. He is the typical repre sentative of papal absolutism in the Middle Ages in conflict with imperial absolutism. He combined personal integrity, consummate statesmanship, and monastic contempt of the world. He lived and moved in the idea of the Old Testa ment theocracy, and had no conception of the free spirit of the gospel. He was a man of blood and iron, an austere monk, inaccessible to feelings of tenderness, when acting in his official capacity as the head of the Roman hierarchy ; yet he showed singular liberality in his treatment of Berengar, and protested against the use of torture. His piety was absorbed in devotion to the hierarchy, to St. Peter, and to the Virgin Mary. He was unscrupulous in the choice of means for his end, and approved of civil war for the triumph of the Roman Church.
The lofty principles he espoused he was willing to stake his life upon. No pope has ever used the term " righteous ness " more frequently than he used it. No pope has ever employed the figure of warfare to describe the conflict he was engaged in more frequently than he employed it.1 No man was ever more convinced of the soundness of his cause. He found his authority in the Scriptures and freely used them to convince others, quoting certain passages again and again, such as 1 Sam. 15 : 23, which is found quoted in his writings nineteen times.2 He found in Matt. 16 : 18 the
1 Hauck, III. 754 sqq.
2 In a single letter to Hermann of Metz, Reg., IV. 2, Gregory quotes at least nine passages of Scripture.
§ 18. DEATH OF GREGORY VII. 67
certain warrant for the papal supremacy and excepted no person from the jurisdiction of Peter's successors.1 As an advocate of papal absolutism and as a moral reformer he has left an abiding impress upon the thought and the practice of Roman Christendom. Even where we are farthest from sharing his views, we may admire the man of fearless courage and moral conviction.
His spirit still moves in the curia, which adheres to the theocratic theory, without the ability of carrying it into practice. The papal Syllabus of 1864 denies that "the Roman pontiffs have exceeded the limits of their power" (§ V. 23), and asserts the superiority of the Church over the State "in litigated questions of jurisdiction" (§ VI. 54). The politico-ecclesiastical encyclicals of Leo XIII. (Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885, and Libertas prcestantissimum natures donum, June 20, 1888) reasserted substantially, though mod erately and cautiously, the Gregorian theory of Church and State.
Ranke, in his last years, wrote of Gregory : 2 " His hie rarchical system rests upon the endeavor to make the clergical order the basis -of all human existence. This makes intelligible its two characteristic and fundamental principles, the command of celibacy and the prohibition of lay investi ture. By the first it was intended to build up out of the lower clergy a body isolated from all the personal and fam ily relationships of human society. By the second it was intended to insure the higher clergy against all interference from the civil power. The great hierarch thought out well the platform on which he placed himself. He met a demand of the age to see in the priest, as it were, a being belonging to a higher order. All that he says betrays dignity, force,
1 Ubi Deus Petro principaliter dedit potestatem ligandi et solvendi in terra et in cceZo, nullum excepit, nihil ab ejus potestate subtraxit. Reg., IV. 2 ; Migne, 148, 456.
2 Weltgesch. VII. 34 sqq.