THE POPES OF THE GREGORIAN RENAISSANCE

St Leo IX. to Honorius II. 1049-1130

VOL. VI.—1049-1073

VICTOR II.

A.D. 1055-1057.

Emperors of the East.

Theodora, 1055-1056. Michael VI. (Stratioticus), 1056-1057.

Emperors of the West.

Henry III (The Black), 1039-1056. Henry IV (only King of Germany), 1056-1106.

King of England.

St. Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066.

King of France.

Henry I., 1031­1061.

At the time of the death of St. Leo IX. (April 1054), the cardinal-subdeacon Hildebrand was in France inquiring into the doctrines of Berengarius of Tours, and, in the words of that innovator, “treating in the name of the apostolic authority on various ecclesiastical affairs”. Nothing could, of course, be done in Rome without the Pope-maker, to whose care the dying Leo is said to have entrusted the Church. But those in Rome to whose charge the government of the Church had been committed in the meanwhile were able to repel a final attempt of the ex- Pope, Benedict IX, to seize the papal throne by force. This would appear to have been the unhappy man’s last great crime; for it is probable that he presently retired to the monastery of Grottaferrata to bewail his sins to the hour of his death. No sooner was Hildebrand returned than, according to Bonizo at least, both clergy and people made it plain to him that it was their wish to make him Pope. Not only, however, had he no wish to sit on the chair of Peter, but he did not think that the time had yet come when the Church could prudently attempt to vindicate her right to elect her head freely. The Black Emperor was at once too good a friend and too powerful a master to be put lightly aside. Though with very great difficulty he at length succeeded in convincing the people of this, and in arranging for a deputation to accompany him to Henry. His idea was at one and the same time to please the emperor and to safeguard the election rights of the Romans by endeavoring to obtain the nomination of the candidate on whom they had previously fixed their choice.

Accordingly, accompanied by a number of the most distinguished Roman clergy and laity, Hildebrand crossed the Alps and found the emperor at Mainz (November 1054); and, if we are to believe Bonizo, induced him to abandon what he called his right, as Patricius of the Romans, of appointing the supreme Pontiffs. Certain it is, at any rate, that he was specially honored by the emperor, and that the Romans demanded Gebhardt, bishop of Eichstadt, and chancellor (economus) of the empire, as the successor of St. Leo IX.

For information concerning the chancellor’s career up to this point, we must turn to the anonymous biographer of the bishops of his see, who has some pretty things to tell us regarding him. He was the son of Beliza and Hartwig, count of Calvi, situated between Baden and Stuttgart, and on the borders of what was at this period the Duchy of Swabia. To this day the ruins of the castle of the counts of Calvi look down upon the town of the same name, upon the river Nagold on which it stands, and over many of the fir-clad heights of the Black Forest.

The future Pope was a distant relative of the emperor; but, when Henry reminded him of the fact, he used to say that his parents were illustrious enough, but were not quite so aristocratic as that. In 1042 he became, while still very young, bishop of Eichstadt under the following curious circumstances. The emperor’s uncle, Gebhardt, bishop of Ratisbon, had asked his nephew to bestow the See of Eichstadt on a relative of his. Henry was disposed to consent till he discovered that the candidate was the son of a priest, whereupon he firmly refused. Very much annoyed, the bishop declared that the real reason of the emperor’s action was his contempt for him. To show that this suspicion was false, Henry assured him that if he would present to him any other of his relations who was a fit and proper person, he would grant him the bishopric. Gebhardt at once brought forward his name­sake. Prejudiced against him on account of his extreme youth, the emperor asked the advice of one bishop after another, and at length turned to St. Bardo, archbishop of Mainz, who, as was his wont, was sitting quiet and recollected with his cowl drawn over his head. Looking at him earnestly, the archbishop replied : “My lord, you may well bestow on him this power, for one day you will grant him a greater”. At a loss to understand the holy man’s meaning, but satisfied with his permission, the emperor “gave the ring and pastoral staff” to the young Gebhardt. When his father heard the news he was overjoyed, and at once asked who was the patron saint of his son’s diocese. When he was told St. Willibald, he exclaimed : “Bah! my dream has deceived me”, for he had once dreamt that his son was to be a bishop under St. Peter. “But”, adds his biographer, “his time had not yet come”.

Despite his youth, Gebhardt showed himself an able Counselor bishop, so much so indeed that he soon became “better than many bishops in the empire, and inferior to but few”. Especially was he remarkable for his skill and dispatch in deciding cases. His well-deserved fame soon reached the ears of the emperor, who associated him with himself in the administration of the empire. In office he succeeded in overcoming envy by virtue—“a most exceptional accomplishment”. And he gave evidence of his varied ability by showing that he could be as able a general as an administrator. When Duke Conrad was exiled into Hungary (1053), Gebhardt took over the government of his Duchy of Bavaria; and during his term of rule inflicted such chastisement on the freebooting Schirenses that up to our author’s days they had not forgotten it. When he was now at the height of his power, and second to the king, “it seemed both to the emperor himself and to many others that St. Bardo’s prophecy concerning the greater power had been already fulfilled”."

But what the greater power was to be, became plain enough to Henry and to Gebhardt when Hildebrand and the Romans presented their petition. It is hard to say whether it was more distasteful to the emperor or to the bishop. The one was loth to lose his favorite minister; the other to take upon himself a burden which had in so short a time proved fatal to so many of his countrymen. But the Romans would have no other than Gebhardt, and the more he refused the proffered dignity, the more were they determined to have him. It was even said that he secretly sent envoys to Rome with instructions to defame his character; and he certainly employed learned men at home to try to save him from the position he dreaded.

March, 1055

But, as the historian of his See reminds us, “there is no wisdom, there is no counsel against the Lord”, and, in a great diet at Ratisbon, Gebhardt brought the whole affair to a close “by a few but very noteworthy words”. “Behold”, said he to the emperor, “I give myself up body and soul to the service of St. Peter, and, although I know myself to be unworthy of so holy a See, I will obey your commands on condition that you restore to St. Peter what belongs to him”. To this the emperor agreed, and Hildebrand carried off the unwilling bishop in triumph to Rome. No wonder he used to declare half in jest and half in earnest that he did not love monks!

Following the narrative of Leo of Monte Cassino, we may go on to say that it was Hildebrand who procured the assent of the Roman people to his choice of Gebhardt as Pope, who suggested to him to assume the name of Victor, and who did not rest till he was enthroned on Holy Thursday, April 13, 1055. “For three years Victor ruled the Apostolic See most gloriously, and, among his other virtues, displayed such liberality that the Romans glorified him both in life and in death”.

Gebhardt’s arrival in Italy was followed almost immediately by that of the emperor. He Was both annoyed and alarmed that Godfrey, duke of Lorraine, who had long been a rebel to his authority, had married his cousin Beatrice, the widow of Boniface, marquis of Tuscany, and had thus become the most powerful noble in Italy (1054). He feared lest, through the influence of the new marquis, the Italians, “ever ready for revolution”, should turn against the empire; and his apprehensions were deepened by the arrival of an embassy from the Romans, which came to beg him to enter Italy to check the power of Godfrey. His prompt action disconcerted the marquis, who hastily quitted Italy, and left his wife to try to pacify him. Taking her daughter Matilda along with her, she went boldly before the emperor, and, while assuring him that in marrying Godfrey she had no thought of doing anything against the interests of the empire, plainly told him that she had only done what the “law of nations” gave her every right to do. Utterly failing not merely in magnanimity but in justice, the emperor simply replied that she ought not to have married without his knowledge, kept both her and her daughter in honorable captivity as hostages, and brought them back with him to Germany. He also took action at the same time against Godfrey’s brother, Cardinal Frederick, who had just returned to Rome from Constantinople with a large sum of money and valuable presents, of most of which, however,—a fact perhaps unknown to the emperor—he had been robbed by Trasmund, count of Teate. Fearful lest this treasure should come into the hands of Godfrey, Henry wrote to the Pope, and bade him seize the cardinal, and send him to him at once. But hearing through his friends of the emperor’s ill-will against him, Frederick left Rome, and became a monk at Monte Cassino.

 Meanwhile the emperor had advanced as far south as Tuscany, and was in the month of May joined by Victor at Florence. On Whit Sunday (June 4), in presence of the emperor and the Pope, a synod was held at which one hundred and twenty bishops assisted. Through the active agency of Hildebrand, further steps were taken to carry on the work of reform inaugurated by Leo. Not only were the decrees against simony and the incontinence of clerics reaffirmed, but several bishops, convicted of breaches of them, were deposed. It was no doubt, too, on this occasion that, reminding the emperor of his promise, Victor obtained through him, sometimes even against his inclinations, the restoration of no small amount of papal property. In 872 Louis II had granted the Holy See Nursia and other towns, which involved the grant of a large portion of the Duchy of Spoleto, which seems to have then included the March of Fermo, Camerino, or Ancona, as it is variously called. And it would appear that Henry the Black made over the whole Duchy with its dependent March to the Roman Church. At any rate, various documents have been preserved which show that Victor II at least was its duke and marquis. In all these negotiations with Henry there was naturally much that disappointed the Pope, and, calling to mind how he had himself been the cause of baulking the policy of Leo IX, he would sigh and exclaim, “I am well served, inasmuch as I myself opposed my lord”.

It would appear that for some months after the council of Florence, the Pope and Hildebrand remained with the emperor in central Italy, probably engaged in establishing on a firmer basis the imperial and the papal authority in the northern half of Italy. But with the Normans and southern Italy, Henry was prevented from interfering by having to return to Germany (November), in order to cope with the difficulties which Godfrey was causing in Lorraine, and to subdue a conspiracy formed against him by many of the powerful nobles of his kingdom.

1056. Hildebrand again in France

In the beginning of the new year, the Pope dispatched Hildebrand to France in order to continue the work of reform from which the death of St. Leo had recalled him. Especially had he to combat simony, encouraged unfortunately by the French king (Henry I), who paid no heed to the admonitions on the subject addressed him both by Leo IX and Victor. The intrepid monk resumed his task with his accustomed energy, and we find it recorded that the “apocrisiarius Aldebran” presided at various councils at which the suppression of simony was a med at. In one of them, held apparently at Embrun, its archbishop, Hugo, accused of simony, continued against all evidence to deny his guilt. To bring matters to a head, Hildebrand, acting on the advice of the other bishops, thus addressed him : “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, whose gifts you are accused of buying, I adjure you to confess the truth on this subject. May heaven prevent you from pronouncing the name of the Holy Spirit as long as you persist in denying the truth”. A man of ready speech, the archbishop at once proceeded to pronounce the sacred names. But, to the profound amazement of all, he was unable, after repeated efforts, to enunciate the name of the Holy Ghost. Utterly stupefied, the archbishop humbly confessed his fault, and along with six other bishops was deposed.

When Hildebrand had to return to Rome, the work of purifying the Church of France was continued by the Pope’s orders, under the presidency of Rimbaud, archbishop of Arles, and Pontius, archbishop of Aix, whom he had appointed his legates. Nothing will show so well the nature of the cleansing to be effected than “a complaint” which was addressed “to the assembly of the vicars of God (at the council of Toulouse), and to the legates of the supreme Roman Pontiff who holds the place of Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles”, by Berenger, viscount, or proconsul, as he called himself, of Narbonne. During the days of his uncle, Archbishop Ermengaud, the church of Narbonne, so the complaint set forth, was “one of the most flourishing between Rome and Spain”. Its possessions of all kinds were great, and its church library was full of books. On the death of Ermengaud, Guifred, count of Cerdagne, a relation of whom Berenger had married, approached the viscount himself and his parents, as well as the count of Rodez, with a view to having his ten-year-old son elected to the archbishopric, and offered to divide the sum of 1oo.ooo solidi between Berenger’s father and the count. At first the viscount’s parents were unwilling to have anything to do with so base a transaction; but when their son, through love of his wife, threatened to kill them if they did not consent to Guifred’s wishes, they and the count of Rodez took the money, and the boy, Guifred (he had the same name as his father), became archbishop of Narbonne. As might have been expected, he showed himself altogether more like one of the ordinary nobles of the period than a priest. He had no sooner come to man’s estate than he quarreled with Berenger, who had no doubt counted on making him his creature. He raised troops and made open war on the viscount, in the course of which thousands of men, we are told, were slain. For the purposes of his campaigns, and to raise 100,000 solidi to buy the bishopric of Urgel for his brother, he absolutely ruined his diocese and his cathedral church. Books, relic-cases, chalices, everything found their way into the hands of money-grabbing Jews. No match apparently for the truculent archbishop, Berenger wished to have their differences settled “by the decision of the apostolic legate”. To this Giufred refused to agree; and when his enemy appealed to the Pope, he excommunicated both him and his wife, and laid his territory under a cruel interdict. Were it not for the fear of God, Berenger assured the assembled Fathers that he would have disregarded Guifred’s sentence, the more so that the archbishop had himself been already excommunicated by Pope Victor. And though, in concluding his complaint, the viscount declared his readiness to go to Rome, he bluntly told the Fathers of Toulouse that if they did not give him the justice he sought, he would treat the archbishop’s excommunication with con-tempt, never keep the peace nor continue his appeal to the Apostolic See.

It is no concern of ours here to inquire as to exactly how far the complaint of Berenger was well founded. His own words about himself, combined with Victor’s and other Popes’ condemnation of Guifred, are enough to show that the picture it presents is accurate enough, at least in its dark outlines, and lets us see what need there was, in the interests of the weak and of law and order, that the results of the reforming zeal of the Domnus Apostolicus should be felt everywhere. Evidently it was only for the Pope of Rome that the turbulent clerical and lay nobles of the age had any respect at all.

Passing on to Spain, whither found its way most of the church plate of the cathedral of Narbonne, we shall find that two facts at once call for notice. The first is that the demand for a reformation of manners was being heard, even amid the clash of arms, in that peninsula, and that the Spanish bishops were endeavoring to meet it. The other is the steady progress of the Christian kingdoms at the expense of the Moors. This was chiefly due to the valor of one of the greatest of the sovereigns who have ruled in Spain, viz., Ferdinand I, king of Castile and Leon. Elated by his successes, and by the fact that he ruled over more than one kingdom, he was induced to assume the title of emperor. This assumption was not unnaturally resented by the Emperor Henry, who sent ambassadors in order to denounce it first to the assembled Fathers at the council of Tours (1055), which was being held by Hildebrand, and then to Pope Victor and the council of Florence. Both Pope and council decided that the German emperor’s contentions were just; and envoys were dispatched by them to remonstrate with the Spanish monarch in their name, and to threaten excommunication and interdict if their decrees were unheeded by him. Ferdinand at once assembled the bishops and nobles of his kingdoms; and while, through the influence of the famous Roderic Diaz, the Cid, the assembly declared its complete independence of the empire, it resolved, in deference to the Roman Pontiff, that it was desirable that their sovereign should lay aside the imperial title. These recommendations were accepted by Ferdinand, who dismissed the ambassadors with the assurance that he would obey the behests of the Pope.

England.

The activities of Victor were not confined to the continent of Europe. He was equally interested in those “who inhabited the isles of the sea, to wit, the Irish (Scoti) and English”. Sending “health and apostolical benediction to his most beloved son King Edward and to all the nobility of the English”, he confirmed, in response to a request of the king, the ancient privileges which the Roman Church had already conferred on the monastery of Ely. To Archbishop Kynsie (Cynesige), who had come all the way from York for the purpose, he presented his pallium, and he had to take action in the affair of Archbishop Strand. If the reader will turn to a preceding page of this work, he will see how, by the influence of the party of Earl Godwin, the unworthy bishop of Winchester, Stigand, was put in possession of the See of Canterbury (1052), though its legitimate occupant, Robert of Jumièges, was still alive, and had not been canonically deposed. The usurper had been excommunicated by St. Leo IX, whose example was followed by four of his successors. And if “bishops-elect sought consecration abroad”, the reason was that Victor II had forbidden the bishops of the province of Canterbury to seek it at the hands of the intruder Stigand. This illiterate pluralist who had obtained the archbishopric by force was destined to lose it by the same means at the hands of William the Conqueror.

The East

Before retracing our steps to follow the movements of the Pope himself, attention may here be called to one more of his letters, viz. to the one which by mistake was formerly attributed to Victor III, and which was addressed to the aged Empress Theodora, who was placed on the throne of the Byzantine Caesars in the same year as Victor II took possession of the chair of Peter. The document would seem to be another illustration of the fact that contemporaries did not realize that an impassable gulf had been formed between Rome and Constantinople by the acts of the papal legates and of the patriarch Michael Cerularius in 1053. At first Theodora allowed herself to be ruled by the ambitious patriarch, who is thought to have favored her promotion for the furtherance of his own ends. But her short reign of eighteen months was not far advanced when she spurned the yoke which he was placing upon her. It may well be that knowledge of this fact was not without its influence on the letter which the Pope wrote to her. Reminding her that it was his duty to admonish both great and small, especially indeed the great, as they can do so much more good or harm “to the poor of Christ”, he begged her to abolish the insupportable tax which was placed upon pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre by the imperial officials. Not only was a heavy tax of three aim levied on each of their horses, but the horses themselves were liable to be seized for the public service, and a sum of like amount was exacted from every two persons on foot. He reminded her that the delinquencies of subordinates were visited on their superiors, wished her every blessing for this life and the next, and exhorted her ever to be mindful of and to venerate the Roman Church “as her first and proper mother”, just as she had ever honored her and her family before her. Death (August 1056) prevented Theodora from carrying into effect her designs against the all-powerful Cerularius, and the tax remained to swell the feelings of bitterness against the Greeks which showed themselves in the conduct of the Latins towards them in the Crusades.

Little is known of the doings of the Pope from the time that Hildebrand went to France till the summer of 1056, when he betook himself to Germany. During this interval, however, he had a difference with the monks of Monte Cassino. The abbacy of this great monastery had become vacant in December 1055; and, as the Pope complained in various letters to the monks, they (a majority of them) had acted very wrongly in electing the monk Peter as their new abbot without either consulting him or obtaining the emperor’s permission. The fact perhaps was that Peter, though a very holy man, was regarded both by a number of his brethren, and especially by the Pope, as wholly unsuited to rule the abbey and its great domains at a time when a strong will and a clear intellect were needed to cope with the aggressive Normans. To explain their conduct, the brethren at once dispatched some of their number both to the Pope and to the emperor. It seemed to them that it was Victor’s intention to get the monastery into his power. However, they boldly declared that even by papal privilege it belonged to the monks to elect their abbots, and to the Popes only to consecrate them. Settlement of the affair, delayed by the Pontiff’s journey to Germany, was brought about by the resignation of Peter, and the subsequent election of Frederick, the cardinal of Lorraine, a candidate as satisfactory to Victor as to the monks (May 1057).

Victor in the Abruzzi

In July 1056 the Pope was in his March of Firmana at Aprutium (Teramo), no doubt on his way to Germany. We there find him restoring property to its bishop, and decreeing, “in the name of King Henry and his own”, that any breach of his decision would be punished by a fine of fifty pounds to the royal exchequer, and of a like amount both to his treasury and to the bishop.

We have no means of saying whether or not he had previously visited the southern portion of Italy. But in any case the story of the sufferings which the people were there enduring from the ravages of the Normans was poured into his ears. It was more than he could bear. This cry of distress, and perhaps, too, indications of unrest on the part of the Romans, caused him to lend a favorable ear to the repeated requests of the emperor that he would come to him in Germany.

Accordingly, about the month of August he moved northwards from Aprutium and found the emperor at Goslar, (1056, September 8). He would have been greeted with a splendor altogether unprecedented, had not God, who wished, we are told, to show how empty was all such display, sent a furious storm of rain at the very moment of the Pope’s arrival. On account of the feast, the Nativity of Our Lady, and to welcome the sovereign Pontiff, the wealth and power of the empire had assembled at Goslar. But the deluge of rain converted what was to have been a most glorious and solemn procession of magnates into a disorderly flight.

Despite the weather, however, attention was given both to business and to pleasure. The Pope succeeded in reconciling Hanno, the new archbishop of Cologne, with the emperor, and then the court migrated to Bodfeld in the Hartz Mountains for hunting purposes. But unfortunately the emperor’s days were numbered. A fever attacked him, and, feeling that the hand of Death was upon him, he prepared to meet his end like a man and a Christian. He asked pardon of all whom he could, restored certain ill-gotten goods, forgave those who had injured him, confessed his sins to the Pope and to the other bishops and priests who surrounded his bedside, and received absolution (indulgentiam) from them, as well as the holy viaticum of the Body and Blood of the Lord. To provide as far as possible for the maintenance of order in his kingdom after his demise, he entrusted it and his successor, Henry IV, a child six years old, to the care of the Pope; and, after an illness of about a week, gave up his soul into the hands of its Maker (October 5, 1056). His body was transported to Spires, where, according to the arrangements made by the Pope and the widowed Empress Agnes it was buried on the anniversary of the day on which he had been born (October 28), in order that, on the very day on which he had come forth from the womb of his mother, he might be laid in the bosom of the earth, the common mother of every mortal.

Through the general uprightness of his character, and especially through his uncompromising hostility to simony, Henry had in many ways deserved well of the Church, even though he occasionally acted as its master. And so Hildebrand, whose life was devoted to freeing it from the thralldom to which he and his predecessors had reduced it, always spoke well of him. But his early death, though disastrous for the empire, was advantageous for the Church. Her path to freedom was greatly smoothed thereby. Meanwhile, now supreme in both Church and State, Victor exerted himself with striking success to preserve the empire from the calamities to be naturally expected on the accession of a child. The occasion called forth all the skill of the former minister. In the East the Slavs had just defeated an imperial army with great slaughter, and, in the West, Godfrey of Lorraine and his allies were still in arms. The first care of the Pope was to cause the boy-king to be solemnly enthroned at Aix-la-Chapelle and the nobles to swear fealty to him, and his next to reconcile Godfrey and Baldwin of Flanders with Henry at a council which he held in December at Cologne. Still in company with the Pope, Henry met the princes of the empire on Christmas Day at Ratisbon. His position was secured, and the Tope, with the empire deeply in his debt, returned to Rome in the beginning of the Lent of 1057.

On his arrival in Rome, Victor occupied himself not only with holding councils, settling various matters in connection with bishoprics, and granting privileges, but also with the Norman question. Unable to bring the pressure of arms to bear upon the Agareni (for so, regarding them as equally vicious as the Saracens, the people called the Normans), he seems to have tried diplomacy, and, according to the Annals of Augsburg, succeeded in inducing them to have a greater regard for peace. His energy indeed at this period was such that we can have no reason to call in question the soundness of the conclusion of his anonymous admirer to the effect that if he had lived longer, “he would have made both the ears of many people tingle”. But his pontificate had not much longer to run. He left Rome for Tuscany, never to return, towards the end of May.

One of the objects of this, his last journey from Rome, was in no doubt to examine for himself on the spot the causes of the perennial dispute between the bishops of Arezzo and Sienna, which was brought before him also. Another reason would be to take further steps towards drawing still closer the bonds of union between the Papacy and the House of Tuscany. Even if he had not been joined by Hildebrand in Germany, it is certain that he was accompanied by him on this occasion.

We have already seen how, emboldened by the death of the emperor, the monks of Monte Cassino had, to the entire satisfaction of the Pope, elected Frederick of Lorraine as the abbot. In the month of June the newly elected abbot followed Victor into Tuscany, and was in the first place ordained by him cardinal-priest of St. Chrysogonus (June 14), that fourth-century basilica of which the late Pope Leo XIII, of glorious memory, was titular when he was elected supreme Pontiff. Ten days later he consecrated him abbot. Assured of the goodwill at least of Beatrice, Duke Godfrey’s wife, who had been restored to him, and of her stepdaughter Matilda, Victor was evidently bent on attaching to the Papacy by the strong bonds of friendship the now most powerful House of Lorraine-Tuscany. In Italy there was no family comparable in influence to that of Godfrey, who received or assumed about this time the titles of “standard-bearer of the Romans, patricius of Rome, marquis of Italy, prefect of Ancona, and marquis of Pisa”. The fruit of Victor’s attention to this influential family was to be garnered by the Papacy at no distant date. The great Countess Matilda was to prove the strongest barrier to the tyrannical designs of Henry IV.

Death and burial

Before the new abbot returned to Rome, he assisted, along with Hildebrand, the provisor of the monastery of St. Paul, outside-the-walls, and with several bishops of different Tuscan cities, at a council which the Pope summoned to settle the dispute between the bishops of Arezzo and Sienna regarding jurisdiction over various parishes (July 23). The assembly met in the palace of St. Donatus, near the city of Arezzo, and would appear to have deeded in favor of the claims of Arezzo.

Five days after the closing of the council, its chief was lying dead in the city near which it had been held. Anxious to have the body of their illustrious countryman buried in their midst, a number of Germans set out with it for “the toparch of Eichstadt”. In the neighbourhood of Ravenna, however, they fell into an ambush prepared for them by a number of its inhabitants, and were robbed of all they had. They were forced, therefore, to bury the remains they so jealously guarded outside Ravenna, “in the basilica of St. Mary, which is of the shape of the Roman Pantheon, and with sorrowful hearts to make their way back, as best they could, to their country”. The basilica in question was the well-known round mausoleum of Theodoric, which had been converted into a monastic church. These distressing circumstances connected with the Pope’s burial serve well to illustrate the lawless condition of the age, and may be looked upon as a complement to the disregard shown by the emperors to the canon law in their elections of Popes. In the sudden and premature death of Victor we have to mourn the loss of another of those German Popes whose lives were an honor to themselves, an advantage to the Church, and a credit to those who nominated them.

Neither epitaph nor coin of Victor seems to be extant. There is a story that on one occasion, when he was saying Mass, the subdeacon put poison into the chalice along with the wine. Wishful after the consecration to raise the chalice, the Pope found to his astonishment that he was unable to do so. When, with the people, he prayed to God to know the cause of this strange circumstance, the poisoner was possessed by the devil. At once divining the cause, the Pope ordered the chalice with the blood of the Lord to be enclosed in an altar and preserved for ever as relics. Then he continued praying until the unfortunate subdeacon was delivered from his possession.