The political authority of the papacy was emphasised for the first time in the polemical writings of the papal reform movement. The reformers realised that they could not enforce their programme without the support of secular rulers. Only kings had the power to ‘restore the health of the whole ecclesiastical order, which is failing even to extinction, and reforge this age of iron into gold with the hammer of righteous rule’: that is, to eradicate simony and clerical marriage from the Church. It was the failure of kings to discharge this duty which prompted Gregory VII to claim an active role in the politics of western Christendom: ‘since there is no prince who troubles himself about such things, we must protect the lives of religious men.’