If we look at the ministers of the Church, the old story of tyranny and vice is told over again during this century.  Among its popes is numbered Benedict IX., deposed for his profligacy, restored and again deposed, restored by force of arms, and selling the pontificate, so that three popes at once claimed the tiara, and were all three declared unworthy, and a fourth placed on the throne.  Fresh disturbances followed, and new usurpers, until in A.D. 1059 the election of the pope was taken out of the hands of the people and transferred to the college of cardinals, a change which was much struggled against, but which was ultimately adopted.  In A.D. 1073 Hildebrand was elected pope under the title of Gregory VII.; this man, perhaps, more than any other, augmented the temporal power of the papacy.  It was he who moulded the church into the form of an absolute monarchy, and fought against all local privileges and national freedom of the churches in each land; it was he who claimed rule over all kings and princes, and treated them as vassals of the Roman see; it was he who, in 1074, calling a council at Rome, caused it to decree the celibacy of the clergy, so that priests having no home, and no family ties, might feel their only home in the Church, and their only tie to Rome; it was he who struggled against Germany, and who kept the excommunicated emperor standing barefoot and almost naked in the snow for three days, in the courtyard of his castle.  A bold bad man was this Hildebrand, but a man of genius and a master-mind, who conceived the mighty idea of a universal Church, wherein all princes should be vassals, and the head of the Church absolute monarch of the world.

It was at the annual council of Rome, A.D. 1076, that Pope Gregory VII. recited and proclaimed “all the ancient maxims, all the doubtful traditions, all the excessive pretensions, by which he could support his supremacy.  It was, in a manner, the abridged code of his domination—­the laws of servitude that he proposed to the world at large.  Here are the terms of this charter of theocracy:  ’The Roman Church is founded by God alone.  The Roman pontiff alone can legitimately take the title of universal ...  There shall be no intercourse whatever held with persons excommunicated by the Pope, and none may dwell in the same house with them....  He alone may wear the imperial insignia.  All the princes of the earth shall kiss the feet of the Pope, but of none other....  He has the right of deposing emperors....  The sentence of the Pope can be revoked by none, and he alone can revoke the sentences passed by others.  He can be judged by none.  None may dare to pronounce sentence on one who appeals to the See Apostolic.  To it shall be referred all major causes by the whole Church.  The Church of Rome never has erred, and never can err, as Scripture warrants.  A Roman pontiff, canonically ordained, at once becomes, by the merit of Saint Peter, indubitably holy.  By his order and with his permission it