GREGORY VII. (HILDEBRAND) SAINT, pope from I 0 7 3 to I 085, was born of humble parents in Tuscany c. Io23, and was educated in the convent of St. Mary on the Aventine at Rome where he became a Benedictine. As chaplain to the exiled Gregory VI., he lived for a year at Cologne acquiring an intimate knowledge of the political and ecclesiastical conditions of Germany. He returned to Rome with Bishop Bruno of Toul, who became Pope Leo IX. (1048-54) . Under him Hildebrand was made a cardinal sub deacon and administrator of the patrimony of St. Peter and acted as a legate in France, where he was occupied inter alia with the question of Berengarius of Tours (q.v.). On the death of Leo IX. he went as the envoy of the Romans to the German court, to conduct the negotiations with regard to his successor. The em peror pronounced in favour of Bishop Gebhard of Eichstadt, who, as Victor II. 7) , again employed Hildebrand as his legate to France. When Stephen IX. (Frederick of Lorraine) was raised to the papacy, without previous consultation with the German court, Hildebrand and Bishop Anselm of Lucca were despatched to Germany to secure a belated recognition. Stephen, however, died before his return, and, by the hasty elevation of Bishop Johannes of Velletri, the Roman aristocracy made a last attempt to recover their influence in papal appointments. Hildebrand, however, secured the election of Bishop Gerhard of Florence. The reign of Nicholas II. (I oS9-61) saw three great transactions —the rapprochement with the Normans in the south of Italy, the alliance with the democratic and, subsequently, anti-German movement of the Patarenes in the north, and the legal enactment which transferred the papal election to the College of Cardinals. In these measures Hildebrand, already a dominant personality on the Curia, though he was only an archdeacon played a large part. Under Alexander II. (1061-73) Hildebrand became the soul of the Curial policy, and sagaciously utilized the general political conditions, especially in Germany.
On Alexander's death, he became Pope Gregory VII. It is proof of the popular faith in his qualifications that, although the circumstances of his election invited assault in 1073, no attempt was then made to set up a rival pontiff. When, however, the oppo sition against him had gone so far as to produce a pretender to the chair, his long and undisputed possession tended to prove the original legality of his papacy; and the appeal to irregularities at its beginning only assumed the appearance of a mere biased attack. On May 22 he received sacerdotal ordination, and on June 3o episcopal consecration.
The focus of the ecclesiastico-political projects of Gregory VII. is to be found in his relationship with Germany. The young Henry IV. was compelled by the Saxon rebellion to come to amicable terms with the pope at any cost. Consequently in May 1oi4 he did penance at Nuremberg in presence of the legates to expiate his intimacy with the members of his council banned by Gregory, took an oath of obedience, and promised his support in the work of reforming the church. This attitude, however, he abandoned so soon as he gained the upper hand of the Saxons by his victory at Hohenburg on the Unstrut (June 9, 1075), and he now attempted to reassert his rights of suzerain in upper Italy without delay. He sent Count Eberhard to Lombardy to combat the Patarenes; nominated the cleric Tedaldo to the archbishopric of Milan ; and finally endeavoured to establish relations with the Norman duke, Robert Guiscard. Gregory's severe reprimands infuriated Henry and his court, and their answer was the hastily convened national council in Worms, which met on Jan. 24, 1076. In a document full of gross accusations the bishops renounced their allegiance. In another King Henry pronounced him deposed, and the Romans were required to choose a new pope. Two bishops were despatched to Italy in company with Count Eberhard under commission of the council, and they succeeded in procuring a similar act of deposition from the Lombard bishops in the synod of Piacenza. The communication of these decisions to the pope was undertaken by the priest Roland of Parma, and he was for tunate enough to gain an opportunity for speech in the synod, which had barely assembled in the Lateran church, and there to deliver his message announcing the dethronement of the pontiff. Such indignation was aroused that it was only due to the modera tion of Gregory himself that the envoy was not cut down on the spot. On the following day the pope excommunicated the Ger man king, divested him of his dignity and absolved his subjects from the oaths sworn to him. The excommunication of the king made a profound impression both in Germany and Italy. In Germany there was a general revulsion of sentiment in favour of Gregory, and the particularism of the princes utilized the auspicious moment for prosecuting their anti-regal policy under the cloak of respect for the papal decision. In October, they met at Tribur to elect a new German king, and Henry was only saved from the loss of his sceptre by their failure to agree on the ques tion of his successor. They settled that, if, on the anniversary of his excommunication, Henry still lay under the ban, the throne should be considered vacant. Henry wisely went to Italy in person and did penance before Gregory at Canossa. The reconciliation was only effected after prolonged negotiations and definite pledges on the part of the king, though no basis was gained for a settle ment of the great questions at issue—notably that of investiture. A new conflict was inevitable because Henry IV. naturally con sidered the sentence of deposition repealed with that of excom munication; while Gregory on the other hand, intent on reserv ing his freedom of action, gave no hint on the subject at Canossa. That the excommunication of Henry IV. was simply a pretext for the opposition of the rebellious German nobles is manifest. They persisted in their policy after his absolution, and set up a rival king in the person of Duke Rudolph of Swabia (Forchheim, March 1077). Gregory tried to remain neutral but finally de cided for Rudolph of Swabia in consequence of his victory at Flarchheim (Jan. 27, Io8o), and again pronounced the excommu nication and deposition of King Henry (March 7, Io8o). Rudolph died on Oct. 16, and a new claimant—Hermann of Luxemburg— was put forward in Aug. Io8r. The king refused to acknowledge the ban on the ground of illegality, and the council summoned at Brixen on June 25, Io8o, pronounced Gregory deposed and nomi nated the archbishop Guibert of Ravenna as his successor. In 1o81 Henry opened the conflict against Gregory in Italy. The latter had now fallen on evil days, and he lived to see 13 cardinals desert him, Rome surrendered by the Romans to the German king, Guibert of Ravenna enthroned as Clement III. (March 24, 1084), and Henry crowned emperor by his rival, while he himself had to flee from Rome.
As regards other countries, Gregory had attempted to establish a claim of suzerainty on the part of the see of St. Peter, and to secure the recognition of its rights of possession. On the ground of "immemorial usage" Corsica and Sardinia were assumed to be long to the Roman Church. Spain and Hungary were also claimed as her property, and an attempt was made to induce the king of Denmark to hold his realm as a fief from the pope. Philip I. of France, by his simony and the violence of his proceedings against the church, provoked a threat of summary measures; and excom munication, deposition and the interdict, appeared to be imminent in 1074. In England; William the Conqueror interfered autocrati cally with the management of the church, forbade the bishops to visit Rome, filled bishoprics and abbeys, and evinced little anxiety when the pope prohibited him from commerce or commanded him to acknowledge himself a vassal of the apostolic chair.
For Gregory, the church, as a divine institution, had been en trusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which the divine will is the only law ; and the pope, qua head of the church, had been made the vicegerent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God. He looked on the worldly State as an unhallowed edifice whose char acter is sufficiently manifest from the fact that it abolishes the equality of man, and that it is built up by violence and injustice. In practice he acknowledged the existence of the State as a dispen sation of Providence, described the coexistence of church and State as a divine ordinance, and emphasized the necessity of union between the sacerdotium and the imperium. But he always up held the superiority of the church and claimed the right of excom municating and deposing incapable monarchs, and of confirming the choice of their successors. The question of appointment to spiritual offices—the so-called investiture—brought the con troversy over the relation between church and State to a head. By the first law (1075) the right of investiture for churches was in general terms denied to the laity. In 1078 neglect of this pro hibition was made punishable by excommunication, and, by a further decree of the same year, every investiture conferred by a layman was declared invalid and its acceptance pronounced liable to penalty. It was, moreover, enacted that every layman should restore, under pain of excommunication, all lands of the church, held by him as fiefs from princes or clerics; and that, hencef or ward, the assent of the pope, the archbishop, etc., was requisite for any investiture of ecclesiastical property. Finally in I o8o the forms regulating the canonical appointment to a bishopric were promulgated. The election was to be conducted by the people and clergy under the auspices of a bishop nominated by the pope or metropolitan; after which the consent of the pope or archbishop was to be procured. In so legislating, Gregory tried to withdraw the appointment to episcopal offices from the influence of the king. If lay investiture could be abolished the king would be deprived of his control over the great possessions assigned to the church by himself and his predecessors, and he could have no security that the duties attached to those possessions would be discharged for the benefit of the empire. The bishops in fact were to retain their position as princes of the empire, but the bond between them and the empire was to be dissolved : they were to owe allegiance only to the pope (see INVESTITURE) .
In the internal government of the church, Gregory wished to see all important matters of dispute referred to Rome; appeals were to be addressed to himself, and he arrogated the right of legisla tion, the Roman synods being merely the instruments of his will. Among the methods employed to break the resistance of the higher prelates, with whom he was often in conflict, the despatch of legates proved peculiarly effective. The regulation, again, that the metropolitans should apply at Rome in person for the pallium schooled them in humility. This battle for papal omnipotence is connected with his championship of compulsory celibacy among the clergy and his attack on simony. In 1074 Gregory required all to renounce their obedience to those bishops who showed indul gence to their clergy in the matter of celibacy. In the following year he commanded the laity to accept no ministrations from married priests and deprived these clerics of their revenues. His war on simony culminated in his declaration in 1078 that con secration by a simoniac was null and void.
The pontificate of Gregory VII. came to a melancholy close, for he died an exile in Salerno on May 25, 1085. Too much the politician, too rough in his methods, too exclusively the representa tive of the Roman see, he had made more enemies than friends, for in the whirlpool of secular politics the religious side of his character was never sufficiently developed to allow the vicegerent of Christ to be heard instead of the hierarch in his official acts. Nevertheless it was he who formulated the ideal of the papacy as a structure embracing all peoples. He took the first step towards the codification of ecclesiastical law and the definite ratification of the claims of the apostolic chair as corner-stones in the church's foundation. He educated the clergy and the lay world in obedience to Rome; and, finally, it was due to his efforts that the celibacy of the clergy became customary in Catholic Christianity. Gregory was canonized by Benedict XIII. in 17 29.
works are printed in Migne's Patrol. Lat., vol. 148. Most of his letters and decrees are collected in the Registrum (ed. P. Jaffe, Bibliotheca reruns Germanicarum, 1865) . Further let ters were printed by Jaffe under the title of Epistolae collectae. The Dictatus Papae-27 sentences on the rights of the pope,-which is given in the Registrum is not the work of Gregory. See Voigt, Hildebrand als Papst Gregorius VII. (1846) ; G. Meyer von Knonau, Jahrbiicher des deutschen Reichs ureter Heinrich IV. and Heinrich V. (4 vols., 189o-19o3) ; W. Martens, Gregor VII., sein Leben and Werken (2 vols., Leipzig, 1904) ; C. Mirbt, Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII. (Leipzig, 1894) ; A. Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (3 vols., Leipzig, 1894) ; A. H. Mathew, D.D., Life and Times of Hilde brand, Pope Gregory VII. (191o) ; A. Fliche, S. Gregoire VII. (2nd ed. 192o) and La Ref orme Gregorienne (1924) ; A. Potthast, Bibl. hist. medii aevi and Jaffe, Regesta pontificum Romanorum (2nd ed. 1885 88).