The great question was still undecided: Shall liberty or tyranny prevail--barbarism or civilization?
This question depended upon the answer to another: Shall the Church of God be free or become the creature of temporal power?
Already William the Conqueror and Henry of Austria were trying to fetter the spouse of Christ--already the gulf was opening that threatened spiritual Rome with destruction.

Then it was that Gregory VII saved the Church as Curtius saved the city; but while the pagan has been raised to the skies, the Christian has been insulted and belied.
Never can we sufficiently contemplate the spectacle of one man contending against the world! Not a chieftain, at the head of an army, subduing kingdom after kingdom, but a priest, without a carnal weapon, resisting a continent combined at once to crush him, and finally vanquishing by his death.

Uninspired by ambition, assailed by every earthly motive, God alone could have directed, and God only could have upheld him.

The Emperor of Austria had sworn to depose him, the Italians promised to assist his antagonist.

With scarce a footing in Germany or Italy, cooped up on a barren peak, he wrestled with the haughty conqueror of England, humbled the pride of Nicephorus Botoniates who had usurped from Michael Paripinasses the empire of the East, and deposed Guibert the guilty Bishop of Ravenna.