Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/398

372 affairs. The Prince Isyaslaff had been twice driven from Kiev by his brothers, when he turned for help to the emperor, Henry, and Borislaff, King of Poland. Now Poland was in the Roman Church, and more than once this country was used by the papal party as their point of attack on the Russian Church. At this time the most powerful of all the popes, Gregory, was dominating the councils of the West. Isyaslaff sought the great pope's intercession with the two sovereigns. Gregory's reply has been preserved among his letters. It is most gracious. He has received Isyaslaff's son, who has come with the petition, and who, as the pope says, has admitted the papal authority, and wishes to have the kingdom as a grant from Peter through the pope, asserting that he makes this request with his father's full authority. Here is Hildebrand's high claim to have the disposal of thrones and kingdoms in his hands, and his distinct assertion that it is admitted by the son of the Prince of Russia, with his father's deliberate consent. We should like to have had the young man's version of the story. It looks as though he had been as wax in the hands of the masterful ruler of empires. If it were indeed the case that he made this complete submission on behalf of Isyaslaff, we cannot imagine that the bargain would have been kept; if the prince had secured his throne by the help of a foreign alliance on such terms as these, he could only have held it as a tyrant against the wishes of his people. Fortunately he was able to regain his position without the aid he had solicited from abroad; and as he did not have occasion to claim his side of the bargain, we are not surprised that we hear no more about the other side. This was the first serious attempt of the papacy to obtain the great prize of Russia for the see of Peter.

Of the next metropolitan, John, who was appointed