Word: hildebrand
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...Regard Hildebrand as only an able and resolute man, who took advantage of, though he did not make his opportunities, and there is enough in his character to impress you with a sense of its unusual dignity; nor can you follow the history of the wretched Emperor with unbated breath; he shows his teeth like a hunted rat, now in one corner, now in another; at last he exposes his neck at Canossa to the spring of the cat that for twenty years has patiently waited in the Vatican. But endow him with an instinct amounting to foreknowledge, with...
...regard to the correctness of this view, that Hildebrand was the true conqueror of England, several doubts arise spontaneously in the mind of one who has heard merely a general statement of the case. First, is it not better, in the nature of things, to suppose that William and Hildebrand had independent plans, which happened to coincide in some particulars, than to suppose that William was a mere tool of the Roman...
...Hildebrand refused the aid asked by William, was there not danger that the Emperor would gain the powerful support of the Normans...
Finally, did not William's treatment of the Church after the conquest show an independence of priestly influence from which it can fairly be inferred that Hildebrand no more made use of the ambition of the Norman to promote the interest of the Papacy than William made use of the ambition of the priest to promote his own interest...
From the one point of view Hildebrand was the admiral on the quarter-deck of his flag-ship, thence signalling his orders to different parts of the squadron; and William was one of his captains, who did the work cut out for him admirably well in preserving his own ship and sinking his individual enemy. According to the other view, Hildebrand and William were mighty co-ordinate powers, which, applied at the opposite ends of a lever, must have balanced, but which, working together at the same end, were enough to heave Europe from...