68 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1073-1085.
and logical connection. ... His activity, which left noth ing untouched, was of a very human sort, while at the same time it embraced religious ideals. The hierarchical princi ple constituted his real life."
Gregorovius, who carries on a sustained comparison between Gregory and Napoleon, praises Gregory's genius and moral vigor. He says : 1 " Gregory was the heir of the ancient aims of the papacy. But his unexampled genius as ruler and statesman is his own, and no one either in ancient Rome or in modem times has ever reached to his revolutionary daring. . . . His dying words reveal the fundamental basis of his character, which was great and manly. To this grand spirit, a character almost without an equal, belongs a place among the rulers of the earth, men who have moved the world by a violent yet salutary influence. The religious element, however, raises him to a far higher sphere than that to which secular monarchs belong. Beside Gregory, Napo leon sinks to an utter poverty of ideas."
Let us hope that Gregory felt in his heart some of that Christian love and meekness whose commendation closes one of his letters to Hermann, archbishop of Metz,2 the most drastic expression of papal absolutism he ever made. He
1 Hist, of City of Rome, IV. 256. Of Canossa this author had said, IV. 207 : "The weaponless victory of the monk Gregory has more claim on the admiration of the world than all the victories of an Alexander, a Caesar, and a Napoleon." Like other Protestant German historians he has no sym pathy with Gregory's papal scheme of papal absolutism, but most of the German Church historians, as Mirbt and Hauck, are inclined to magnify the courage and manly vigor of Henry, as well as the justice of his cause, and to underestimate or question the moral quality of Gregory in his conflict with the emperor, and the immediate results of the event at Canossa. Hauck, III. 805, omits a detailed description of that remarkable scene with the remark that it was so well known to Germans as not to need retelling. He pronounces the estimate usually put upon Gregory's intellectual gifts as too high, and declares that the title "Great" is properly associated with the name of the first Gregory and not with the seventh pope of that name. Hildebrand had convictions enough, but lacked in native force, p. 832 sq.
2 Dated March 15, 1081, Reg., VIII. 21 ; Mirbt, Quellen, 105-112; Migne, 148, 594-604.
§ 18. DEATH OF GREGORY VII. OiY
wrote : " If the virtue of love be neglected, no matter what good any one may do, he will wholly lack the fruit of salva tion. To do these things in humility and to love God and our neighbor as we ought, this presupposes the mercy of him who said, Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Whosoever humbly follows him shall pass from the kingdom of submission which passes away, to the kingdom of true liberty which abides forever."
CHAPTER III.
THE PAPACY FROM THE DEATH OF GREGORY VII. TO THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS. A.D. 1085-1122.
§ 19. Victor IIL and Urban II. 1086-1099. Compare the chapter on the Crusades.
AT the death of Gregory, his imperial enemy was victorious in Germany, and had recovered part of Saxony; Lombard y remained loyal to the empire ; Matilda was prostrated by grief and sickness ; the anti-pope Wibert (Clement IIL, 1080-1100) continued to occupy a part of Rome (the Lateran palace and the castle of St. Angelo); Roger, the new duke of the Normans, spent his whole force in securing for himself the sole rule over Calabria and Apulia against his brother Bohemund. There was a papal interregnum of twelve months.
At last the excellent Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino, who had raised that convent to the height of its prosperity, was elected to succeed his friend Gregory, May 24, 1086. He accepted after long delay, but ruled only eighteen months as Victor III. He loved monastic solitude, and died Sept. 16, 1087.
He was followed by Otto (Odo), cardinal-bishop of Ostia, a Frenchman, formerly prior of Cluny, and one of the in timate counsellors of Hildebrand. He assumed the name Urban II., and ruled from March 12, 1088, to July 29, 1099. He followed in the steps of Gregory, but with more caution and adaptation to circumstances. He spent his pontificate mostly outside of Rome, but with increasing moral influ ence. He identified himself with the rising enthusiasm for