were deposed, and bishops punished, and monarchs reprimanded.  He was the prime minister of four popes before he accepted that high office to which he doubtless had aspired while meditating as a monk amid the sunny slopes of Cluny, since he knew that the exigences of the Church required a bold and able ruler,—­and who in Christendom was bolder and more far-reaching than he?  He might have been elevated to the chair of Saint Peter at an earlier period, but he was contented with power rather than glory, knowing that his day would come, and at a time when his extraordinary abilities would be most needed.  He could afford to wait; and no man is truly great who cannot bide his time.

At last Hildebrand received the reward of his great services,—­“a reward,” says Stephen, “which he had long contemplated, but which, with self-controlling policy, he had so long declined.”  In the year 1073 Hildebrand became Gregory VII., and his memorable pontificate began as a reformer of the abuses of his age, and the intrepid defender of that unlimited and absolute despotism which inthralled not merely the princes of Europe, but the mind of Christendom itself.  It was he who not only proclaimed the liberties of the people against nobles, and made the Church an asylum for misery and oppression, but who realized the idea that the Church was the mother of spiritual principles, and that the spiritual authority should be raised over all temporal power.

In the great crises of States and Empires deliverers seem to be raised up by Divine Providence to restore peace and order, and maintain the first condition of society, or extricate nations from overwhelming calamities.  Thus Charlemagne appeared at the right time to prevent the overthrow of Europe by new waves of barbaric invasion.  Thus William the Silent preserved the nationality of Holland, and Gustavus Adolphus gave religious liberty to Germany when persecution was apparently successful.  Thus Richelieu undermined feudalism in France, and established absolutism as one of the needed forces of his turbulent age, even as Napoleon gave law and order to France when distracted by the anarchism of a revolution which did not comprehend the liberty which was invoked.  So Hildebrand was raised up to establish the only government which could rescue Europe from the rapacities of feudal nobles, and establish law and order in the hands of the most enlightened class; so that, like Peter the Great, he looms up as a reformer as well as a despot.  He appears in a double light.

Now you ask:  “What were his reforms, and what were his schemes of aggrandizement, for which we honor him while we denounce him?” We cannot see the reforms he attempted without glancing at the enormous evils which stared him in the face.