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.