Mons. Benigni and Saint Gregory VII
Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Introduction to the chapter of the Social History of the Church by Msgr. Benigni dedicated to the great pontiff Saint Gregory VII.
Henry IV and Gregory VII (1073-85) up to Canossa (1077).
Hildebrand's election took place on the same day that Alexander II went underground. It was an acclamation of the clergy and the people who wanted him to be the successor of the five popes that Hildebrand had encouraged to reform the Church.. This reform was now irresistibly mature, and as always happens with a profound religious movement, political tendencies penetrated it and led the harsh political and social struggle with them.
Those sectarians of the Errician struggle who brought out the accusation of simony for the election of Gregory VII, they were miserable slanderers. Today there is no wise historian who doubts it. The force of things imposed the choice of those who had powerfully improvised the dominating movement.