repaired and richly ornamented many of the Roman churches. In 833 he accompanied Lothaire into France, hoping to effect a reconciliation between him and his father. A meeting took place in the great plain near Mulhausen; but the wily Lothaire, having contrived to corrupt the fidelity of his father's troops, compelled him to abdicate the throne. The pope, greatly afflicted at a treachery which he could not prevent, returned to Rome. He died in 844. According to Platina, it was this pope who instituted the festival of All Saints.—T. A.
Gregory V., son of Otho, marquis of Verona, was raised to the papacy in 997, through the influence of his uncle, the Emperor Otho III., being at the time only twenty-four years old. His baptismal name was Bruno or Biorn; he was the first German who held the Roman see. Soon after his election, the emperor having returned into Germany, the citizens, under the leadership of Crescentius, expelled him from the city, and appointed one John as antipope. The pope went to Lombardy, and, in a council which he convened at Pavia, excommunicated Crescentius and John. Coming back to Italy at the head of an army, the emperor reinstated Gregory, after a banishment of eleven months, in the apostolic chair. This pope was a learned man as the times went, and could preach fluently in German, French, and Latin. In 998 he decided the long-standing controversy between Arnoul and Gerbert (afterwards Pope Sylvester II.), respecting their rival claims upon the see of Rheims. He died in 999.—T. A.
Gregory VI. In 1045, after Sylvester III. had been driven from Rome by Benedict IX., the latter was induced by the archpriest John Gratian, the most respected of the Roman clergy, to resign the tiara and retire from Rome. Gratian was then elected pope, and took the name of Gregory. The patrimony of St. Peter was at this time infested by brigands and usurpers. Gregory therefore raised a body of troops, by means of whom he inflicted condign punishment on the more noted offenders, cleared the roads of highwaymen, and enabled pilgrims to travel in security. Upon the arrival of the Emperor Henry III. in Italy, in 1046, a council was held at Sutri, at which Gregory resigned his pontificate. He followed the emperor into Germany, and thence went to Cluny, where he died.—T. A.
Gregory VII., one of the greatest of the popes, but regarding whose character and conduct there will always be immense diversity of opinion, was born about the year 1013 in Tuscany, though he is conjectured to have been of German origin. He was of humble birth, being the son of a carpenter. Hildebrand,—for so was he called ere elevated to the papal throne—was educated at Rome and entered the benedictine order. The history of the world in the eleventh century is—so far as the popes are concerned—for the most part, a horrible chaos. Corruption throughout Christendom was universal. Every element of society was in turmoil, but none had yet taken organic shape; the temporal and spiritual powers were fiercely contending for preponderance. There were stupendous and fruitful forces preparing the future, but the present was all dark and troubled. One of the most crying scandals of the eleventh and subsequent centuries was, that it was seldom a pope had not one or two antipopes usurping his privileges and questioning his authority. Pope Gregory VI. was in 1046 driven by the intrigues of two antipopes and by other painful circumstances into exile, and took with him his friend Hildebrand. They stopped at the monastery of Cluny in France, where Hildebrand passed a few years in profound retirement. In 1049, Hildebrand was summoned by Leo IX. to Rome and created cardinal. Of Leo and of several subsequent popes he was the sage counsellor in their plans of reform, their energetic co-operator in their schemes for the aggrandisement of the church. On the 22d April, 1073, Hildebrand was himself chosen pope, and was not slow in giving proofs of his vigour. To erect a theocracy before which all Europe should bow, was his lofty and comprehensive design, a design pursued with iron will and boundless arrogance. We can admire Gregory when fulminating his anathemas at a turbulent and licentious priesthood, and when trying to purify the altar; we can applaud him when branding simony; we can sympathize with him in his vast, sublime project of theocratic unity: but when he treated all catholic kingdoms as fiefs of the church, we see a mad and unholy ambition. Of course it would be wrong to judge Gregory by modern maxims and by modern practices: but we are justified in condemning him when under the pretence of suppressing anarchy in any particular land, he made government there impossible. When, for instance, he claimed the right of investiture, that is, not merely the right to nominate bishops and abbots, but to put them in possession of their temporal dominions which embraced the third of the soil, he was rendering monarchs the merest puppets, and let us not marvel that they resisted. Gregory's most determined foe during the whole of his pontificate was the emperor, Henry IV., who, violently opposing the pope's haughty demands and insatiate encroachments, proceeded so far as to pronounce the deposition of Gregory. For this insult the pope took a crushing revenge. He not merely excommunicated the emperor and stirred up everywhere adversaries against him, but in January, 1077, forced him to perform at Canossa a degrading penance which has become famous in history. The potentate who had been compelled to stand three days fasting and with naked feet in the snow ere admitted to the pope's presence or to absolution, was not likely to forget the humiliation. As soon as Henry had strengthened his party and had gathered his adherents round him, he hastened to inflict vengeance on the pope. He again pronounced his deposition and raised as antipope Clement III. Rome he likewise attacked, and after a siege of two years took it in 1084. The pope had very faithful friends, among others the Countess Matilda, who governed extensive territories in Italy, and whose generosity towards the pope and the church were unbounded. Gregory, however, was no longer a match for the emperor. He therefore called to his aid the Normans in the north of Italy, at whom not long before he had hurled excommunication. Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia and Sicily, gave him effectual help indeed with his valorous Normans, but only to bring him into bondage to himself. After an insurrection at Rome Duke Robert took the pope with him to Salerno, where on the 25th of May, 1085, Gregory died. His last words were, "I have loved justice, and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile." Apart from those tremendous controversies in which Gregory VII. was continually engaged, he never ceased to make religion an agent of mercy and civilization.—W. M—l.
Gregory VIII. (Cardinal Albert) was elected in October, 1187, upon the decease of Urban III. He was learned and eloquent, and of pure and austere life; but he held the holy see only two months. During this time he did what he could to reanimate, by his circular letters, the old crusading fervour of the christian nations. Proceeding in December to Pisa, for the purpose of attempting to reconcile the ancient feud between that city and Genoa, he was seized with fever, and died on the 16th of the same month.—T. A.
Gregory IX. (Cardinal Ugolino) succeeded Honorius III. in March, 1227. He was of the family of the counts of Anagni, and a nephew of Innocent III. His pontificate was one long deadly grapple between right and force—between the spiritual and the temporal—between the church and the empire. The ambition of Frederic II. was to possess himself of the whole of Italy; the struggle between him and Gregory became at last one of life and death. Having designedly rendered abortive the preparations made in the late pontificate for a fresh crusade, Frederic, after an admonition, was in 1228 excommunicated. For a time the difference was patched up; in 1230 the excommunication was withdrawn, and Frederic visited the pope at Anagni. But after his victory over the Lombard cities at Cortenuova in 1237, Frederic seized on several of the papal provinces, while his son Henry, in south Italy, sequestered to his own use the revenues of several bishoprics. Upon this the pope excommunicated Frederic in 1239. Frederic invaded the papal states the following year. In due course he prepared to besiege Rome, but the pope, nearly a hundred years old, and heartbroken by so many calamities, died on the 12th August, 1241.—T. A.
Gregory X. (Tebaldo Visconti), archdeacon of Liege, was elected by the cardinals at Viterbo in the year 1271. The object nearest to his heart was the relief of the Holy Land. He willingly confirmed, in 1273, the happy choice of Rudolf of Hapsburg as emperor of Germany. Proceeding to Lyons in 1274, he presided at the sessions of the council, at which the Eastern church was temporarily restored to unity. While at Lyons the pope promulgated the constitution of the famous conclave to regulate the election of future popes. In 1275 the pope met Rudolf at Lausanne, and after a satisfactory interview, set out on his return to Rome; but he was taken ill on the way at Arezzo, and died there in 1276.—T. A.
Gregory XI. (Cardinal Peter Roger), born in 1336, one of the Avignon popes, succeeded Urban V. in 1370. He was a nephew of Clement VI., but of a far higher character.
