vast, that in 1245 Innocent IV, the Emperor Baldwin, and Saint Louis were
all lodged together within its walls, and with them all the attendant
trains of prelates and nobles with their servants.

In the eleventh century no other force of equal energy existed. The monks
were the most opulent, the ablest, and the best organized society in
Europe, and their effect upon mankind was proportioned to their strength.
They intuitively sought autocratic power, and during the centuries when
nature favored them, they passed from triumph to triumph. They first
seized upon the papacy and made it self-perpetuating; they then gave
battle to the laity for the possession of the secular hierarchy, which had
been under temporal control since the very foundation of the Church.

According to the picturesque legend, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, seduced by the
flattery of courtiers and the allurements of ambition, accepted the tiara
from the emperor, and set out upon his journey to Italy with a splendid
retinue, and with his robe and crown. On his way he turned aside at Cluny,
where Hildebrand was prior. Hildebrand, filled with the spirit of God,
reproached him with having seized upon the seat of the vicar of Christ by
force, and accepted the holy office from the sacrilegious hand of a
layman. He exhorted Bruno to cast away his pomp, and to cross the Alps
humbly as a pilgrim, assuring him that the priests and people of Rome
would recognize him as their bishop, and elect him according to canonical
forms. Then he would taste the joys of a pure conscience, having entered
the fold of Christ as a shepherd and not as a robber. Inspired by these
words, Bruno dismissed his train, and left the convent gate as a pilgrim.
He walked barefoot, and when after two months of pious meditations he
stood before Saint Peter's, he spoke to the people and told them it was
their privilege to elect the pope, and since he had come unwillingly he
would return again, were he not their choice.