Excerpt from Mediaeval Rome, From Hildebrand to Clement VIII 1073-1600 Hildebrand was the son, it is said, of a poor joiner Of Soana, in the marshes of Tuscany, and belonged, as his name implies, to the Lombard stock, with which that district was largely peopled. Courtly genealogists endeavoured, in the usual fashion, to exalt his family when he had become famous, and it was pretended that he belonged to the noble family of the Aldobrandini. Marvellous tales are told about his infancy - how fire played around his head - as it had played around that of the youthful Servius Tullius, and how his first exercise in the alphabet was to put together a phrase emblematic of universal dominion. But the facts are, that he went as a lad to Rome, where his uncle was Abbot of the Monastery of Sta. Maria on the Aventine, that he became a monk, and entered the order of Cluny. But the master mind of Hildebrand was not likely to be cabined and confined within the narrow limits of a monastic Cloister. Small and insignificant in appearance, he possessed boundless ambition and the practical abilities to gratify it, for, if he despised the world, he wished to Show his contempt by conquering it. While others composed from the safe recesses of some remote hermitage envenomed diatribes against the modern Gomorrha ofthe Seven Hills, he cast about for the means of reforming the fallen l'apacy and restoring it to its historical functions. \vhen Gregory VI. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.