Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/172

 160 THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES the men who had the highest conception of the ecclesiastical authority. In endeavouring to purify the Church these were the men whom Henry brought into the most influential position; and as the Church emerged from its moral degradation, it renewed its claims to supremacy with a fresh warrant derived from its spiritual efficiency. In 1046 there were no fewer than three rival popes. All three were deposed, and the emperor nominated his own selection, Clement 11., a German. After German nim he nominated three more popes in succession, Popes. a n Germans ; most notable being another Bruno, who ruled as Leo ix. Leo was a zealous reformer, but he was not content to accept the nomination of the emperor without the higher authority of election by the clergy. In this as in other matters his adviser was the monk Hildebrand, who continued to be the real director of papal policy until he him- self was elected pope as Gregory vn. in 1073. The papacy entered on the course, more and more openly, of claiming to be the supreme authority in Christendom to which emperors and kings must bow. The assertion of these pretensions was made the easier because Henry in. was succeeded by a child, Henry iv., who was not able to throw down the challenge until he was grown up ; and even then his first occupation was a sharp struggle with some of the German nobles. As pope himself, and long before he became pope, Gregory vn. had a definite and a splendid object before him. Somewhat as Samuel, prophet of Israel, claimed that the Lord of Hosts ruled the chosen people by the voice of His prophets, only suffering a king to be chosen as a sort of subordinate officer, so Gregory claimed that it was the will of the Almighty to rule through the heirs of the apostles, and especially the heir of St. Peter, only suffering kings and emperors as sub- ordinate officers. The clergy should form a great organisation of the spiritual servants of God, recognising no human authority as being set over them, but only the divine authority of the Church itself. Christendom was to be literally the kingdom of the Almighty, whose vicegerent on earth was the pope. The glory of God and His Church stood above all else. The whole theory of course involved that the clergy should live up to the