It mattered nothing that the Emperor was ashamed of his weakness; that he retracted; that he vowed vengeance; that he marched at the head of new armies.  No matter that his adherents were indignant; that all Germany wept; that loyalty rallied to his aid; that he gained victories proportionate with his former defeats; that he chased Gregory from city to city, and castle to castle, and convent to convent, while his generals burned the Pope’s palaces and wasted his territories.  No matter that Gregory—­broken, defeated, miserable, outwardly ruined—­died prematurely in exile; no matter that he did not, in his great reverses, anticipate the fruits of his firmness and heroism.  His principles survived him; they have never been lost sight of by his successors; they gained strength through successive generations.  Innocent III. reaped what he had sown.  Kings dared not resist Innocent III., who realized those three things to which the more able Gregory had aspired,—­ “independent sovereignty, control over the princes of the earth, and the supremacy of the Church.”  Innocent was the greater pope, but Hildebrand was the greater man.

Yet, like so many of the great heroes of the world, he was not destined in his own person to reap the fruits of his heroism.  “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile,”—­these were his last bitter words.  He fancied he had failed.  But did he fail?  What did he leave behind?  He left his great example and his still greater ideas.  He left a legacy to his successors which makes them still potent on the earth, in spite of reformations and revolutions, and all the triumphs of literature and science.  How mighty his deeds!  How great his services to his Church!  “He found,” says an eloquent and able Edinburgh reviewer, “the papacy dependent on the emperor; he sustained it by alliances almost commensurate with the Italian peninsula.  He found the papacy electoral by the Roman people and clergy; he left it electoral by papal nomination.  He found the emperor the virtual patron of the Roman See; he wrenched that power from his hands.  He found the secular clergy the allies and dependents of the secular power; he converted them into inalienable auxiliaries of his own.  He found the patronage of the Church the desecrated spoil and merchandise of princes; he reduced it to his own dominion.  He is celebrated as the reformer of the impure and profane abuses of his age; he is more justly entitled to the praise of having left the impress of his gigantic character on all the ages which have succeeded him.”

Such was the great Hildebrand; a conqueror, however, by the force of recognized ideas more than by his own strength.  How long, you ask, shall his empire last?  We cannot tell who can predict the fortunes of such a power.  It is not for me to speculate or preach.  In considering his life and career, I have simply attempted to paint one of the most memorable moral contests of the world; to show the power of genius and will in a superstitious age,—­and, more, the majestic force of ideas over the minds and souls of men, even though these ideas cannot be sustained by reason or Scripture.