he lived, in mathematical science and useful mechanical invention"
("Europe during the Middle Ages," Hallam, pp. 595-598).

If we look at the ministers of the Church, the old story of tyranny and
vice is told over again during this century. Among its popes is numbered
Benedict IX., deposed for his profligacy, restored and again deposed,
restored by force of arms, and selling the pontificate, so that three
popes at once claimed the tiara, and were all three declared unworthy,
and a fourth placed on the throne. Fresh disturbances followed, and new
usurpers, until in A.D. 1059 the election of the pope was taken out of
the hands of the people and transferred to the college of cardinals, a
change which was much struggled against, but which was ultimately
adopted. In A.D. 1073 Hildebrand was elected pope under the title of
Gregory VII.; this man, perhaps, more than any other, augmented the
temporal power of the papacy. It was he who moulded the church into the
form of an absolute monarchy, and fought against all local privileges
and national freedom of the churches in each land; it was he who claimed
rule over all kings and princes, and treated them as vassals of the
Roman see; it was he who, in 1074, calling a council at Rome, caused it
to decree the celibacy of the clergy, so that priests having no home,
and no family ties, might feel their only home in the Church, and their
only tie to Rome; it was he who struggled against Germany, and who kept
the excommunicated emperor standing barefoot and almost naked in the
snow for three days, in the courtyard of his castle. A bold bad man was
this Hildebrand, but a man of genius and a master-mind, who conceived
the mighty idea of a universal Church, wherein all princes should be
vassals, and the head of the Church absolute monarch of the world.

It was at the annual council of Rome, A.D. 1076, that Pope Gregory VII.
recited and proclaimed "all the ancient maxims, all the doubtful