| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 45001 |
| QUOTATION: | Who does not know that kings and rulers sprang from men who were ignorant of God, who assumed because of blind greed and intolerable presumption to make themselves masters of other men, their equals, by means of pride, violence, bad faith, murder, and almost every other kind of crime? Surely the devil drove them on. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Pope Gregory VII (c. 1020–1085), Italian cleric, pope. Letter, March 15, 1081.
on the right of the pope to excommunicate the German king and Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Gregory excommunicated Henry twice, in 1076 and 1080, and was in turn excommunicated by him. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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