BOOK VI.

FROM THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI. TO THE DEATH
OF POPE CELESTINE III, A.D. 1046-1198.
 

CHAPTER VIII.

FROM THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS TO THE DEATH OF POPE ADRIAN IV. A.D. 1122-1159

1

BERNARD DE CLAIRVAUX

 

ALTHOUGH the concordat of Worms had been welcome both to the papal and to the imperialist parties as putting an end to the contest which had long raged between them, the terms of the compromise embodied in it did not remain in force beyond the death of Henry V, which took place at Utrecht in May 1125. Henry had not taken the precaution of providing himself with a successor to the empire or to the German kingdom, nor was there any one who could pretend to election as being his natural heir; and the princes of Germany saw in the circumstances of the vacancy an opportunity for gaining advantages at the expense of the crown. A letter is extant, addressed by such of them as had assembled for the emperor's funeral at Spires to their absent brethren, whom they exhort to remember the oppressions under which both the church and the kingdom had suffered, and to take care that the future sovereign should be one under whom both church and kingdom might be free from “so heavy a yoke of slavery”. It is supposed that this letter was drawn up by Archbishop Adalbert of Mayence, the bitter and vindictive enemy of the late emperor, and in the election of a new king this prelate’s influence was exerted in the spirit which the document had indicated. For this election sixty thousand men of the four chief nations of Germany—the Franconians, the Saxons, the Swabians, and the Bavarians—assembled near Mainz, in the month of August, encamping on both sides of the Rhine, while the conferences of their leaders were held within the city. The attendance of prelates and nobles was such as had not been seen within the memory of living men; and under the direction of a papal legate, who was present, it was settled that the election should be conducted in a form analogous to that of a pope—that, as the pope was chosen by the cardinals, and the choice was ratified by the inferior clergy, so the king should be elected by ten representatives from each of the four chief nations, and their choice should be confirmed by the rest. Three candidates were proposed— Frederick, duke of Swabia, Lothair, duke of Saxony, and Leopold, marquis of Austria; to whom some authorities add the name of a fourth—Charles “the Good”, count of Flanders. Both Lothair and Leopold, however, professed, with strong protestations, a wish to decline the honour; and it appeared as if the election were about to fall on Frederick, the son of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, who in the reign of Henry IV had suddenly emerged from the undistinguished crowd of German nobles, and had been rewarded for his services with the dukedom of Swabia and the hand of the emperor s daughter. But the younger Frederick was obnoxious to the hierarchical party on account of his connection with the Franconian emperors, whose family estates he had inherited; while many of the lay princes, as well as the clergy, were unwilling to give themselves a king who was likely to assert too much of independence. Through Adalbert’s artful policy it was contrived that the election should fall on Lothair, who, while he still protested, struggled, and threatened, was raised on the shoulders of his partisans and proclaimed as king.

Lothair, who was already advanced in life, had been conspicuous for the steadiness of his opposition to the late dynasty, and on that account was popular with its enemies; he was respected for his courage and honesty; and, after a slight display of opposition in some quarters, his election was received with general acquiescence. But, although he had always professed himself a champion of the church, the clerical party, which had borne so large a part in his advancement, held it necessary to bind him by new conditions. It was stipulated that the church should have full liberty of election to bishoprics, without being controlled, “as formerly”, by the presence of the sovereign, or restrained by any recommendation; and that the emperor, after the consecration of a prelate so elected, should, without any payment, invest him with the regalia by the sceptre, and should receive of him an oath of fidelity “saving his order”— a phrase which was interpreted as excluding the ancient feudal form of homage. No mention was made of the concordat of Worms, by which the presence of the prince at elections had been allowed, and, while the formality of homage had been left untouched, it had been provided that, in the case of German bishops, investiture should precede consecration; and this disregard of the reservations made at Worms in behalf of the crown was justified by the hierarchical party under the pretence that they had been granted to Henry V alone, and not to his successors. A further proof of the change which had taken place in the relations of the papal and the imperial powers is furnished by the circumstance that two bishops were sent to Rome, with a prayer that the pope would confirm the election of the king.

The pontificate of Calixtus II was distinguished by the vigour of his home administration. At the Lateran Council of 1123, he enacted canons against the invasion of ecclesiastical property and the conversion of churches into fortresses. He suppressed the practice of carrying arms within the city, which had grown up during the long contest with the empire, and had become the provocation to continual and bloody affrays; and in other ways he exerted himself successfully against the lawlessness and disorder which had prevailed among the Romans. On the death of Calixtus, in December 1124, a cardinal named Theobald Buccapecus (or Boccadipecora) was chosen as his successor, and assumed the name of Celestine; but, after he had been invested with the papal robe, and while the cardinals were engaged in singing the Te Deum for the election, Robert Frangipani, the most powerful of the Roman nobles, burst with a band of armed men into the church where they were assembled, and insisted that Lambert, cardinal bishop of Ostia (a prudent and learned man, who had acted as the late pope’s legate at Worms), should be chosen. Theobald, although his election was unimpeachable, and although he had received the vote of Lambert himself, thought it well to prevent a schism by voluntarily withdrawing from the contest; and Lambert, having some days later been elected in a more regular manner, held the papacy, under the name of Honorius II, until 1130. But on his death a serious schism arose, through the rival elections of Gregory, cardinal of St. Angelo, and Peter Leonis, cardinal of St. Mary in the Trastevere, the grandson of a wealthy Jew, who had been baptized under the pontificate of Leo IX, and had taken at his baptism the name of that pope. The “Leonine family”, or Pierleoni (as they were called), had since risen to great power in Rome; their wealth had been increased by the continued practice of those national arts which they had not renounced with the faith of their forefathers; while their political ability had been displayed in high offices, and in the conduct of important negotiations. For a time the Jewish pedigree seems to have been almost forgotten, and their genealogy (like that of other great medieval families, and probably with equal truth) was afterwards deduced from the illustrious Anicii and the imperial Julii of ancient Rome. The future anti­pope himself had studied at Paris, had been a monk of Cluny, had been raised to the dignity of cardinal by Paschal II, and had been employed as a legate in England and in France—on one occasion as the colleague of his future rival, Gregory. The circumstances of the election are variously reported; but from a comparison of the reports it would appear that Gregory (who styled himself Innocent II) was chosen in the church of St. Gregory on the Caelian, immediately after the death of Honorius, with such haste that the proper formalities were neglected; whereas the election of Peter, which took place in St. Mark's at a later hour of the same day, was more regular, and was supported by a majority of the cardinals. And the inference in favour of Peter (or Anacletus II) is strengthened by the circumstance that his opponent's partisans, while they continually insist on the question of personal merit, are studious to avoid that of legality as to the circumstances of the election.

The rival popes were not, as in former cases, representatives of opposite principles, but merely of the rival interests of the Frangipani and the Leonine factions. Each of them, at his election, had gone through the pretence of professing unwillingness to accept the papacy; and each of them now endeavoured to strengthen himself for the assertion of his title to it. In Rome itself Anacletus prevailed. His enemies tell us that not only was he supported by the power and wealth of his family, but that he had formerly swelled his treasures by all the corrupt means which were open to him as a cardinal or a legate; that he plundered the treasury, that he compelled pilgrims by imprisonment and hunger to submit to merciless exactions, that he melted down the plate of churches, even employing Jews to break up chalices and crucifixes when Christian tradesmen shrank from such impiety. His connection with the hated and unbelieving race is eagerly caught up as matter of reproach; and he is charged with scandalous and even revolting dissoluteness. That Innocent is not assailed by similar reproaches may have been the effect either of superior character in himself or of greater forbearance in the party which opposed him. The wealth of Anacletus was employed in raising soldiers and in corrupting the venal Romans; he got possession of St. Peter’s by force; and in no long time the nobles who had adhered to Innocent, and had sheltered his partisans in their fortified houses—even the Frangipani themselves—were gained over by the rival pope or were terrified into submission. Finding himself without support in his own city, Innocent resolved to throw himself on that kingdom which had lately afforded a refuge to his predecessor Gelasius; he therefore left Conrad, cardinal-bishop of Sabina, as his representative at Rome, sailed down the Tiber in the end of May, and after having spent some time at Pisa and at Genoa, he landed in September at St. Gilles in Provence. The course which the king and the church of France were to take in the dispute as to the papacy was mainly determined by two abbots, who stood in the highest repute for sanctity, Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter of Cluny. 

Bernard, the third son of a knight named Tesselin, was born at Fontaines, near Dijon, in 1091. His mother, Aletha, or Alice, was a woman of devout character, and dedicated her children—six sons and one daughter—in their infancy to God; but Bernard—a gentle, thoughtful, studious, and silent boy—was the one in whom she placed the strongest hope of seeing her desire fulfilled. As he was entering on youth, Aletha died, taking part to the last moment of her life in the devotions of the clergy who were gathered around her bed; but her influence remained with him. The earnestness of his resistance to the temptations of youth was shown by standing for hours up to the neck in chilling water; and other stories to the same purpose are related of him. He believed that his mother often appeared to him in visions, for the purpose of warning him lest his studies (like those of many others in that time) should degenerate into a mere pursuit of literature, apart from the cultivation of religion; and, after much mental distress, the crisis of his life took place as he was on his way to visit his brothers, who were engaged in a military expedition under the duke of Burgundy. Entering a church by the wayside, he “poured out his heart like water before the sight of God”; he resolved to devote himself to the monastic state, and forthwith endeavoured to bring his nearest relations to join in the resolution. The first of his converts was his uncle Waldric, a distinguished and powerful warrior; and one by one his five brothers also yielded. The eldest, Guy, who was married and had children, was restrained for a time by his wife’s unwillingness; but a sudden illness convinced her that it “was hard for her to kick against the pricks”. To another brother, Gerard, who was strenuous in his refusal, Bernard declared that nothing but affliction would bring him to a right mind, and, laying his finger on a certain place in his side, he told him that even there a lance should penetrate. The prophecy was fulfilled by Gerard’s being wounded and made prisoner; and, on recovering his liberty (not without the assistance of a miracle) he joined the company which Bernard was forming. As Bernard at the head of his converts was leaving the family mansion in order to fullfill their resolution, the eldest brother observed the youngest, Nivard, at play, and told him that the inheritance would now all fall to him;—“Is it, then, heaven for you and earth for me?” said the boy, “that is no fair division”; and he too, after a time, broke away from his father to join the rest. The old man himself followed, and at length the devotion of the family to the monastic life was completed by the adhesion of the sister, who renounced the married state, with the wealth and the vanities in which she had delighted. For six months the brothers resided in a house at Chatillon, for the purpose of settling their worldly affairs before entering the cloister. Others in the meantime were induced to join them, and in 1113 Bernard, with more than thirty companions, presented himself for admission at Citeaux—a monastery which he chose for the sake of its rigour, and as offering the best hope of escaping the notice of men. The progress of the Cistercian order had been slow, on account of the severity of its discipline, so that Stephen Harding, the third abbot, had almost despaired of spiritual offspring to carry on his system. But the vision by which he had been consoled, of a multitude washing their white garments in a fountain was now to be rapidly fulfilled.

By the accession of Bernard and his company, the original monastery became too narrow to contain its inmates, and in the same year the “eldest daughter”, the monastery of La Ferté, was founded. This was followed in 1114 by the foundation of Pontigny; and in 1115 Bernard himself was chosen to lead forth a fresh colony to a place which had been the haunt of a band of robbers, and known as “The Valley of Wormwood”, but which now exchanged its name for that of Clairvaux—The Bright Valley. For a time, the hardships which the little community had to bear were excessive. They suffered from cold and from want of clothing; they were obliged to live on porridge made of beech-leaves; and when the season of necessity was past, their voluntary mortifications were such as to strike all who saw them with astonishment. Their bread, wrung by their labour from an ungracious soil, was “not so much branny as earthy”; their food (it is said) had no savour but what was given to it by hunger or by the love of God; everything that could afford pleasure to the appetite was regarded as poison. A monk of another order, who visited Clairvaux, carried off a piece of the bread as a curiosity, and used to show it with expressions of wonder that men, and yet more, that such men, could live on such provisions. But we are told that miracles came to the aid of the monks. When they were in the extremity of need, opportune supplies of money unexpectedly arrived; in a famine, when they undertook to feed the poor of the neighbourhood, their corn was miraculously multiplied; and from these assistances they drew a confidence in the Divine protection, so that they ceased to disturb their abbot with anxieties about worldly things.

Bernard himself carried his mortifications to an extreme of rigour. He prayed standing, until his knees and his feet failed him through weariness; he fasted until his digestion was so deranged that to eat was a torture to him; he grudged the scanty time which he allowed himself for sleep, as being wasted in a state of death. He shared beyond his strength in the ruder labours of the monks, such as the work of the fields and the carry­ing of wood. “It was”, says one of his biographers, “as if a lamb were yoked to the plough and compelled to drag it”. Much of his time was spent in study; but, although he read the orthodox expositors, he declared that he preferred to learn the sense of Scripture from itself, that his best teachers were the oaks and beeches among which he meditated in solitude. By the severity of his exercises, it is said that he had extinguished his bodily senses; for many days together he ate blood, supposing it to be butter; he drank oil without knowing it from water; after having spent a year at Citeaux, he could not tell whether the roof of the novices chamber was vaulted or not, nor whether the east end of the church had two windows or three; and for a whole day he walked along the shore of the Leman lake without being aware that any water was near. Hearing that his life was in danger from his excessive mortifications, William of Champeaux, bishop of Châlons on the Marne, by whom he had been ordained, repaired to Citeaux, and, prostrating himself before the abbots of the order, who were assembled in a general chapter, requested that Bernard might be committed to his care for a year. The request was granted, and the bishop placed the abbot in a small hut outside his monastery, “like those usually made for lepers at the crossings of the highways”, with orders that he should not be disquieted with business or allowed to indulge in his usual austerities. By this (although the bishop’s orders were but imperfectly obeyed) Bernard’s life was probably saved; but, when the year was at an end, he plunged into ascetic exercises more violently than before, as if to compensate for his forced relaxations. In later years, Bernard expressed disapprobation of such excess in mortification as that by which he had weakened his own body and impaired his vigour yet the appearance of his pale face and mace­rated form, the contrast of bodily weakness with inward strength, contributed greatly to enhance the effect of his powerful voice and his gushing flow of language, his strong conviction, and the burning fervour with which he spoke. To persons of every class he knew how to address himself in the style most suitable to their understanding and feelings and over all kinds of men, from the sovereign to the serf, he exercised an irresistible power. Whenever he went forth from his solitude, says a biographer, he carried with him, like Moses, from his intercourse with heaven, a glory of more than mortal purity, so that men looked on him with awe, and his words sounded to them as the voice of an angel. To his other means of influence was added the reputation of prophetic visions and of miraculous gifts. Not only is it said that he healed by his touch, but there are many such stories as that bread which he had blessed produced supernatural effects both on the bodies and on the minds of those who ate it; that water in which he had washed his hands cured the ailment of a man who had been charged in a vision to drink it; that his stole cast out a devil; and that a blind man recovered his sight by placing himself on a spot where the saintly abbot had stood. Of the reality of his miracles Bernard himself appears to have been convinced, and we are told that they were a matter of perplexity to him; but that, after much consideration, he concluded that they were granted for the good of others, and were no ground for supposing himself to be holier or more favoured than other men. When recommended by such a man, the rigour which at first had deterred from the Cistercian order became a powerful attraction; Clairvaux was beset by candidates for admission; the number of its inmates rose to seven hundred, among whom the king’s brother Henry, afterward archbishop of Reims, was to be seen submitting to the same severe discipline as the rest; and the number of monasteries founded by Bernard, in person or through his disciples, amounted to a hundred and sixty, scattered over every country of the west, but subject, as was believed, to a preternatural knowledge of their affairs which enabled him to watch over all. Wives were afraid for their husbands, and mothers hid their sons, lest they should fall under the fascination of Bernard’s eloquence, and desert the world for the cloister. As the chief representative of the age’s feelings, the chief model of the character which it most revered, he found himself, apparently without design, and even unconsciously, elevated to a position of such influence as no ecclesiastic, either before or since his time, has attained. Declining the dignities to which he saw a multitude of his followers promoted, the abbot of Clairvaux was for a quarter of a century the real soul and director of the papacy; he guided the policy of emperors and kings, and swayed the deliberations of councils; nay, however little his character and the training of his own mind might have fitted him for such a work, the authority of his sanctity was such as even to control the intellectual development of the age which owned him as its master.

In the schism which had now arisen, Bernard zealously espoused the interest of Innocent. At a council which king Lewis summoned at Étampes for the consideration of the question, the abbot of Clairvaux is said to have spoken as if by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost; and the assembly, in accordance with his opinion, pronounced in favour of Innocent—not, apparently, as having been the most regularly elected (for it is said that the notorious disorderliness of Roman elections led them to pay little regard to this point), but mainly on the ground of his superior personal merit.

Unequalled as Bernard’s influence became, however, perhaps that of Peter “the Venerable” was at this time yet more important to Innocent. For Anacletus had himself been a monk of Cluny, and had reckoned on the support of his order; so that the ready and spontaneous declaration of the abbot in behalf of Innocent inflicted the severest blow on the rival claimant of the papacy. And the character of Peter was such as to give all weight to his decision. Elected to the headship of his order at the age of thirty, he had recovered Cluny from the effects of the disorders caused by his predecessor, Pontius, and had once more established its reputation as a seat of piety, learning, and arts. In him the monastic spirit had not extinguished the human affections, but was combined with a mildness, a tolerance, and a charity which he was able to reconcile with the strictest orthodoxy. The reputation of the “venerable” abbot was such that emperors, kings, and high ecclesiastical personages revered his judgment; and when it became known that Innocent had reached Cluny with a train of sixty horses, provided by the abbot for his conveyance, the effect of this signal declaration against the Cluniac antipope was widely and strongly felt. At Cluny Innocent spent eleven days, and on the 25th of October, the anniversary of the dedication of the high altar by Urban II, he consecrated the new church of the monastery. There he was welcomed in the name of the French king by Suger, abbot of St. Denys; and in the beginning of 1131 he was received by Lewis himself at Fleury, with the deepest demonstrations of respect. With a view of enlisting Henry of England in the same cause, Bernard had undertaken a journey into his continental territory; and, notwithstanding the opposition of many prelates, who are said to have represented that Innocent, as a fugitive, would be a burden to the king and to his people, the abbot had met with his wonted success. On Henry's hesitating,—“Are you afraid”, asked Bernard, “that you may sin by giving your obedience to Innocent? Think how you may answer for your other sins, and let this rest on me!”. The king’s reluctance was overcome, and he accompanied Bernard to Chartres, where Innocent received his assurances of support, with the magnificent presents which accompanied them.

Anacletus had proposed that the question between himself and his rival should be decided by an ecclesiastical council or by the emperor; but the proposal was declined by Innocent, on the ground that he was already rightful pope. Each party continued, by strenuous exertions, to endeavour to enlist adherents. The cardinals who supported Innocent wrote to Lothair, that, after their election had been made at the third hour, the Jewish antipope was chosen at the sixth—the hour when the Redeemer was crucified by the Jews, and when a thick darkness overspread the world. They dwell on his alleged impieties and other misdeeds; they assure Lothair that the whole East joins in anathematizing the pretender, and they entreat the king of the Romans himself to support their caused

With no less eagerness and confidence, Anacletus endeavoured to make interest in all quarters. He insisted on the validity of his election, which he described as unanimous, although he admitted that he was opposed by a few sons of Belial, on whom he lavishes all the treasures of ecclesiastical abuse. He reminds some to whom he writes of their ancient friendship with his father; to others he recalls his own friendly relations with them; to the Cluniacs, his connection with their order and its chief monastery. He, too, boasts of his powerful supporters—that he is acknowledged throughout the whole of Rome, and that the East is with him and it would seem that he endeavoured to verify this boast by a letter to the king of Jerusalem, in which he vaguely promises to do great things for the holy city. But the success of these endeavours was very small. For a time bishops of the opposite parties contended in dioceses, and rival abbots disputed the headship of monasteries but the great orders all declared in favour of Innocent. The letters which Anacletus addressed to princes and prelates remained without acknowledgment, and the only secular power which he was able to secure to his side was that of the southern Normans. The position of the rivals was expressed by a verse which spoke of Peter as having Rome, while Gregory had the whole world.

Although Anacletus had declared himself in favour of Lothair, instead of throwing himself into the interest of the Hohenstaufen family, and although Lothair had been importuned in his behalf by a letter written in the name of the Romans, Germany was won to the side of Innocent by legates who appeared before a diet at Wurzburg, and it was arranged that the king should meet the pope at Liège. The assemblage collected in that city for the occasion was imposing from the number of prelates and nobles who attended. Lothair received the pope with the greatest reverence, held the rein of his horse while he rode through the streets, and, with his wife Richenza, was crowned by his hands in the cathedral. The king promised to go into Italy, and to seat Innocent in St. Peter’s chair; but when, in consideration of this aid, he desired that the privilege of investiture should be restored to him,—representing, it is said, that the weakening of the imperial power by the cession of this was a weakening of the papacy itself—a serious difference arose. To the Romans who were present, the proposal appeared to involve evils even worse than the ascendency of the antipope in Rome; but their repugnance might have been unavailing if it had not been reinforced by the authority of Bernard, to whose firm opposition Lothair found himself obliged to yield. But in questions which soon after arose as to various sees—especially those of Treves and Verdun—he showed that he was no longer disposed, as at the time of his election, to give up the privileges which had been reserved to the crown by the concordat of Worms, but, agreeably to the terms of that treaty, he insisted that the bishops should receive investiture before consecration.

Returning into France, Innocent spent the Easter season at Paris and St. Denys, where he was received with splendid hospitality, and in October he held a council at Reims, which was attended by thirteen archbishops and two hundred and sixty-three bishops. Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensians, and now archbishop of Magdeburg, appeared on the part of the German king, to renew his promises of assistance, and to efface the remembrance of the late disputes. The kings of England, of Aragon, and of Castile were also represented by prelates who tendered in their names assurances of obedience and support. Lewis of France was present in person; and, as his son and colleague, Philip, had lately been killed by a fall from his horse in a street of Parish a younger son, Lewis, at that time ten years old, was crowned in his stead. Bernard had by his personal intercourse acquired an unbounded influence over Innocent, so that although the pope still appeared to consult in public with his cardinals, it was known that he was really under the guidance of the abbot of Clairvaux, to whom all who desired any favour from the pope addressed themselves. From Reims Innocent proceeded to visit Clairvaux, where he was the more deeply impressed by the austerity of the Cistercian system from its contrast with the magnificence of Cluny. The “poor of Christ”, according to Bernard’s biographer, received him, not in purple and fine linen, not with the display of gilded books and splendid furniture, not with the loud blare of trumpets; but their coarsely-attired procession carried a cross of stone, and greeted him with a low chant of psalms. The pope and his attendant bishops were moved to tears at the sight, while the monks, with their eyes fixed on the ground, would not allow themselves to look at their visitors. It was with awe that these beheld the simple oratory with its naked walls, the refectory with its bare earthen floor, the rude and scanty provisions of the brotherhood—even fish being served up for the pope’s table only. The solemnities of the choir were painfully disturbed by a monk who suddenly exclaimed, “I am the Christ!”, but we are told that the demon who had prompted this outbreak was immediately quelled by the prayers of Bernard and his brethren.

In April 1132, Innocent crossed the Alps on his re­turn to Italy, having addressed from Lyons a letter to Bernard, by which, in acknowledgment of his services, the pope bestowed exemptions and other privileges on Clairvaux and on the whole Cistercian order. After having spent the summer in Lombardy, he met Lothair in the plains of Roncaglia in November. Since the election of the German king, the interest of the Hohenstaufen had been strengthened by the return of Frederick’s brother Conrad from the Holy Land; and as Conrad had taken no oath of fealty to Lothair, he was now set up as the head of the party. In 1128 he was crowned as king of Italy at Monza by Anselm, archbishop of Milan, who, on the ground of his church's independence, had refused the pall from pope Honorius. In consequence of having officiated at the coronation, Anselm had been declared by Honorius to be deposed, and, having afterwards accepted the pall from Anacletus, he was excommunicated by Innocent and driven from his city, while Conrad was excommunicated by both the claimants of the papacy. Yet the opposition of the Hohenstaufen was still so formidable in Germany that Lothair, when he proceeded into Italy, in fullfillment of the promise which he had made at Liège, could only take with him a body of 1,5oo or 2,000 horse, which excited the mockery of the Italians. With this small force, however, he conducted the pope to Rome, where they arrived on the 30th of April 1133.

Attempts were made by Anacletus (who still held possession of a great part of the city) to obtain an inquiry into his pretensions; but Lothair, under the influence of the opposite party, rejected his overtures, and issued an edict in condemnation of him. On the 4th of June, Lothair and Richenza were crowned in the Lateran by Innocent; for St. Peter’s, the usual scene of the imperial coronations, was in the hands of the antipope. Before entering the church, the emperor swore, in the presence of the Roman nobles, to defend the pope’s person and dignity, to maintain those royalties of St. Peter which innocent already possessed, and to aid him with all his power towards the recovery of the rest. A compromise was arranged as to the inheritance of the countess Matilda, which, in consequence of Henry V’s refusal to admit her donation, had become a subject of dispute between the papacy and the empire. Lothair was invested with the lands by the ceremony of the ring, and was to hold them under the Roman see on payment of a hundred pounds of silver yearly; and after him they were to be held on like terms by his son-in-law Henry, duke of Bavaria, at whose death they were to revert to the papacy. In this arrangement it is evident that Lothair was more eager to secure the interest of his own family than that of the elective imperial crown. But beyond the temporary settlement of this question and his formal acknowledgment as emperor, Lothair’s expedition to Italy had no results. His declaration in favour of Innocent was not supported either by the force which would have suppressed opposition, or by the wealth which would have bought over the Romans; and he found himself obliged to retire before the dangers of the climate, leaving Rome a prey to its exasperated factions. Innocent was speedily again driven out, and withdrew to Pisa, where he remained until the beginning of 1137.

At Pisa a great council was held in May 1136, when Anacletus was excommunicated, and the sentence of deposition, without hope of restoration, was pronounced against his partisans. At this assembly Bernard was the person most remarkable for the influence which he exerted, and for the reverence which was paid to him : but we are assured by his biographer that he remained unmoved by all the honours which were pressed on him. From Pisa he proceeded to Milan, in order to complete the work of reclaiming the citizens from their adhesion to the antipope and Conrad. When his approach was known, almost the whole population poured forth to meet him at a distance of some miles. They thronged to touch him; they pulled out threads from his clothes, to be treasured as relics or employed for the cure of the sick. Bread and water were brought from a distance for his blessing, from which they were believed to derive a sacramental virtue; and a vast number of miracles was wrought, which were ascribed by the Milanese to his sanctity, and by himself to the willing and eager faith of the people. The turbulent city submitted implicitly to his words; the ornaments of the churches were put away, sackcloth and coarse woollen garments were generally worn, and women as well as men manifested their repentance by submitting to be shorn of their hair. Bernard was entreated to accept the archbishopric, which he did not absolutely refuse; but he declared that he would leave the matter to be decided by the course which his palfrey should take on the morrow, and in obedience to this sign he rode away from Milan. A new archbishop, Robald, was soon afterwards elected, and, at Bernard's persuasion, the Milanese consented to his accepting the pall from Innocent, and taking an oath to the pope by which, in the words of the chronicler Landulf, “he turned the liberty of the church of Milan into the contrary”. The jurisdiction of the see had lately been diminished by the erection of an archbishopric of Genoa, with metropolitan authority over some dioceses which were withdrawn from the province of Milan.

On Bernard’s return to France, his influence was again remarkably manifested. Gerard, bishop of Angouleme, who had taken a prominent part in forcing Pope Paschal to recall his compact with Henry V, had been employed by successive popes as legate for Aquitaine and the adjoining provinces of Spain. He had written to the council of Étampes a letter in favour of Innocent, but, having been unable to obtain from that pope a renewal of his legation, he had espoused the party of Anacletus, and had received from him a fresh commission. It was in vain that he attempted to draw Henry of England and some princes of Spain and Brittany into the antipope’s interest; but he was able to secure the adherence of William IX, count of Aquitaine, and, relying on the count’s support, he seized on the see of Bourges, and ejected several bishops and abbots, filling their places with men whose birth is said to have been their only qualification for such office. Peter of Cluny had endeavoured to reclaim the count of Aquitaine, but without success; but at the request of Innocent’s legate, Geoffrey, bishop of Chartres, Bernard undertook the task. After having listened to his arguments, the count, who was really indifferent as to the claims of the rival popes, professed himself willing to join the party of Innocent. But as to the deprived bishops, he declared that he would not and could not restore them, because they had offended him beyond forgiveness, and he had bound himself by an oath to the contrary; nor could he be persuaded by Bernard's assurances that such oaths were not to be regarded as valid. The abbot proceeded to the celebration of mass, while William, as an excommunicate person, remained without the church-door, until Bernard again came forth, with a sternness of countenance, a fire in his eyes, and an awful solemnity in his whole demeanour, which appeared more than human, and bearing the consecrated host in his hands. “Often”, he said, “have we entreated you, and you have despised us, the servants of God. Lo, here comes to you the Son of the Virgin, the Lord and Head of the church which you persecute. Here is your Judge, at whose name every knee shall bow of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth—your Judge, into whose hands your soul will fall. Will you despise Him too, as you have despised His servants?”. At these words, while all around were in trembling expectation of the event, the count fell on the earth, foaming at the mouth, and apparently senseless. He was raised up by some soldiers of his guard, but his limbs refused to support him, until Bernard, touching him with his foot, desired him to stand up, and hear God's sentence. The demand that he should restore the ejected prelates was immediately obeyed, and his reconciliation with the church was signed with the kiss of peace. Gerard of Angouleme still resisted all attempts to gain him; but it is said that he was soon after found lifeless in his bed, having died excommunicate and without the last sacraments. His body was torn from the grave by order of the legate Geoffrey of Chartres, the altars which he had consecrated were thrown down, all who had been promoted by him to ecclesiastical offices were ejected, and the schism was suppressed in France.

In 1137, Bernard, in compliance with a request from Innocent and his cardinals, undertook another journey into Italy, for the purpose of labouring against the antipope. The interest of Anacletus had by this time greatly declined; his money was exhausted, his state was diminished, even the service of his table had fallen into a condition of meanness and neglect; and Bernard, on arriving at Rome, discovered that most of the anti­pope’s adherents were inclined to a reconciliation with Innocent, although many of them were withheld by oaths, by family ties, or by other private considerations. The whole strength of the party now rested on Roger II of Sicily. Roger, an able, stern, and ambitious prince, had undertaken, on the extinction of Robert Guiscard’s line by the death of William of Apulia in 1127, to unite under his own power the whole of the Norman acquisitions in Italy, and, in addition to the possessions both of the Hauteville family and of the earlier settlers in Campania, he had seized on the duchy of Naples, which until then had been connected with the Greek empire. Pope Honorius, after having thrice denounced him excommunicate, and after having vainly endeavoured to resist his progress by an armed alliance, was compelled in 1228 to invest him in his new conquests with the title of duke; and two years later, Roger, having assumed the title of king, received a confirmation of it from Anacletus, by whom he was crowned at Palermo.

The pope had joined with the dispossessed princes of the south in entreating the emperor’s intervention; and Lothair, after having established peace in Germany by a reconciliation with Frederick and Conrad of Hohenstaufen (in which Bernard's mediation was added to that of the empress Richenza), again crossed the Alps at the head of a powerful force. In a single campaign, with the aid of the fleets of Genoa and Pisa, he deprived Roger of all his late acquisitions on the mainland. But dissensions arose between the allies. In a question as to the reconciliation of the abbey of Monte Cassino, which had been drawn by the Sicilian power into the antipope’s interest, the emperor bitterly reproached the pope’s representatives for their master’s ingratitude to him, and even threatened to forsake his party; and when a new prince, Rainulf, was to be invested at Salerno, after a month’s discussion whether the suzerainty belonged to the pope or to the emperor, the difficulty was for the time overcome by an arrangement that both should at the ceremony hold the banner by means of which the investiture was performed. Having restored Innocent to Rome, and apparently pacified Italy, Lothair set out homewards; but at Trent he fell sick, and on the 3rd of December he died at Breitenwang, an obscure place between the rivers Inn and Lech. A diet was summoned to meet at Whitsuntide 1138 for the election of a successor, and it was expected that the choice of the Germans would fall on Henry, duke of Bavaria, the son-in-law and representative of the late emperor. But Henry, by conduct which had gained for him the epithet of “The Proud”, had offended many of the electors, and the influence of the pope, who dreaded a too powerful emperor, was exerted in opposition to the family which had restored him to the possession of his capital. Without waiting, therefore, for the appointed diet, a small party of the electors, headed by the archbishops of Treves and Cologne (Mayence being vacant in consequence of the death of Adalbert), chose Conrad of Hohenstaufen—once an excommunicated pretender to the Italian kingdom—as king of Germany, and he was crowned by the papal legate, cardinal Theotwin, at Aix-la-Chapelle. For some years which followed, Germany was again a prey to the contests of parties struggling for supremacy, and it is said that in the course of these contests—at the battle of Weinsberg, in 1140—the names of Welf and Waiblingen (Guelf and Ghibelline), “those hellish names”, as a Genoese chronicler calls them, which afterwards became so notorious in the feuds of Italy, were first heard as the rallying cries of the opposite parties.

While Lothair was yet on his way towards the Alps, Roger again appeared in Italy, and speedily recovered a large portion of his conquests. In answer to overtures from Innocent, which were made through Bernard, he proposed a conference between representatives of the rival popes,—in the hope, it is said, that Peter of Pisa, one of the ablest partisans of Anacletus, would by his learning and rhetorical skill prove superior to the abbot of Clairvaux. After Peter had stated the claims of Anacletus, Bernard began his reply by insisting on the unity of the church, and then proceeded to apply the doctrine by asking whether it could be thought that Roger alone was in the one ark of salvation, while all other Christian nations, and all the holy orders of monks, were to perish? Then, seeing the impression which his words had made on his hearers, “Let us”, he said to Peter, taking him by the hand, “enter into a safer ark”. The antipapal champion, whether really convinced, or gained by a promise that his dignities should be secured to him, yielded to the appeal and returned with Bernard to Rome, where he professed his submission to Innocent; but Roger still held out with a view of making conditions as to some property of the Roman see which he had seized.

The death of Lothair was followed within a few weeks by that of Anacletus, who, notwithstanding , the decay of his power, had to the last kept possession of the Vatican. His body was secretly buried, lest it should be treated like that of Pope Formosus; and, although a successor was set up, under the name of Victor the Fourth, this was rather with a view to making favourable terms of reconciliation than with any serious hope of prolonging the schism. Innocent spent large sums in buying over the adherents of Anacletus,—among them the members of the late antipope’s own family, who humbled themselves at his feet, and took the oath of fealty to him; and such was Bernard's influence that the new antipope went to his lodging, by night, renounced his claims, stripped off his insignia, and was led by the abbot in triumph to prostrate himself at the feet of Innocent. The joy of the Romans at the restoration of peace was unbounded; but Bernard, to whom they ascribed the merit of it, escaped with all speed from their demonstrations of gratitude, and returned to resume in the quiet seclusion of Clairvaux his mystical exposition of the Canticles.

In April 1139, Innocent, now undisputed master of Rome, assembled at the Lateran a general council, which was attended by a thousand archbishops and bishops. The pope in his opening speech asserted the feudal authority of St. Peter's successor over all other members of the hierarchy, as the superior under whom all ecclesiastical power is held. The ordinations and other acts of Anacletus and his partisans, such as Gerard of Angouleme, were annulled, and some bishops who had received schismatic consecration were severely rebuked by the pope, who forcibly snatched their pastoral staves from their hands, plucked off their robes, and took from them their episcopal rings. Roger of Sicily, although he had given in his adhesion to Innocent, was denounced excommunicate, with all his followers canons relating to discipline were passed; and the Truce of God, in its fullest extent, was re-enacted. Yet the remainder of the pope’s own life was almost entirely spent in war—partly against his immediate neighbours, and partly against the Sicilian king. Roger was carrying on the war in the south with great barbarity—slaughtering defenseless people, plundering, destroying trees and crops, tearing from the grave and treating with the basest indignities the body of Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, who had accompanied Lothair on his last expedition, and that of duke Rainulf of Salerno, who had died at Troja about the time of the Lateran council. In June 1139 Innocent set out against the invader, at the head of an armed force, accompanied by Robert, prince of Capua, who had been again dispossessed of his territories. But, like Leo IX, the pope fell into the hands of the Normans, and, as in Leo’s case, the victors contented themselves with exacting the papal sanction for their conquests, with the confirmation of Roger’s kingly title.

The contest for the papacy had long diverted Bernard’s attention from the studies in which he most delighted. We shall next find him engaged in a conflict of a different kind; but before proceeding to this, it is necessary to trace in some degree the intellectual movements of the age, and the history of the celebrated man to whom Bernard was now to be opposed.

During the latter part of the eleventh century, a fresh impulse had been given to intellectual activity by the labours of Lanfranc, Berengar, Anselm, and other eminent teachers. The old cathedral schools were developing into seminaries of general learning, frequented by numbers beyond the example of former times, and exercising an important influence. And the monastic discipline, which for some was merely a mechanical rule, while for spirits of a mystical tendency it offered the attractions of contemplation and devotion, stimulated minds of a different character to exercise themselves in speculations which often passed the boundaries of orthodoxy.

The question as to the existence of universals—such as genus, species, differentia, proprium, accidens,—which had divided the schools of ancient philosophy, had been generally ruled in the church by the authority of St. Augustine, who held with Plato the real existence of universals; yet there had been some who, with Aristotle, asserted that they were mere names or ideas. This nominalism (as it was styled) was now taken up by Roscellin, a canon of Compiègne, and perhaps a Breton by birth, who is said to have taught that universals were nothing more than words, and to have denied the existence of anything but individuals—of collective wholes, because they are made up of individuals; of parts, because they are not entire individuals. It was, however, by the application of his system to the doctrine of the Trinity that Roscellin became most famous. If, he said, we would avoid the error of supposing the Father and the Holy Ghost to have been incarnate with the Son, we must believe the divine Persons to be three real beings, as distinct from each other as three angels or three souls, although the same in power and in will. This proposition, although advanced not in opposition to the doctrine of the church, but with a view to explain and support it, naturally gave rise to a charge of tritheism, for which Roscellin was cited to answer before a council at Soissons, in 1092. Anselm, then abbot of Le Bec, on being informed by a monk named John that Roscellin claimed for his opinion the authority of Lanfranc and his own, strongly denied the imputation, declaring that Roscellin either was a tritheist, or did not understand his own words; and he requested Fulk, bishop of Beauvais, who was about to attend the council, to clear both himself and Lanfranc from the charge. He also began a treatise on the subject, but broke it off on hearing that Roscellin had retracted at Soissons; although he afterwards completed it on being told that Roscellin, like Berengar, had only yielded for a time out of fear, and had since resumed the profession of his old opinions. Finding himself unsafe in France, Roscellin withdrew into England; but his opposition to Anselm, who was now archbishop of Canterbury, and his maintenance of the strict Hildebrandine view as to the unfitness of the sons of clergy for ordination, combined to render him unpopular, so that in 1097 he was compelled to leave the country. He was, however, kindly received by Ivo of Chartres, who appears to have reconciled him with the church, and, probably through his interest, he became a canon of St. Martin's at Tours but his unfortunate application of nominalism to theology had excited such a prejudice against the theory altogether, that John of Salisbury speaks of it as having almost disappeared with Roscellin.

Among Roscellin’s pupils was Peter Abelard, born in 1079 at Palais or Le Pallet, near Nantes. In the “History of his Misfortunes” (an autobiographical epistle which abundantly displays his vanity and indiscretion), he tells us that, although the eldest son of Berengar, who was lord of the place, he very early preferred “the conflicts of disputation to the trophies of arms”, and, resigning the family inheritance to his brothers, he betook himself to the life of a scholar. He had already travelled over many provinces of France, displaying his dialectical skill in disputes with all who chose to encounter him, when, at the age of twenty-one, he became a pupil of William of Champeaux, archdeacon of Paris and master of the cathedral school, who was in enjoyment of the highest reputation as a teacher. William was at first charmed with the pupil’s abilities; but when Abelard began to question his doctrines, to argue with him, and sometimes to triumph over him, both the master and the other scholars were not unnaturally disgusted. Notwithstanding the endeavours of William to prevent him, Abelard opened a school of his own at Melun, then a royal residence, and, after a time, removed to Corbeil, with a view of being nearer to the capital. The fame and the popularity of William began to wane before the new teacher, whose eloquence, boldness, clearness of expression, and wit drew crowds of admiring hearers. An illness brought on by study compelled Abelard to withdraw to his native province; and, on returning to Paris, after an absence of some years, he found that William of Champeaux had resigned his archdeaconry and school, and had become a canon regular at the abbey of St. Victor, without the city walls, where, however, he had resumed his occupation as a teacher. Notwithstanding their former rivalry, Abelard became a pupil of William in rhetoric; but the old scenes were renewed; for Abelard not only controverted an opinion of his master on the subject of universals, but obliged him to renounce it, or, at least, the form in which it was expressed. By this defeat William’s credit was greatly impaired; many of his pupils deserted to Abelard, who now gained a more regular position, being invited by William’s successor to teach in the cathedral school; but through the envy of William (as the case is represented to us), this master was ejected, and Abelard was again driven to teach independently at Melun. After a time, William retired to the country, and Abelard thereupon returned to Paris, where (in his own language) he “pitched his camp on the Mount of St. Genevieve, without the city, as if to besiege the teacher who had taken possession of his place”. On hearing of this, William again began to lecture at Paris; the cathedral school was deserted; and the students were divided between William and Abelard, while both the masters and the pupils of the rival schools engaged in frequent conflicts. Abelard, however, was again obliged to go into Brittany, in order to take leave of his mother, who was about to enter a cloister, as her husband had done before; and on his return to Paris, as the old rivalry had been ended by the promotion of William to the bishopric of Châlons on the Marne, he resolved to turn from the study of philosophy to that of theology.

For this purpose he repaired to the school of Laon, which had long flourished under Anselm, a pupil of Anselm of Canterbury. It was said of Anselm of Laon that he had argued a greater number of men into the catholic faith than any heresiarch of his time had been able to seduce from it; pupils flocked to him, not only from all parts of France but from foreign countries; and among them were many who, like Abelard, had themselves been teachers of philosophy before placing themselves at the feet of the theologian of Laon. But to Abelard the plain, solid, and traditional method of Anselm appeared tame and empty. It seemed to him that the old man's fame was founded rather on his long practice than on ability or knowledge; that he had more of smoke than of light; that if any one came to him in uncertainty as to any question, the uncertainty was only increased by Anselm’s answer; that he was like the barren fig-tree which the Saviour cursed. “Having made this discovery”, he adds, “I did not idle away many days in lying under his shadow”; and the rareness of his attendance at Anselm's lectures began to be noted as disrespectful towards the teacher. In consequence of having expressed contempt for the traditional glosses on Scripture, he was challenged by some of his fellow-students to attempt a better style of exposition; whereupon he undertook the book of Ezekiel, as being especially obscure, and, declining the offer of time for preparation, began his course of lectures next day. The first lecture found but few hearers; but the report which these spread as to its brilliancy drew a greater audience to the second, and the few soon became an eager multitude. Anselm, on receiving reports as to the lectures from two of his chief pupils, Alberic and Letulf, was alarmed lest he should be held accountable for any errors which might be vented in them, and made use of a privilege which belonged to his office by forbidding Abelard to teach at Laon; whereupon Abelard once more returned to Paris. He now got uncontrolled possession of the principal school, from which he had formerly been ejected, and his theological lectures became no less popular than those which he had before delivered in philosophy. Even Rome, it is said, sent him pupils. Wealth as well as fame flowed in on him; his personal graces, his brilliant conversation, his poetical and musical talents, enhanced the admiration which was excited by his public teaching; but now, when all went prosperously with him, the passions which he represents himself as having before kept under strict control, began to awake. He tells us that he might have won the favour of any lady whom he might have chosen; but he coolly resolved on the seduction of Heloisa, a beautiful maiden of eighteen, whose extraordinary learning and accomplishments were already famous. With a view to this, he insinuated himself into the confidence of her uncle, with whom she lived,—a canon named Fulbert; and, by lamenting to Fulbert the troubles of housekeeping, he drew him into an arrangement agreeable both to the canon's love of money and to his affection for his niece—that Abelard should board in Fulbert’s house, and should devote his spare hours to the culture of Heloisa’s mind, for which purpose he was authorized to use even bodily chastisement. “I was no less astonished at his simplicity”, says Abelard, “than if he were to entrust a tender lamb to a famished wolf”; and the result was such as might have been expected.

In the meantime, Abelard’s scholars could not but remark a change in their master. The freshness and life of his teaching were gone; he contented himself with listlessly repeating old lectures; and his mental activity was shown only in the production of amatory verses, which, as he complacently tells us, were long afterwards popular. At length the rumours which had been generally current reached Fulbert himself. The lovers were separated; but on Heloisa’s announcing to Abelard, “with the greatest exultation”, that she was pregnant, he contrived to steal her from her uncle’s house, and sent her to his sister in Brittany, where she gave birth to a son, Astrolabius. Fulbert furiously insisted on a marriage, to which Abelard consented, on the condition that, for the sake of his reputation and of his prospects, it should be kept secret. But against this Heloisa remonstrated vehemently and in an unexpected strain. She assured Abelard that her uncle would never be really appeased. She entreated her lover not to sacrifice his fame, in which she considered herself to have an interest. She strongly put before him the troubles of married life—the inconveniences which children must cause in the modest dwelling of a philosopher—fortifying her argument with a host of quotations from writers both sacred and profane. For herself, she said, she would rather be his friend, having no hold on him except by favour, than connected with him by the bonds of wedlock. She was, however, brought back to Paris, and the marriage was secretly performed. But no sooner was the ceremony over than Fulbert broke his promise of silence, while Heloisa with oaths and even with curses denied the marriage; and Abelard, in order to withdraw his wife from her uncle's cruelty, placed her in the convent of Argenteuil, where she had been brought up. Here he continued to carry on his intercourse with her; but as she wore the monastic dress, Fulbert began to fear that Abelard might rid himself of her by persuading her to take the vows, and resolved on a barbarous revenge. Abelard’s servant was bribed to admit into his lodging some ruffians whom the canon had hired; and entering his chamber at night, they inflicted on him a cruel and disgraceful mutilation

The report of this atrocity excited a general feeling of indignation. Two of the agents in it, who were caught, were subjected to a like penalty, with the addition of the loss of their eyes; and Fulbert was deprived of his preferments, although sheltered by his clerical character from further punishment. Abelard, overwhelmed with shame and grief, retired to St. Denys, where—more, as he confesses, from such feelings than from devotion—he took the monastic vows; Heloisa having at his command already put on the veil at Argenteuil.

But although Abelard profited by the opportunities of study which his monastic retirement afforded, it was not to give him peace. He soon made himself unpopular by censuring the laxity of the abbot and his brethren, and by their contrivance he was removed to a dependent cell, where he resumed his occupation of teaching both in philosophy and in theology, with such success that, as he tells us, “neither the place sufficed for their lodging, nor the land for their support”. The audiences of other professors were thinned; their envy was aroused, and they beset bishops, abbots, and other important persons with complaints against their successful rival—that the cultivation of secular learning was inconsistent with his duty as a monk, and that, by teaching theology without the sanction of some accredited master, he was likely to lead his pupils into error. And in no long time an opportunity for attacking him was given by an “Introduction to Theology”, drawn up at the desire of his pupils, who had requested him to illustrate the mystery of the Trinity in words which might be not only pronounced, but understood. Roscellin, who had made his own peace with the church, denounced Abelard as a Sabellian, and in the grossest terms reflected on him for the errors and misfortunes of his life, while Abelard in his turn reproached his former master as alike infamous for his opinions and for his character. At the instance of his old opponents, Alberic and Letulf, who were now established as teachers, at Reims, he was cited by the archbishop of that city before a council at Soissons. At this assembly he delivered his book to the legate Conon of Palestrina, who presided, and professed himself willing to retract anything in it which might be regarded as contrary to the catholic faith. The book was handed to his accusers for examination, and in the meantime Abelard daily expounded his opinions in public, with such effect that, although he and his disciples, on their arrival, had been in danger of being stoned as tritheists, a great reaction took place in his favour.

On the last day of the council, to which the further consideration of the case had been deferred, Geoffrey of Chartres, the most eminent of the bishops present, after having reminded the assembly of Abelard’s fame, and of the necessity of dealing cautiously, proposed that the charge against him should be clearly stated, and that he should be allowed to reply. On this an outcry was raised that no one could withstand such a sophist; that his book deserved condemnation, if it were only because he had allowed it to be copied without the sanction of Rome. He was condemned, not for tritheism, but for the opposite error of Sabellianism; he was required to read aloud the Athanasian creed, which he did with a profusion of tears, and to throw his book into the fire. The bishop of Chartres in vain endeavoured to obtain that he might be sent back to St. Denys; the accusers insisted that he should be detained within the jurisdiction of Reims, and he was committed to the custody of Goswin, abbot of St. Medard's, at Soissons. But the severity of this judgment excited such general reprobation, that those who had shared in it endeavoured to excuse themselves by throwing the blame on each other, and after a time Abelard was allowed to return to St. Denys.

It was not long, however, before he again brought himself into trouble by denying, on the authority of a passage in Bede's works, the identity of Dionysius the Areopagite with the patron saint of the monastery. Such an opinion, after the labours of abbot Hilduin, who was supposed to have settled the matter by long inquiries in Greece, was regarded as not only profane but treasonable; for St. Denys was the patron of the whole kingdom, and Abelard was even denounced to the king. It was in vain that he addressed to the abbot a letter intended to reconcile the different accounts : he was placed under guard, and, “almost in desperation, as if the whole world had conspired against him”, he escaped from the abbey by night, and found refuge with a friend, who was prior of a cell near Provins. Abbot Adam of St. Denys refused to release him from his monastic obedience; but as the old man died soon after, a release was obtained from his successor, Suger, on condition that Abelard should not attach himself to any other monastery; for St. Denys was proud of so famous a member, and wished to retain the credit of reckoning him as its own.

He now fixed himself in company with a single clerk, in the neighbourhood of Nogenton the Seine, where, on a site granted to him by Theobald, count of Champagne, he built himself an oratory of reeds and straw. But even in this retreat he soon found himself surrounded by disciples, who, for the sake of his instructions, were willing to endure all manner of hardships. By their labour the little oratory was enlarged into a monastery, with its church, to which he gave the name of the Divine Comforter or Paraclete—a novelty which, in addition to his popularity as a teacher, excited his enemies afresh, as it had not been usual to dedicate churches to any other Person of the Trinity than the Second. Among those enemies he mentions two “new apostles, in whom the world very greatly trusted”—Bernard and Norbert. These, he says, talked and preached against him everywhere, and such was the obloquy raised that, whenever he heard of a synod, he apprehended that it might be summoned for his own condemnation. He declared that he often thought even of withdrawing into some country of unbelievers, in the hope of finding that toleration which was denied him by his fellow Christians.

At this time he was chosen abbot of the ancient monastery of St. Gildas, at Ruys, on the coast of Morbihan, and, with the consent of Suger of St. Denys, he accepted the office as promising him a quiet refuge. But his hopes were bitterly disappointed. The country was wild and desolate, and, with the ocean filling the whole view beyond it, appeared to be the extremity of the world. The very language of the people was unintelligible; the monks were utterly disobedient and unruly, and met his attempts at reform by mixing poison for him, even in the eucharistic cup, and by setting ruffians in ambush to murder him. There were quarrels, too, with a rude and powerful neighbour, who had invaded the property of the monastery; and such was the lawlessness of the country that no redress of wrongs was to be had. In such circumstances, moreover, Abelard could not but feel that his intellectual gifts were altogether useless and wasted.

Abbot Suger, of St. Denys, on the authority of old documents, brought forward a claim to the nunnery of Argenteuil, which was also denounced as a place of gross licentiousness; and his claim was admitted by a council held at Paris under a legate, whose decision was confirmed by Honorius II, and also by his successor Innocent. The charges against the nuns, however, do not appear to have extended to Heloisa, who had become prioress and was held in general veneration; and Abelard, on hearing that she was about to lose her home, offered the deserted Paraclete to her and such of her sisters as she might choose for companions. The gift was confirmed by Innocent II, and the Paraclete received privileges from other popes, and became the mother of a small orders. Abelard had drawn up the History of his Calamities, in the form of a letter to a (perhaps imaginary) friend; and it fell into the hands of Heloisa, who was thus induced to write to him. Her letters are full of the most intense and undisguised passion; the worship of genius mingles in them with the glow of carnal love. In the freest language she reminds her husband of their former intercourse; she declares that by him she and all her family had been raised to eminence; she charges herself with having caused his ruin, and declares that she would rather be his friend than his wife—rather his concubine, his harlot, than an empress. She avows that, however those who know her not may think of her, she is at heart a hypocrite; that she still cares more for her lover than for God; that beneath the monastic dress there burns in her an unabated and unquenchable passion which disturbs her in her dreams, at her prayers, even at the most solemn devotion of the mass. Abelard’s replies are in a very different strain; he coldly points out to her the sinfulness of her former life, and urges her to seek for pardon and peace in the duties of the cloister. He furnished her and her sisterhood with prayers and hymns, with a rule which as to externals was conceived in a spirit of Cistercian severity, and with directions for their studies borrowed in a great part from St. Jerome. From time to time he visited the Paraclete; but as even these visits excited scandal, they became infrequent. In 1134, apparently, he finally quitted Ruys, although he still retained the abbacy; and once more he taught on the Mount of St. Genevieve, where John of Salisbury afterwards famous for his achievements in literature and for his connexion with Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was one of his pupils.

On many important subjects—the mutual relations of the Divine Persons and other points connected with the doctrine of the Trinity; the Divine attributes; the work and merits of the Saviour; the operations of the Holy Ghost; the sinfulness of man; the gift of prophecy; the inspiration and the integrity of the Scriptures; the eucharistic presence; the character of miracles altogether, and the reality of those which were reported as of his own time; the relations of faith, reason, and church authority; the penitential system, and the absolving powers of the priesthood—Abelard had vented opinions which were likely to draw suspicion on him. To this was added the irritation produced by his unsparing remarks on the faults of bishops and clergy, of monks and canons; and, in addition to the books which he had himself published, the circulation of imperfect reports of his lectures tended to increase the distrust of him which was felt. Yet while he bitterly complained of this distrust, it seems as if he even took a pride in exciting it. Without apparently intending to stray from the path of orthodoxy, he delighted to display his originality in peculiarities of thought and expression; and hence, instead of a harmonious system, there resulted a collection of isolated opinions, which, stated as they were without their proper balances and complements, were certain to raise misunderstanding and obloquy. Ignorant as he was of Greek (for he owns that on this account he was unacquainted with Plato’s writings), and having little knowledge of antiquity even at second hand, he idealized the sages of heathenism—not only the Greek philosophers, but the Brahmans of India—whom he invidiously contrasted with the monks and clergy of his own day. While he regarded the knowledge of the Saviour as necessary for all men, he held that the ancient sages had received this knowledge through the Sibyls; and he supposed them to have attained to the doctrine of the Trinity, partly by the exercise of their reason, and partly as the reward of their pure and self-denying lives. He supposed them to have had saving faith, and all but a historical knowledge of Christianity; he supposed their philosophy to have been nearer akin than Judaism to the gospel; and he supposed the rites of the old law to have been needless for them, because these were not, like the gospel, intended for all mankind. In a book which bore the title of “Yes and No”, he had arranged under 158 heads the opinions of earlier Christian writers on a like number of subjects; not (as had been usual) for the purpose of exhibiting their agreement, or of harmonizing their differences, but in order that, by displaying these differences, he might claim for himself a like latitude to that which the teachers of older times had enjoyed without question. It was not to be wondered at that such a claim, with the novelty and strangeness of the opinions which he had advanced, should excite a general alarm. This feeling found expression through William, formerly abbot of St. Thierry, and now a Cistercian monk in the diocese of Reims, who addressed a letter to Bernard, and to Abelard’s old patron, Geoffrey of Chartres, who was now papal legate for France. William professes much affection for Abelard, but desires to draw attention to his errors—errors (he says) the more dangerous on account of his vast reputation, which is described as such that his works were carried across the Alps and the seas, and even in the Roman court were regarded as authoritative. He also mentions the “Yes and No”, and a work entitled “Know Thyself”; but, as he had not seen these, he could only conjecture that their contents were probably as monstrous as their names.

Bernard and Abelard were not unacquainted with each other. They had met in 1131, at the consecration of an altar for the abbey of Maurigny by Pope Innocent, and somewhat later, in consequence of a visit which Bernard had paid to the Paraclete, and of some remarks which he was reported to have made on usages which struck him as novel in that place, Abelard had addressed to him a letter, which by its want of deference to the popular saint, and by its somewhat satirical tone, was not likely to be acceptable. The old enmities between Abelard and some of Bernard’s friends—William of Champeaux, Anselm of Laon, Alberic—and the fact that Arnold of Brescia, who had become notorious as the agitator of Rome, had once been Abelard’s pupil—may have contributed to increase the abbot’s dislike of him. The two men were, indeed, representatives of opposite tendencies. Bernard felt none of Abelard’s intellectual cravings. Although not an enemy of learning, he valued knowledge only with a view to practical good; he distrusted and dreaded speculation; and, while Abelard taught that “by doubt we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we ascertain the truth”,—thus making doubt his starting-point,—it was Bernard’s maxim that “The faith of the godly believes instead of discussing”. We may, therefore, easily understand that he was ready to listen to charges against a man so different from himself as Abelard; he felt instinctively that there was danger, not so much in this or that individual point of his teaching, as in the general character of a method which seemed likely to imperil the orthodoxy of the church.

On receiving William of St. Thierry’s letter, Bernard sought an interview with Abelard, and endeavoured to persuade him to a retractation. Abelard, according to Bernard’s biographer, consented to retract, but was afterwards induced by his disciples to depart from his promise; in any case, he requested that the matter might be brought before a council which was to meet at Sens in the Whitsun-week of 1140. The king of France was present, with a great number of bishops and other ecclesiastics; and the chief occasion of the meeting—the translation of the patron saint’s relics—was of a nature to produce an excitement against anyone who was supposed to impugn the popular religion, so that Abelard’s life seems to have been in danger from the multitude. Bernard had at first declined a summons to attend, on the ground that the question did not especially concern him, and also that he was but as a youth in comparison with such a controversial Goliath as Abelard. He wrote, however, to the pope and to the Roman court, in strong denunciation of Abelard, both for his particular errors and for his general enmity to the established faith of the Church and at length the urgency of his friends prevailed on him to appear at the council. The representatives of intellect and of religious feeling, of speculative inquiry and of traditional faith, were now face to face. Seventeen articles were brought forward against Abelard, and Bernard, as the promoter of the charge, desired that they might be read aloud. But scarcely was the reading begun when Abelard,—losing courage, it would seem, at the thought of the influence and the prejudices arrayed against him,—surprised and disappointed the spectators by appealing to the pope. Such an appeal, from judges of his own choosing, and before sentence, was a novelty unsanctioned by the laws of the church; but the bishops admitted it, lest, by contesting the papal privileges, they should create a prejudice in favour of the appellant. While, however, they refrained from condemning Abelard's person, they proceeded to examine the propositions imputed to him, and pronounced fourteen out of the seventeen to be false and heretical.

A ludicrous account of the scene is given by one of Abelard’s disciples named Berengar, in a letter addressed to Bernard himself and marked throughout by the ostentatious contempt with which Abelard and his followers appear to have regarded the most admired saint and leader of the age. Berengar treats Bernard as a mere idol of the multitude—as a man gifted with a plentiful flow of words, but destitute of liberal culture and of solid abilities; as one who by the solemnity of his manner imposed the tritest truisms on his votaries as if they were profound oracles. He ridicules his reputation for miraculous power; he tells him that his proceedings against Abelard were prompted by a spirit of bigotry, jealousy, and vindictiveness, rendered more odious by his professions of sanctity and charity. Of the opinions imputed to his master, he maintains that some were never held by Abelard, and that the rest, if rightly interpreted, are true and catholic. The book, he says, was brought under consideration at Sens when the bishops had dined, and was read amidst their jests and laughter, while the wine was doing its work on them. Any expression which was above their understanding excited their rage and curses against Abelard. As the reading went on, one after another became drowsy; and when they were asked whether they condemned his doctrines, they answered in their sleep without being able fully to pronounce their words. The council reported the condemnation to the pope, with a request that he would confirm it, and would prohibit Abelard from teaching; and a like request was urged by Bernard in letters addressed to Innocent and to some of the most important cardinals.

Abelard’s hopes of finding favour at Rome were disappointed. His interest in the papal court was far inferior to Bernard's, and his connection with the revolutionary Arnold of Brescia, who had attended him at the council—a connexion which Bernard had carefully put forward—could not but weigh heavily against him. On reaching Lyons, on the way to prosecute his appeal, he was astounded to find that the pope, without waiting for his appearance, without any inquiry whether Abelard had used the language imputed to him, or whether it had been rightly understood, had condemned him, with all his errors (which, however, were not specified), and had sentenced him and Arnold to be shut up in separate monasteries. But in this distress, the “venerable” Peter, a man of wider charity than Bernard, not out of indifference to orthodoxy, but from respect for Abelard’s genius and from pity for his misfortunes, offered him an asylum at Cluny, where, with the pope's sanction, Abelard lived in devotion, study, and in the exercise of his abilities as a teacher. Here he drew up two confessions (one of them addressed to Heloisa), in which he disowned some of the things imputed to him, “the words in part, and the meaning altogether”, and strongly declared his desire to adhere to the catholic faith in all points. Yet there is reason to suppose that he would not have admitted himself to have erred, except to the extent of having used words open to misconstruction; and, although he had been reconciled with Bernard through the good offices of the abbots of Cluny and Citeaux, he still blamed him for interfering in matters which he had not been trained to understand, and declared that the charges against himself had been brought forward out of malice and ignorance.

Finding that his guest’s health was failing, Peter removed him, in the hope of recovery, from Cluny to the dependent monastery of St. Marcel, near Châlons on the Saone; and there Abelard ended his agitated life in 1142. His body, in compliance with the desire which he had expressed, was sent to the Paraclete for burial. At Heloisa’s request, the abbot of Cluny pronounced him absolved from all his sins, and the absolution was hung on his tomb; and Peter, who, in announcing his death to Heloisa, had highly praised his piety, humility, and resignation, composed an epitaph in which he was celebrated at once for his intellectual gifts and for that better philosophy to which his last days had been devoted. Heloisa survived her husband until the year 1163.

 

2

THE SECOND CRUSADE

A.D. 1122-1159, STATE OF ITALY. ARNOLD OF BRESCIA

 

Ever since the beginning of the contest between the papacy and the empire a spirit of independence had been growing among the Italian cities. The emperors were rarely seen on the southern side of the Alps, and although their sovereignty was admitted, it was practically little felt. Most of the Lombard cities set up governments of their own, under a republican form; and, with that love of domination which generally accompanies the republican love of liberty, the stronger endeavoured to reduce the weaker to subjection. In this movement towards independence, the claims of the bishops were found to stand in the way of the inhabitants of the cities; and this, with other circumstances, had prepared the people to listen to any teachers who might arise to denounce the hierarchy. Such a teacher, named Arnulf, had appeared at Rome in 1128, professing a divine commission to preach against the pride and luxury, the immorality and greediness, of the cardinals and of other ecclesiastics. Arnulf, after having disregarded warnings, met with the death which he had expected and courted—being seized and thrown into the Tiber by night; but in no long time a more formidable successor arose in Arnold of Brescia.

Arnold was born at Brescia, probably about the year 1105, and grew up amid the agitations and struggles which marked the rise of Lombard independence, and in which his native city largely shared. That he was a pupil of Abelard appears certain, although the time and the place are matters for conjectured. But although the master and the scholar were both animated by a spirit of independence, it would seem that Arnold had nothing of Abelard's speculative character (for he is not even distinctly charged with any heresy), but was bent entirely on practical measures of reform. After having officiated for a time as a reader in the church of Brescia, Arnold separated himself from the secular clergy, embraced a strict monastic life, and began to inveigh unsparingly against the corruptions of both clergy and monks in a strain which resembled at once the extreme Hildebrandine party and their extreme opponents. There had been much in the late history of Brescia to produce disgust at the assumption of temporal power by ecclesiastics; and Arnold, filled with visions of apostolical poverty and purity,—of a purely spiritual church working by spiritual means alone,—imagined that the true remedy for the evils which had been felt would be to strip the hierarchy of their privileges, to confiscate their wealth, and to reduce them for their support to the tithes, with the free­will offerings of the laity. These doctrines were set forth with copious eloquence, in words which, as Bernard says, were “smoother than oil, and yet were they very swords”. Nor can we wonder that they were heard with eagerness by the multitude, who, according to the preacher’s scheme, were both to be enriched with the spoils of the church and for the future were to hold the clergy in dependence. The bishop of Brescia complained to the pope; and the Lateran council of 1139, without having called Arnold before it, condemned him to silence and to banishment beyond the Alps. On this he withdrew into France, and in the following year he appeared at Sens as Abelard's chief supporter—“the shield-bearer of that Goliath”, as Bernard styles him. Although, however, he was sentenced by the pope in consequence to imprisonment in a monastery, it would seem that the French bishops did not feel themselves concerned to carry out the sentence; and for some years Arnold lived and taught at Zurich unmolested, being tolerated by Herman, bishop of Constance, and even admitted as an inmate into the house of the papal legate, Guy of Castello, although Bernard, by applications both to the legate and to the bishop, endeavoured to dislodge him.

In the meantime his principles had made way at Rome—although rather in their political than in their religious character—and the more, perhaps, on account of the attention which had been drawn to him by the Lateran condemnation. Provoked by the pope's having concluded peace with Tivoli in his own name alone, and having granted too favourable terms, the Romans in 1143 burst into insurrection, displaced the government, and established in the Capitol a senate on the ancient Roman models They resolved that their city should resume its ancient greatness—that it should be the capital of the world, as well in a secular as in a religious sense; but that the secular administration should be in different hands from the spiritual. As the popes were connected with the southern Normans, the revolutionary party felt themselves obliged to look for an alliance in some other direction. They therefore turned towards Conrad, king of the Romans; and perhaps it was at this time that they addressed to him a letter in which they profess themselves devoted to his interest, represent their services in opposition to his and their common enemies,—the clergy and the Sicilians,—and entreat him to receive the imperial crown at Rome, and to revive the glories of the empire by ruling as a new Constantine or Justinian, with the assistance of the senate, in “the city which is the capital of the world”. Conrad, however, would seem to have suspected that these proposals were not so much intended for his interest as for that of the party from which they came; and he preferred an alliance with the pope, whose envoys waited on him at the same time.

The revolt of the Romans was fatal to Innocent II, who died in September 1143, and was succeeded by Celestine the Second, the same who, as Cardinal Guy of Castello, had been the pupil of Abelard and the protector of Arnold. Celestine was a man of high character, both for learning and for moderation; but his pontificate of less than six months was marked by no other considerable act than the removal of an interdict under which Lewis “the Young” of France had lain for some years on account of some differences as to the archbishopric of Bourges. The royal power had been rapidly growing in France. The number of the great fiefs had been diminished through the failure of male heirs, in consequence of which many of them had passed into new families by the marriage of the heiresses; the kings had made it their policy to raise the commons, and had strengthened themselves by allying themselves with them against the nobles; agriculture was greatly extended; population, industry, and wealth were increased. Lewis VII, who had become sole king by the death of his lather in 1137, had very greatly extended the royal territory by his marriage with Eleanor, heiress of Aquitaine, and the successful outset of his reign had gained for him a reputation which was ill maintained by his conduct in later years. For a time he showed himself indifferent to the ecclesiastical sentence which had been pronounced against him; but in 1143 a change was produced in him by a terrible incident which took place in the course of a war between him and Theobald, count of Champagne—the burning of 1300 men, women, and children, who had taken refuge in a church at Vitry. Deeply struck with horror and remorse on account of the share which he considered himself to have had in their death, he solicited absolution, which Celestine readily bestowed—the questions in dispute between the crown and the church being settled by a compromise.

Under Celestine’s successor, a Bolognese who exchanged his name of Gerard de' Caccianemici for that of Lucius II, the republicans of Rome ventured further than before. Arnold himself appears to have been now among them, having perhaps repaired to Rome in reliance on Celestine's kindness, although the time of his arrival is uncertain. The constitution was developed by the creation of an equestrian order, and by the election of tribunes. A patrician named Jordan, who appears to have been a brother of the late antipope Anacletus, was substituted for the papal prefect of the city, and, as a matter of policy, this patrician was theoretically regarded as a representative of the emperor, whose lordship the revolutionary government affected to acknowledge. The palaces and houses of cardinals and nobles were destroyed; some of the cardinals were personally assaulted; and the pope was required to surrender his royalties, and to content himself and his clergy with tithes and voluntary offerings. Lucius, who was supported by a powerful party of nobles (among whom were the patrician's own brothers), resolved to put down the republic, and, at the head of a strong force, proceeded to the Capitol with the intention of dispersing the senators; but the senate and the mob combined to resist, and in the tumult which ensued the pope was wounded by a stone, which caused his death.

The vacant throne was filled by the election of Peter Bernard, a Pisan by birth, who had been a pupil of Bernard of Clairvaux, and had been appointed by Innocent II to the abbacy of St. Anastasius at the Three Fountains, near Rome—a monastery which that pope rebuilt, and, in gratitude for Bernard’s services, bestowed on the Cistercian order. The character of the new pope, who styled himself Eugenius III, had been chiefly noted for an extreme simplicity, so that his old superior, while he congratulated him on his election and expressed the fullest confidence in his intentions, thought it necessary almost to blame the cardinals for the choice which they had made, and to bespeak their forbearance and assistance for him; but Eugenius, to the surprise of all who had known him, now displayed an eloquence and a general ability which were referred to miraculous illumination. The rites of his consecration were disturbed by an irruption of the citizens, demanding that he should acknowledge their republican government; and he withdrew to the monastery of Farfa, where the ceremony was completed. The anathemas which he pronounced against his contumacious people were unheeded; but after residing for some time at Viterbo, he was enabled to effect a re-entrance into Rome, where he agreed to acknowledge the senate on condition that its members should be chosen with his approval, and that he should be allowed to nominate a prefect instead of the patrician. But the Romans, finding that he refused to gratify their enmity against the inhabitants of Tivoli, to whom he had been chiefly indebted for his restoration, drove him again from the city, and the people, excited by the harangues of Arnold, who had brought with him a body of two thousand Swiss, continued their attacks upon the nobles and the clergy; they fortified St. Peter's and plundered the pilgrims, killing some of them in the church itself Bernard strongly remonstrated with the Romans on the expulsion of Eugenius, and urged the emperor elect to interfere for his restoration. But during the pope's residence at Viterbo tidings had been received from the East which for the time superseded all other interests.

The Latins had kept their footing in the East chiefly in consequence of the dissensions of their enemies, but had failed to learn from them the necessity of union among themselves. The great feudatory princes of Antioch, Edessa, and Tripoli quarrelled with the kings of Jerusalem and with each other. The barons were defiant and unruly, and their oppressive treatment of their inferiors rendered them more hateful to the Christians than they were to the infidels. The patriarchs quarrelled with the kings and with the popes; the patriarchs of Jerusalem quarrelled with those of Antioch; while the archiepiscopal province of Tyre, which, on the acquisition of that city in 1127, had been assigned by Pope Honorius to Jerusalem, but was claimed by Antioch, suffered under the tyranny of both. The military orders already began to display an intolerable pride and a contempt of all external authority. The relations of the Latins with the Greek empire, although improved since the days of Alexius Comnenus, were still uneasy. The religious motive which had given birth to the Latin kingdom was forgotten, so that pilgrims were objects of mockery in the Holy Land, and were disliked as intruders. The successors of the crusaders had in general settled down into a life of ease and luxury, in which the worst features of oriental life were imitated; and a mongrel race, the offspring of European fathers and of eastern mothers, had grown up, who were known by the name of Poulains, and are described as utterly effeminate and depraved—“more timid than women, and more perfidious than slaves”.

In December 1144, Zenghis, prince of Mosul and Aleppo, taking advantage of the enmity between the Frank rulers of Edessa and Antioch, made himself master of Edessa, chiefly through the assistance of an Armenian whose daughter had been debauched by the count, Jocelin. The archbishop, who is said to have allowed the capture to take place rather than expend his treasures in the payment of soldiers, was crushed to death. A frightful slaughter of the Christian inhabitants was carried on, until it was stopped by the command of Zenghis, and a multitude of captives were sold as slaves. Zenghis himself was soon after assassinated, and during the absence of his son Noureddin the Christians regained possession of the place through an agreement with the Armenian inhabitants; but when they had held it a few days, Noureddin recovered it with great slaughter, punished the inhabitants with terrible severity, and, after having enriched himself by the plunder of the city, utterly destroyed it.

The exultation of the Mussulmans at this great success was boundless; and not less intense were the feelings of grief and indignation with which the tidings of their triumph were received among the Christians of the west. The city of King Abgarus, who had been honoured by a letter from the Saviour himself; the city where the miraculously-impressed image of the Saviour’s countenance, his gift to Abgarus, had been preserved for centuries, and had served as a protection against the attacks of infidel besiegers; the city where the apostle St. Thaddeus had preached, which still possessed his body, and that of St. Thomas, the apostle of the Indies; the city which had maintained its Christianity while all around it fell under the Mussulman yoke, was now in the hands of the unbelievers ; thousands of Christians had been slain, and the enemy of the cross was pressing on, so that, unless speedy aid were given, the Latins would soon be altogether driven from the Holy Land. Eugenius resolved to stir up a new crusade; and on the 1st of December 1145 he addressed to the king, the princes, and the people of France, a letter summoning them to the holy war. The privileges formerly offered by Urban II were renewed—remission of sins for all who should engage in the expedition; the protection of the church for their families and property; no suits were to be brought against them until their return; those who were in debt were discharged from payment of interest, and it was allowed that the possessors of fiefs should pledge them in order to raise the expenses of the war.

It was natural that such a call should be first addressed to France, the chosen refuge of expelled popes, the country which had given princes, and laws, and language to the crusading colonies of the East. And Lewis VII, then about twenty-six years of age, was ready to take the cross—from feelings of devotion, from remorse for the conduct which had drawn on him the censures of the church and for his guilt in the calamity of Vitry, from a belief that he was bound by a promise which his brother Philip had been prevented by death from fulfilling; perhaps, too, by the hope of sharing in the saintly glory which crowned the names of Godfrey and Tancred. At a parliament which was held at Bourges, at Christmas 1145, he proposed the subject to his nobles, and the bishop of Langres excited them by a description of the scenes which had taken place in the East; but as the number of those who were present was not great, the business of a crusade was adjourned to a larger meeting, which was to be held at Vezelay at the following Easter. To this Lewis summoned all the princes of Gaul, and, as neither the abbey church nor the marketplace of Vezelay could hold the assembled multitude, they were ranged along the declivity of the hill on which the little town is built, and in the valley of the Cure below. The pope had been requested to attend, but had been compelled by the renewed troubles of Rome to excuse himself and had delegated the preaching of the crusade to Bernard, who, although for some years he had been suffering from sickness, enthusiastically took up the cause. At Vezelay, Bernard set forth with glowing eloquence the sufferings of the eastern Christians, and the profanation of the holy places by the infidels. His speech was interrupted by loud and eager cries of “The cross! The cross!”. Lewis and his queen were the first to take the sign of enrolment in the sacred cause; princes, nobles, and a multitude of others pressed forward, until the crosses which had been provided were exhausted, when the abbot, the king, and others gave up part of their own dresses in order to furnish a fresh supply. It was agreed that the expedition should be ready to set out within a year, and the great assembly of Vezelay was followed by meetings in other towns of France, at which Bernard's eloquence and the prophet-like authority which he had gained, were everywhere triumphant, and enlisted crowds of zealous followers. At Chartres he was urged to become the leader of the crusade; but, warned by the failure of Peter the Hermit, he felt his unfitness for such a post, and told the assembly that his strength would not suffice to reach the distant scene of action; that they should choose a leader of a different kind. “There is more need there”, he told the abbot of Morimond, “of fighting soldiers than of chanting monks”.

The scenes of the first crusade were renewed. Miracles, prophecies, promises of success drawn out of the Sibylline oracles, contributed to stir up the general enthusiasm. Bernard tells us that cities and castles were emptied; that the prophecy of “seven women taking hold of one man” was almost fulfilled among those who remained behind. Many robbers and other outcasts of society embraced the new way of salvation which was opened to them; hymns took the place of profane songs; violence ceased, so that it was considered wrong even to carry arms for the sake of safety. Yet amid the general excitement and zeal, many bitter complaints were raised (especially from the monastic societies) against the heavy taxation by which the king found it necessary to raise money for his expedition.

From France Bernard proceeded into Germany, where an ignorant and fanatical monk, named Rudolf had been preaching the crusade with much success, but had combined with it a denunciation of the Jews, of whom great numbers had been slaughtered in consequence. At such times of excitement against the enemies of Christ the Jews were generally sufferers. Even Peter of Cluny on this occasion wrote to the French king, denouncing them as more distant from Christianity and more bitter against it than the Saracens, and advising that, although they ought not to be slain, their wealth should be confiscated for the holy enterprise. But Bernard was against all measures of violence towards them, and wished only that they should be forbidden, as the pope had forbidden all Christians, to exact usury from the crusaders. He therefore reprobated Rudolf's preaching in the strongest terms, and, as the monk disowned submission to any ecclesiastical authority, Bernard, at the request of the archbishop of Mainz, undertook a journey into Germany for the purpose of counteracting his influence. In an interview at Mainz, Rudolf was convinced of his error; filled with shame and sorrow for the effects of his preaching, he withdrew into a cloister; and although such was the exasperation which he had produced among the people that Bernard was almost stoned on attempting to dissuade those of Frankfort from violence and plunder against the Jews, the abbot’s humane exertions were successful in arresting the persecution.

At Frankfort Bernard had interviews with Conrad, whom he endeavoured to draw into the crusade. In Germany, where there was not that special connection with the eastern Latins which had contributed to rouse the French to their assistance, less of sympathy was to be expected than in France; and the king’s age, his knowledge of the difficulties, acquired in an earlier pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and most especially the political state of Germany, of Italy, and of Rome, combined to dissuade him from the expedition. Although, therefore, Bernard was able to remove some of the obstacles by reconciling him with princes who might have been likely to take advantage of his absence, Conrad steadily resisted his solicitations, and Bernard was about to return to Clairvaux, when he was invited by Herman, bishop of Constance, to wait for a diet which was to be held at Spires, and in the meanwhile to preach the crusade in the diocese of Constance.

The fame of Bernard and his reputation for miracles were already well known in Germany, and, as he journeyed up the Rhine, crowds everywhere flocked to him, entreating his pity for the cure of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the possessed. His own enthusiasm (for, although he disavowed all credit on account of his miracles, he believed them to be real, and to be attestations of his cause) and the enthusiasm of the people were raised to the highest degree; every day, says a biographer who had accompanied him on his mission, he did some miracles, and on some days as many as twenty. As he was unacquainted with the language of the country, his discourses were explained by an interpreter; but his looks and tones and gestures penetrated to the hearts of the Germans far more than the chilled words of the translator; they wept and beat their breasts, and even tore the saint's clothes in order that they might take the cross. Returning to Spires, Bernard there again urged his cause on Conrad with such force that the king promised to consult his advisers, and to answer on the morrow. But at the mass which followed immediately after this interview, Bernard, contrary to custom and without notice, introduced a sermon, which he wound up by a strong personal appeal to Conrad—representing him as standing before the judgment-seat, and as called by the Saviour to give an account for all the benefits which had been heaped on him. The “miracle of miracles”, as Bernard styled it, was wrought. Conrad burst into tears, and declared himself ready to obey the call to God's service; and, amid the loud shouts of all who were present, Bernard, taking the banner of the cross from the altar, delivered it to the king as the token of his engagement. Among the chiefs who followed Conrad’s example in taking the cross were his nephew Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Welf of Bavaria, Henry, marquis of Austria, and the chronicler Otho, bishop of Freising, uterine brother of Conrad, and formerly a pupil of Abelard. The Saxons declined the expedition, on the ground that their duty called them rather to attack their own idolatrous neighbours, and for this purpose they engaged in a home crusade against the pagans on their northern border. But from all other parts of Germany recruits poured in; and Bernard left the abbot of Eberach to take his place in organizing the expedition.

Returning home by way of Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Cambray, Bernard everywhere produced the greatest effect by his eloquence and his miracles; and he reappeared at Clairvaux with thirty followers, whom, with an equal number of others, he had persuaded to embrace the monastic life. In February 1147 a great meeting was held at Étampes, and Bernard was eagerly listened to as he reported the success of his late journey. On the second day of the meeting, the question of the route which should be taken by the French crusaders was discussed. Letters or envoys had been received by the king from various sovereigns to whom he had announced his expedition. Roger of Sicily advised him to proceed by sea, and offered him a resting-place by the way. Conrad of Germany and Geisa of Hungary, wishing to divert the stream from their own territories, advised that the French should take ship; but Manuel of Constantinople made flattering promises of aid and furtherance, and Lewis, disdaining the doubts which were raised as to the Greek’s sincerity, and the representations which were offered as to the difficulties of the way, decided on making the journey by land.

On the following day the question of a regency was proposed. The king left the choice to his nobles and prelates, and Bernard announced that it had fallen on the count of Nevers, and Suger, abbot of St. Denys. “Behold”, he said, “here are two swords; it is enough”. The count, however, declined the office on the ground that he was about to become a Carthusian; and the regency was committed to Suger, with two colleagues whose share in it was little more than nominal.

Eugenius now appeared in France, and was met at Dijon by Lewis, who displayed the greatest reverence towards him. The two celebrated Easter at St. Denys, where the pope overruled Suger’s reluctance to undertake the regency. The king took from the altar the —the banner of the county of the Vexin, which he held under the great abbey—and, as a feudal vassal, received Suger’s permission to engage in the crusade, with the pope’s blessing on his enterprise.

It had been agreed that the forces of France and of Germany should proceed separately, as well for the sake of avoiding quarrels among the soldiers as for greater ease in obtaining provisions. In the spring of 1147, Conrad set out from Ratisbon, after having endeavoured to secure the peace of Germany by the election and coronation of his son Henry as king of the Romans. His force consisted of 70,000 heavy-armed cavalry, with a huge train of lighter horsemen, footmen, women and children; and Lewis was to follow with an equal number. The Germans embarked on rafts and in boats which conveyed them safely down the Danube; but in Hungary they were met by envoys from the Greek emperor, who required them to swear that they had no designs against him; and on entering the imperial territory they found difficulties on every side. Manuel is accused by the Latins of treachery, and the Greek Nicetas joins in the charge, while other Greeks charge the crusaders with the blame of the differences which arose. There was plundering by the strangers, and attacks were often made on them by the Greek soldiery. Although markets for provisions had been promised, the Greeks shut themselves up in their towers, and let down their supplies over the walls in buckets; they insisted on being paid beforehand, and it is complained that their provisions were shamefully adulterated, that sometimes they gave nothing in return for the payment, and that in exchanges they cheated the Latins by means of false money which Manuel had coined for the purpose. By a sudden rising of the river Melas in the night, a considerable part of Conrad's force was swept away, with his tents and camp equipage. On reaching Constantinople, the scenes of the first crusade were renewed. The Byzantines were shocked by the rudeness of the Germans, and especially by the sight of women armed and riding in male fashion, “more masculine than Amazons”. There were quarrels about markets; the Germans, in indignation at the treatment which they met with, plundered and destroyed many splendid villas near the city; there were irreconcilable and interminable disputes as to matters of precedence and ceremony. Although the two emperors were brothers-in-law, Conrad left Constantinople without having seen Manuel, and crossed the Bosphorus with a host which, after all the reduction that it had suffered, was still reckoned to exceed 90,000 men.

In the meantime a force composed of men from Flanders, England, and other northern countries, assembled in the harbour of Dartmouth, and sailed for Portugal, where they wrested Lisbon from the Saracens in October 1147. But it would seem that they were content with their successes in the Spanish peninsula, and did not proceed onwards to join in the attempts to deliver the Holy Land.

The French crusaders assembled at Metz, where a code of laws was drawn up for their conduct in the expedition; but a chronicler declines to record these laws, inasmuch as they were not observed by the nobles who had sworn to them. The host passed through Germany and Hungary without any considerable misfortune, although even from the Hungarian frontier the king found it necessary to write to Suger for a fresh supply of money; and at Constantinople their superior refinement at once made them more acceptable than the Germans, and enabled them better to conceal their dislike and distrust of the Greeks. But the hollowness of the oppressive civilities with which Manuel received Lewis was deeply felt; the Greeks were found to be false and fraudulent in all their dealings; and the exasperation of the crusaders was increased by religious differences, so bitter that the Greek clergy thought it necessary to purify the altars on which the Latins had celebrated, and even to rebaptize a Latin before allowing him to marry a wife of the Greek communion. The bishop of Langres proposed to seize the city, by way of punishing them for their schism and their perfidy; and but for the eagerness of the crusaders to go onwards, his counsels would probably have been acted on. After reaching the Asiatic shore, Lewis did homage to the eastern emperor; but an eclipse of the sun, which took place on the same day, was interpreted as portending some diminution of the king’s splendour.

Lewis had reached Nicaea in safety when he was met by Frederick of Hohenstaufen with tidings of disasters which had befallen the Germans. The main body of these, under Conrad, had intended to march by Iconium, while the rest, under the bishop of Freising, were to take the less direct way by the coast; but, before Conrad and his division had advanced far, it was found that they had miscalculated, and had been deceived by the Greeks, both as to the distance and as to the difficulties of the way. Encumbered as they were by helpless women and children, they advanced but slowly. Their provisions were nearly exhausted, and no more were to be procured; the Greek guides who had led them into the desert country, after having deluded them with falsehoods of every kind, deserted them during the night, and returned to deceive the French with romantic fables as to the triumphs of the crusading arms. Squadrons of Turks, lightly armed and mounted on nimble horses, hovered about them, uttering wild cries, and discharging deadly flights of javelins and arrows, while the Europeans, worn out with hunger and toil, loaded with heavy armour, and having lost their horses, were unable to bring them to close combat: and, as they were still within the imperial territory, there was reason to believe that the enemies of the cross had been incited to attack them by the treachery of Manuel. At Nicaea Conrad himself appeared in retreat, with less than a tenth of the force which he had led onwards from that city. The Greeks refused to supply his hungry followers with food, except in exchange for their arms : and most of them returned in miserable condition towards Constantinople, whence a scanty remnant found its way back to Germany. In order that Conrad might not appear without a respectable force, Lewis ordered the Lorrainers, Burgundians, and Italians, who were feudally subject to the empire, to attach themselves to him; and, having resolved to proceed by the longer but less hazardous road, the army reached Ephesus. But quarrels had arisen between the nations of which it was composed a coolness took place between the two leaders; and Conrad, under pretext of illness, gladly accepted an invitation from his imperial brother-in-law, and returned to winter at Constantinople.

After having spent Christmas at Ephesus, Lewis directed his march towards Attalia (Satalia). The crusaders crossed the Maeander, after a victory over a Turkish force which opposed their passage. But as they advanced they found themselves unable to obtain food, and the treachery of the Greeks became continually more manifest. In a narrow defile, where the van and the rear had been accidentally separated, the army was attacked, and suffered heavy loss both in slain and in prisoners; the king’s own life was in great danger. The survivors continued their march in gloomy apprehension, and dangers seemed to thicken around them. In their extremity, it was proposed by Lewis that a brotherhood of five hundred horsemen should be formed for the protection of the rest. A knight named Gilbert, of whom nothing is known except the skill and valour which he displayed on this occasion, was chosen as its head, and even the king himself served as a member of the band. By Gilbert’s generalship, two rivers were successfully crossed in the face of the enemy, who were afterwards attacked and routed with great slaughter; and, although the crusaders were in such distress for provisions that they were obliged to eat most of their horses, they reached Attalia on the fifteenth day of their march from Ephesus.

From Attalia Lewis embarked for Syria, by advice of his counsellors, taking with him part of the force, and having, as he thought, secured a safe advance for the rest under the protection of an escort. But the Greeks who had been hired for this purpose abandoned them; and the crusaders, after having fought bravely against an assailing force of Turks, were driven to fall back on Attalia. There, however, the inhabitants who, during the king’s stay in the city, had used every kind of extortion against the Franks, shut the gates on them, and they found themselves obliged to crouch under the walls, hungry and almost naked, while violent storms of wind and rain increased their misery. At length, in utter desperation, they attempted again to march onward. But the Turks surrounded them in overpowering numbers, and the whole remnant of the unhappy force was cut off with the exception of three thousand, who surrendered themselves into slavery. Some of them apostatized, although their masters did not put any force on them as to religion.

Lewis landed at the mouth of the Orontes, and proceeded to Antioch, where he was received by his wife’s uncle, prince Raymond; but he declined the prince’s invitation to join in an expedition against Noureddin, and continued his way to Jerusalem, where he arrived towards the end of June, in a guise befitting a penitential pilgrim rather than a warrior who had set out at the head of a powerful army, and with an assured hope of victory and conquest. In July, a meeting of the Frank chiefs, both lay and ecclesiastical, was held at Acre, and among those present was Conrad, who, after having been hospitably entertained at Constantinople through the winter, had reached Jerusalem at Easter, with a very few soldiers in his train. An expedition against Damascus was resolved on, and the siege of that city was begun with good hope of success. But jealousies arose among the Franks, and some of them—it is said the Templars—were bribed by the enemy's gold, so that the expedition was defeated. Sick in body, depressed in mind, and utterly disgusted with the Christians of the Holy Land, Conrad embarked for Constantinople in September, and thence, by way of Greece and Istria, made his way to Ratisbon, where he arrived in Whitsun week 1149. Lewis, ashamed and penitent, lingered in the Holy Land until July of that year, when, yielding at length to Suger’s earnest solicitations, he took ship for Sicily—his queen following separately. In passing through Italy he had an interview with the pope, and he soon after reached his own dominions. But of the vast numbers which had accompanied him towards the East, it is said that not so many as three hundred returned.

The miserable and shameful result of this expedition, which, while it had drained Europe of men and treasure, had only rendered the condition of the Christians in the Holy Land worse than before, excited loud murmurs against Bernard, as the man by whose preaching, prophecies, and miracles, it had been chiefly promoted; and all his authority was needed in order to justify himself. We are told that, when the dismal tidings from the East were filling all France with sorrow and anger, a blind boy was brought to him for cure. The abbot prayed that, if his preaching had been right, he might be enabled to work the miracle; and this attestation of his truth was granted. He referred to his earlier miracles as certain signs that his preaching of the crusade had been sanctioned by Heaven; he declared himself willing to bear any blame rather than that it should be cast on God. He regarded the failure of the expedition as a fit chastisement for the sins of the crusaders; and an Italian abbot assured him that St. John and St. Paul had appeared in a vision, declaring that the number of the fallen angels had been restored from the souls of those who had died in the crusade.

During the absence of Lewis in the East, his kingdom had been successfully administered by Suger. Suger was born of humble parents in 1081, and at an early age entered the monastery of St. Denys, where he became the companion of Lewis VI in his education, and so laid the foundation of his political eminence. His election as abbot in 1122 was at first opposed by Lewis, because the royal permission had not been previously asked; but this difficulty was overcome, and Suger became the king’s confidential adviser. In the midst of the political employments which continually increased on him, notwithstanding his endeavours to withdraw from them, he performed his monastic duties with the most scrupulous attention. He reformed the disorders which Abelard had censured among the monks of the abbey; he skillfully improved its finances, and extended its property; he rebuilt the church and furnished it magnificently.  In his own person he had always been rigidly monastic; and although it is supposed that he was the abbot whom Bernard censures for going about with upwards of sixty horses, and a train more than sufficient for two bishops, he afterwards reformed his pomp, and received Bernard’s warm congratulations on the change. Under Lewis VII Suger’s influence became greater than ever. While left as regent of the kingdom, he employed not only his secular authority, but the censures of the church, which the pope authorized him to wield, in checking the violent and lawless tendencies of such nobles as had remained in France. He defeated the attempts of Robert of Dreux, who had returned from the crusade before his brother Lewis, to supplant the absent king, and he exerted himself diligently to raise and transmit the supplies of money for which Lewis was continually importuning him by letters. When the unhappy expedition was projected, Suger had opposed the general enthusiasm for it. But after its failure, the tidings which arrived from the East stirred him with new feelings. Raymond of Antioch had been slain, and other chiefs were taken prisoners. Jerusalem itself was threatened by the infidels, while within its walls a bitter contest for power was raging between the young king Baldwin III and his mother Melisenda. It seemed as if the Latins were about to be swept from the Holy Land. Suger was excited to attempt to raise a fresh crusade, which Bernard advocated with his old enthusiasm. Meetings for the purpose were held at Laon and at Chartres; but both nobles and bishops received the project with coldness, and when it was proposed that Bernard himself should go to Jerusalem, in order to provoke others to emulation, the Cistercians refused to allow him. Suger, however, resolved to devote to this purpose the treasures with which St. Denys had been enriched by his administration. He sent large sums of money to the East, and intended to follow with a force of his own raising. But his death in 1151 put an end to the projected expedition.

It has been mentioned that the queen of the French accompanied her husband to the crusade, and that she returned in a separate vessel. Eleanor's haughty and unbending character was ill suited to that of Lewis, and she scornfully declared that she had married, not a king, but a monk. Differences had broken out between them at Antioch, and had been fomented by her uncle Raymond, who was provoked by the king’s refusal to assist him in his designs against Aleppo. She is charged with infidelity to her husband, whom it is even said that she had intended to desert for the embraces of an infidel chief. The marriage was open to a canonical objection, of which Bernard had spoken strongly during the quarrel between the king and the church; and although the pope had overruled this objection, it was now brought before a council at Beaugency, which pronounced for a separation on the ground of consanguinity. Immediately after, Eleanor entered into a second marriage with Henry, duke of Normandy, count of Anjou, and afterwards king of England, who thus became master of her extensive territories; and, by this marriage, the foundation was laid for a life-long jealousy and rivalry between Lewis and the great vassal whose territory in France exceeded the king’s own.

The presence of the pope, and the good understanding between him and Suger, had contributed greatly to the preservation of peace in France during the crusade; and by corresponding with the archbishop of Mainz, and Wibald, abbot of Stablo, whom Conrad had left as guardians of his son, Eugenius conferred a like benefit on Germany. In November 1147 he was induced by an invitation from Albero, archbishop of Treves, to visit that city, where he remained nearly three months. Among the matters there brought before him were the prophecies of Hildegard, head of a monastic sisterhood at St. Disibod’s, in the diocese of Mainz. Hildegard, born in 1098, had from her childhood been subject to fits of ecstasy, in which it is said that, although ignorant of Latin, she uttered her oracles in that language; and these oracles were eagerly heard, recorded, and preserved. With the power of prophecy she was believed to possess that of miracles; she was consulted on all manner of subjects, and among her correspondents were emperors, kings, and popes. Her tone in addressing the highest ecclesiastical personages is that of a prophetess far superior to them, and she denounces the corruptions of the monks and clergy in a strain, which has made her a favourite with the fiercest opponents of the papal church. Bernard, when in Germany, had been interested by Hildegard's character, and at his instance the pope now examined her prophecies, bestowed on her his approval, and sanctioned her design of building a convent in a spot which had been marked out by a vision, on St. Rupert's Hill, near Bingen.

From Treves Eugenius proceeded to Reims, where, on the 21st of March 1148, a great council met under his presidency. This council is connected with English history, not only by the circumstance that Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, attended it in defiance of a prohibition from king Stephen (for whom, however, he charitably obtained a respite when the pope was about to pronounce a sentence of excommunication), but because among the matters which came before it was a contest for the see of York between William, a nephew of the king, and Henry Murdac, abbot of Fountains. In this question, Bernard, influenced by partiality for Henry, as a member of his order and formerly his pupil, took a part which is universally acknowledged to have been wrong; for William had been elected by a majority of votes, and had been consecrated by his uncle, Henry, bishop of Winchester. The affair had already been discussed at Paris in 1147, and was now, through Bernard's influence, decided by the pope against William, who was excommunicated; but he found a refuge with the bishop of Winchester, until, after the death of his rival, he was again elected to York, and, with the sanction of Anastasius IV, resumed possession of the see in 1154. His return was, however, opposed by some of his clergy, and his death, which took place in the same year, is said to have been caused by poison administered in the eucharistic chalice. William's sanctity was attested by miracles at his tomb, and in the next century the archbishop whom Bernard had branded as a simoniac, and whom Eugenius, at Bernard's dictation, had deposed, was canonized by Nicholas III.

Another question which came before the council at Reims related to the opinions of Gilbert de la Porrée, who, after having been long famous as a teacher, had been raised in 1141 to the bishopric of Poitiers. Gilbert was, like Abelard, one of those theologians who paid less than the usual reverence to the traditions of former times. Otho of Freising, his pupil and admirer, tells us that his subtlety and acuteness led him to depart in many things from the customary way of speaking, although his respect for authority was greater than Abelard's, and his character was free from the vanity and the levity which had contributed so largely to Abelard's misfortunes.

Gilbert had been present at the council of Sens in 1140, and it is said that Abelard, after having heard himself condemned, turned to the theologian of Poitiers, and warned him in a well-known verse of Horace that his turn of persecution would come next. The pope, when on his way to France, was met at Siena by two archdeacons of Gilbert's diocese, who presented a complaint against their bishop; but when he attempted to investigate the charge at the council of Paris in 1147, Gilbert was saved from condemnation by the obscurity of the subject to which his alleged errors related, and by his own dialectical acuteness. The inquiry was adjourned to a greater assembly, but the difficulties which had baffled the council of Paris were equally felt at Reims. The chief errors imputed to Gilbert related to the doctrine of the Godhead. He was charged with denying that the Divine essence is God, and consequently with denying that it could have been incarnate; with holding that God is pure Being, without any attributes, although including in his perfect Being all that we conceive of as His attributes and to this it was added that he denied the efficacy of the Sacraments—maintaining that none were really baptized but such as should eventually be saved. Gilbert defended himself at great length, and cited many passages from the fathers in behalf of his opinions. “Brother”, said the pope at last, “you say and read a great many things which perhaps we do not understand; but tell us plainly whether you own that supreme essence by which the three Persons are God to be itself God”. Gilbert, wearied with the disputation, hastily answered “No”, and his answer was recorded, after which the council adjourned. On the following day, Gilbert, who in the meantime had held much earnest conference with such of the cardinals as favoured him, endeavoured by distinctions and explanations to do away with the effect of his hasty reply. Bernard, in speaking against him, made use of some words which gave offence to the cardinals—"Let that, too, be written down", said Gilbert. “Yes”, cried the abbot, “let it be written down with an iron pen, and with a nail of adamant!”. As Gilbert’s party among the cardinals was strong, Bernard endeavoured to counteract their influence by assembling a number of French prelates and other ecclesiastics, and producing at the council a set of propositions on which these had agreed in opposition to the errors imputed to the bishop of Poitiers. On this, the jealousy of the cardinals, who had long been impatient of his ascendency over Eugenius, burst forth. They denounced the French clergy as attempting to impose a new creed—a thing, they said, which all the patriarchs of Christendom could not presume to do without the authority of Rome; they loudly blamed the pope for preferring the French church to the Roman—for preferring his private friendships before the advice of those legitimate counsellors to whom he owed his elevation. Eugenius, unwilling to offend either party, desired Bernard to make peace; whereupon Bernard declared that he and his friends had not intended to claim any undue authority for their paper; but that, as Gilbert had demanded a written statement of his belief, he had desired to fortify himself by the consent of the French bishops. Gilbert was at length allowed to depart unharmed, on professing his agreement with the faith of the council and of the Roman church; he was reconciled with his archdeacons, by whom the charges had been brought against him; and his friends represented the result of the inquiry as a triumph.

Eugenius was now able, by the assistance of the Sicilian king, to return to Rome, where he arrived in November 1149, and he requested Bernard, as their personal intercourse could no longer be continued, to draw up some admonitions for his benefit. The result was a remarkable treatise “On Consideration”, which shows how far Bernard’s reverence for the papacy was from implying an admiration of the actual system of Rome, and how nearly in some respects the views of the highest hierarchical churchmen agreed with those of such reformers as Arnold of Brescia. With professions of deep humility and deference, the abbot writes as if the pope were still a monk of Clairvaux. The great object of the book is to exhort Eugenius to the spiritual duties of his office, and to warn him against the dangers of secularity. Bernard complains of the manifold business in which popes were engaged; of their employment in hearing of suits which were rather secular than ecclesiastical, and fell rather under the laws of Justinian than under those of the Saviour. These engagements, he says, were so engrossing as to allow no time for consideration; and the pope is advised to extricate himself from them as far as possible by devolving some part of his jurisdiction on others, by cutting short the speeches and the artifices of lawyers, and by discouraging the practice of too readily appealing to Rome. There is much of earnest warning against pride and love of rule; Bernard declares that the pomp of the papacy is copied, not from St. Peter, but from Constantine; that the Roman church ought not to be the mistress of other churches, but their mother; that the pope is not the lord, but the brother, of other bishops. He denounces the frequent exemption of abbots from the authority of bishops, and of bishops from the authority of their arch­bishops, the greed, the venality, the assumption of the papal court; he desires Eugenius to be careful in the choice of his officials and confidants, to avoid all acceptance of persons—(as to money, he acknowledges the pope’s utter indifference)—and to advance resolutely, although gradually, towards a reformation of the prevailing abuses. There is no reason to doubt that this treatise was received by Eugenius with the respect which he always paid to Bernard; but the abuses which it denounced were too strong and too inveterate to be cured by the good intentions of any pope. In it, however, the great saint of Clairvaux, by the unreserved plainness of his language and by the weight of his authority, had supplied a weapon which, from age to age, was continually employed by those who desired to reform the church and the court of Rome.

Although Eugenius was received by the Romans with submission to his spiritual authority, his temporal claims were not admitted, and after a few months he was again compelled to leave the city. In the hope of aid against the rebels, he entreated Conrad to come to Italy and receive the imperial crown, while the Romans requested the king to take part with them against the clergy, and Manuel of Constantinople urged the fullfillment of an agreement which had been made as Conrad was returning from the East, for a joint expedition against the pope's Sicilian allies. To each party Conrad replied that he was preparing for an Italian expedition, and he assured the pope that no evil was intended against the Roman church. But in the midst of his preparations he was seized by an illness, which carried him off in February 1152. In the end of that year, Eugenius, whose bounty and mildness had done much to conciliate the Romans, was allowed to return to his capital; but he survived little more than six months, dying on the 8th of July 1153. And on the 20th of August in that year Bernard died at Clairvaux— “ascending”, says a chronicler of the time, “from the Bright Valley to the mountain of eternal brightness”.

 

3

ADRIAN IV AND FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.

 

Henry, king of the Romans, had died about a year and a half before his father; and, although Conrad still had a son surviving, his feeling for the public good induced him to choose an heir of maturer age, his nephew Frederick, son of that Frederick of Hohenstaufen who had been Lothair’s competitor for the empire. A week after his uncle’s death, Frederick was elected at Frankfort, and five days later he received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle from Arnold, archbishop of Cologne. On the very day of his coronation the stern determination of his character was remarkably displayed. In the minster, where the ceremony took place, one of his officers, who had been dismissed for misconduct, threw himself at his feet, in the hope that the circumstances of the day might secure his pardon. But Frederick declared that, as he had disgraced the man not out of hatred but for justice sake, neither the festive occasion nor the intercessions of the princes who were present could be allowed to reverse the sentence. Frederick, who was now thirty-one years of age, had distinguished himself in the late crusade; he was a prince of extraordinary ability and indomitable perseverance, filled with a high sense of the dignity to which he had been elevated, and with a firm resolution to maintain its rights according to the model of Charlemagne. Yet, although his struggle for the assertion of the imperial privileges was to be chiefly against the hierarchy, he appears to have been sincere in his profession of reverence for the church, and not immoderate in his conception of the relations between the secular and the ecclesiastical powers. Descended as he was from the houses of both Welf and Waiblingen, the feud of those houses was dormant throughout his reign, although it afterwards revived, when the names became significant of the papal and the imperial parties respectively.

In the very beginning of his reign, Frederick was drawn into a collision with the papacy with regard to the see of Magdeburg. Some of the clergy had wished to elect the dean as archbishop, while others were for the provost; but Frederick persuaded the dean and his partisans to accept Wichmann, bishop of Zeitz, as their candidate, and, by the power which the Worms concordat had allowed to the sovereign in cases of disputed elections, he decided for Wichmann, and invested him with the regalia. The provost on this carried a complaint to Eugenius, who, in letters to the chapter of Magdeburg and to the German bishops, ordered that Wichmann should not be acknowledged as archbishop; it is, however, remarkable that he rested his prohibition on the canons which forbade translation except for great causes (such as, he said, did not exist in this case), but did not hint as yet that the translation of bishops was a matter reserved to the Roman see. Frederick continued firm in the assertion of his pretensions, against both Eugenius and his successor, Anastasius IV. A legate whom Anastasius sent into Germany for the settlement of the question found himself resisted in his assumptions, and was obliged to return without having effected anything; and Wichmann, whom Frederick soon after sent to Rome, received from Anastasius the confirmation of his election, with the archiepiscopal pall. By the result of this affair Frederick's authority was strengthened in proportion to the loudness with which the Roman court had before declared itself resolved to abate nothing of its pretensions.

The long absence of the emperors from Italy had encouraged the people of that country, which was continually advancing in commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, in wealth and in population, to forget their allegiance to the imperial crown. The feudatories came to regard themselves as independent; the cities set up republican governments of their own, under consuls who were annually elected, and the right of investing these magistrates was the only shadow which the bishops were allowed to retain of their ancient secular power. The cities were engaged in constant feuds with each other, and each subdued the nobles of its neighbourhood, whom the citizens in some cases even compelled to reside within the city walls for a certain portion of the year.

Frederick was resolved to reassert the imperial rights, and applications from various quarters concurred with his own inclination in urging on him an expedition into Italy. With the Greek emperor he formed a scheme of combination against the Sicilian Normans and while Eugenius entreated his aid against the republican and Arnoldist faction, which the pope represented as intending to set up an emperor of its own, another writer addressed him on the part of the Romans, assuring him that the story of Constantine’s donation had now lost all credit even among the meanest of the people, and that the pope with his cardinals did not venture to appear in public. At his first German diet, in 1152, Frederick proposed an expedition into Italy, for which he required the princes to be ready within two years; and in October 1154 he entered Lombardy by way of Trent, at the head of the most splendid army that had ever crossed the Alps. A great assembly was summoned to the plains of Roncaglia, the place in which the German kings, on their way to receive the imperial crown, had been accustomed to meet their Italian subjects. The vassals who failed to appear—among them, some ecclesiastics—were declared to have forfeited their fiefs. The mutual complaints of the Italian cities were heard, and severe sentences were pronounced against those who were found guilty, especially against the powerful and turbulent Milanese, who had treated Frederick’s admonitions with contempt, and had now added to their offences by offering to bribe him into sanctioning their tyranny over their neighbours. Tortona, which had shown itself contumacious, was taken after a siege of two months, and destroyed; and at Pavia the king was received with a magnificence which expressed the joy of the citizens in the humiliation of their Milanese enemies.

In March 1153 Frederick had entered into a compact with Eugenius, binding himself to make no alliance with the Romans or with Roger of Sicily unless with the pope’s consent, and to maintain the privileges of the papacy; while the pope promised to support the power of Frederick, and to bestow on him the imperial crown, and both parties pledged themselves to make no grant of Italian territory to “the king of the Greeks”. Since the date of that compact, Eugenius had been succeeded by Anastasius IV, and Anastasius, in December 1154, by Nicholas Breakspear, an Englishman, who took the name of Adrian IV. Breakspear, the son of a poor clerk, who had afterwards become a monk of St. Albans, is said to have been refused admission into that house on account of his insufficiency in knowledge, and was driven to seek his fortune in France, where he distinguished himself by his diligence in study at Paris, and rose to be abbot of the regular canons of St. Rufus, near Avignon. In this office he became unpopular with his canons, who carried their complaints against him to Eugenius III; and the pope at once put an end to the strife and marked his high sense of the abbot's merit by appointing him cardinal-bishop of Albano. As cardinal, he was sent on an important legation into the Scandinavian kingdoms, from which he returned during the pontificate of Anastasius and now the poor English scholar, whose Saxon descent would probably have debarred him from any considerable preferment in his native land, was elected to the chair of St. Peter. “He was”, says a biographer, “a man of great kindness, meekness, and patience, skilled in the English and in the Latin tongues, eloquent in speech, polished in his utterance, distinguished in singing and an eminent preacher, slow to anger, quick to forgive, a cheerful giver, bountiful in alms and excellent in his whole character”. If, however, we may judge by his acts, it would seem that Adrian’s temper was less placid than it is here represented; and his ideas as to the papal dignity were of the loftiest Hildebrandine kind. Immediately after his election, he refused to acknowledge the republican government, and issued an order that Arnold of Brescia should be banished from Rome. To this it was answered that the pope ought to confine himself to spiritual affairs; and the insolence of Arnold’s partisans increased until it reached a height which gave the pope an advantage against them. A cardinal was attacked and mortally wounded in the street; Adrian placed the city under an interdict; and the severity of this sentence, which had never before been known at Rome, was the more strongly felt from its being issued in Lent, a time when the Romans had been accustomed to the pomp and the religious consolations of especially solemn services. By the absence of these the people were so intensely distressed that, in the holy week, they compelled the senators to submit to the pope, who consented to take off his censure on condition that Arnold should be driven out. On this Arnold fled from the city, and, after having wandered for a time, he found a refuge among the nobles of the Campagna, by whom he was regarded as a prophet. But Frederick, as he advanced towards Rome with a rapidity which excited Adrian's suspicions, was met by three cardinals, who in the pope’s name requested that he would take measures against an incendiary so dangerous to the crown as well as to the church; and in consequence of the king's demand Arnold was surrendered by those who sheltered him. Frederick delivered him over to the pope, and, under the authority of the prefect of Rome, the popular leader was hanged, after which his body was burnt, and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber, lest they should be venerated as relics by the multitudes who had followed him. “Bad as his doctrine was”, says Gerhoh of Reichersperg, “I wish that he had been punished with imprisonment, or exile, or with some other penalty short of death, or at least that he had been put to death in such a manner as might have saved the Roman church from question”.

The negotiations which Adrian had opened through his cardinals were satisfactorily settled by Frederick’s swearing that his intentions were friendly to the pope, and receiving in turn a promise of the imperial crown. Having thus assured himself Adrian ventured into the camp at Nepi, where he was received with great honour; but, although Frederick threw himself at his feet, the pope took offence at the king's omitting to hold his stirrup—an act of homage which, although the first example of it had been given little more than half a century before, by Conrad, the rebellious son of Henry IV, was already deduced by the papal party from Constantine the Great, who was said to have performed it to Pope Sylvester. Adrian declared that he would not give the kiss of peace unless he received the same honour which his predecessors had always received, while Frederick declared that the omission was purely the effect of ignorance, but that he must consult his nobles on the subject. The cardinals in alarm withdrew to Civita Castellana, and a long discussion was carried on, which was at length settled by the evidence of some Germans who had accompanied the emperor Lothair to Rome; and, as this evidence was in the pope’s favour, Frederick next day submitted to do the service which was required, although it would seem that in the performance he intentionally gave it the character of a jest. Having overcome this difficulty, the king proceeded onwards in company with the pope, who strongly represented to him the disorders of Rome, and endeavoured to draw him into an expedition against the Sicilians, with a view to recovering Apulia for the apostolic see. Frederick contrived to defer the consideration of this proposal; but it may be supposed that the pope’s representations had some share in producing the reception which the king gave to a deputation from the citizens, which waited on him near Sutri. After listening for a time to the bombastic oration which one of the envoys addressed to him in the name of Rome, dwelling on her glories, and endeavouring to make terms for the Romans in exchange for their consent to the imperial coronation, the king indignantly cut him short—“These”, he said, pointing to his German nobles and soldiers, “are the true Latins—the consuls, the senators, the knights. The glory of Rome and the Romans has been transferred to the Franks. Our power has not been conferred by you, as you pretend, but has been won by victory. Your native tyrants, such as Desiderius and Berengar, have been overcome by my predecessors, and died as captives and slaves in foreign lands. It is not for subjects to prescribe laws to their sovereign. It is not for a prince at the head of a powerful army, but for captives, to pay money; I will submit to no conditions of your making”.

On reaching Rome, Frederick took possession of the Leonine suburb, while the bridge of St. Angelo, the only means of communication with the opposite bank, was guarded by his soldiery; and on the 18th of June he was crowned by Adrian in St. Peter's amid the loud acclamations of the Germans. But after the ceremony, while the troops had withdrawn from the oppressive heat of the day, and were refreshing themselves in their tents, a body of Romans sallied across the bridge, attacking such of the Germans as they found in the streets or in the churches, and appeared to have a design of seizing the pope. The noise of this irruption penetrated to the emperor’s camp, and Frederick immediately ordered his troops to arms. A fierce conflict raged from four in the afternoon till nightfall; the assailants were driven back as far as the Forum; the Tiber ran with blood, and it is said that a thousand of the Romans were slain, and two hundred taken prisoners, while only one of the imperialists was killed and one captured. At the pope’s intercession the Roman captives were given up to the prefect of the city, and on St. Peter’s day Adrian pronounced the absolution of all who had taken part in the late slaughter. Frederick was soon after compelled by the pestilential air of the Roman summer to withdraw from the neighbourhood of the city, and, as the time for which his troops were bound to serve was drawing towards an end, he retired beyond the Alps—on the way taking and destroying Spoleto, the inhabitants of which had provoked him by their insolence. At Christmas 1155-6 a diet was held at Worms, where Arnold, archbishop of Mainz, Hermann, count palatine, and others were brought to trial for disturbing the peace of Germany during the emperor's absence. The archbishop was spared in consideration of his age and profession; but the count palatine and ten of his partisans were sentenced to the ignominious punishment of “carrying the dog”.

Frederick’s attention was soon again demanded by the affairs of Italy. William “the Bad”, the son and successor of Roger of Sicily, had in 1155 refused to enter into a treaty with the pope, or to admit his ambassadors to an interview, because Adrian, by way of claiming him as a vassal, had styled him not king, but lord. He besieged the pope in Benevento, laid waste the surrounding territory, and was denounced excommunicate. This sentence was not without its effect on the minds of William’s allies, and, in addition to the fear that these might desert him, the dread of a combination between the Greek emperor and the pope inclined him further to peace. His first overtures were refused, but Adrian, after having seen his own troops and allies defeated, was fain to sue in his turn, and received the most favourable terms. The king fell at his feet, and, on swearing fealty to the Roman see, was invested by Adrian with the kingdom of Sicily and the Italian territories of the Normans (including some which the popes had never before affected to dispose of); while, in consideration of this, he promised to aid the pope against all enemies, and to pay a yearly tribute for Apulia, Calabria, and his other continental dominions. Frederick, who had been exerting himself with energy and success to reduce Germany to tranquillity, was greatly displeased that the pope had without his concurrence entered into an alliance with the Sicilians—an alliance, moreover, which involved the disallowance of the imperial claims to suzerainty over Apulia. He signified his displeasure to Adrian, who on his side was dissatisfied on account of the emperor’s having divorced his wife under pretext of consanguinity, and having entered into another marriage, which was recommended to him by political considerations. At a diet at Wurzburg, in 1157, a fresh expedition into Italy was resolved on; but it was delayed by the necessity of attending to the affairs of Poland, and in the meantime an incident took place which led to a violent collision between the pope and the emperor.

Eskil, archbishop of Lund, in that part of modern Sweden which was then subject to Denmark, in returning from a visit to Rome, had been attacked, plundered, and imprisoned with a view to the exaction of ransom, by some robber knights in the neighbourhood of Thionville. No notice had been taken of this by Frederick, to whom Eskil had probably given offence by his exertions to render the Danish church independent of the metropolitans of Bremen and Hamburg. But Adrian, on hearing of it, addressed to the emperor a letter of indignant remonstrance against the apathy with which he had regarded an outrage injurious to the empire as well as to the church—reminding Frederick of his having conferred the imperial crown on him, and adding that, if it had been in his power, he would have bestowed on him yet greater favours. The letter was presented to the emperor by two cardinals at a great assembly at Besançon, where it was read aloud, and was interpreted by the chancellor Reginald of Dassel (who soon after became archbishop of Cologne). But the word beneficia which the pope had used to signify favours or benefits, was unluckily misunderstood by the Germans as if it had the feudal sense of benefices or fiefs. The pope was supposed to have represented the empire as a fief of the papacy; and it was remembered that Frederick, at his first visit to Rome, had been offended by a picture which, with its inscription, represented Lothair as receiving his crown from the pope’s gift, and as performing homage for it. A loud uproar arose at the supposed insolence of the pontiff, and the general feeling was still further exasperated when Cardinal Roland dared to ask “From whom, then, does the emperor hold his crown, if not from the pope?”. The palsgrave Otho of Wittelsbach, who carried the naked sword of state, was with difficulty prevented by the emperor from cleaving the audacious ecclesiastic’s head with it. “If we were not in a church”, said Frederick himself, “they should know how the swords of the Germans cut”. He burst forth into violent reproaches against the legates and their master; they were abruptly and ignominiously dismissed, and were charged to return home at once, without staying more than one night in any place of the imperial dominions, or burdening bishops or monasteries by their exactions. Frederick, whose exasperation was increased by some strong rebukes which Adrian had addressed to him on account of his divorce and second marriage, forthwith sent forth a letter to his subjects, in which he protested that he would rather hazard his life than admit the pope’s insolent assumptions; that he held his kingdom and the empire by the choice of the princes and under God alone, agreeably to our Lord's saying, that two swords are necessary for the government of the world. Orders were issued that no German ecclesiastic should go to Rome without the imperial license, and the passes into Italy were guarded in order to prevent all communication.

On hearing from his legates of the indignities to which they had been subjected, the pope wrote to the German bishops, urging them to bring the emperor to a better mind, and to persuade him to exact from archbishop Reginald and the palsgrave signal and public atonement for their “blasphemies” against the Roman church. But on this occasion the German prelates preferred their national to their hierarchical allegiance. They told the pope that they had admonished the emperor, and had received from him “such an answer as became a catholic prince” declaring his firm resolution, while paying all due reverence to the pope, to admit no encroachment of the church on the empire; and they entreated Adrian to soothe the high spirit of their sovereign. The pope began to be alarmed, and, at the instance of Henry, duke of Bavaria, he dispatched two envoys of a more politic character than the last, with a letter of explanation composed in a moderate and conciliatory style. The word beneficium he said, meant, not a fief, but simply a good deed (bonum factum) and surely the emperor would admit that to crown him was such a deed; and by the crown nothing more had been meant than the act of placing it on Frederick’s head. The letter was delivered at Augsburg, and was well received; and the picture which had given offence at Rome was removed, if not destroyed.

At length the projected expedition was ready, and Frederick, having settled the affairs of Germany, Hungary, and Poland, crossed the Alps in July 1158, at the head of a force composed of many nations, and which is reckoned at 100,000 infantry and 15,000 horsed Milan and other insubordinate cities were compelled to surrender, and felt his severity, while the enmity of the Italian towns against each other was shown in acts of cruelty committed by those in the imperial interest, to the astonishment and disgust of the Germans. Milan was deprived of the privileges which were known under the name of royalties and was required to submit the choice of its consuls to the emperor for confirmation. At Martinmas, a great assembly was held in the Roncaglian plains, where a city of tents was erected, the Germans and Italians encamping on the opposite banks of the Po. As the extent of the imperial powers in Italy had been hitherto undefined, Frederick, in an address to his assembled subjects, declared himself resolved that it should now be duly ascertained and determined, professing that he would rather govern by law than by his own caprice; and the matter was committed to four eminent professors of Bologna, together with twenty-eight judges of the Lombard cities. Filled with the lofty notions of the imperial dignity which had lately been produced by the revived study of ancient Roman law, these authorities declared that the emperor possessed autocratic power, and was entitled to exact a capitation from all his subjects. The rights of the Italian cities, to the possession of royalties were investigated, and those for which no authority could be shown were confiscated; a general tribute was imposed; and by these measures a revenue of 30,000 pounds of silver was added to the imperial treasury. A few cities were allowed by special favour to retain their consuls, who were to be appointed with the emperor's consent; but the ordinary system of government was to be by officers bearing the title of podestà, who were to be nominated by the emperor, and were also to be chosen from among strangers to the place over which they were appointed. Measures were also taken to bind the cities to mutual peace, to prevent them from combining into parties, and to suppress the private wars of the nobles.

On hearing of these proceedings, Adrian was greatly excited. The idea of the imperial prerogative which had been sanctioned at Roncaglia conflicted with the Hildebrandine pretensions of the papacy. The resumption of royalties which had been held not only by cities and by nobles, but by bishops and abbots—the imposition of a tribute from which ecclesiastics were not exempted—the investiture of Frederick’s uncle, Welf VI of Bavaria, in the inheritance of the countess Matilda—were circumstances which might well produce alarm and irritation in the pope’s mind; “it seemed to him”, says a writer of later date, “as if all that the emperor gained were taken from himself”. While engaged in settling the quarrels of the Lombard cities, Frederick received from the pope a letter peremptorily forbidding him to arbitrate in a difference between Bergamo and Brescia; and instead of being committed, as was usual, to an envoy of honourable station, this letter was delivered by a man of mean and ragged appearance, who immediately disappeared. About the same time Adrian gave additional provocation to the emperor by refusing to allow the promotion of Guy of Blandrata to the see of Ravenna, on the evidently trilling ground that he could not be spared from Rome, where he was a subdeacon of the church. Indignant at these slights, the emperor ordered his secretaries, in addressing the pope, to use the singular instead of the plural number, and to reverse the custom, which had prevailed since the time of Leo IV, of placing the pope’s name before that of the sovereign in the heading of letters. These changes drew forth a strong remonstrance from Adrian, who declared them to be a breach of the commandment that we should honour our parents, and of the fealty which Frederick had sworn to the see of St. Peter; and he further complained that the emperor exacted homage as well as fealty from bishops, that he took their consecrated hands between his own hands, that he closed not only the churches but the cities of his dominions against the legates of the apostolic see. An embassy was also commissioned to demand redress of alleged encroachments on the papacy—that the emperor sent messengers to Rome without the knowledge of the pope, to whom all power in the city belonged; that his envoys claimed entertainment in the palaces of bishops; that he exacted the allowance known by the name of the pope’s subjects on other occasions besides that on which it was admitted to be lawful—the expedition to receive the imperial crown; that he detained Matilda’s inheritance, and other territories which rightfully belonged to the apostolic see. To these complaints Frederick replied that he had been driven by the pope’s new assumptions to fall back on the older forms in writing to him; that he had no wish for the homage of bishops, unless they cared to retain the royalties which they had received from the crown; that the palaces of bishops stood on imperial ground, and therefore his ambassadors were entitled to enter them; that if he shut out cardinals from churches and from cities, it was because they were false to their profession, and were intent only on plunder; that if the pope were sovereign of Rome, the imperial title was a mockery: and he inveighed in strong terms against the pride and rapacity of the Roman court.

The exasperation of both parties rose higher and higher. A proposal of Frederick, that the matters in dispute should be left to the decision of six cardinals to be named by the pope, and six German bishops to be chosen by himself, was rejected by Adrian, on the ground that the pope could be judged by no man. The emperor, indignant at the discovery of letters exhorting the Lombard cities to revolt, received favourably a fresh embassy from the Roman senate and people, and entered into negotiations with them.

A rupture of the most violent kind between the papacy and the empire appeared to be inevitable, when, on the 1st of September 1159, Adrian died at Anagni.

 

CHAPTER IX.

ALEXANDER III. A.D. 1159-1181.