Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/129

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X AND REFORM 115

weeks later. Then Henry made his cousin, Bishop Bruno of Toul, Pope. Unfortunately this splendid man of Alsatian noble extraction was granted only a few years during which to keep the rainbow of peace aloft in the storm-laden air.

Bishop Bruno took the name of Leo IX. He trusted the Emperor and the Emperor trusted him. When the two sovereigns stood face to face, their contemporaries were given a twofold picture of handsome, manly strength. Their natures, though different, were in harmony, for the Pope was of other stuff than Henry. He also was majestic and dignified, but for all his splendour and distinction he possessed an infectious warmth of character. While a priest in Conrad's court, he had already been known as the "good-natured Bruno" and his motto remained, one must be all things to all men, and show kindness to everyone. He was alive to the beauty of the world, loved both men and beasts, practised the arts, studied public opinion, rode to battle like a knight, and proved a tireless horseman during the long pastoral tours he made through the Empire. Yet one could often see him going at night in lay attire as a barefoot pilgrim from the Lateran to St. Peter's. He served the Church with the same deep earnestness that characterized the Emperor. Immediately he took up the struggle to re-establish the unchanging rights of his See. At a synod which convened in the Lateran Basilica, he repudiated simony as determinedly as any Cluniac reformer, being supported in this by the will of the Emperor (which harmonized completely with his own) and by the democratic movement which had arisen in northern Italy under the name of Pataria. He removed from the feudal episcopacy those who had personally been guilty of simony. His sternness sent a chill of fear down the spines of those he investigated. The Bishop of Sum, summoned to take an oath of innocence, succumbed to a stroke. Leo also decreed that all priests who had been ordained by simonistic bishops were to be considered unordained and deprived of their rank, even though they themselves might be innocent. A tu- mult ensued among those affected by the ruling; and men who clung to a milder view of the reform movement induced the Pope to agree that ordination by a simonistic bishop was valid. There was almost a danger of a rigoristic prophetic movement comparable to that which


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