Gregory VI. was a more religious man than his purchase of the See would suggest. He was conspicuous for chastity at a time when, a caustic contemporary said, it was regarded at Rome as an angelic virtue. There is every reason to believe that he bought the Roman See with the best of intentions. Unhappily, Benedict IX. exhausted his treasury and returned to claim his dignity; while another faction of the Romans set up a pretender under the name of Silvester II. Gregory ruled his flock--there was very little Papal ruling of the _world_ in those days--from Sta. Maria Maggiore: Silvester controlled St. Peter's and the Papal mansion on the Vatican: Benedict held the Lateran. This squalid spectacle must have sunk deep into the soul of the young reformer. But there were religious men in Rome, and the virtuous Henry III. was summoned from Germany. The remedy was almost as humiliating as the disorder. Henry scattered the rivals and, observing that there was no member of the Roman clergy fit to occupy the See, he put into it one of his German bishops, with the title of Clement II.
Hildebrand went with his patron, in the King's train, to Germany, but the more rigorous climate soon made an end of John Gratian. It is said, but is by no means certain, that Hildebrand then went to Cluny for a time. It is at all events certain that in 1049, the Roman climate having killed two German Popes in two years, Hildebrand returned to Italy in the train of Bishop Bruno. Under the name of Leo IX. this handsome, stately, and deeply religious Pontiff spent the next six years in a devoted effort to reform the Church. The magnitude of his task may be measured by that appalling indictment of clerical and monastic vice, the _Book of Gomorrha_, which Peter Damiani wrote under Leo IX., and with his cordial approval. Leo visited the chief countries of Europe, but he could make little impression on that stubborn age and he died almost broken-hearted. Under him Hildebrand served his apprenticeship. He became a cardinal-subdeacon, a guardian of St. Peter's, and rector of the monastery of St. Paul: in which, to his fine disgust, he found women serving the monks. He went also as legate to France, where he dealt leniently with and learned to esteem the chief heretic of the age, Bérenger. Hildebrand had little insight into character and less into speculative theology. To the end of his life he befriended Bérenger.