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During the last days of April 1073, Hildebrand, though ill as a result of the spiritual upheavals through which he had passed, dictated the necessary letters concerning his election. After Alexander's death, he said, the cardinals had fasted and prayed for three days and thus prepared themselves for the new election. But suddenly, as the corpse was being placed in the tomb at the Church of St. Salvator, there was a tumult and shouting among the people and he had been forced to ascend the Papal throne (for which he considered himself utterly unfitted) without having had time or opportunity to discuss or reflect upon the matter.

These events were reminiscent of the election of Gregory the Great, and this new Pope also took the name of Gregory. As the seventh of the name, he looked upon the first as his model, though he resembled him neither in blood nor in temperament. Yes, when he cited say- ings of God's aristocratic consul and he loved to do so in official letters the sound was utterly different, and incompatible with his own words. Then one hears with far more than ordinary clarity what is hard and commanding in the voice of this Lombard from Tuscany. That which informs his words and deeds is a Germanic spirit of force. The fatherly characteristics of the first Gregory are not here, nor can one discern in Hildebrand anything of the whimsicality or irony of his chosen exemplar. Perhaps for that reason the impression given by his personality is so overwhelming and so strange. His slight, ugly form and his pale face aroused the contempt of his enemies; and those who were weaker than he whetted their pride on the autocracy of this plebeian. His father had been a goat-herd, and his mother came from a poor section of the city. Yet the spirit blows where it lists. He might be of humble origin, but he was possessed by the daemon of a task to be performed for mankind. Peter Damien complained that Hildebrand spoke to him as roughly as the north wind. His speeches and his letters constantly seek to make an impression: they command, demand, urge, take by storm. But when they are not so impulsive and flow more quietly, they enable one to glimpse the real nature of the man from whom they spring. He was a homo religiosus a man

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GREGORY