Gregory VII’s pontificate is acknowledged as the starting-point for, as Professor Wilks has termed it, ‘the vigorous expression and application of hierocratic principles’, the foundation stone of the medieval papal monarchy and its sovereignty. Gregory revived once and for all, as earlier leaders had succeeded in doing only temporarily, the imperial concept of sovereign legislative authority. Though deeply aware of the limitations imposed by tradition, Gregory raised the pope’s power of lawmaking to a unique sovereign act: ‘He alone can compose new laws to meet the needs of the times’, as it was expressed in the Dictatuspapae, the twenty-seven declarations on papal power that were entered into the papal register in March 1075.