crucify the pride of rank and power. If the president of a college
or of a railroad or of a bank becomes a different man to the eye of
an early friend, what can be expected of those who are raised above
public opinion, and have no fetters on their wills,--men who are
regarded as infallible and feel themselves supreme!


But of all these three hundred or four hundred men who have swayed
the destinies of Europe,--an uninterrupted line of pontiffs for
fifteen hundred years or more, no one is so famous as Gregory VII.
for the grandeur of his character, the heroism of his struggles,
and the posthumous influence of his deeds. He was too great a man
to be called by his papal title. He is best known by his baptismal
name, Hildebrand, the greatest hero of the Roman Church. There are
some men whose titles add nothing to their august names,--David,
Julius, Constantine, Augustine. When a man has become very eminent
we drop titles altogether, except in military life. We say Daniel
Webster, Edward Everett, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin, William Pitt. Hildebrand is a greater name than
Gregory VII., and with him is identified the greatest struggle of
the Papacy against the temporal powers. I do not aim to dissect
his character so much as to present his services to the Church. I
wish to show why and how he is identified with movements of supreme
historical importance. It would be easy to make him out a saint
and martyr, and equally so to paint him as a tyrant and usurper.
It is of little consequence to us whether he was ascetic or
ambitious or unscrupulous; but it IS of consequence to show the
majestic power of those ideas by which he ruled the Middle Ages,
and which will never pass away as sublime agencies so long as men
are ignorant and superstitious. As a man he no longer lives, but