ST. GREGORY VII. A.D. 1073-1085.

III. Christendom, ecclesiastical and civil. Gregory’s attitude towards it

IV. First two years of Gregory’s pontificate.

Works. — Innumerable authors have written of Gregory in all languages. The first to do him justice was the non-Catholic German historian Voigt. Jager’s French translation of Voigt’s famous monograph is the one here cited. Hist. du Pape Grégoire VII., 2nd ed., Paris, 1842. Another non-Catholic remarkably impartial biography of Hildebrand is Bowden’s Life and Pontificate of Gregory the Seventh, 2 vols., London, 1840.

The work of A. F. Villemain on Gregory has been translated into English (Life of Gregory VII., London 1874, 2 vols.), but is nothing like so valuable as Bowden's biography.

A clear and useful little work is Hildebrand and his Times, W. R. Stephens, London, 1888.

Of Catholic writers we have used Montalembert, Monks of the West, ed. Edinburgh, 1879, vols. VI and VII. Such biographies as Tosti’s La Contessa Matilde, Firenze, 1859,2 are, of course, of great help towards a full understanding of the career of Gregory.

Emperors of the East.

Michael VII. (Ducas), 1067-1078.

Nicephorus III. (Botaniates), 1078-1081.

Alexius I. (Comnenus), 1081-1118.

The latest work in English on Gregory VII is The Life and Times of Hildebrand, by the Right Rev. A. H. Mathew, London, 1910. It appeared too late to be used for the present work. This is the less to be regretted seeing that it Is not founded on the original sources, but consists largely of direct translations from well-known modern authors, and hence is not nearly so valuable as most of the other works we have cited. It is, however, suitably illustrated, contains a useful translation of Gregory’s famous letter to Hermann, Bishop of Metz, and views the great pontiff not altogether unsympathetically, but from a very different standpoint to the one taken up in this volume.