Chapter IX: Part 9

But there were many circumstances which not only rendered the rise of such a person possible, but made his progress easy and almost unavoidable. First of all, the crusading spirit which commenced with this century had introduced a great change in the principles and practice of the higher clergy. It is a mistake to suppose that the expedition to Jerusalem, under the preaching of Peter the Hermit, which took place in 1094, was the earliest manifestation of the aggressive spirit of the Christian, as such, against the unbeliever. A holy war was proclaimed against the Saracens of Italy at an early date. An armed assault upon the Jews, as descendants of the murderers of Christ, had taken place in 1080. Even the Norman descent on England was considered by the more devout of the Papist followers in the light of a crusade against the enemies of the Cross, as the Anglo-Saxons were not sufficiently submissive to the commands of Rome. Bishops, we saw, were held in a former century to derogate from the sanctity of their characters when they fought in person like the other occupants of fiefs. But the sacred character which expeditions like those against Sicily and Salerno gave to the struggle made a great difference in the popular estimate of a prelate's sphere of action. He was now held to be strictly in the exercise of his duty when he was slaying an infidel with the edge of the sword. He was not considered to be more in his place at the head of a procession in honour of a saint than at the head of an army of cavaliers destroying the enemies of the faith. Warlike skill and personal courage became indispensable in a bishop of the Church; and in Germany these qualities were so highly prized, that the inhabitants of a diocese in the empire, presided over by a man of peace and holiness, succeeded in getting him deposed by the Pope on the express ground of his being "placable and far from valiant." The epitaph of a popular bishop was, that he was "good priest and brave chevalier." The manners and feelings of the camp soon became disseminated among the reverend divines, who inculcated Christianity with a battle-axe in their hands. They quarrelled with neighbouring barons for portions of land. They seized the incomes of churches and abbeys. Bishop and baron strove with each other who could get most for himself out of the property of the Church. The layman forced his serfs to elect his infant son to an abbacy or bishopric, and then pillaged the estate and stripped the lower clergy in the minor's name. Other abuses followed; and though the strictness of the rule against the open marriage of priests had long ceased, and in some places the superiority of wedded incumbents had been so recognised that the appointment of a pastor was objected to unless he was accompanied by a wife--still, the letter of the Church-law, enjoining celibacy on all orders of the clergy, had never been so generally neglected as at the present time. No attempt was made to conceal the almost universal infraction of the rule. Bishops themselves brought forward their wives on occasions of state and ceremony, who disputed the place of honour with the wives of counts and barons. When strictly inquired into, however, these alliances were not allowed to have the effect of regular matrimony. They were looked upon merely as a sort of licensed and not dishonourable concubinage, and the children resulting from them were deprived of the rights of legitimacy. Yet the wealth and influence of their parents made their exclusion from the succession to land of little consequence. They were enriched sufficiently with the spoil of the diocese to be independent of the rights of heirship. This must have led, however, to many cases of hardship, when the feudal baron, tempted by the riches of the neighbouring see, had laid violent hands on the property, and by bribery or force procured his own nomination as bishop. The children of any marriage contracted after that time lost their inheritance of the barony by the episcopal incapacity of their father, and must have added to the general feeling of discontent caused by the junction of the two characters. For when the tyrannical lord became a prelate, it only added the weapons of ecclesiastic domination to the baronial armory of cruelty and extortion. He could now withhold all the blessings of the Church, as bishop, unless the last farthing were yielded up to his demands as landlord. An appalling state of things, when the refractory vassal, who had escaped the sword, could be knocked into submission by the crozier, both wielded by the same man. The Church, therefore, in its highest offices, had become as mundane and ambitious as the nobility. And it must have been evident to a far dimmer sight than Hildebrand's, that, as the power and independence of the barons had been gained at the expense of the Crown, the wealth and possessions of the bishops would weaken their allegiance to the Pope. Sprung from the lowest ranks of the people, the grim-hearted monk never for a moment was false to his order. He looked on lords and kings as tyrants and oppressors, on bishops themselves as lording it over God's heritage and requiring to be held down beneath the foot of some levelling and irresistible power, which would show them the nothingness of rank and station; and for this end he dreamed of a popedom, universal in its claims, domineering equally over all conditions of men--an incarnation of the fiercest democracy, trampling on the people, and of the bitterest republicanism, aiming at more than monarchical power. He had the wrath of generations of serfdom rankling in his heart, and took a satisfaction, sweetened by revenge, in bringing low the haughty looks of the proud. And in these strainings after the elevation of the Papacy he was assisted by several powers on which he could securely rely.

The Normans, who by a wonderful fortune had made themselves masters of England under the guidance of William, were grateful to the Pope for the assistance he had given them by prohibiting all opposition to their conquest on the part of the English Church. Another branch of Normans were still more useful in their support of the papal chair. A body of pilgrims to Jerusalem, amounting to only forty men, had started from Scandinavia in 1006, and, having landed at Salerno, were turned aside from completing their journey by the equally meritorious occupation of resisting the Saracens who were besieging the town. They defeated them with great slaughter, and were amply rewarded for their prowess with goods and gear. News of their gallantry and of their reward reached their friends and relations at home. In a few years they were followed by swarms of their countrymen, who disposed of their acquisitions in Upper Italy to the highest bidder, and were remunerated by grants of land in Naples for their exertion on behalf of Sergius the king. But in 1037 a fresh body of adventurers proceeded from the neighbourhood of Coutances in Normandy, under the command of three brothers of the family of Hauteville, to the assistance of the same monarch, and, with the usual prudence of the Norman race, when they had chased the enemy from the endangered territory, made no scruple of keeping it for themselves. Robert, called Guiscard, or the Wise, was the third brother, and succeeded to the newly-acquired sovereignty in 1057. In a short time he alarmed the Pope with the prospect of so unscrupulous and so powerful a neighbour. His Holiness, therefore, demanded the assistance of the German Emperor, and boldly took the field. The Normans were no whit daunted with the opposition of the Father of Christendom, and dashed through all obstacles till they succeeded in taking him prisoner. Instead of treating him with harshness, and exacting exorbitant ransom, as would have been the action of a less sagacious politician, the Norman threw himself on his knees before the captive pontiff, bewailed his hard case in being forced to appear so contumacious to his spiritual lord and master, and humbly besought him to pardon his transgression, and accept the suzerainty of all the lands he possessed and of all he should hereafter subdue. [A.D. 1059.] It was a delightful surprise to the Pope, who immediately ratified all the proceedings of his repentant son, and in a short time was rewarded by seeing Apulia and the great island of Sicily held in homage as fiefs of St. Peter's chair. From thenceforth the Italian Normans were the bulwarks of the papal throne. But, more powerful than the Normans of England, and more devoted personally to the popes than the greedy adventurers of Apulia, the Countess Matilda was the greatest support of all the pretensions of the Holy See. Young and beautiful, the holder of the greatest territories in Italy, this lady was the most zealous of all the followers of the Pope. Though twice married, she on both occasions separated from her husband to throw herself with more undivided energy into the interests of the Church. With men and money, and all the influence that her position as a princess and her charms as a woman could give, the sovereign pontiff had no enemy to fear as long as he retained the friendship of his enthusiastic daughter.

[A.D. 1060.]

Hildebrand was the ruling spirit of the papal court, and was laying his plans for future action, while the world was still scarcely aware of his existence. He began, while only Archdeacon of Rome, by a forcible reformation of some of the irregularities which had crept into the practice of the clergy, as a preparatory step to making the clergy dominant over all the other orders in the State. He gave orders, in the name of Stephen the Tenth, for every married priest to be displaced and to be separated from his wife. For this end he stirred up the ignorant fanaticism of the people, and encouraged them in outrages upon the offending clergy, which frequently ended in death. The virtues of the cloister had still a great hold on the popular veneration, in spite of the notorious vices of the monastic establishments, both male and female; and Hildebrand's invectives on the wickedness of marriage, and his praises of the sanctity of a single life, were listened to with equal admiration. The secular clergy were forced to adopt the unsocial and demoralizing principles of their monkish rivals; and when all family affections were made sinful, and the feelings of the pastor concentrated on the interests of his profession, the popes had secured, in the whole body of the Church, the unlimited obedience and blind support which had hitherto been the characteristic of the monastic orders. With the assistance of the warlike Normans, the wealth and influence of the Countess Matilda, the adhesion of the Church to his schemes of aggrandizement, he felt it time to assume in public the power he had exercised so long in the subordinate position of counsellor of the popes; and the monk seated himself on what he considered the highest of earthly thrones, and immediately the contest between the temporal and spiritual powers began. [A.D. 1073.] The King of France (Philip the First) and the Emperor of Germany (Henry the Fourth) were both of disreputable life, and offered an easy mark for the assaults of the fiery pontiff. He threatened and reprimanded them for simony and disobedience, proclaimed his authority over kings and princes as a fact which no man could dispute without impiety, and had the inward pleasure of seeing the proudest of the nobles, and finally the most powerful of the sovereigns, of Europe, forced to obey his mandates. The pent-up hatred of his race and profession was gratified by the abasement of birth and power.

The struggle with the Empire was on the subject of investiture. The successors of Charlemagne had always retained a voice in the appointment of the bishops and Church dignitaries in their states; they had even frequently nominated to the See of Rome, as to the other bishoprics in their dominions. The present wearer of the iron crown had displaced three contending popes, who were disturbing the peace of the city by their ferocious quarrels, and had appointed others in their room. There was no murmur of opposition to their appointment. They were pious and venerable men; and of each of them the inscrutable Hildebrand had managed to make himself the confidential adviser, and in reality the guide and master. Even in his own case he waited patiently till he had secured the emperor's legal ratification of his election, and then, armed with legitimacy, and burning with smothered indignation, he kicked down the ladder by which he had risen, and wrote an insulting letter to the emperor, commanding him to abstain from simony, and to renounce the right of investiture by the ring and cross. These, he maintained, were the signs of spiritual dignity, and their bestowal was inherent in the Pope. The time for the message was admirably chosen; for Henry was engaged in a hard struggle for life and crown with the Saxons and Thuringians, who were in open revolt. Henry promised obedience to the pontiff's wish, but when his enemies were defeated he withdrew his concession. The Pope thundered a sentence of excommunication against him, released his subjects from their oath of fealty, and pronounced him deprived of the throne. The emperor was not to be left behind in the race of objurgation. [A.D. 1076.] He summoned his nobles and prelates to a council at Worms, and pronounced sentence of deprivation on the Pope. Then arose such a storm against the unfortunate Henry as only religious differences can create. His subjects had been oppressed, his nobility insulted, his clergy impoverished, and all classes of his people were glad of the opportunity of hiding their hatred of his oppressions under the cloak of regard for the interests of religion. He was forced to yield; and, crossing the Alps in the middle of winter, he presented himself at the castle of Canossa. Here the Pope displayed the humbleness and generosity of his Christian character, by leaving the wretched man three days and nights in the outer court, shivering with cold and barefoot, while His Holiness and the Countess Matilda were comfortably closeted within. And after this unheard-of degradation, all that could be wrung from the hatred of the inexorable monk was a promise that the suppliant should be tried with justice, and that, if he succeeded in proving his innocence, he should be reinstated on his throne; but if he were found guilty, he should be punished with the utmost rigour of ecclesiastical law.

Common sense and good feeling were revolted by this unexampled insolence. Friends gathered round Henry when the terms of his sentence were heard. The Romans themselves, who had hitherto been blindly submissive, were indignant at the presumption of their bishop. None continued faithful except the imperturbable Countess Matilda. He was still to her the representative of divine goodness and superhuman power. But her troops were beaten and her money was exhausted in the holy quarrel. Robert Guiscard, indeed, came to the rescue, and rewarded himself for delivering the Pope by sacking the city of Rome. Half the houses were burned, and half the population killed or sold as slaves. It was from amidst the desolation his ambition had caused that the still-unsubdued Hildebrand was guarded by the Normans to the citadel of Salerno, and there he died, issuing his orders and curses to his latest hour, and boasting with his last breath that "he had loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that therefore he expired in exile." [A.D. 1085.] After this man's throwing off the mask of moderation under which his predecessors had veiled their claims, the world was no longer left in doubt of the aims and objects of the spiritual power. There seems almost a taint of insanity in the extravagance of his demands. In the published collection of his maxims we see the full extent of the theological tyranny he had in view. "There is but one name in the world," we read; "and that is the Pope's. He only can use the ornaments of empire. All princes ought to kiss his feet. He alone can nominate or displace bishops and assemble or dissolve councils. Nobody can judge him. His mere election constitutes him a saint. He has never erred, and never shall err in time to come. He can depose princes and release subjects from their oaths of fidelity." Yet, in spite of the wildness of this language, the ignorance of the period was so great, and the relations of European nations so hostile, that the most daring of these assumptions found supporters either in the superstitious veneration of the peoples or the enmity and interests of the princes. The propounder of those amazing propositions was apparently defeated, and died disgraced and hated; but his successors were careful not to withdraw the most untenable of his claims, even while they did not bring them into exercise. They lay in an armory, carefully stored and guarded, to be brought out according to the exigencies either of the papal chair itself, or of the king or emperor who for the moment was in possession of the person of the Pope. None of the great potentates of Europe, therefore, was anxious to diminish a power which might be employed for his own advantage, and all of them by turns encouraged the aggressions of the Papacy, with a short-sighted wisdom, to be an instrument of offence against their enemies. Little encouragement, indeed, was offered at this time to opposition to the spiritual despot. Though Hildebrand had died a refugee, it was remarked with pious awe that Henry the Fourth, his rival and opponent, was punished in a manner which showed the highest displeasure of Heaven. His children, at the instigation of the Pope, rebelled against him. He was conquered in battle and taken prisoner by his youngest son. [A.D. 1106] He was stripped of all his possessions, and at last so destitute and forsaken that he begged for a subchanter's place in a village church for the sake of its wretched salary, and died in such extremity of want and desolation that hunger shortened his days. For five years his body was left without the decencies of interment in a cellar in the town of Spires.

But an immense movement was now to take place in the European mind, which had the greatest influence on the authority of Rome. [A.D. 1095] A crusade against the enemies of the faith was proclaimed in the year 1095, and from all parts of Europe a great cry of approval was uttered in all tongues, for it hit the right chord in the ferocious and superstitious heart of the world; and it was felt that the great battle of the Cross and the Crescent was most fitly to be decided forever on the soil of the Holy Land.

From the very beginning of this century the thought of armed intervention in the affairs of Palestine had been present in the general mind. Religious difference had long been ready to take the form of open war. As the Church strengthened and settled into more dogmatic unity, the desire to convert by force and retain within the fold by penalty and proscription had increased. As yet some reluctance was felt to put a professing Christian to death on merely a difference of doctrine, but with the open gainsayers of the faith no parley could be held. Thousands, in addition to their religious animosities, had personal injuries to avenge; for pilgrimage to Jerusalem was already in full favour, and the weary wayfarers had to complain of the hostility of the turbaned possessors of the Holy Sepulchre, and the indignities and peril to which they were exposed the moment they came within the infidel's domain. Why should the unbelievers be allowed any longer to retain the custody of such inherently Christian territories as the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane? Why should the unbaptized followers of Mohammed, those children of perdition, pollute with hostile feet the sacred ground which had been the witness of so many miracles and still furnished so many relics which manifested superhuman power? Besides, what was the wealth of other cities--their gold and precious jewels--to the store of incalculable riches contained in the very stones and woodwork of the metropolis and cradle of the faith? Bones of martyrs--garments of saints--nails of the cross--thorns of the crown--were all lying ready to be gathered up by the faithful priesthood who would lead the expedition. And who could be held responsible, in this world or the next, for any sins, however grievous, who had washed them out by purifying the floors of Zion with the blood of slaughtered Saracens and saying prayers and kneeling in contemplation within sight of the Sepulchre itself? So Peter the Hermit, an enthusiast who preached a holy war, was listened to as if he spake with the tongues of angels. The ravings of his lunacy had a prodigious effect on all classes and in all lands; and suddenly there was gathered together a confused rabble of pilgrims, armed in every variety of fashion--princes and beggars, robbers and adventurers--the scum of great cities and the simple-hearted peasantry from distant farms--upwards of three hundred thousand in number, all pouring down towards the seaports and anxious to cross over to the land where so many high hopes were placed. Vast numbers of this multitude found their way from France through Italy; and luckily for Urban the Second--the fifth in succession from Gregory--they took the opportunity of paying a visit to the city of Rome, scarcely less venerable in their eyes than Jerusalem itself. They were the soldiers of the Cross, and in that character felt bound to pay a more immediate submission to the Chief of Christianity than to their native kings. They found the city divided between two rivals for the tiara, and, having decided in favour of Urban, chased away the anti-pope who was appointed by the Imperial choice. Terrified at the accession of such powerful supporters, the Germans were withdrawn from Italy, and Urban felt that the claims of Hildebrand were not incapable of realization if he could get quit of unruly barons and obstinate monarchs by engaging them in a distant and ruinous expedition. It needed little to spread the flame of fanaticism over the whole of Christendom. The accounts given of this first Crusade transcend the wildest imaginings of romance. An indiscriminate multitude of all nations and tongues seemed impelled by some irresistible impulse towards the East. Ostensibly engaged in a religious service, enriched with promises and absolutions from the Pope, giving up all their earthly possessions, and filled with the one idea of liberating the Holy Land, it might have been expected that the sobriety and order of their march would have been characteristic of such elevating aspirations. But the infamy of their behaviour, their debauchery, irregularity, and dishonesty, have never been equalled by the basest and most degraded of mankind. Like a flood they poured through the lands of Italy, Bohemia, and Germany, polluting the cities with their riotous lives, and poisoning the air with the festering corruption of their innumerable dead. They at last found shipping from the ports, and presented themselves, drunk with fanatical pride, and maddened with the sufferings they had undergone, before the astonished people of Constantinople. That enervated and over-civilized population looked with disgust on the unruly mass. Of the vast multitudes who had started under the guidance of Peter the Hermit, not more than 20,000 survived; and of these none found their way to the object of their search. The Turks, who had by this time obtained the mastery of Asia, cut them in pieces when they had left the shelter of Constantinople, and Alexis Comnenus, the Grecian emperor, had little hope of aid against the Mohammedan invaders from the unruly levies of Europe.

But in the following year a new detachment made their appearance in his states. This was the second ban, or crusade of the knights and barons. Better regulated in its military organization than the other, it presented the same astonishing scenes of debauchery and vice; and dividing, for the sake of sustenance, into four armies, and taking four different routes, they at length, in greatly-diminished numbers, but with unabated hope and energy, presented themselves before the walls of Constantinople. This was no mob like their famished and fainting predecessors. All the gallant lords of Europe were here, inspired by knightly courage and national rivalries to distinguish themselves in fight and council. Of these the best-known were Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwyn of Flanders, Robert of Normandy, (William the Conqueror's eldest son,) Hugh the Great, Count of Vermandois, and Raymond of St. Gilles. Six hundred thousand men had left their homes, with innumerable attendants--women, and jugglers, and servants, and workmen of all kinds. Tens of thousands perished by the way; others established themselves in the cities on their route to keep up the communication; and at last the Genoese and Pisan vessels conveyed to the Golden Horn the strength of all Europe, the hardy survivors of all the perils of that unexampled march--few indeed in number, but burning with zeal and bravery. Alexis lost no time in diverting their dangerous strength from his own realms. He let them loose upon Nicea, and when it yielded to their valour he had the cleverness to outwit the Christian warriors, and claimed the city as his possession. On pursuing their course, they found themselves, after a victory over the Turks at Dorylæum, in the great Plain of Phrygia. Hunger, thirst, the extremity of heat, and the difficulty of the march, brought confusion and dismay into their ranks. All the horses died. Knights and chevaliers were seen mounted on asses, and even upon oxen; and the baggage was packed upon goats, and not unfrequently on swine and dogs. Thirst was fatal to five hundred in a single day. Quarrels between the nationalities added to these calamities. Lorrains and Italians, the men of Normandy and of Provence, were at open feud. And yet, in spite of these drawbacks, the great procession advanced. Baldwyn and Tancred succeeded in getting possession of the town of Edessa, on the Euphrates, and opened a communication with the Christians of Armenia. [A.D. 1098.] The siege of Antioch was their next operation, and the luxuries of the soil and climate were more fatal to the Crusaders than want and pain had been. On the rich banks of the Orontes, and in the groves of Daphne, they lost the remains of discipline and self-command and gave themselves up to the wildest excesses. But with the winter their enjoyment came to an end. Their camp was flooded; they suffered the extremities of famine; and when there were no more horses and impure animals to eat, they satiated their hunger on the bodies of their slaughtered enemies. Help, however, was at hand, or they must have perished to the last man. Bohemund corrupted the fidelity of a renegade officer in Antioch, and, availing themselves of a dark and stormy night, they scaled the walls with ladders, and rushed into the devoted city, shouting the Crusaders' war-cry:--"It is the will of God!" and Antioch became a Christian princedom. But not without difficulty was this new possession retained. The Turks, under the orders of Kerboga, surrounded it with two hundred thousand men. There was neither entrance nor exit possible, and the worst of their previous sufferings began to be renewed. But Heaven came to the rescue. A monk of the name of Peter Bartholomew dreamt that under the great altar of the church would be found the spear which pierced the Saviour on the cross. The precious weapon rewarded their toil in digging, and armed with this the Christian charge was irresistible, and the Turks were cut in pieces or dispersed. Instead of making straight for Jerusalem, they lingered six months longer in Antioch, suffering from plague and the fatigues they had undergone. When at last the forward order was given, a remnant, consisting of fifty thousand men out of all the original force, began the march. As they got nearer the object of their search, and recognised the places commemorated in Holy Writ, their enthusiasm knew no bounds. The last elevation was at length surmounted, and Jerusalem lay in full view. "O blessed Jesus," cries a monk who was present, "when thy Holy City was seen, what tears fell from our eyes!" Loud shouts were raised of "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! God wills it! God wills it!" They stretched out their hands, fell upon their knees, and embraced the consecrated ground. But Jerusalem was yet in the hands of the Saracens, and the sword must open their way into its sacred bounds. The governor had offered to admit the pilgrims within the walls, but in their peaceful dress and merely as visitors. This they refused, and determined to wrest it from its unbelieving lords. On the 15th of July, 1099, they found that their situation was no longer tenable, and that they must conquer or give up the siege. The brook Kedron was dried up, the sun poured upon them with unendurable heat, their provisions were exhausted, and in agonies of despair as well as of military ardour they gave the final assault. The struggle was long and doubtful. At length the Crusaders triumphed. Tancred and Godfrey were the first to leap into the devoted town. Their soldiers followed, and filled every street with slaughter. The Mosque of Omar was vigorously defended, and an indiscriminate massacre of Mussulmans and Jews filled the whole place with blood. In the mosque itself the stream of gore was up to the saddle-girths of a horse. The onslaught was occasionally suspended for a while, to allow the pious conquerors to go barefoot and unarmed to kneel at the Holy Sepulchre; and, this act of worship done, they returned to their ruthless occupation, and continued the work of extermination for a whole week. The depopulated and reeking town was added to the domains of Christendom, and the kingdom of Jerusalem was offered to Godfrey of Bouillon. With a modesty befitting the most Christian and noble-hearted of the Crusaders, Godfrey contented himself with the humbler name of Baron of the Holy Sepulchre; and with three hundred knights--which were all that remained to him when that crowning victory had set the other survivors at liberty to revisit their native lands--he established a standing garrison in the captured city, and anxiously awaited reinforcements from the warlike spirits they had left at home.

TWELFTH CENTURY.

Emperors of Germany.

A.D.

HENRY IV.--(_cont._)

1106. HENRY V.

_House of Suabia._

1138. CONRAD III.

1152. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.

1190. HENRY VI.

1198. PHILIP and OTHO IV., (of Brunswick.)

Kings of England.

A.D.

1100. HENRY I.

1135. STEPHEN.

1154. HENRY II.

1189. RICHARD I.

1199. JOHN.

Emperors of the East.

A.D.

ALEXIS I.--(_cont._)

1118. JOHN.

1143. MANUEL.

1183. ANDRONICUS I.

1185. ISAAC II., (the Angel.)

1195. ALEXIS III.

Kings of France.

A.D.

PHILIP I.--(_cont._)

1108. LOUIS VI.

1137. LOUIS VII.

1180. PHILIP AUGUSTUS.

King of Scotland.

A.D.

1165. WILLIAM.

1147. SECOND CRUSADE, led by Louis VII. of France.

1189. THIRD CRUSADE, led by Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, and
Richard of England.

Authors.

BERNARD, (1091-1153,) BECKET, (1119-1170,) EUSTATHIUS, THEODORUS, BALSAMON, PETER LOMBARD, WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY, (1096-1143.)

THE TWELFTH CENTURY

ELEVATION OF LEARNING--POWER OF THE CHURCH--THOMAS À-BECKETT.

The effect of the first Crusade had been so prodigious that Europe was forced to pause to recover from its exhaustion. More than half a million had left their homes in 1095; ten thousand are supposed to have returned; three hundred were left with Godfrey in the Christian city of Jerusalem; and what had become of all the rest? Their bones were whitening all the roads that led to the Holy Land; small parties of them must have settled in despair or weariness in towns and villages on their way; many were sold into slavery by the rapacity of the feudal lords whose lands they traversed; and when the madness of the time had originated a Crusade of Children, and ninety thousand boys of ten or twelve years of age had commenced their journey, singing hymns and anthems, and hoping to conquer the infidels with the spiritual arms of innocence and prayer, the whole band melted away before they reached the coast. Barons, and counts, and bishops, and dukes, all swooped down upon the devoted march, and before many weeks' journeying was achieved the Crusade was brought to a close. Most of the children had died of fatigue or starvation, and the survivors had been seized as legitimate prey and sold as slaves.

Meantime the brave and heroic Godfrey--the true hero of the expedition, for he elevated the ordinary virtues of knighthood and feudalism into the nobler feelings of generosity and romance--gained the object of his earthly ambition. Having prayed at the sepulchre, and cleansed the temple from the pollution of the unbelievers' presence, wearied with all his labours, and feeling that his task was done, he sank into deep despondency and died. [A.D. 1100.] Volunteers in small numbers had occasionally gone eastward to support the Cross Ambition, thoughtlessness, guilt, and fanaticism sent their representatives to aid the conqueror of Judea; and his successors found themselves strong enough to bid defiance to the Turkish power. They carried all their Western ideas along with them. They had their feudal holdings and knightly quarrels. The most venerated names in Holy Writ were desecrated by unseemly disputes or the most frivolous associations. The combination, indeed, of their native habits and their new acquisitions might have moved them to laughter, if the men of the twelfth century had been awake to the ridiculous. There was a Prince of Galilee, a Marquis of Joppa, a Baron of Sidon, a Marquis of Tyre. Our own generation has renewed the strange juxtaposition of the East and West by the language employed in steamboats and railways. Trains will soon cross the Desert with warning whistles and loud jets of steam and all the phraseology of an English line. For many years the waters of the mysterious Red Sea have been dashed into foam by paddles made in Liverpool or Glasgow. But these are visitors of a very different kind from Bohemund and Baldwyn. Baldwyn, indeed, seemed less inclined than his companions to carry his European training to its full extent. He Orientalized himself in a small way, perhaps in imitation of Alexander the Great, and, dressed in the long flowing robes of the country, he made his attendants serve him with prostrations, and almost with worship. He married a daughter of the land, and in other respects endeavoured to ingratiate himself with the Saracens by treating them with kindness and consideration. The bravery of those warriors of the Desert endeared them to the rough-handed barons of the West. It was impossible to believe that men with that one pre-eminent virtue could be so utterly hateful as they had been represented; and when the intercourse between the races became more unrestrained, even the religious asperities of the Crusaders became mitigated, they found so many points of resemblance between their faiths. There was not an honour which the Christian paid to the Virgin which was not yielded by the Mohammedan to Fatima. All the doctrines of the Christian creed found their counterparts in the professions of the followers of the Law. Allah was an incarnation of the Deity; and even the mystery of the Trinity was not indistinctly seen in the legend of the three rays which darted from the idea of Mohammed in the mind of the Creator. While this community of sentiment softened the animosity of the crusading leaders towards their enemies, a still greater community of suffering and danger softened their feelings towards their followers and retainers. In that scarcity of knights and barons, the value of a serf's arm or a mechanic's skill was gratefully acknowledged. There had been many mutual kindnesses between the two classes all through those tedious and blood-stained journeys and desperate fights. A peasant had brought water to a wounded lord when he lay fainting on the burning soil; a workman had had the revelation of the true crown: they were no longer the property and slaves of the noble, who considered them beings of a different blood, but fellow-soldiers, fellow-sufferers, fellow-Christians. They were not spoken of in the insulting language of the West, and called "our thralls," "our slaves," "our bondsmen;" at the worst they were called "our poor," and lifted by that word into the quality of brothers and men. The precepts of the gospel in favour of the humble and suffering were felt for the first time to have an application to the men who had toiled on their lands and laboured in their workshops, but who were now their support in the shock of battle, and companions when the victory was won. Only they were poor; they had no lands; they had no arms upon their shields. So Baldwyn gave them large tracts of country; and they became vassals and feudatories for fertile fields near Jericho and rich farms on the Jordan. They were gentlemen by the strength of their own right hands, as the fathers of their lords and suzerains had been.

But the amalgamation of race and condition was not carried on in the East more surely or more extensively than in the West. The expenses of preparing for the pilgrimage had impoverished the richest of the lords of the soil. They had been forced to borrow money and to mortgage their estates to the burghers of the great commercial towns, which, quietly and unobserved, had spread themselves in many parts of France and Italy. Genoa had already attained such a height of prosperity that she could furnish vessels for the conveyance of half the army of the Crusade. In return for her cargoes of knights and fighting-men, she brought back the wealth of the East,--silks, and precious stones, and spices, and vessels of gold and silver. The necessities of the time made the money-holder powerful, and the men who swung the hammer, and shaped the sword, and embroidered the banner, and wove the tapestry, indispensable. And what hold, except kindness, and privilege, and grants of land, had the baron on the skilful smith or the ingenious weaver who could carry his skill and energy wherever he chose? Besides, the multitudes who had been carried away from the pursuits of industry to fall at the siege of Antioch or perish by thirst in the Desert had given a greatly-increased value to their fellow-labourers left at home. While the castle became deserted, and all the pomp of feudalism retreated from its crumbling walls, the village which had grown in safety under its protection flourished as much as ever--flourished, indeed, so much that it rapidly became a town, and boasted of rich citizens who could help to pay off their suzerain's encumbrances and present him with an offering on his return. The impoverished and grateful noble could do no less, in gratitude for gift and contribution, than secure them in the enjoyment of greater franchises and privileges than they had possessed before. The Church also gained by the diminished number and power of the lords, who had seized upon tithe and offering and had looked with disdain and hostility on the aggressions of the lower clergy. True to its origin, the Church still continued the leader of the people, in opposition to the pretensions of the feudal chiefs. It was still a democratic organization for the protection of the weak against the powerful; and though we have seen that the bishops and other dignitaries frequently assumed the state and practised the cruelties of the grasping and illiterate baron, public opinion, especially in the North of Europe, was not revolted against these instances of priestly domination, for whatever was gained by the crozier was lost to the sword. It was even a consolation to the injured serf to see the truculent landlord who had oppressed him oppressed in his turn by a still more truculent bishop, especially when that bishop had sprung from the dregs of the people, and--crown and consummation of all--when the Pope, God's vicegerent upon earth, who dethroned emperors and made kings hold his stirrup as he mounted his mule, was descended from no more distinguished a family than himself. It was the effort of the Church, therefore, in all this century, to lower the noble and to elevate the poor. To gain popularity, all arts were resorted to. The clergy were the showmen and play-actors of the time. The only amusement the labourer could aim at was found for him, in rich processions and gorgeous ceremony, by the priest. How could any fault of the abbot or prelate turn away the affection of the peasant from the Church, which was in a peculiar manner his own establishment? Never had the drunkenness, the debauchery and personal indulgences of the upper ecclesiastics reached such a pitch before. The gluttony of friars and monks became proverbial. The community of certain monasteries complained of the austerity of their abbots in reducing their ordinary dinners from sixteen dishes to thirteen. The great St. Bernard describes many of the rulers of the Church as keeping sixty horses in their stables, and having so many wines upon their board that it was impossible to taste one-half of them. Yet nothing shook the attachment of the uneducated commons. Their priest got up dances and concerts and miracles for their edification, and had a right to enjoy all the luxuries of life. Once freed, therefore, from the watchful enmity of lord and king, the Church was well aware that its power would be irresistible. The people were devoted to it as their earthly defender against their earthly oppressors, the caterer of all their amusements, and as their guide in the path to heaven. Gratitude and credulity, therefore, were equally engaged in its behalf. And new influences came to its support. Romance and wonder gathered round the champions of the Faith fighting in the distant regions of the East. Every thing became magnified when seen through the medium of ignorance and fanaticism. The tales, therefore, strange enough in themselves, which were related by pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, and amplified a hundredfold by the natural exaggeration of the vulgar, raised higher than ever the glory of the Church. The fastings and self-inflicted scourgings of holy men, it was believed, effected more than the courage of Godfrey or Bohemund; and even of Godfrey it was said that his ascetic life and painful penances caused more losses to the enemy than his matchless strength and military skill.

It would be delightful if we could place ourselves in the position of the breathless crowds at that time listening for the news from Palestine. No telegraphic despatch from the Crimea or Hindostan was ever waited for with such impatience or received with such emotion. The baron summoned the palmer into his hall, and heard the strange history of the march to Jerusalem, and the crowning of a Christian king, and the creation of a feudal court, with a pang, perhaps, of regret that he had not joined the pilgrimage, which might have made him Duke of Bethlehem or monarch of Tiberias. But the peasants in their workshops, or the whole village assembled in the long aisles of their church, lent far more attentive ears to the wayfaring monk who had escaped from the prison of the Saracen, and told them of the marvels accomplished by the bones of martyrs and apostles which had been revealed to holy pilgrims in their dream on the Mount of Olives. Footprints on the heights of Calvary, and portions of the manger in Bethlehem, were described in awe-struck voice; and when it was announced that in the belt of the narrator, enwrapped in a silken scarf,--itself a fabric of incalculable worth,--was a hair of an apostle's head, (which their lord had purchased for a large sum,) to be deposited upon their altar, they must have thought the sacrifices and losses of the Crusade amply repaid. And no amount of these sacred articles seemed in the least to diminish their importance. The demand was always greatly in advance of the supply, however vast it might be. And as the mines of California and Australia have hitherto deceived the prophets of evil, by having no perceptible effect on the price of the precious metals, the incalculable importation of saints' teeth, and holy personages' clothes, and fragments of the true Cross, and prickles of the real Crown of Thorns, had no depressing effect on the market-value of similar commodities with which all Christian Europe was inundated. Faith seemed to expand in proportion as relics became plentiful, as credit expands on the security of a supply of gold. And as many of those articles were actually of as clearly-recognised a pecuniary value as houses or lands, and represented in any market or banking-house a definite and very considerable sum, it is not too much to say that the capital of the West was greatly increased by these acquisitions from the East. The cup of onyx, carved in one stone, which was believed to have been that in which the wine of the Last Supper was held when our Saviour instituted the Communion, was pledged by its owner for an enormous sum, and--what is perhaps more strange--was redeemed when the term of the loan expired by the repayment of principal and interest. The intercourse, therefore, between power and money showed that each was indispensable to the other. The baron relaxed his severity, and the citizen opened his purse-strings; the Church inculcated the equality of all men in presence of the altar; and when the kings perceived what merchandise might be made of privileges and exemptions accorded to their subjects, and how at one great blow the townsman's squeezable riches would be increased and the baron's local influence diminished, there was a struggle between all the crowned heads as to which should be most favourable to the commons. It was in this century, owing to the Crusades, which made the commonalty indispensable and the nobility weak, which strengthened the Crown and the Church and made it their joint interest to restrain the exactions of the feudal proprietors, that the liberties of Europe took their rise in the establishment of the third estate. In the county of Flanders, the great towns had already made themselves so wealthy and independent that it scarcely needed a legal ratification of their franchise to make them free cities. But in Italy a step further had been made, and the great word Republic, which had been silent for so many years, had again been heard, and had taken possession of the general mind. In spite of the opposition and the military successes of Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, the spirit which animated those great trading communities was never subdued. In Venice itself--the greatest and most illustrious of those republics, the first founded and last overthrown--the original municipal form of government had never been abolished. At all times its liberties had been preserved and its laws administered by officers of its own choice, and from it proceeded at this time a feeling of social equality and an example of commercial prosperity which had a strong effect on the nascent freedom of the lower and industrious classes over all the world. Genoa was not inferior either in liberty or enterprise to any of its rivals. Its fleets traversed the Mediterranean, and, being equally ready to fight or to trade, brought wealth and glory home from the coasts of Greece and Asia. It is to be observed that the first reappearance of self-government was presented in the towns upon the coast, whose situation enabled them to compensate for smallness of territory by the command of the sea. The shores of Italy and the south of France, and the indented sea-line of Flanders, followed in this respect the example set in former ages by Greece, and Tyre, and Pentapolis, and Carthage. There can be no doubt that the sight of these powerful communities, governed by their consuls and legislated for by their parliamentary assemblies, must have put new thoughts into the heads of the serfs and labourers returning, in vessels furnished by citizens like themselves, from the conquest of Cyprus and Jerusalem, where the whole harvest of wealth and glory had been reaped by their lords. Encouraged by these examples, and by the protection of the King of France and Emperor of Germany, the towns in Central and Western Europe exerted themselves to emulate the republican cities of the South. The nearest approach they could hope to the independence they had seen in Pisa or Venice was the possession of the right of electing their own magistrates and making their own laws. These privileges, we have seen, were insured to them by the helplessness and impoverishment of the feudal aristocracy and the countenance of the Church.