BOOK VI.

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

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE DEATH OF GREGORY VII TO THAT OF THE EMPEROR HENRY IV.—THE FIRST CRUSADE. A.D. 1085-1106.

 

 

GREGORY VII left behind him a powerful and resolute party. It could reckon on the alliance of the Normans, for whom it was important that the pope should be favourable to their own interest rather than to that of the emperor; and it was supported by the devoted attachment of the countess Matilda. On the other hand, the emperor’s strength in Italy was greater in appearance than in reality; for, although many of the chief cities were with him, a strong desire of independence had arisen among them, and he could not safely rely on them unless in so far as his interest coincided with their private objects.

When asked on his death-bed to recommend a successor, Gregory had named Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, and first cardinal-presbyter of the Roman church, and had desired that, if the abbot should refuse the papacy, either Otho, bishop of Ostia, Hugh, archbishop of Lyons (the same who, as bishop of Die, had been legate in France), or Anselm, bishop of Lucca, the chaplain and chief counsellor of Matilda, should be chosen. The general wish was for Desiderius, but he obstinately refused—perhaps from unwillingness to exchange his peaceful dignity for one which, although loftier, must involve him in violent contentions with the emperor and the antipope. A year had elapsed, when at Whitsuntide 1086 he was persuaded to go to Rome, supposing that he was then no longer in danger of having the popedom forced on him. Preparations were made for an election, and, by the advice of Desiderius, Otho was about to be chosen, when an objection was raised that he was canonically disqualified, as being already a bishop. Although this impediment had in later times been often disregarded, the mention of it served to divert the multitude, who cried out for Desiderius. The abbot, struggling, and refusing to put on a part of the pontifical dress, was enthroned, and greeted as Victor III; but immediately afterwards he left the city, and, renouncing the dignity which had been thrust on him, withdrew to his monastery.

Ten months more passed away, and in March 1087 Desiderius summoned a council to meet at Capua, with a view to a new election. At this meeting Roger, son of Robert Guiscard, and Jordan, prince of Capua, with a number of bishops, threw themselves at his feet, and entreated him to retain the papacy; but Hugh of Lyons and Otho of Ostia objected to him, and required an examination into his conduct. By this opposition Desiderius was determined to accept the office which he had so long declined. He repaired to Rome under the protection of a Norman force, which wrested St. Peter's from the antipope; and on the 9th of May he was consecrated. The partisans of Guibert, however, soon after recovered possession of the church, and, after the fashion of the ancient Donatists, they washed the altars in order to cleanse them from the pollution of the Hildebrandine mass.

Although the new pope had been among the most devoted of Gregory’s adherents, it would seem that he was now weary of conflict, and desirous to gratify his natural inclination for peace. Of his late opponents, Otho submitted to him : but Hugh, who himself aspired to the papacy, addressed to Matilda two letters, in which he charged him with apostasy from Gregory’s policy, and with a disposition to grant unworthy concessions to the emperor. By this letter Victor was greatly exasperated, and at a synod at Benevento, in the month of August, he excommunicated the archbishop. The synod renewed the anathema against the antipope and the decrees against investiture. After three sessions had been held, the pope was struck with palsy; and, having been removed to Monte Cassino, he died there on the 16th of September. Victor has left three books of Dialogues, which are valuable as throwing light on the history of his time, while, by the excessive credulity which he displays, as well as by their form, they remind us of his model, the Dialogues of Gregory the Great.

Another long vacancy in the popedom followed. The antipope had possession of Rome, and the emperor’s power was formidable to the inheritors of Gregory’s principles. But they were encouraged by the resolution of Matilda; and in March 1088 a council met at Terracina for the appointment of a successor to Victor. In consideration of the difficulties of the time, the form of election prescribed by Nicolas II was set aside. About forty bishops and abbots were present, together with envoys from the Great Countess, and from some prelates beyond the Alps. The clergy of Rome were represented by the cardinal of Porto; the people, by the prefect of the city; and Otho, bishop of Ostia, who had again been recommended by Victor on his death-bed, was unanimously chosen.

The new pope, who took the name of Urban II, was a Frenchman of noble family. He was educated at Reims, under Bruno, afterwards famous as the founder of the Carthusian order, and became a canon of that city; but he resigned his position to enter the monastery of Cluny. In consequence of a request which Gregory had made, that the abbot would send him some monks who might be fit for the episcopate, Otho left Cluny for Rome in 1076; he was employed by the pope in important business, and was advanced to the sec of Ostia. Urban’s principles were the same with those of Gregory, and, if he had not the originality of his master, he was not inferior to him in firmness, activity, or enterprise; while with these qualities he combined an artfulness and a caution which were more likely to be successful than Gregory's undisguised audacity and assumption.

At the time of the election, Rome was almost entirely in the hands of the antipope, so that Urban, on visiting it, was obliged to find shelter in the island of the Tiber; while such was his poverty that he was indebted to one of the Frangipani family, and even to some women of the humblest class, for the means of subsistence. The city was a scene of continual struggles between the opposite parties. Their mutual exasperation may be imagined from an instance on each side : that Bonizo, a vehement partisan of Urban, on being appointed to the see of Piacenza, after having been expelled from that of Sutri, was blinded and was put to death with horrible mutilation by the imperialists of his new city and that Urban declared it lawful to kill excommunicate persons, provided that it were done out of zeal for the church.

Henry, when compelled by Robert Guiscard to retire from Rome, had returned to Germany in 1084. He found the country in great disorder, and in August 1o36 he was defeated by the Saxons and their allies, at the Bleichfeld, near Wurzburg. But by degrees he was able to conciliate many of his old opponents and his strength increased; in the following year he received the submission of his rival Herman, and in 1088 he reduced the Saxons to tranquillity. In consequence of these successes, the bishops of the opposite party were expelled from their sees, so that Urban had only four adherents among the prelates of Germany. While the warriors fought the battles of the papacy and the empire with the sword, the theologians of the parties carried on a fierce controversy with the pen—some of them with learning, decency, and Christian feeling; others with outrageous violence, reckless falsehood, and disgusting buffoonery. In 1089, Urban issued a decree by which the sentences of Gregory were somewhat modified. Anathema was denounced in the first degree against the emperor and the antipope; in the second degree, against such as should aid them, or should receive ecclesiastical dignities from them; while those who should merely communicate with them were not anathematized, but were not to be admitted to catholic fellowship except after penance and absolutions. In the same year the antipope Clement was driven out of Rome by the citizens, who are said to have exacted from him an oath that he would not attempt to recover his dignity. A negotiation was soon after opened between the parties, on the condition that Henry should be acknowledged as emperor, and Urban as pope. But it was abandoned through the influence of the imperialist bishops, who naturally apprehended that they might be sacrificed to the proposed reconciliation.

Urban now persuaded Matilda, at the age of forty-three, to enter into a second marriage, with a youth of eighteen—the younger Welf, son of the duke of Bavaria. The union was one of policy; the pope hoped to secure by it a male head for his lay adherents, to fix the allegiance of Matilda, who had now lost the guidance not only of Gregory but of Anselm of Lucca, and to engage the elder Welf to exert all his influence in Germany against the emperor. On hearing of the event, which had for some time been kept secret from him, Henry crossed the Alps in the spring of 1090, and for three years ravaged Matilda’s territories. Mantua, after a siege of six months, was surrendered to him by treachery. The countess, reduced to great distress, entered into negotiations at Carpineto, and was about to yield, even to the extent of acknowledging Clement as pope, when the abbot of Canossa, starting up with the air of a prophet, declared that to conclude peace on such terms would be a sin against every Person of the Divine Trinity, and the treaty was broken off! Henry attempted to take Canossa, the scene of his memorable humiliation; but he was foiled, partly through the dense gloom of the weather, and lost his standard, which was hung up as a trophy in the castle-chapel.

The antipope had found means of re-establishing himself at Rome, in 1091; but in 1094 Urban again got possession of the Lateran, through the treachery of the governor, who offered to surrender it for a certain sum. There were, however, no means of raising this until Godfrey, abbot of Vendome, who had arrived at Rome on a pilgrimage of devotion, by placing at the pope's disposal not only his ready money but the price of his horses and mules, enabled him to complete the bargain.

The empress Bertha had died in 1088, and in the following year Henry had married Adelaide or Praxedes, a Russian princess, and widow of Uto, marquis of Saxony. The marriage was unhappy, and Henry relapsed into the laxity of his early life. But worse infamies were now imputed to him; it was asserted that he had compelled Adelaide to prostitute herself to his courtiers, that he had required his son Conrad to commit incest with her, and that, when the prince recoiled with horror from the proposal, he had threatened to declare him a supposititious child. The empress was welcomed as an ally by Matilda, and her story was related before a synod at Constance, in 1094. What her motives may have been for publishing a tale so revolting, so improbable, and in parts so contradictory to itself—whether she were disordered in mind, or whether, in her ignorance of the language in which her depositions were drawn up, she subscribed them without knowing their contents—it is vain to conjecture. But the story furnished her husband's enemies with a weapon which they employed with terrible effect against him.

About the same time, Conrad appears to have been tampered with by some of the anti-imperialist clergy. This prince had grown up at a distance from Henry, and without experiencing his influence; for in early childhood he had been committed to the archbishop of Milan for education, and many years had passed before the troubles of Germany permitted the father and the son to meet again. To a character like Conrad’s—gentle, studious, devout, and dreamy—the long and hopeless contentions of the time, its rude hostilities, the schism of western Christendom, could not but be deeply distasteful; it would seem that the work of alienating him from his father was easy, and that he was preparing to leave the court when Henry, suspecting the intention, committed him to custody. Conrad, however, found means to escape, and sought a refuge with Matilda, who had perhaps been concerned in the practices by which he had been incited to rebel, and now received him with honour, while Urban released him from his share in the emperor’s excommunication. He was crowned at Monza as king of Italy, by Anselm, arch­bishop of Milan; and many Lombard cities declared in his favour. How little the prince's own will concurred in the movements of which he was the nominal head, appears from the fact that he always continued to style Henry his lord and emperor, and would not allow him to be spoken of with disrespect. The rebellion of his son inflicted on Henry a blow in comparison of which all his earlier sufferings had been as nothing. He cast off his robes, secluded himself in moody silence, and, it is said, was with difficulty prevented from putting an end to his own life.

But a new movement, which now began, was to be far more valuable to Urban and to the papacy than any advantages which could have resulted from the contest with the emperor.

For many years the hardships inflicted on pilgrims by the Mahometan masters of the Holy Land had roused the pity and the indignation of Christendom. The stream of pilgrimage had continued to flow, and with increasing fulness. Sometimes the pilgrims went in large bodies, which at once raised the apprehensions of the Mussulmans that they might attempt to take possession of the country, and, by the wealth which was displayed, excited their desire of plunder. A company headed by Lietbert, bishop of Cambray, in 1054, was so numerous that it was styled “the host of the Lord”; but the bishop and his followers had the mortification of finding that Jerusalem was for the time closed against the entrance of Christians. Ten years later, on a revival of the belief that the day of judgment was at hand, a still greater expedition set out under Siegfried of Mainz, whose mean and tortuous career was varied from time to time by fits of penitence and devotion. The pilgrims were repeatedly attacked, and, out of 7000 who had left their homes, 5000 fell victims to the dangers, the fatigues, and the privations of the journey.

A fresh race of conquerors, the Seljookian Turks, had appeared in the east. They carried their arms into Asia Minor, wrested all but the western coast of it from the Greeks, and in 1071 humiliated the empire by taking prisoner its sovereign, Romanus Diogenes. Their conquests were formed into a kingdom to which they insolently gave the name of Roum (or Rome), with Nicaea, the city venerable for the definition of orthodox Christianity, for its capital and in 1076 they gained possession of Palestine. Under these new masters the condition of the Christian inhabitants and pilgrims was greatly altered for the worse. With the manners of barbarians the Turks combined the intolerant zeal of recent converts to Islam; and the feelings of European Christians were continually excited by reports of the exactions, the insults, and the outrages to which their brethren in the east were subjected.

The idea of a religious war for the recovery of the Holy Land was first proclaimed (as we have seen) by Sylvester II. Gregory VII, in the beginning of his pontificate, had projected a crusade, and had endeavoured to enlist the emperor and other princes in the cause; but as the object was only to succour the Byzantine empire, not to deliver the Holy Land, his proposal failed to excite any general enthusiasm, and led to no result. His successor, Victor, had published an invitation to a war against the Saracens of Africa, with a promise of remission of all sins to those who should engage in it; and a successful expedition had been the consequence. But now a greater impulse was to be given to such enterprises.

Peter, a native of Amiens, had been a soldier in his youth. He was married, but withdrew from the society of his wife into a monastery, and afterwards became a hermit. In 1093 he visited Jerusalem, where his spirit was greatly stirred by the sight of the indignities which the Christians had to endure. He suggested to the patriarch Symeon an application for aid to the Byzantine emperor; the patriarch replied that the empire was too weak to assist him, but that the Christians of the west could help effectually, by prayers if not by arms. On his return to Europe, Peter presented himself before the pope, related his interview with Symeon, and enforced the patriarch's request by a story of a vision in the church of the holy sepulchre, where the Saviour had appeared to him, and had charged him to rouse the western nations for the delivery of the Holy Land. Urban listened with approbation, but, instead of at once committing himself to the enterprise, he desired Peter to publish it by way of sounding the general feeling. The hermit set forth, roughly dressed, girt around his waist with a thick cord, having his head and feet bare, and riding on a mule. Short of stature, lean, of dark complexion, with a head disproportionately large, but with an eye of fire, and a rude, glowing eloquence, he preached to high and to low, in churches and on highways, the sufferings of their brethren, and the foul desecrations of the land which had been hallowed by their Redeemer’s birth and life. He read letters from the patriarch of Jerusalem and other Christians, with one which he professed to have received from heaven. When words and breath failed him, he wept, he groaned, he beat his breast, and pointed to a crucifix which he kissed with fervent devotion. Some, it is said, regarded him as a hypocrite; but the vast mass listened with rapture. The hairs which fell from his mule were treasured up as precious relics. Gifts were showered on him, and were distributed by him as alms. He reconciled enemies; he aroused many from lives of gross sin, and others from a decent apathy; he reclaimed women from a course of profligacy, portioned them, and provided them with husbands. In no long time he was able to return to the pope, with a report that everywhere his tale had been received with enthusiasm, so that he had even found it difficult to restrain his hearers from at once taking arms and compelling him to lead them to the Holy Land.

The pope appears to have been sincerely interested in the enterprise for its own sake; yet he can hardly have failed to apprehend something of the advantages which he was likely to reap from it. It opened to him the prospect of uniting all Christian Europe in one cause; of placing himself at the head of a movement which might lift him triumphantly above the antipope, and might secure for the church a victory over the temporal power; of putting an end to the schism which had so long divided the Greek from the Latin Christianity. And while the greater part of his own city was still in the hands of a rival—while he was embroiled in deadly hostility with the most powerful sovereign of the west—Urban boldly resolved to undertake the great work.

A council was assembled in March 1095 at Piacenza, where the pope appeared surrounded by two hundred bishops, four thousand clergy, and thirty thousand laity; and, as no building was large enough to contain this multitude, the greater sessions were held in a plain near the city. The project of a holy war was set forth; ambassadors from the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, stated the distress of the eastern Christians, and the formidable advances of the Turks. The hearers were moved to tears by these details; the pope added his exhortations, and many bound themselves by oath to engage in the crusade. But the Italians of that day possessed neither the religious enthusiasm nor the valour which would have fitted them to sustain the brunt of such an enterprise; and Urban resolved that the grand inauguration of it should take place in his native country.

Other affairs were also transacted at Piacenza. Canons were passed against Simoniacs, Nicolaitans, and Berengarians; the antipope was solemnly anathematized; and the empress Adelaide was brought forward to excite indignation and revolt against her husband by the story of his alleged offences.

In his progress towards France, Urban was received at Cremona by Conrad, who obsequiously held his stirrup. The prince was rewarded by a promise of Germany and the imperial crown, and was yet further bound to the papal interest by a marriage which Urban and Matilda arranged for him with a wealthy bride, the daughter of Roger, grand count of Sicily. On entering France the pope was met by the gratifying information that Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, had at length succeeded in procuring for him the acknowledgment of his title in England.

The case of Philip, king of France, divided the pope’s attention with the crusade. Philip, whose increasing sloth and sensuality had continued to lower him in the estimation of his feudatories and subjects, had in 1092 separated from his queen Bertha, and married Bertrada, wife of Fulk, count of Anjou. There was no formal divorce in either case; but the separation and the marriage were justified on the ground that both Bertha and Bertrada were within the forbidden degrees of relationship to their first husbands—a pretext which, between the extension of the prohibitory canons and the complicated connexions of princely houses, would have been sufficient to warrant the dissolution of almost any marriage in the highest orders of society. No one of Philip's immediate subjects would venture to officiate at the nuptial ceremony, which was performed by a Norman bishop; but the union had been sanctioned by a council at Reims in 1094, when the death of Bertha appeared to have removed one important obstacle to it. Ivo, bishop of Chartres, a pious and honest prelate, who was distinguished above all his contemporaries for his knowledge of ecclesiastical law, alone openly protested against it; he disregarded a citation to the council, and was not to be moved either by the king’s entreaties, or by imprisonment and the forfeiture of his property. Hugh, archbishop of Lyons, who had been reconciled with Urban and restored to his office of legate, excommunicated the king in a council at Autun, which was not then within the kingdom of France; but Philip obtained absolution from Rome by swearing that, since he had become aware of the pope’s objections to his marriage, he had abstained from conjugal intercourse with Bertrada. Urban, however, now knew that this story was false, and was resolved to strike a decisive blow.

A council had been summoned to meet at Clermont in Auvergne. The citations to it were urgent, and charged the clergy to stir up the laity in the cause of the crusade. Among the vast assemblage which was drawn together were fourteen archbishops, two hundred and twenty-five bishops, and about a hundred abbots; the town and all the neighbouring villages were filled with strangers, while great numbers were obliged to lodge in tents. The sessions lasted ten days: the usual canons were passed in condemnation of simony, pluralities, and impropriations; the observation of the truce of God was enjoined and Urban ventured to advance a step beyond Gregory, by forbidding not only the practice of lay investiture, but that any ecclesiastic should swear fealty to a temporal lord—a prohibition which was intended entirely to do away with all dependence of the church on the secular power. Philip, the suzerain, although not the immediate ruler of the country in which the council was held, was excommunicated for his adultery with Bertrada; and, startling as such an act would have been at another time, it was not only allowed to pass, but even was unnoticed, amid the engrossing interest of the greater subject which filled the minds of all.

At the sixth session the crusade was proposed. Urban ascended a pulpit in the market-place and addressed the assembled multitude. He dwelt on the ancient glories of Palestine, where every foot of ground had been hallowed by the presence of the Saviour, of his virgin mother, of prophets and apostles. Even yet, he said, God vouchsafed to manifest his favour to it in the yearly miracle of the light from heaven, by which the lamps of the holy sepulchre were kindled at the season of the Saviour’s passion—a miracle which ought to soften all but flinty hearts. He enlarged on the present condition of the sacred territory—possessed as it was by a godless people, the children of the Egyptian handmaid; on the indignities, the outrages, the tyranny, which they inflicted on Christians redeemed by Christ’s blood. He appealed to many of those who were present as having themselves been eyewitnesses of these wrongs. Nor did he forget to speak of the progressive encroachments of the Turks on Christendom—of the danger which threatened Constantinople, the treasury of so many renowned and precious relics. “Cast out the bondwoman and her son!” he cried; “let all the faithful arm. Go forth, and God shall be with you. Turn against the enemies of the Christian name the weapons which you have stained with mutual slaughter. Redeem your sins by obedience—your rapine, your burnings, your bloodshed. Let the famous nation of the Franks display their valour in a cause where death is the assurance of blessedness. Count it joy to die for Christ where Christ died for you. Think not of kindred or home; you owe to God a higher love; for a Christian, every place is exile, every place is home and country”. He insisted on the easiness of the remedy for sin which was now proposed—the relaxation of all penance in favour of those who should assume the cross. They were to be taken under the protection of the church; their persons and their property were to be respected, under the penalty of excommunication. For himself he would, like Moses, hold up his hands in prayer for them, while they were engaged in fighting the Amalekites.

The pope’s speech was interrupted by an enthusiastic cry from the whole assemblage—“God wills it!”—words which afterwards became the war-cry of the crusaders; and when he ceased, thousands enlisted for the enterprise by attaching the cross to their shoulders. The most important promise of service was that of Raymond of St. Gilles, the powerful count of Toulouse, who was represented at the council by envoys. Adhemar of Monteil, bishop of Le Puy, who had already been a pilgrim to Jerusalem, stepped forward with a joyous look, declared his intention of joining the crusade, and begged the papal benediction. A cardinal pronounced a confession of sins in the name of all who were to share in the expedition, and the pope bestowed his absolution on them. Adhemar was nominated as legate for the holy war; the pope, in answer to a request that he would head the Christian army, excused himself on the ground that the care of the church detained him; but he promised to follow as soon as circumstances should allow. It was believed that the resolution of the council was on the same day known throughout the world, among infidels as well as among Christians.             

Urban remained in France until August of the year 1096, and held many councils at which he enforced the duty of joining the holy war. The bishops and clergy seconded his exhortations, and everywhere a ferment of preparation arose. Famines, pestilences, civil broils, portents in the heavens, had produced a general disposition to leave home and to engage in a career of adventure. Women urged their husbands, their brothers, and their sons to take the cross; and those who refused became marks for universal contempt. Men who on one day ridiculed the crusade as a chimera, were found on the next day disposing of their all in order to join it. Lands were sold or mortgaged, to raise the means of equipment for their owners; artisans and husbandmen sold their tools; the price of land and of all immoveable property fell, while horses, arms, and other requisites for the expedition became exorbitantly dear. A spirit of religious enthusiasm animated all ranks, and with it was combined a variety of other motives. The life of war and adventure in which the nations of the west found their delight was now consecrated as holy and religious; even the clergy might without scruple fight against the enemies of the faith. The fabulous splendours and wealth of the east were set before the imagination, already stimulated by the romantic legends of Charlemagne and his peers. There was full forgiveness of sins, commutation of all penances. God, according to the expression of a writer of the time, had instituted a new method for the cleansing of sins. Penitents, who had been shamed among their neighbours by being debarred from the use of arms, were now at liberty to resume them. For the peasant there was an opportunity to quit his depressed life, to bear arms, to forsake the service of his feudal lord, and to range himself under the banner of any leader whom he might choose. For the robber, the pirate, the outlaw, there was amnesty of his crimes, and restoration to society; for the debtor there was escape from his obligations; for the monk there was emancipation from the narrow bounds and from the monotonous duties of his cloister; for those who were unfit to share in the exploits of war, there was the assurance that death on this holy expedition would make them partakers in the glory and bliss of martyrs. The letter which Peter the Hermit professed to have received from heaven was not the only thing which claimed a supernatural character. Prophets were busy in preaching the crusade, and turned it to their own advantage. Many deceits were practised, nor did they always escape detection. It was common among the more zealous crusaders to impress the cross on their flesh; but some impostors professed to have received the mark by miracle. Among them was a monk who found himself unable to raise money for his outfit by other means, but who, by displaying the cross on his forehead and pretending that it had been stamped by an angel, succeeded in collecting large contributions. The fraud was detected in the Holy Land; but his general conduct on the expedition had been so respectable that he afterwards obtained promotion, and eventually became archbishop of Caesarea.

The festival of the Assumption (August 15) had been fixed on for the commencement of the expedition; but long before that time the impatience of the multitude was unable to restrain itself Peter was urged to set out, and in the beginning of March he crossed the Rhine at Cologne, at the head of a motley host, of which the other leaders were a knight named Walter of Pacy, and his nephew Walter “the Pennyless”. A separation then took place; the military chiefs went on, with the more vigorous of their followers, and promised to wait for Peter and the rest at Constantinople. A second swarm followed under a priest named Gottschalk, and a third under another priest named Folkmar, with whom was joined count Emicho, a man notorious for his violent and lawless character. Each successive crowd was worse than that which had preceded it; among them were old and infirm men, children of both sexes, women of loose virtue—some of them in male attire; they were without order or discipline, most of them unprovided with armour or money, having no idea of the distance of Jerusalem, or of the difficulties to be encountered by the way. Emicho’s host was composed of the very refuse of the people, animated by the vilest fanaticism. It is said that their march was directed by the movements of a goose and a goat, which were supposed to be inspired. Their passage through the towns of the Moselle and the Rhine, the Maine and the Danube, was marked by the plunder and savage butchery of the Jewish inhabitants, who in other quarters also suffered from the fury excited among the multitude against all enemies of the Christian name. Bishops endeavoured to rescue the victims by admitting them to a temporary profession of Christianity; but some of the more zealous Jews shut themselves up in their houses, slew their children, and disappointed their persecutors by burning themselves with all their property.

No provision had been made for the subsistence of these vast hordes in the countries through which they were to pass. Their dissoluteness, disorder, and plundering habits raised the populations of Hungary and Bulgaria against them and the later swarms suffered for the misdeeds of those who had gone before. Gottschalk and his followers were destroyed in Hungary, after having been treacherously persuaded to lay down their arms. Others were turned back from the frontier of that country, or struggled home to tell the fate of their companions, who had perished in battles and sieges; while want and fatigue aided the sword of their enemies in its ravages. The elder Walter died at Philippopoli; but his nephew and Peter the Hermit struggled onwards, and reached Constantinople with numbers which, although greatly diminished, were still imposing and formidable.

The emperor Alexius was alarmed by the unexpected form in which the succour which he had requested presented itself; and the thefts and unruliness of the strangers disturbed the peace of his capital. It is said that he was impressed by the eloquence of Peter, and urged him to wait for the arrival of the other crusaders; but the hermit's followers were resolved to fight, and the emperor was glad to rid himself of them by conveying them across the Bosphorus. A great battle took place under the walls of Nicaea, the city which had been hallowed for Christians by the first general council, but which had become the capital of the Turkish kingdom. Walter the Pennyless, a brave soldier, who had energetically striven against the difficulties of his position, was slain, with most of his followers. Many were made prisoners, and some of them even submitted to apostatize. The Turks, after their victory, fell on the camp, where they slaughtered the unarmed and helpless multitude; and the bones of those who had fallen were gathered into a vast heap, which remained as a monument of their luckless enterprise. The scanty remains of the host were rescued by Alexius, at the request of Peter, who had returned to Constantinople in disgust at the disorderly character of his companions; they sold their arms to the emperor, and endeavoured to find their way back to their homes. It is reckoned that in these ill-conducted expeditions half a million of human beings had already perished, without any other effect than that of adding to the confidence of the enemy, who dispersed the armour of the slain over the east in proof that the Franks were not to be dreaded.

In the meantime the more regular forces of the crusaders were preparing. Every country of the west, with the exception of Spain, where the Christians were engaged in their own continual holy war with the infidels, sent its contributions to swell the array. Germany, at enmity with the papacy, had not been visited by the preachers of the crusade, and, when the crowds of pilgrims began to stream through the country, the inhabitants mocked at them as crazy, in leaving certainties for wild adventure; but by degrees, and as the more disciplined troops appeared among them, the Germans too caught the contagion of enthusiasm. Visions in the sky—combats of airy warriors, and a beleaguered city—added to the excitement. It was said that Charlemagne had risen from his grave to be the leader, and preachers appeared who promised to conduct those who should follow them dry-shod through the sea.

Of the chiefs, the most eminent by character was Godfrey of Bouillon, son of Count Eustace of Boulogne, who had accompanied William of Normandy in the invasion of England, and descended from the Carolingian family through his mother, the saintly Ida, a sister of Godfrey the Hunchbacked. In his earlier years, Godfrey had been distinguished as a partisan of the emperor. It is said that at the Elster, where he carried the banner of the empire, he gave Rudolf of Swabia his death wound by driving the shaft into his breast, and that he was the first of Henry’s army to mount the walls of Rome. His services had been rewarded by Henry with the marquisate of Antwerp after the death of his uncle Godfrey, and to this was added in 1089 the dukedom of Lower Lorraine, which had been forfeited by the emperor’s rebel son Conrad. A fever which he had caught at Rome long disabled him for active exertion; but at the announcement of the crusade he revived, and—partly perhaps from a feeling of penitence for his former opposition to the pope—he vowed to join the enterprise, for which he raised the necessary funds by pledging his castle of Bouillon, in the Ardennes, to the bishop of Liège. Godfrey is described by the chroniclers as resembling a monk rather than a knight in the mildness of his ordinary demeanour, but as a lion in the battle-held—as wise in counsel, disinterested in purpose, generous, affable, and deeply religious. Among the other chiefs were his brothers Eustace and Baldwin; Hugh of Vermandois, brother of the king of France; the counts Raymond of Toulouse, Robert of Flanders, Stephen of Blois and Chartres; and Robert duke of Normandy, the brave, thoughtless, indolent son of William the Conqueror. Each leader was wholly independent of the others, and the want of an acknowledged head became the cause of many disasters.

In order that the passage of the army might not press too severely on any country, it was agreed that its several divisions should proceed to Constantinople by different routes. Godfrey, at the head of 10,000 horse and 80,000 foot, took the way through Hungary, where his prudence was successfully exerted in overcoming the exasperation raised by the irregular bands which had preceded him. The crusaders from Southern France in general went through Italy, and thence by sea either to the ports of Greece and Dalmatia, or direct to Constantinople. A large force of Normans, under Roger of Sicily and Bohemund, the son of Robert Guiscard by his first marriage, were engaged in the siege of Amalfi, when Hugh of Vermandois with his crusaders arrived in the neighbourhood. The enthusiasm of the strangers infected the besiegers, and Bohemund, who had been disinherited in favour of his half-brother, and had been obliged to content himself with the principality of Tarentum, resolved to turn the enterprise to his own advantage. He raised the cry of "God wills it!" and, sending for a mantle of great value, caused it to be cut up into crosses, which he distributed among the eager soldiers, by whose defection Roger found himself compelled to abandon the siege. The new leader was distinguished by deep subtlety and selfishness; but with him was a warrior of very opposite fame—his cousin or nephew Tancred, whose character has (perhaps not without some violence to facts) been idealized into the model of Christian chivalry.

The gradual appearance of the crusading forces at Constantinople renewed the uneasiness of Alexius, and the accession of Bohemund, who had been known to him of old in Guiscard's wars against the empire, was especially alarming. That the emperor treated his allies with a crafty, jealous, distrustful policy, is certain, even from the panegyrical history of his daughter Anna Comnena; but the statements of the Latin chroniclers are greatly at variance with those of the Byzantine princess, and it would seem that there is no foundation for the darker charges of treachery which they advance against Alexius. Godfrey was obliged to resort to force in order to establish an understanding with him; and the emperor then took another method of proceeding. While obliged to entertain his unwelcome visitors during the remainder of the winter season, he plied the leaders with flattery and with gifts, and obtained from one after another of them to him such parts of their expected conquests as had formerly belonged to the empire; in return for which he promised to provide for their supply on the march, and to follow with an army for their support. He skilfully decoyed one party across the Bosphorus before the arrival of another; and by Whitsuntide 1097 the whole host had passed into Asia. They had been joined at Constantinople by Peter the Hermit, and were accompanied by an imperial commissioner, whose golden substitute for a nose excited the wonder and distrust of the Franks.

The Turks of Roum were now before them, and, on approaching the capital of the kingdom, their zeal and rage were excited by the sight of the hill of bones which marked the place where Walter and his companions had fallen. Nicaea was besieged from the 14th of May to the 20th of June, but on its capture the Latins were disappointed of their expected plunder by finding that the Turks, when it became untenable, had been induced by the imperial commissioner to make a secret agreement for surrendering it to Alexius. The discovery filled them with disgust and indignation, which were hardly mitigated by the presents which the emperor offered by way of compensation; and they eagerly looked for an opportunity of requiting their perfidious ally. A fortnight later was fought the battle of Dorylaeum, in which the fortune of the day is said to have been turned by heavenly champions, who descended to aid the Christians. The victory was so decisive that the sultan of Roum was driven to seek support among the brethren of his race and religion in the east.

The army had already suffered severely, and, as it advanced through Asia Minor, it was continually thinned by skirmishes and sieges, by the difficulties of the way, and by scarcity of food and water. The greater part of the horses perished, and their riders endeavoured to supply their place by cows and oxen—nay, it is said, by the large dogs and rams of the country. Godfrey was for a time disabled by wounds received in an encounter with a savage bear. Disunion appeared among the leaders, and some of them began to show a preference of their private interests to the great object of the expedition. Baldwin, disregarding the remonstrances of his companions, accepted an invitation to assist a Christian prince or tyrant of Edessa, who adopted him and promised to make him his heir. The prince's subjects rose against him, and, in endeavouring to escape by an outlet in the wall of the city, he was pierced with arrows before reaching the ground, whereupon Baldwin established himself in his stead. But the great mass of the crusaders held on their march for Jerusalem.

At length they arrived in Syria, and on the 18th of October laid siege to Antioch. The miseries endured during this siege, which lasted eight months, were frightful. The tents of the crusaders were demolished by the winds, or were rotted by the heavy rains, which converted their encampment into a swamp; their provisions had been thoughtlessly wasted in the beginning of the siege, and they were soon brought to the extremity of distress; the flesh of horses, camels, dogs, and mice, grass and thistles, leather and bark, were greedily devoured; and disease added its ravages to famine. Parties which were sent out to forage were unable to find any supplies, and returned with their numbers diminished by the attacks of the enemy. The horses were reduced from 70,000 to less than 1000, and even these were mostly unfit for service. Gallant knights lost their courage and deserted; among them was Stephen of Blois, who, under pretence of sickness, withdrew to Alexandretta, with the intention of providing for his own safety if the enterprise of his comrades should miscarry. The golden-nosed Greek commissioner, looking on the ruin of the crusaders as certain, obtained leave to depart by promising to return with reinforcements and supplies, but was careful not to reappear. Peter the Hermit, unable to bear the privations of the siege, and perhaps the reproaches of the multitude, ran away, with William, count of Melun, who, from the heaviness of his blows, was styled “the Carpenter”; but the fugitives were brought back by order of Bohemund, who made them swear to remain with the army. Yet in the midst of these sufferings the camp of the crusaders was a scene of gross licentiousness, until the legate Adhemar compelled them to remove all women from it, to give up gaming, and to seek deliverance from their distress by penitential exercises. As the spring advanced, the condition of the army improved; supplies of provisions were obtained from Edessa, and from Genoese ships which had arrived in the harbour of St. Symeon; most of the deserters returned; and on the 2nd of June, through the treachery of one Firuz, who had opened a negotiation with Bohemund, and professed to embrace Christianity, the crusaders got possession of the city, although the fortress still remained in the hands of the enemy.

The capture of Antioch was marked by barbarous and shameful excesses. All who refused to become Christians were ruthlessly put to the sword. The crusaders, unwarned by their former distress, recklessly wasted their provisions, and when, soon after, an overwhelming force of Turks appeared, under Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who had been sent by the sultan of Bagdad to the relief of Antioch, they found themselves shut up between these new enemies and the garrison of the fortress. Their sufferings soon became more intense than ever. The most loathsome food was sold at exorbitant prices; old hides, thongs, and shoe-leather were steeped in water, and were greedily devoured; even human flesh was eaten. Warriors were reduced to creep feebly about the silent streets, supporting themselves on staves. The cravings of famine levelled all ranks; nobles sold their horses and arms to buy food, begged without shame, or intruded themselves unbidden at the meals of meaner men; while some, in despair and indifference to life, withdrew to hide themselves and to die. Many deserted,—William the Carpenter being especially noted among them for the violation of his late oath; and while some of these were cut off by the enemy, others surrendered themselves and apostatized. Rumours of the distress which prevailed, even exaggerated (if exaggeration were possible), reached Stephen of Blois in his retreat; regarding the condition of his brethren as hopeless, he set out on his return to the west, and, on meeting Alexius, who was advancing with reinforcements, he gave such a representation of the case as furnished the emperor with a pretext for turning back, and leaving his allies to a fate which seemed inevitable.

In the extremity of this misery, Peter Bartholomes, a disreputable priest of Marseilles, announced a revelation which he professed to have thrice received in visions from St. Andrew—that the lance which pierced the Redeemer's side was to be found in the church of St. Peter. The legate made light of the story; but Raymond of Toulouse, to whose force Peter was attached, insisted on a search, and, after thirteen men had dug a whole day, the head of a lance was found. The crusaders passed at once from despair to enthusiasm. Peter the Hermit was sent to Kerboga, with a message desiring him to withdraw; but the infidel scornfully replied by vowing that the invaders should be compelled to embrace the faith of Islam, and the Christians resolved to fight. After a solemn preparation by prayer, fasting, and administration of the holy Eucharist, all that could be mustered of effective soldiers made a sally from the city, with the sacred lance borne by the legate’s chaplain, the chronicler Raymond of Agiles. The Saracens, divided among themselves by fierce dissensions, fled before the unexpected attack, leaving behind them an immense mass of spoil; and again the victory of the Christians was ascribed to the aid of celestial warriors, who are said to have issued from the neighbouring mountains in countless numbers, riding on white horses, and armed in dazzling white. The fortress was soon after surrendered into their hands; but the unburied corpses which poisoned the air produced a violent pestilence, and among its earliest victims was the pious and martial legate Adhemar. Fatal as this visitation was to those who had been enfeebled by the labours and privations of the siege, it was yet more so to a force of 1500 Germans, who arrived by sea soon after its appearance, and were cut off almost to a man. Godfrey, fearing a return of the malady which he had caught at Rome, sought safety from the plague by withdrawing for a time into the territory of his brother, Baldwin of Edessa.

A report of the capture of Antioch and of the legate’s death was sent off to Urban, with a request that he would come in person to take possession of St. Peter’s eastern see, and would follow up the victory over the unbelievers by reducing the schismatical Christians of the east to the communion of the Roman church. In the meantime the Greek patriarch was reinstated, although he soon found himself compelled to give way to a Latin; and, after much discussion between the chiefs who asserted and those who denied that the conduct of Alexius had released them from their promise to him, Bohemund, in fulfilment of a promise which he had exacted as the condition of his obtaining the surrender of the city, was established as prince of Antioch.

Although the discovery of the holy lance had been the means of leading the crusaders to victory, the imposture was to cost its author dear. The Normans, when offended by his patron Raymond of Toulouse in the advance to Jerusalem, ridiculed the idea of St. Andrew’s having chosen such a man for the medium of a revelation, and declared that the lance, which was clearly of Saracen manufacture, had been hidden by Peter himself. Peter offered, in proof of his veracity, to undergo the ordeal of passing between two burning piles, and the trial took place on Good Friday 1099. He was severely scorched; but the multitude, who supposed him to have come out unhurt, crowded round him, threw him down in their excitement, and, in tearing his clothes into relics, pulled off pieces of his flesh with them. In consequence of this treatment he died on the twelfth day; but to the last he maintained the credit of his story, and it continued to find many believers.

The ravages of the plague, and the necessity of re­cruiting their strength after the sufferings which they had undergone, detained the crusaders at Antioch until March of the following year. Three hundred thousand, it is said, had reached Antioch, but famine and disease, desertion and the sword, had reduced their force to little more than 40,000, of whom only 20,000 foot and 1500 horse were fit for service and on the march to Jerusalem their numbers were further thinned in sieges and in encounters with the enemy, so that at last there remained only 12,000 effective foot-soldiers, and from 1200 to 1300 horsed. Aided by the terror of the crusade, the Fatimite Arabs had succeeded in recovering Jerusalem from the Turks; and before Antioch the Christian leaders had received from the caliph an announcement of his conquest, with an offer to rebuild their churches and to protect their religion, if they would come to him as peaceful pilgrims. But they disdained to admit any distinction among the followers of the false prophet, and replied that, with God’s help, they must win and hold the land which He had bestowed on their fathers. On the 6th of June, after a night during which their eagerness would hardly allow them to rest, they arrived in sight of the holy city. A cry of “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! It is the will of God!” burst forth, while with many the excess of joy could only find vent in tears and sighs. All threw themselves on their knees, and kissed the sacred ground. But for the necessity of guarding against attack, they would have continued their pilgrimage with bare feet; and they surveyed with eager credulity the traditional scenes of the Gospel story, which were pointed out by a hermit of Mount Olivet. The Christians who had been expelled from the city, and had since been miserably huddled together in the surrounding villages, crowded to them with tales of cruelty and profanation, which raised their excitement still higher. Trusting in their enthusiasm, and expecting miraculous aid, they at once assaulted the walls; but they were unprovided with the necessary engines, and met with a disastrous repulsed.

During the siege of forty days which followed, although those who could afford to buy were well supplied with food and wine, the crusaders in general suffered severely from hunger, and yet more from the fierce thirst produced by the heats of midsummer, and from the burning south wind of that parched country. The brooks were dried; the cisterns had been destroyed or poisoned, and the wells had been choked up by the enemy; water was brought in skins from a distance by peasants, and was sold at extravagant prices, but such was its impurity that many died of drinking it; the horses and mules were led six miles to water, exposed to the assaults of the Arabs; many of them died, and the camp was infected by the stench of their unburied bodies. The want of wood was a serious difficulty for the besiegers. In order to remedy this, the buildings of the neighbourhood were pulled down, and their timber was employed in constructing engines of war; but the supply was insufficient, until Tancred (according to his biographer) accidentally found in a cave some long beams which had been used as scaling-ladders by the Arabs in the late siege, and two hundred men under his command brought trees from a forest in the hills near Nablous. All—nobles and common soldiers alike—now laboured at the construction of machines, while the defenders of the city were engaged in similar works, with better materials and implements. But the Christians received an unexpected aid by means of a Genoese fleet which opportunely arrived at Joppa. The sailors, finding themselves threatened by an overwhelming naval force from Egypt, forsook their ships and joined the besiegers of Jerusalem, bringing to them an ample supply of tools, and superior skill in the use of them. At length the works were completed, and the crusaders, in obedience, it is said, to a vision of the legate Adhemar, prepared by solemn religious exercises for the attack of the city. After having moved in slow procession around the walls, they ascended the Mount of Olives, where addresses were delivered by Peter the Hermit and Arnulf, a chaplain of Robert of Normandy. The princes composed their feuds, and all confessed their sins and implored a blessing on their enterprise, while the Saracens from the walls looked on with amazement, and endeavoured to provoke them by setting up crosses, which they treated with every sort of execration and contempt. On the 14th of July a second assault was made. The besiegers, old and young, able-bodied and infirm, women as well as men, rushed with enthusiasm to the work. The towering structures, which had been so laboriously built, on being advanced to the walls, were opposed by the machines of the enemy; beams and long grappling-hooks were thrust forth to overthrow them; showers of arrows, huge stones, burning pitch and oil, Greek fire, were poured on the besiegers; but their courage did not quail, their engines stood firm, and the hides with which these were covered resisted all attempts to ignite them. The fight was kept up for twelve hours, and at night the Christians retired. Next day the contest was renewed, with even increased fury. As a last means of disabling the great engine which was the chief object of their dread, the Saracens brought forward two sorceresses, who assailed it with spells and curses; but a stone from the machine crushed them, and their bodies fell down from the ramparts, amid the acclamations of the besiegers. In the end, however, the crusaders were repulsed, and were on the point of yielding to despair, when Godfrey saw on the Mount of Olives a warrior waving his resplendent shield as a signal for another effort. Adhemar and others of their dead companions are also said to have appeared in front of the assailants, and after a fierce struggle they became masters of the holy city—the form of the legate being the first to mount the breach. It was noted that the capture took place at the hour of three on the afternoon of a Friday—the day and the hour of the Saviour’s passion.

The victory was followed by scenes of rapine, lust, and carnage, disgraceful to the Christian name. The crusaders, inflamed to madness by the thought of the wrongs inflicted on their brethren, by the remembrance of their own fearful sufferings, and by the obstinate resistance of the besieged, spared neither old man, woman, nor infant. They forced their way into houses, slew the inhabitants, and seized all the treasures that they could discover. Seventy thousand Mahometans were massacred; many who had received a promise of life from the leaders were pitilessly slaughtered by the soldiery. The thoroughfares were choked up with corpses; the temple and Solomon's porch, where some of the Saracens had made a desperate defence, were filled with blood to the height of a horse's knee; and, in the general rage against the enemies of Christ, the Jews were burnt in their synagogue. Godfrey, who in the assault had distinguished himself by prodigious acts of valour, took no part in these atrocities, but, immediately after the victory, repaired in the dress of a pilgrim to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, to pour out his thanks for having been permitted to reach the sacred city. Many followed his example, relinquishing their savage work for tears of penitence and joy, and loading the altars with their spoil; but, by a revulsion of feeling natural to a state of high excitement, they soon returned to the work of butchery, and for three days Jerusalem ran with blood. When weary of slaying, the crusaders employed the surviving Saracens in clearing the city of the dead bodies and burning them without the walls; and, having spared them until this labour was performed, they either killed them or sold them as slaves.

Eight days after the taking of the city, the victors met for the election of a king. The names of various chiefs—among them, Robert of Normandy—were proposed, and, as the surest means of ascertaining their real characters, their attendants were questioned as to their private habits. Against Godfrey nothing was discovered, except that his devotion was such as sometimes to detain him at the accustomed hours of food—a charge which the electors regarded as implying not a fault but a virtue. The duke of Lorraine, therefore, was chosen king of Jerusalem; but he refused to wear a crown of gold where the King of kings had been crowned with thorns, and contented himself with the style of “Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre”.

Godfrey had hardly been chosen when he was again summoned to arms by the appearance of a more numerous force of Saracens from Egypt, which had arrived too late to succour the garrison of Jerusalem.

The crusaders were victorious in the battle of Askelon; and, having thus secured the footing of their brethren in the Holy Land, the great body of them returned to Europe, after having bathed in the Jordan, carrying with them palm-branches from Jericho, and relics of holy personages who, for the most part, had before been unheard of in the west. Among those who returned was Peter the Hermit, who spent the remainder of his days in a monastery of his own foundation at Huy, near Liège, until his death in 1115. The new kingdom was at first confined to the cities of Jerusalem and Joppa, with a small surrounding territory, but was gradually extended to the ancient boundaries of Palestine. The French language was established; and, Godfrey, with the assistance of the most skilful advisers whom he could find, laid the foundation of a code of laws, derived from those of the west, and afterwards famous under the name of the “Assizes of Jerusalem”. After having held his dignity for little more than a year, Godfrey died amidst universal regret, and by his recommendation his brother, Baldwin of Edessa, was chosen to succeed him as king; for the scruple which the hero of the crusade had felt as to this title was now regarded as unnecessary. Crusaders and pilgrims continued to flock towards the Holy Land, excited less by the triumphs of their brethren than by sympathy for their sufferings; and in these expeditions many perished through the difficulties and dangers of the way.

The patriarch of Jerusalem, who had been sent out of the city by the Arabs before the siege, had since died in Cyprus. As at Antioch, a Latin patriarch was established; and the Greek Christians, who found themselves persecuted as schismatics, were reduced to regret the days when they had lived under the government of the infidels. Nor were the Latins free from serious dissensions among themselves. Arnulf, who has been already mentioned as having shared in animating the crusaders to the final assault, a man of ability, but turbulent, ambitious, and grossly immoral, had contrived to get himself hastily elected to the patriarchate on the taking of Jerusalem, and had endeavoured to prevent the appointment of any secular head for the community. He was set aside in favour of Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, who arrived from Rome with a commission as legate in succession to Adhemar, and is said to have obtained the support of the chiefs by means of wealth which he had acquired on a mission in Spain; but Daimbert was no less bent on establishing the supremacy of the hierarchy. Not content with persuading Godfrey and Bohemund to take investiture at his hands, he advanced claims of territory for the church which would have left the new royalty almost destitute; and Godfrey was glad, in the difficulties of his situation, to make a provisional compromise with the patriarch’s demands. The troubles thus begun continued to divide the kings and the patriarchs of Jerusalem, while the patriarchate itself was the subject of intrigues which led more than once to the deposition of its possessors. The patriarch also had to contend with his brother of Antioch for precedence and jurisdiction; and his authority was boldly defied by the great military orders which soon after arose.

The diminished kingdom of Roum, of which Iconium became the capital, was now isolated between the Latins of Syria and the Byzantine empire. But although the crusaders had saved the empire of Alexius, his relations with them were of no friendly kind. They taxed him with perfidy, with deserting them in their troubles, with secretly stirring up the infidels against them. They held themselves released by his conduct from the feudal obligations which they had contracted to him; Bohemund, who, after a captivity in the east, had revisited Europe, and had married a daughter of Philip of France, even for a time alarmed the empire by a renewal of his father's projects against it. Instead of effecting, as had been expected, a reconciliation between the eastern and the western churches, the crusade had the effect of embittering their hostility beyond the hope of cure.

In endeavouring to estimate the crusades—the Trojan war of modern history (as they have been truly styled)—we must not limit our consideration to their immediate purpose, to the means by which this was sought, or to the degree in which it was attained. They have often been condemned as undertaken for a chimerical object; as an unjust aggression on the possessors of the Holy Land; as having occasioned a lavish waste of life and treasure; as having inflicted great hardships on society by the transference of property, the impoverishment of families, and the heavy exactions for which they became the pretext; as having produced grievous misrule and disorder by drawing away prelates, nobles, and at length even sovereigns, from their duties of government at home to engage in the war with the infidels. Much of this censure, however, seems to be unfounded. The charge of injustice is a refinement which it is even now difficult to understand, and which would not have occurred to either the assailants or the assailed in an age when the feeling of local religion (however little countenanced by the new Testament) was as strong in the Christian as in the Jew or the Moslem—when the Christians regarded the holy places of the east as an inheritance of which they had been wrongfully despoiled, and which they could not without disgrace, or even sin, leave in the hands of the unbelievers. But in truth the crusades were rather defensive than aggressive. They were occasioned by the advance of the new tribes which with the religion of Mahomet had taken up that spirit of conquest which had cooled and died away among the older Mahometan nations. They transferred to the east that war in defence of the faith which for ages had been carried on in Spain. And while this was enough to justify the undertaking of the crusades, they led to results which were altogether unforeseen, but which far more than outweighed the temporary evils produced by these expeditions.

The idea of a war for the recovery of the land endeared to Christians by the holiest associations was of itself a gain for the martial nations of the west—raising, as it did, their thoughts from the petty quarrels in which they had too generally wasted themselves, to unite their efforts in a hallowed and ennobling cause. It was by the crusades that the nations of Europe were first made known to each other as bound together by one common interest. Feudal relations were cast aside; every knight was at liberty to follow the banner of the leader whom he might prefer; instead of being confined to one small and narrow circle, the crusaders were brought into intercourse with men of various nations, and the consequences tended to mutual refinement. And, while the intercourse of nations was important, the communication into which persons of different classes were brought by the crusades was no less so; the high and the low, the lord and the vassal or common soldier, the fighting man and the merchant, learned to understand and to value each other better. The chivalrous spirit, of which France had hitherto been the home, now spread among the warriors of other countries, and the object of the crusades infused into chivalry a new religious character. Nor was chivalry without its effect on religion, although this influence was of a more questionable kind. In the cause of the cross, the canons against clerical warriors were suspended and the devotion which knights owed to their ladies tended to exalt the devotion of the middle ages to her who was regarded as the highest type of glorified womanhood. The Christians of the west were brought by the crusades into contact with the civilization of the Arabs, new to them in its character, and on the whole higher than their own. After the first blind fury of their enmity had passed away, they learned to respect in their adversaries the likeness of the virtues which were regarded as adorning the character of a Christian knight; and they were ready to adopt from them whatever of knowledge or of refinement the Orientals might be able to impart. Literature and science benefited by the intercourse which was thus established. Navigation was improved; ships of increased size were built for the transport of the armaments destined for the holy wars. Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Marseilles were enriched by the commerce of the east; the gems, the silks, the spices, and the medicines of Asia became familiarly known in Europe; new branches of industry were introduced; and the inland trading cities gained a new importance and prosperity by aiding to distribute the commodities and luxuries which they received through the agency of the great seaports.

The political effects of the crusades on the kingdoms of western Europe were very important. They tended to increase the power of sovereigns by lessening the number of fiefs. As many of the holders of these were obliged to sell them, in order to find the means of equipment for the holy war, the feudal power became lodged in a less number of hands than before, and kings were able to make themselves masters of much that had until then been independent of their authority. At the same time the class of citizens was rising in importance and dignity. As the wealth of towns was increased by commerce, they purchased or otherwise acquired privileges, and became emancipated from their lay or ecclesiastical lords. It was the interest of kings to favour them, as a counterpoise to the power of the nobles; and thus, more especially in France, the strength of the crown and the liberty of the trading class advanced in alliance with each other. And, although slowly and gradually, the crusades contributed towards the elevation of the peasantry, and the abolition of slavery in western Europe.

To the clergy the transfer of property occasioned by the crusades was very advantageous. Sees or monasteries could not permanently suffer by the zeal of crusading bishops or abbots, inasmuch as the incumbents could not dispose of more than a life-interest in their property. And, while they were thus secured against loss, the hierarchy had the opportunity of gaining immense profit by purchasing the lay estates which were thrown into the market at a depreciated value, while in such purchases they were almost without rivalry, as the Jews, the only other class which possessed the command of a large capital, were not buyers or cultivators of land.

But the popes were the chief gainers by the crusades. By means of these enterprises they acquired a control over western Christendom which they might otherwise have sought in vain. They held in their own hands the direction of movements which engaged all Europe; and their power was still further increased, when, in the second crusade, sovereign princes had shown the example of taking the cross. The spirit of the time then emboldened the popes to propose that emperors and kings should embark in a crusade; to refuse would have been disgraceful; and when the promise had been made, the pope was entitled to require the fulfilment of it whenever he might think fit. Nor would any plea of inconvenience serve as an excuse; for what was the interest of a prince or of his dominions to the general concern of Christendom? In the east, the popes extended their sway by the establishment of the Latin church, while they claimed the suzerainty of the territories wrested from the infidels. And while in the west the holy war afforded them a continual pretext for sending legates to interfere in every country, they also gained by means of it a large addition to their wealth. The contributions which had at first been a free offering towards the cause became a permanent tribute, which was exacted especially from the monks and clergy; and when this took the form of a certain proportion of the revenues, the popes were thus authorized to investigate and to control the amount and the disposal of the whole property which belonged to ecclesiastical or monastic foundations.

Urban felt the addition of strength which he had gained by the crusade. He compelled Conrad to renounce the power of investiture, which the prince had ventured to exercise at Milan; and in a council held at Bari, in 1098, with a view to a reconciliation with the Greeks, he would have excommunicated the king of England for his behaviour to the primate Anselm, had not Anselm himself entreated him to refrain. But to his surest allies, the Normans of the south, the pope was careful to give no offence. Roger, grand count of Sicily, had now firmly established himself in that island, and, while he allowed toleration to the Mahometan inhabitants, had restored the profession of Christianity, founded bishoprics, and built many churches and monasteries. In 1098 the grand count was offended by finding that the pope, without consulting him, had appointed the bishop of Trani legate for Sicily; and, in consequence of his remonstrances at a council at Salerno, a remarkable arrangement was made, which, from the circumstance that it lodged the ecclesiastical power in the same hands with the civil, is known as the “Sicilian Monarchy”. By this the pope invests Roger and his successors with the character of perpetual legates of the apostolic see; all papal mandates are to be executed through their agency, and they are to have the right of selecting such bishops and abbots as they may think fit to attend the papal councils. In explanation of a grant so unlike the usual policy of Rome, it has been conjectured that the pope, being aware that the Normans would be guilty of many irregularities in the administration of the church, yet being resolved not to quarrel with such valuable auxiliaries, devolved his authority on the prince with a view to rid himself of personal responsibility for the toleration of these irregularities.

In 1099, the antipope and his adherents were finally driven out from Rome, where they had until then kept possession of some churches; and Urban became master of the whole city. But on the 29th of July in that year he died—a fortnight after the taking of Jerusalem, but before he could receive the tidings of the triumph which had crowned his enterprise. The cardinals, assembled in the church of St. Clement, chose as his successor the cardinal of that church, Rainier, a Tuscan by birth, who had been a monk at Cluny, and, having been sent to Rome at the age of twenty, on the business of his monastery, had obtained the patronage of Gregory, by whom he was employed in important affairs and promoted to the dignity of cardinal. Rainier on his election assumed the name of Paschal II.

In the following year, Guibert or Clement III, the rival of four successive popes, died at Castelli. That he was a man of great abilities and acquirements, and was possessed of many noble qualities, is admitted by such of his opponents as are not wholly blinded by the enmity of party and his power of securing a warm attachment to his person is proved by the fact that in the decline of his fortunes, and even to the last, he was not deserted. His grave at Ravenna was said to be distinguished by miracles, until Paschal ordered his remains to be dug up and cast into unconsecrated ground. Three antipopes—Theoderic, Albert, and Maginulf, the last of whom took the name of Sylvester IV—were set up in succession by Guibert’s party; but they failed to gain any considerable strength, and Paschal held undisturbed possession of his see. Philip of France, after having been excommunicated at Clermont, had succeeded, through the intercession of Ivo of Chartres, in obtaining absolution, which was pronounced by the pope in a council at Nimes, on condition of his forswearing further intercourse wirth Bertrada. This promise, however, was soon violated, and in 1097 the king was again excommunicated by the legate, Hugh of Lyons. The pope, greatly to his legate’s annoyance, was prevailed on to grant a second absolution in the following year; but in 1100 the adulterous pair incurred a fresh excommunication at Poitiers. Four years later, on the king’s humble request, supported by the representations of Ivo and other bishops, who had met in a council at Beaugency, Paschal authorized his legate, Lambert bishop of Arras, to absolve them on condition that they should never thenceforth see each other except in the presence of unsuspected witnesses. At a synod at Paris in 1105, the king appeared as a barefooted penitent, and both he and Bertrada were absolved on swearing to the prescribed conditions yet it appears that they afterwards lived together without any further remonstrance on the part of the pope. Philip on his death-bed, in 1108, expressed a feeling that he was unworthy to share the royal sepulchre at St. Denys, and desired that he might be buried at Fleury, in the hope that St. Benedict, the patron of the monastery, would intercede for the pardon of his sins.

The marriage of Matilda with the younger Welf had been a matter of policy, not of affection. The countess, finding her political strength increase, treated her young husband with coldness and Welf was disgusted by discovering that the rich inheritance, which had been a chief inducement to the connexion, had already been made over in remainder to the church. A separation took place. Welf, as the only possible means of annulling the donation, invoked the emperor’s aid, and his father, the duke of Bavaria, hitherto Henry’s most formidable opponent in Germany, now joined him with all his influence. On returning to his native country, after a sojourn of nearly seven years in Italy, Henry met with a general welcome. He devoted himself to the government of Germany, and for some years the stormy agitation of his life was exchanged for tranquil prosperity. His conciliatory policy won over many of his old opponents, whose enmity died away as intercourse with him revealed to them his real character; and at a great diet at Cologne, in 1098, he obtained an acknowledgment of his second son, Henry, as his successor, in the room of the rebel Conrad, while, with a jealousy suggested by sad experience, he exacted from the prince an oath that he would not during his father's lifetime attempt to gain political power. The emperor’s ecclesiastical prerogative was acknowledged; although his excommunication was unrepealed, even bishops of the papal party communicated with him and were fain to take investiture at his hands. The Jews, who had suffered from the fury of the crusading multitudes, were taken under his special protection, and from that time were regarded as immediately dependent on the crown.

The death of the antipope Clement, and the substitution of Paschal for Urban, appeared to open a prospect of reconciliation with Rome; and circumstances were rendered still more favourable by the removal of Conrad, who died in 1101, neglected by those who had made him their tool, but who no longer needed him. Henry announced an intention of crossing the Alps, and submitting his differences with Rome to the judgment of a council. But—whether from unwillingness to revisit a country which had been so disastrous to him, from a fear to leave Germany exposed, and in compliance with the dissuasions of his bishops, or from an apprehension that the pope, elated by the success of the crusade, would ask exorbitant terms of reconciliation—he failed to make his appearance; and Paschal, at a synod in March 1102, renewed his excommunication, adding an anathema against all heresies, and especially that which disturbs the present state of the church by despising ecclesiastical censures. Yet the emperor’s clergy still adhered to him; among them, the pious Otho of Bamberg, afterwards famous as the apostle of Pomerania, who acted as his secretary and assisted him in his devotions.

Henry spent the Christmas of 1102 at Mayence, where he declared a resolution of abdicating in favour of his son, and setting out for the holy war, as soon as he should be reconciled with the pope. At the same time he proclaimed peace to the empire for four years,—that no one should during that time injure his neighbour, whether in person or in property; and he compelled the princes to swear to it. The decree was obeyed, and Germany by degrees recovered from the wounds inflicted by its long distractions. The peaceable classes—the merchant and trader, the husbandman and the artisan—carried on their occupations unmolested; the highways were safe for travellers, and the traffic of the rivers was unimpeded by the little tyrants whose castles frowned along the banks. But the discords of Germany were only laid to sleep for a time. Intrigue was busy among the clergy, with whom the principles of Gregory had made way in proportion as their utility for the interests of the class became more apparent. Many bishops were won over from Henry's party, and were ready to countenance a new movement against him. And a renewal of civil war was sure to be welcome to the nobles and their armed retainers, who fretted against the forced inaction which was so opposite to the habits of their former lives, while many of them, being no longer at liberty to resort to violence and plunder, found themselves reduced from splendour to poverty.

The younger Henry was now tampered with. The young nobles, with whom the emperor had studiously encouraged him to associate, were prompted to insinuate to him that he was improperly kept under—that if he should wait until his father's death, the empire would probably then be seized by another; and that the oath exacted of him by his father was not binding. These suggestions were too successful. In December 1104, as the emperor was on an expedition against a refractory Saxon count, his son deserted him at Fritzlar, and to all his overtures and entreaties made no other answer than that he could hold no intercourse with an excommunicate person, and that his oath to such a person was null and void. There is no evidence to show that the pope had been concerned in suggesting this defection; but the prince immediately asked his counsel, and was absolved from his share in the emperor's excommunication by the legate, Gebhard of Zähringen, bishop of Constance. On declaring himself against his father, the young Henry at once found himself at the head of a powerful party, among the most conspicuous members of which was Ruthard, archbishop of Mainz, who had been charged with misdemeanours as to the property of the Jews slain by the crusaders, and had found it expedient to abscond when the emperor proposed an inquiry into his conducts. For a year Germany was disquieted by the muster, the movements, and the contests of hostile armies. The prince, however, professed that he had no wish to reign—that his only motive in rebelling was to bring about his father's conversion; and, with consistent hypocrisy, he refused to assume the ensigns of royalty.

On the 21st of December 1105, an interview between the father and the son took place at Coblentz. The emperor’s fondness burst forth without restraint; he threw himself at the feet of his son, and confessed himself guilty of many offences against God, but adjured the prince not to stain his own name by taking it on himself to punish his father's misdeeds. The behaviour of the young Henry was marked throughout by the deepest perfidy. He professed to return his father's love, and proposed that they should dismiss their followers with the exception of a few knights on each side, and should spend the Christmas season together at Mainz. To this the emperor consented, and in his interviews with his son, as they proceeded up the bank of the Rhine, he poured forth all the warmth of his affection for him, while the prince professed to return his feelings, and repeatedly gave him the most solemn assurances of safety. But at Bingen Henry found himself made prisoner, and he was shut up in the castle of Bockelheim on the Nahe, under the custody of his enemy Gebhard of Urach, bishop of Spires, who had lately been promoted to that see by the rebel king. The emperor was rudely treated and ill fed ; his beard was unshorn; he was denied the use of a bath; at Christmas the holy Eucharist was refused to him, nor was he allowed the ministrations of a confessor; and he was assailed with threats of personal violence, of death or lifelong captivity, until he was persuaded to surrender the ensigns of his power—the cross and the lance, the crown, the sceptre, and the globe—into the hands of the rebel’s partisans. He entreated that an opportunity of defending his conduct before the princes of Germany might be granted him; but, although a great diet was about to meet at Mainz, he was not allowed to appear before it—under the pretext that his excommunication made him unfit, but in reality because it was feared that his appearance might move the members to compassion, while the citizens of Mainz, like the inhabitants of most other German cities, were known to be still firmly attached to him. On the 31st of December he was removed to Ingelheim, where he was brought before an assembly composed exclusively of his enemies. Worn out by threats and ill usage, he professed himself desirous to resign his power, and to withdraw into the quiet which his age rendered suitable for him. The papal legate and the fallen emperor's own son alone remained unmoved by his humiliation. In answer to his passionate entreaties for absolution, the legate told him that he must acknowledge himself guilty of having unjustly persecuted Gregory. Henry earnestly desired that a day might be allowed him to justify his conduct before the princes of the empire, but it was answered that he must at once submit, under pain of imprisonment for life. He asked whether by unreserved submission he might hope to obtain absolution; but the legate replied that absolution could only be granted by the pope himself The emperor, whose spirit was entirely broken, so that he was ready to catch at any hope, however vague, and to comply with any terms, promised to satisfy the church in all points; it is even said that he solicited, for the sake of a maintenance, to be admitted as a canon of Spires, a cathedral founded by his grandfather and finished by himself, and that the bishop harshly refused his request. On the festival of the Epiphany, the younger Henry was crowned at Mainz by archbishop Ruthard, who at the ceremony warned him that, if he should fail in his duties as a sovereign, his father’s fate would over­take him. The violence of his ecclesiastical abettors was shown by disinterring the bones of deceased imperialist bishops.

But serious outbreaks in favour of the dethroned emperor took place in Alsatia and elsewhere; and after a time, alarmed by rumours that his death or perpetual captivity was intended, he contrived to make his escape by the river to Cologne. At Aix-la-Chapelle he was met by Otbert, bishop of Liège, to whose affectionate pen we are chiefly indebted for the knowledge of his latest fortunes, and under the bishop's escort he proceeded to Liège. The clergy of that city had steadily adhered to him, and when Paschal desired count Robert of Flanders to punish them for their fidelity, one of their number, the annalist Sigebert of Gemblours, sent forth a powerful letter in defence of their conduct, and in reproof of the papal assumptions. From his place of refuge Henry addressed letters to the kings of France, England, and Denmark, in which he denounced the new claims of Rome as an aggression on the common rights of all princes, and pathetically related the story of his sufferings from the enmity of the papal party and from the treachery of his own son whom they had misled. He again offered to abide an examination of his conduct by the princes of Germany, and he requested his godfather, the venerable abbot of Cluny, to mediate with the pope. Other cities joined with Liège in declaring for him; he was urged to retract his forced resignation, and he once more found himself in a condition to contest the possession of the kingdom. The younger Henry was repulsed from Cologne, and the hostile armies were advancing towards each other, when the emperor's faithful chamberlain appeared in the king's camp, and delivered to him his father’s ring and sword. Henry IV had died at Liège, on the anniversary of his defeat at Melrichstadt, the 7th of August 1106, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and the fiftieth of his reign—desiring on his death-bed that these relics might be carried to his successor, with a request (which proved fruitless) that his partisans might be forgiven for their adherence to him.

In surveying the long and troubled reign of this prince, it seems impossible to acquit the hierarchy of grievous wrongs towards him. His early impressions of the clergy were not likely to be favourable—derived as they must have been from the remembrance of his abduction by Hanno, and from the sight of that prelate’s sternness, ambition, pride, and nepotism, of Adalbert’s vanity and worldliness, and of the gross simony, misrule, rapacity, and corruption which disgraced the German church. Under his self-appointed ecclesiastical guardians, his education was neglected, and he was encouraged in licence and riot. The warnings of Gregory, however sound in their substance, were not conveyed in a manner which could be expected to influence him for good, since they were accompanied by new claims against the royal and imperial power. Gregory took advantage of his weakness; he surrounded him with a net of intrigues; he used against him the disaffection of his subjects, which had been in great part provoked by the encroachments of some ecclesiastics and was swollen by the industrious enmity of others; he humbled him to the dust and trampled on him. The claims of the papacy, whether just or unjust, were novel; it was the pope that invaded the emperor's traditional power, while Henry asserted only the prerogatives which his predecessors had exercised without question. “It was his fate”, says William of Malmesbury, “that whosoever took up arms against him regarded himself as a champion of religion”. By the hierarchy his troubles were fomented, and atrocious calumnies were devised against him; it was under pretence of religion that his sons, one after the other, rebelled, and that that son on whom he had lavished his tenderness, to whom he was even willing to transfer all his power, forced from him a premature resignation by the most hateful treachery and violence. Yet Henry, among all the faults which are imputed to him, is not taxed by his very enemies with any profanity or irreligion; his contests were not even with the papacy itself but with its occupants, and with the new pretensions by which they assailed his crown.

The conduct of Henry as a ruler must be viewed with allowance for the unfortunate training and circumstances of his youth. The faults of other men were visited on him; the demands of his subjects were frequently unreasonable, and were urged in an offensive style; and if his breach of engagements was often and too justly charged against him, it may be palliated by the consideration that the opposition to him was animated by a power which claimed authority to release from all oaths and obligations. Adversity drew forth the display of talents and of virtues which had not before been suspected; from the time of his humiliation at Canossa, he appeared to have awakened to a new understanding of his difficulties and of his duties, and exhibited a vigour, a firmness of purpose, and a fertility of resource, of which his earlier life had given little indication. His clemency and placability were so remarkable as even to extort the acknowledgments of hostile writers. The troubles of his last days were excited, not by misgovernment, but by his having governed too well.

To the needy and to the oppressed classes Henry was endeared by his warm sympathy for them, by his support of them against the tyranny of the nobles, by the charity not only of bountiful almsgiving, but of personal kindness in administering to their reliefs. The poor, the widows, the orphans crowded around his bier, pouring forth their tears and prayers, kissing the hands which had distributed his gifts, and commemorating his kind and gentle deeds. The loyal Otbert buried his master with the rites of the church, but was soon after compelled, as a condition of receiving absolution, to disinter the body, which was then carried to Spires, where Henry himself had desired to be buried in the cathedral which owed its completion to his bounty. But this was not to be permitted; the cathedral, in consequence of having been polluted by the corpse, was interdicted by bishop Gebhard; and for five years the remains of the excommunicated emperor were kept in the unconsecrated chapel of St. Afra, where, like the relics of a saint, they were visited by multitudes who affectionately cherished his memory.

 

 

CHAPTER V.

ENGLAND FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF ST. ANSELM.

A.D. 1066-1108.