As for the supreme rulers of this contradictory Church, so benevolent and yet so cruel, so enlightened and yet so fanatical, so humble and yet so proud,—­this institution of blended piety and fraud, equally renowned for saints, theologians, statesmen, drivellers, and fanatics; the joy and the reproach, the glory and the shame of earth,—­there never were greater geniuses or greater fools:  saints of almost preternatural sanctity, like the first Leo and Gregory, or hounds like Boniface VIII. or Alexander VI.; an array of scholars and dunces, ascetics and gluttons, men who adorned and men who scandalized their lofty position; and yet, on the whole, we are forced to admit, the most remarkable body of rulers any empire has known, since they were elevated by their peers, and generally for talents or services, at a period of life when character is formed and experience is matured.  They were not greater than their Church or their age, like the Charlemagnes and Peters of secular history, but they were the picked men, the best representatives of their Church; ambitious, doubtless, and worldly, as great potentates generally are, but made so by the circumstances which controlled them.  Who can wield irresponsible power and not become arrogant, and perhaps self-indulgent?  It requires the almost superhuman virtue of a Marcus Aurelius or a Saint Louis to crucify the pride of rank and power.  If the president of a college or of a railroad or of a bank becomes a different man to the eye of an early friend, what can be expected of those who are raised above public opinion, and have no fetters on their wills,—­men who are regarded as infallible and feel themselves supreme!

But of all these three hundred or four hundred men who have swayed the destinies of Europe,—­an uninterrupted line of pontiffs for fifteen hundred years or more, no one is so famous as Gregory VII. for the grandeur of his character, the heroism of his struggles, and the posthumous influence of his deeds.  He was too great a man to be called by his papal title.  He is best known by his baptismal name, Hildebrand, the greatest hero of the Roman Church.  There are some men whose titles add nothing to their august names,—­David, Julius, Constantine, Augustine.  When a man has become very eminent we drop titles altogether, except in military life.  We say Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, William Pitt.  Hildebrand is a greater name than Gregory VII., and with him is identified the greatest struggle of the Papacy against the temporal powers.  I do not aim to dissect his character so much as to present his services to the Church.  I wish to show why and how he is identified with movements of supreme historical importance.  It would be easy to make him out a saint and martyr, and equally so to paint him as a tyrant and usurper.  It is of little consequence to us whether he was ascetic or ambitious or unscrupulous; but it is of consequence to show the majestic power of those ideas by which he ruled the Middle Ages, and which will never pass away as sublime agencies so long as men are ignorant and superstitious.  As a man he no longer lives, but his thunderbolts are perpetual powers, since they still alarm the fears of men.