Saint Gregory VII — born Hildebrand —, born around 1015-1025 at Soana in Tuscany and died on 25 May 1085 at Salerno, is one of the greatest popes in the history of the Church and one of the most contested. Son of a humble craftsman, a Benedictine monk trained in Rome, he was for twenty years the hidden soul of the reform of the Church before himself ascending the Chair of Peter in 1073.
This article is not about his pontificate — the fight against simony and clerical marriage, the end of lay investiture, the duel with Emperor Henry IV and the humiliation of Canossa —, which can be found in the article Pope Saint Gregory VII (1073-1085) and in the dossiers The Gregorian Reform and The Investiture Controversy. It focuses on the saint: the inner man, his monastic formation, his virtues, his spiritual friendships, his death in exile, and the long history of his cult.
For Gregory VII is a singular saint: dead defeated, driven out of Rome, he was raised to the altars only five centuries after his death — and his very canonization triggered, in the 18th century, one of the most violent quarrels between Rome and the European monarchies, the "affair of the Office of Saint Gregory VII". Few saints have been, even in their liturgy, such a sign of contradiction. His epitaph sums up his whole life in a sentence that became famous: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile."
Saint Gregory VII in a few dates
- c. 1015-1025Birth of Hildebrand in Tuscany
- 1030sMonastic formation in Rome
Raised at the monastery of St Mary on the Aventine, where his uncle was abbot. There he breathed the reforming spirit and made his profession as a Benedictine monk.
- 1046-1049Exile with Gregory VI
After the deposition of his master Pope Gregory VI at the Synod of Sutri (1046), Hildebrand follows him into exile in Germany. He returns with the reforming pope Leo IX.
- 1050-1073The archdeacon, soul of the reform
In the service of five popes (Leo IX, Victor II, Stephen IX, Nicholas II, Alexander II), he becomes archdeacon of the Roman Church and the true driving force of renewal, the one Peter Damian nicknamed his holy Satan, according to historians.
- 22 April 1073Election to the pontificate
Elected pope on the death of Alexander II, he takes the name Gregory VII in honour of Gregory VI, his first master.
- January 1077Canossa
Emperor Henry IV, excommunicated, comes to beg absolution in the snow at Canossa. Gregory, as a priest, cannot refuse a repentant sinner — at the cost of his own political position.
- 1084-1085Exile and death at Salerno
Driven from Rome after its sack by the Normans, Gregory withdraws to Salerno, where he dies on 25 May 1085 uttering: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile."
- 1584-1606-1728From death to the altar
Entered in the Roman Martyrology (1584), local Office authorized at Salerno by Paul V (1606), then canonized with the Office extended to the universal Church by Benedict XIII (1728) — triggering the "affair of the Office".
- 1729-1730The affair of the Office
The fifth lesson of the new Office, recalling the deposition of Henry IV, provokes mandements from French bishops and a decree of the Parlement of Paris suppressing the Office.
Hildebrand: the man before the pope
An obscure birth in Tuscany
Nothing in Hildebrand's origins suggested that he would one day govern Christendom. He was born around 1015-1025 at Soana (Sovana), a small town in Tuscany, into a modest family: his father was a craftsman — blacksmith or carpenter according to the accounts[4][5]. The sources diverge on the exact year: the Catholic Encyclopedia places it between 1020 and 1025[6], others bring it back to around 1015[7] — hence the wide range used here. Contemporary sources describe him as a vir de plebe, "a man of the people"[8]. The future adversary of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe was thus, by his very birth, the exact opposite of a prince: a son of the people whom nothing destined for power, except grace and an iron will.
His name, Hildebrand, is of Germanic origin — a sign of the Lombard presence in Tuscany. His adversaries would later turn this name against him in a venomous pun, calling him Hellebrand, "hell-firebrand". Sanctity and slander accompanied his name from the very beginning.
Monastic formation in Rome
Sent to Rome at a young age, Hildebrand was raised at the monastery of St Mary on the Aventine, where his maternal uncle was abbot[9][10]. It was there — and not, as a long-standing tradition would have it, at Cluny — that he received the decisive imprint of his life. The Aventine cloister was then imbued with the reforming spirit blowing through all 11th-century monasticism, inherited from Cluny and its great abbots[11]. The young man had as masters Lawrence, Archbishop of Amalfi, and a learned monk named John Gratian — the future Pope Gregory VI[12].
Hildebrand made his profession as a Benedictine monk there[13]. All his life, even amid the most political battles, he remained at heart a monk: a man shaped by the Rule of Saint Benedict, obedience, asceticism and prayer. It is this monastic mould — and not worldly ambition — that explains his lofty and uncompromising conception of the Church.
The exile of 1046 and the question of Cluny
The event that forged the young monk was a drama. His master John Gratian, who had become Pope Gregory VI, was deposed in December 1046 at the Synod of Sutri, in the great cleansing of the Roman papacy undertaken by Emperor Henry III. Hildebrand, out of loyalty, followed his fallen master into exile beyond the Alps, in Germany[14][15]. There he saw at close hand the misery of a debased papacy, the plaything of Roman factions and emperors — a spectacle that would decide his entire future programme.
Here the sources diverge, and honesty requires saying so. An ancient tradition, long repeated, holds that after Gregory VI's death, Hildebrand withdrew to Cluny and became a monk there[16]. Modern historians consider this claim doubtful: Hildebrand himself asserts it in some letters, but nothing proves a long Cluniac stay[17]. What is certain is that he returned to Rome in the retinue of the reforming Pope Saint Leo IX, around 1049, and that he never again left the service of the Roman Church. Whether or not Cluny counted him among its sons, it was the Cluniac ideal — a Church free, purified, restored to God — that would dwell in him until his death.
The archdeacon, hidden soul of the reform
The servant of five popes
For nearly a quarter of a century, before himself becoming pope, Hildebrand was the indispensable collaborator of all the reforming pontiffs: Leo IX, Victor II, Stephen IX, Nicholas II, Alexander II[18][19]. Steward of the patrimony of Saint Peter, legate, counsellor, he became archdeacon of the Roman Church under Nicholas II — the office that made him, in fact, the first minister of the papacy. The detail of the reforms he inspired — the decree on papal election by the cardinals (1059), the fight against simony and Nicolaitism — belongs to the history of the Gregorian Reform; what matters here is the man who carried it.
This man struck his contemporaries by a supernatural energy. Short, unattractive, of fragile health, he nevertheless governed souls and events by an inner strength that even his adversaries admired. All his life, he acted as a monk become the arm of God, convinced that he served not a policy, but the holiness of the Bride of Christ.
A delightful nickname: strength in the service of the Church
The most delightful testimony to this temperament comes from another saint and great reformer, Cardinal Peter Damian. An austere hermit and Doctor of the Church, Peter Damian worked closely with Hildebrand, and sometimes suffered under his grip. Historians report that, in the 1070s, he nicknamed him his holy Satan, with entirely affectionate mischief[20].
The phrase is not an insult: it is an exasperated tribute. Peter Damian meant that this tiny monk bent the entire pontifical court, ministers and cardinals included, to his will by the sheer force of an indomitable will in the service of the Church[21]. There was in Hildebrand something irresistible — an intransigence that could frighten, but that was wholly ordered to God. The paradox of his sanctity lies there: a monastic gentleness in his interior life, an iron harshness whenever the rights of God were at stake.
The spirituality of Saint Gregory VII
Beneath the reformer and the statesman lies a coherent and powerful spirituality, which can be read in his letters (the Registrum) and in the accounts of those who knew him. Four traits sum it up: love of justice, passion for the liberty of the Church, devotion to Saint Peter, and union with God in prayer and tears.
Love of justice
The key word of Gregory VII's entire interior life is iustitia — justice, understood not in the narrow juridical sense, but in the biblical sense: the order willed by God, holiness restored to all things. His motto sums it all up: "I have loved justice and hated iniquity." This formula echoes almost word for word the Psalm addressed to the King-Messiah: "You have loved justice and hated iniquity" (Ps 45:8)[22]. Gregory made this royal verse the programme of a lifetime — and paid for it with exile.
To love justice, for him, was not to defend a power: it was to refuse that holy things be bought (simony), that the Church be enslaved to the interests of princes, that bishoprics be treated as fiefs. His firmness, often mistaken for pride, was the expression of a conscience that could not compromise on what it believed to be the right of God.
Libertas Ecclesiae: freeing the Bride of Christ
Gregory VII's great word, the one for which he lived and died, is libertas Ecclesiae: the liberty of the Church[23][24]. In his vision, the Church is the Bride of Christ, and to see her sold, dominated, invested by lay hands was a profanation. His fight against the investiture of bishops by kings was not, in his eyes, a quarrel over power: it was the defence of the honour of God and of the purity of His Bride.
His spiritual programme can be summed up, according to historians, in a simple ideal: a free, chaste and catholic Church, purified of simony and freed from the grip of princes[25].
This conviction gave him an unheard-of boldness before the mighty: better, for him, a hunted pope and a poor but free Church, than a rich Church enslaved to princes. It is this hierarchy of values — God first, the liberty of the Church second, worldly peace last — that makes him a saint and not a mere politician.
Devotion to Saint Peter and to the Roman Church
For Gregory, the apostle Peter was not a distant figure of the past: he was a living presence. He literally thought of himself as Peter's servant, vicar and at times spokesman, whose see he occupied. His letters invoke "blessed Peter" unceasingly as a master whose mere executor he is. This Petrine faith — the Roman Church as rock and mother of all Churches — is the mystical root of his authority: if he dares to stand up to emperors, it is because he speaks not in his own name, but in Peter's.
When he was crushed by the weight of his office, he did not write as an ambitious man, but as a man overwhelmed. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, he confided his anguish to Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino by taking up the words of the psalmist: "I have come into deep waters…" (Ps 69:3)[26].
A man of prayer and tears
The hagiographers agree on a point that polemics has made people forget: Gregory VII was a contemplative. Amid his countless occupations, the accounts of sanctity report, he remained a man of prayer, and his tears spoke of the tenderness of his heart[27].
The praises that accompanied his election describe the same man: "pious", "modest, sober, chaste, devoted to hospitality", nourished "from childhood at the breast of this Mother Church"[28]. Beneath the fighter lies an austere monk who never ceased to seek God.
The tradition of the healing Virgin
Medieval piety surrounded his figure with wondrous tales which express, in their own way, his filial trust in the Virgin Mary. The Lives of the Saints relates that, gravely ill, Gregory is said to have seen the Blessed Virgin question him about his sufferings; entrusting himself to her judgement, he is said to have been healed by her touch[29]. This account should be received for what it is: not a deposition, but a hagiographical tradition expressing the spiritual truth of a soul entrusted to the hands of the Mother of God.
Friendships and spiritual children
The sanctity of Gregory VII can also be read in the circle of fervent souls who surrounded him — proof that he was not a solitary tyrant, but a spiritual father.
Countess Matilda of Tuscany
The most famous of his spiritual daughters is Countess Matilda of Tuscany (1046-1115), the most powerful princess in Italy, who placed her fortune and her armies at the pope's service[30]. Their friendship, of a wholly mystical intensity, was slandered by the emperor's partisans, who saw a scandal in it; it was only the meeting of two souls burning with the same zeal for the Church. It was in her castle of Canossa that the most famous scene of the pontificate would be played out.
Hugh of Cluny, Empress Agnes and the others
Around him gravitate other figures of sanctity: Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, heir of Saint Odilo, godfather of Emperor Henry IV and mediator between pope and empire; the Empress Agnes, mother of Henry IV, who became a penitent in Rome and a faithful follower of the pope; Anselm of Lucca, canonist and saint; Desiderius of Monte Cassino, the future Pope Victor III[31][32]. This network of monastic and reforming friendships forms the true spiritual milieu of Gregory VII: an international of sanctity in the service of the liberty of the Church.
Canossa: the victory of mercy
The best-known episode of his life — the penance of Emperor Henry IV, who came in January 1077 to beg in the snow at Canossa for absolution from the pope he had defied — belongs to the story of the pontificate and of the Investiture Controversy. But it has a spiritual reading that touches on Gregory's sanctity.
Politically, absolving the repentant emperor was a mistake: it lifted his excommunication and restored his strength. But Gregory was a priest before being a prince. Faced with a prostrate, imploring sinner, fasting for three days at the castle gate, he could not, as minister of God's forgiveness, refuse absolution without betraying his priesthood. So he forgave — at the cost of his own position. Canossa, so often read as the pope's proud triumph over the emperor, is in reality the victory of mercy over human prudence: a saint who preferred to lose the game rather than close the door to a penitent.
Exile and death at Salerno (1085)
The fall and the sack of Rome
The last years of Gregory VII were a Calvary. Henry IV, having recovered, marched on Rome, had an antipope elected (Clement III) and besieged the true pope in Castel Sant'Angelo. Gregory was freed in 1084 by his Norman ally Robert Guiscard — but at the price of a dreadful sack of Rome by the Norman troops, which turned the Roman populace against the pope[33][34]. Hated in his own city for a calamity he had not caused, Gregory had to leave Rome. He withdrew to Salerno, among the Normans, where he ended his life.
"I have loved justice, I have hated iniquity"
It was at Salerno that the defeated and exiled pope died, on 25 May 1085. Tradition holds that, feeling the end approaching, he uttered the words that would become his epitaph and the summary of his whole life[35][36]:
"I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile." — Last words of Saint Gregory VII, 25 May 1085[37]
In Latin — "Dilexi iustitiam et odivi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio" — these words are a bitter and grandiose echo of the royal Psalm (Ps 45:8): the dying pope applies to himself the words spoken of the Messiah, but reverses their ending. Christ, because He loved justice, was anointed and exalted; Gregory, for the same reason, dies in exile. Three days before his death, he lifted all the excommunications he had pronounced, except those striking Henry IV and the antipope[38][39]: to the very end, mercy and firmness intertwined.
The tomb at Salerno
Gregory VII was buried in St Matthew's Cathedral, Salerno, where his tomb remains a place of veneration to this day[40][41]. His epitaph engraves his last words in stone. The pope whom Rome had driven out thus rests far from the City he had so loved — but his memory never ceased returning to Rome, until the Church officially proclaimed him a saint.
From death to the altar: the cult of Saint Gregory VII
The recognition of his sanctity was slow and gradual — far more so than for most medieval saints. Defeated in his lifetime, Gregory had to wait centuries before the Church solemnly raised him to the altars. Three main stages can be distinguished, whose dates vary according to the sources — as this article honestly notes.
| Stage | Date | Authority | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry in the Roman Martyrology | 1584 | Gregory XIII | Official recognition of the cult (often called "beatification") |
| Proper Office authorized at Salerno | 1606 | Paul V | Cult at first local (called "canonization" by French sources) |
| Extension of the cult | 1705, then Benedictines | — | Cistercians, then the whole Benedictine order |
| Extension to the universal Church | 1728 | Benedict XIII | Proper Office inserted into the Roman Breviary → the great quarrel |
The Roman Martyrology of 1584
It was under Pope Gregory XIII, in 1584, in the great revision of the Roman Martyrology conducted by Cardinal Baronius, that Hildebrand's name was officially entered among the saints[42][43]. This entry counts as public recognition of his cult — what the Catholic Encyclopedia calls his beatification[44]. His memory has remained in the calendar: the Church still celebrates him today, on 25 May.
1606: Paul V authorizes the Office at Salerno
In 1606, Pope Paul V went a step further: he granted the chapter of Salerno Cathedral the right to honour Gregory VII as a saint with a public Office[45]. This is the step that French sources call his canonization — whereas the Catholic Encyclopedia and English Wikipedia place the canonization proper in 1728, under Benedict XIII[46][47]. The cult then remained largely local — Salerno, guardian of his tomb —, then gradually spread: to the Cistercians (1705), then to the whole Benedictine order, of which Gregory is one of the most illustrious sons[48].
1728: Benedict XIII extends the Office to the universal Church
The decisive turning point came in the 18th century. In 1728, Pope Benedict XIII — a Dominican zealous for reform — decided to extend the cult of Gregory VII to all Christendom, by inserting his legend and proper Office into the Roman Breviary, with a feast on 25 May[49][50]. Rome thought it was honouring a great reforming saint. But by having the account of his battles against the emperor read every year throughout the Church, Benedict XIII relit a bomb. This was the affair of the Office of Saint Gregory VII.
The affair of the Office of Saint Gregory VII (1729-1730)
The fifth lesson that shocked
The new Office contained, like every saint's Office, lessons (readings) recounting the blessed's life. But the fifth lesson recalled, without mincing words, the most explosive act of the pontificate: Gregory VII had excommunicated Emperor Henry IV, declared him deposed from his kingdom, and released his subjects from the oath of loyalty they had sworn to him[51]:
"He resisted with intrepidity the impious efforts of Henry: he deprived him of the communion of the faithful and of his kingdom, and released the peoples subject to him from the fidelity they had sworn to him." — Fifth lesson of the Office of Saint Gregory VII, 1728 Breviary[52]
To have this read in every diocese of France was solemnly to affirm, in the official liturgy, the pope's power to depose kings and to release peoples from their oath. For the European monarchies of 1729, jealous of their sovereignty, this was intolerable.
The Gallican revolt: Caylus, Colbert, the Parlement of Paris
Gallican France reacted violently. The Bishop of Auxerre, Charles de Caylus, published as early as 24 July 1729 a resounding mandement forbidding the Office in his diocese in the name of the liberties of the Gallican Church and royal sovereignty[53]. The Bishop of Montpellier, Charles-Joachim Colbert, followed suit on 30 July 1729 and wrote to the king[54]. Finally, the civil power intervened: the Parlement of Paris, by a decree of 23 February 1730, suppressed the Office and forbade its publication in the kingdom[55].
To make Gregory VII a saint to whom one prays was, for the Gallicans, to make the deposition of kings a doctrine sung at the altar.
Benedict XIII retaliated harshly: within six weeks, he condemned Caylus's mandement by a brief threatening excommunication[56]. The conflict soon spread beyond France: in several Catholic monarchies attached to their regalian rights, the Office was set aside or censored, while Jansenists and regalists seized on it to denounce "pontifical theocracy"[57][58].
Regalism, Jansenism and Gallicanism against pontifical theocracy
Why such a storm over a saint dead for six centuries? Because Gregory VII had become, in spite of himself, the symbol of the burning question of the 18th century: where does the power of the Church end, and that of the State begin? The parties fought over his liturgical corpse:
| Camp | What it saw in Gregory VII |
|---|---|
| Ultramontanes / Rome | The saintly model of the liberty of the Church against princes |
| Gallicans | A theocratic pope threatening the liberties of the Church in France |
| Regalists / sovereign courts | A dangerous precedent: the pope's right to depose kings |
| Jansenists | A weapon against "despotic" Roman authority |
The affair of the Office is thus one of the great episodes in the struggle between Gallicanism and Ultramontanism, two centuries before the First Vatican Council decided in Rome's favour. That the mere liturgical canonization of a saint could provoke decrees of parlement and threats of excommunication shows how deeply Gregory VII touched a nerve that was still raw.
What the quarrel reveals
The episode is rich in meaning for understanding the sanctity of Gregory VII. In life, he was hunted down and excommunicated by an antipope; dead and canonized, he was once again banished from breviaries by kings and parlements. Few saints have been so enduringly a sign of contradiction: his figure forced every generation to choose between obedience to God and obedience to the prince. The Church, by proclaiming him a saint and maintaining his Office despite the monarchies, decided: Gregory VII had been right to prefer exile to iniquity.
Feast, patronage and iconography
The feast of 25 May
Saint Gregory VII is celebrated on 25 May, the day of his death at Salerno — often shared, in the calendar, with Saint Bede the Venerable and Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi[59][60]. His memory figures in the Roman calendar as that of a pope and confessor, a model for pastors who prefer fidelity to tranquillity.
Iconography: the pope of exile
Art depicts him as a pope (tiara, cope), often with the attributes of his legend: the inscription of his motto "Dilexi iustitiam", the scene of Canossa where the emperor humbles himself before him, or the Virgin healing him. A confessor of the faith more than a popular wonderworker, he is first of all, in Christian memory, the pope of the liberty of the Church — the one who, as his epitaph recalls, loved justice even unto banishment.
A saint for the liberty of the Church
What remains, spiritually, of Saint Gregory VII? Not first a doctrine of power, but a testimony: that of a monk become pope who believed, even unto blood, that the Church belongs to God and not to men. He may have erred in his means, been harsh, intransigent, at times clumsy; but the axis of his life was of rare purity — to love justice, to hate iniquity, whatever the cost.
He belongs to that generation of saints of the year 1000 and the 11th century — Saint Odilo, Saint Peter Damian, Saint Stephen of Hungary whom he himself canonized in 1083 — who dreamed of a Christendom finally restored to God. Of them all, he was the most opposed, and the loneliest at the end. The greatness of his sanctity lies not in a dazzling victory, but in an offered failure: to die defeated and banished, repeating that one has loved justice. That is why the Church, long afterwards, entered him in her calendar — not for having triumphed, but for having preferred exile to iniquity.
To go further
- Pope Saint Gregory VII (1073-1085) — the pontificate itself: simony, clerical celibacy, investitures, Canossa, duel with Henry IV.
- The Gregorian Reform — the great movement of renewal of the Church that bears his name.
- The Investiture Controversy — the conflict between priesthood and empire in which he was the central actor.
- The Reform of Cluny — the monastic hearth from which his ideal of a free Church proceeds.
- Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072) — the hermit reformer, his collaborator, who nicknamed him his holy Satan according to historians.
- Pope Saint Leo IX — the reforming pope with whom Hildebrand returned to Rome in 1049.
- Saint Stephen of Hungary (c. 975-1038) — the apostolic king whom Gregory VII canonized in 1083.
Notes and References
"Pope Gregory VII", Wikipedia (consulted in 2026, factual data cross-checked): born c. 1015 at Sovana (Tuscany), son of a blacksmith; studies at the monastery of St Mary on the Aventine in Rome, uncle abbot, masters Lawrence of Amalfi and Johannes Gratianus (future Gregory VI); exile in Germany (Cologne) after the deposition of Gregory VI at the Synod of Sutri (December 1046); stay at Cluny "disputed"; supporters: Matilda of Tuscany, Hugh of Cluny, Empress Agnes, Anselm of Lucca, Desiderius of Monte Cassino; death on 25 May 1085 at Salerno, epitaph "I have loved justice…", lifting of excommunications except Henry IV and the antipope Clement III; cult: "beatified on 25 May 1584 by Gregory XIII, canonized on 24 May 1728 by Benedict XIII", feast on 25 May.
1 4 7 10 12 14 17 30 31 39 42 47 50 59"Saint Grégoire VII, Pape (1021-1085), fête le 25 mai", reflexionchretienne.fr (Lives of the Saints): Hildebrand, born at Sovana in Tuscany.
2 5Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): born at Soana (or Ravacum) in Tuscany, between 1020 and 1025 according to this source, to an artisan father, vir de plebe.
3 6 8Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): education at the monastery of Santa Maria on the Aventine in Rome, where his maternal uncle was abbot; "the austere spirit of Cluny permeated this Roman cloister"; Benedictine monastic profession in Rome (and not at Cluny).
9 11 13"Grégoire VII", French Wikipedia (consulted in 2026, factual data cross-checked): Hildebrand born c. 1020-1025 at Sovana; Roman formation; archdeacon of the Roman Church; motto/last words "Dilexi iustitiam et odivi iniquitatem, propterea morior in exilio", echo of Psalm 45:8 ("You have loved justice and hated iniquity"); death and tomb at Salerno; cult: entry in the Roman Martyrology under Gregory XIII (1584); canonization by Paul V (1606) granting the Salerno chapter a public Office; extension to the Cistercians (1705) then to the Benedictines; extension to the universal Church by Benedict XIII (1725-1728) with insertion of the legend into the Roman Breviary; indignant reaction of Catholic sovereigns and several French bishops in the name of Gallican liberties; feast on 25 May.
15 19 22 24 33 41 43 45 48 58 60Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): according to this source, Hildebrand is said to have withdrawn to Cluny after the deposition of his master Gregory VI — a tradition modern historians now consider doubtful (cf. [^enwiki]).
16Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): service as collaborator then archdeacon under Popes Leo IX, Victor II, Stephen IX, Nicholas II and Alexander II, until the election of 1073.
18""Holy Satan" — Visualising the Letters of Gregory VII (1073-1085)", George Litchfield, History Matters, University of Sheffield, 19 August 2020: the study uses holy Satan as a historiographical shorthand; historians (notably Uta-Renate Blumenthal and H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085, Oxford, 1998) report that Cardinal Peter Damian nicknamed Hildebrand thus in the 1070s — the exact primary reference (Migne, PL 144: letter number and page) having not been established, the nickname is given as a paraphrase and not as a direct quotation, without quotation marks or Latin formula.
20 21"Saint Grégoire VII, le grand réformateur du XIᵉ siècle", cath.ch (Swiss Catholic portal): presentation of Gregory VII as the pope of reform and of libertas Ecclesiae, the liberty of the Church against lay powers; the ideal of a free, chaste and catholic Church, purified of simony and of the princes' grip, is given here as a paraphrase of this secondary source's summary, not as a textual quotation.
23 25Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): anguish expressed to Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino in the words of the psalm ("I am come into deep waters…", Ps 69) — the exact reference of the letter in the Registrum (edition, number) having not been established, the passage is given as a paraphrase after the Catholic Encyclopedia, without attribution to an identified letter.
26"Saint Grégoire VII, Pape (1021-1085), fête le 25 mai", reflexionchretienne.fr (Lives of the Saints), secondary source: the man of prayer with tears of tenderness amid his occupations — the primary reference (edition and page) having not been established, the verbatim is replaced by a paraphrase.
27Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): praises at his election ("a pious man", "modest, sober, chaste, devoted to hospitality", raised "from childhood at the breast of this Mother Church").
28"Saint Grégoire VII, Pape (1021-1085), fête le 25 mai", reflexionchretienne.fr (Lives of the Saints), secondary source: tradition of the Blessed Virgin healing him of a grave illness — the primary reference (edition and page) having not been established, the verbatim dialogue is replaced by a paraphrase.
29Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): mention of the pope's circle of collaborators and spiritual friends, including Abbot Desiderius of Monte Cassino, the future Pope Victor III.
32Catholic Encyclopedia, "Pope St. Gregory VII" (newadvent.org/cathen/06791c.htm): sack of Rome by the Normans in 1084; death on 25 May 1085 at Salerno, last words "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile"; lifting of all excommunications three days before his death, except against Henry IV and Guibert (the antipope Clement III); burial in St Matthew's Church, Salerno; "beatified by Gregory XIII in 1584 and canonized in 1728 by Benedict XIII".
34 35 37 38 40 44 46"Saint Grégoire VII, Pape (1021-1085), fête le 25 mai", reflexionchretienne.fr (Lives of the Saints): exile and death at Salerno in 1085, last words "J'ai aimé la Justice et j'ai haï l'iniquité" ("I have loved Justice and hated iniquity"); buried in Salerno Cathedral; canonized by Paul V in 1606; feast on 25 May.
36"La Grande Affaire", ch. VII "Débat autour du bréviaire Grégoire VII et l'Église gallicane", Presses universitaires de Rennes (books.openedition.org/pur/156972): Benedict XIII has the Office of Saint Gregory VII approved and inserted into the Roman Breviary (feast on 25 May), lessons approved by the Congregation of Rites and Cardinal Coscia.
49"La Grande Affaire", ch. VII, Presses universitaires de Rennes (books.openedition.org/pur/156972): the fifth lesson states that Gregory VII resisted the "impious efforts" of Henry IV, "deprived him of the communion of the faithful and of his kingdom, and released the peoples subject to him from the fidelity they had sworn to him".
51 52"La Grande Affaire", ch. VII, Presses universitaires de Rennes (books.openedition.org/pur/156972): mandement of Charles de Caylus, Bishop of Auxerre (24 July 1729), forbidding the Office; mandement of Charles-Joachim Colbert, Bishop of Montpellier (30 July 1729) and letter to the king; decree of the Parlement of Paris of 23 February 1730 suppressing the Office.
53 54 55"La Grande Affaire", ch. VII, Presses universitaires de Rennes (books.openedition.org/pur/156972): Benedict XIII's retaliation by a brief threatening excommunication against recalcitrant bishops; exploitation of the affair by Gallicans, regalists and Jansenists against "pontifical theocracy".
56 57