The Eighteen Christian Centuries

TENTH CENTURY.

Authors.

Suidas, (Lexicographer), Gerbert, Odo, Dunstan.

THE TENTH CENTURY.

The tenth century is always to be remembered as the darkest and most debased of all the periods of modern history. It was the midnight of the human mind, far out of reach of the faint evening twilight left by Roman culture, and further still from the morning brightness of the new and higher civilization. If we try to catch any hope of the future, we must turn from the oppressed and enervated populations of France and Italy to the wild wanderers from the North. By following the latter detachment of Norsemen who made their settlements on the Seine, we shall see that what seemed the wedge by which the compactness of an organized kingdom was to be split up turned out to be the strengthening beam by which the whole machinery of legal government had been kept together. Romanized Gauls, effeminated Franks, Goths, and Burgundians, were found unfitted for the duties either of subjects or rulers. They were too ambitious to obey, and too ignorant to command. Religion itself had lost its efficacy, for the populations had been so fed with false legends, that they had no relish for the truths of the gospel, which, indeed, as an instrument of instruction, had fallen into complete disuse. Ship-loads of false relics, and army-rolls of imaginary saints, were poured out for the general veneration. The higher dignitaries of the Church were looked on with very different feelings, according to the point of view taken of them. When regarded merely as possessors of lands and houses, they were loved or hated according to the use they made of their power; but at the very time when cruelties and vices made them personally the objects of detestation or contempt, the sacredness of their official characters remained. Petitions were sent to the kings against the prelates being allowed to lead their retainers into battle, not entirely from a scruple as to the unlawfulness of such a proceeding, but from the more serious consideration that their death or capture would be taken as a sign of the vengeance of Heaven, and damp the ardour of the party they supported. Churches and cathedrals were filled with processionary spectacles, and their altars covered with the offerings of the faithful; and yet so brutal were the manners of the times, and so small the respect entertained for the individual priest, that laymen of the highest rank thought nothing of knocking down the dignitaries of the Church with a blow on the head, even while solemnly engaged in the offices of devotion. The Roman pontiffs, we have seen, did not scruple to avail themselves of the forgeries of their enthusiastic supporters to establish their authority on the basis of antiquity, and at the middle of this century we should find, if we inquired into it, that the sacred city and chair of St. Peter were a prey to the most violent passions. Many devout Roman Catholics have been, at various periods, so horrified with the condition of their chiefs, and of the perverted religion which had arisen from tradition and imposture, that they have claimed the mere continued existence of the Papacy as a proof of its Divine institution, and a fulfilment of the prophecy that “the gates of hell should not prevail against it.” Yet even in the midst of this corruption and ignorance, there were not wanting some redeeming qualities, which soften our feelings towards the ecclesiastic power. It was at all times, in its theory, a protest against the excesses of mere strength and violence. The doctrines it professed to teach were those of kindness and charity; and in the great idea of the throned fisherman at Rome, the poorest saw a kingdom which was not of this world, and yet to which all the kingdoms of this world must bow. Temporal ranks were obliterated when the descendants of kings and emperors were seen paying homage to the sons of serfs and workmen. The immunity, also, from spoil and slaughter, which to a certain extent still adhered to episcopal and abbatial lands, reflected a portion of their sanctity on the person of the bishop and abbot. Mysterious reverence still hung round the convents, within which such ceaseless prayers were said and so many relics exposed, and whither it was also known that all the learning and scholarship of the land had fled for refuge. The doles at monastery-doors, however objected to by political economists, as encouragements of mendicancy and idleness, were viewed in a very different light by the starving crowds, who, besides being qualified by destitution and hunger for the reception of charitable food, had an incontestable right, under the founder’s will, to be supported by the establishment on whose lands they lived. The abbot who neglected to feed the poor was not only an unchristian contemner of the precepts of the faith, but ran counter to the legal obligations of his place. He was administrator of certain properties left for the benefit of persons about whose claims there was no doubt; and when the rapacious methods of maintaining their adherents, which were adopted by the count and baron, were compared with the baskets of broken victuals, and the jugs of foaming beer, which were distributed at the buttery of the abbey, the decision was greatly in favour of the spiritual chief. His ambling mule, and swift hound, and hooded hawks, were not grudged, nor his less defensible occupations seriously inquired into, as long as the beef and mutton were not stinted, and the liquor flowed in reasonable streams. As to his theological tenets, or knowledge of history, either sacred or profane, the highest ecclesiastic was on the same level of utter ignorance and indifference with the lowest of his serfs. There were no books of controversial divinity in all this century. There were no studies exacted from priest or prelate. All that was required was an inordinate zeal in the discovery of holy relics, and an acquaintance with the unnumbered ceremonies performed in the celebration of the service. Morals were in as low a state as learning. Debauchery, drunkenness, and uncleanness were the universal characteristics both of monk and secular. So it is a satisfaction to turn from the wretched spectacle of the decaying and corrupt condition of an old society, to the hardier vices of a new and undegenerated people. Better the unreasoning vigour of the Normans, and their wild trust in Thor and Odin—their spirit of personal independence and pride in the manly exercises—than the creeping submission of an uneducated population, trampled on by their brutal lay superiors, and cheated out of money and labour by the artifices of their priests.

Rollo, the Norman chief, had pushed his unresisted galleys up the Seine, and strongly intrenched himself in Rouen, in the first year of this century. From this citadel, so admirably selected for his purposes, whether of defence or conquest, he spread his expeditions on every side. The boats were so light that no shallowness of water hindered their progress even to the great valleys where the river was still a brook. When impediments were encountered on the way, in the form of waterfall, or, more rarely, of bridge or weir, the adventurers sprang to shore and carried their vessels along the land. When greater booty tempted them, they even crossed long tracts of country, hauling their boats along with them, and launching them in some peaceful vale far away from the sea. Every islet in the rivers was seized and fortified; so that, dotted about over all the beautiful lands between the Seine and the borders of Flanders, were stout Norman colonies, with all the pillage they had obtained securely guarded in those unassailable retreats, and ready to carry their maritime depredations wherever a canoe could swim. Their rapidity of locomotion was equal to that of the Saracenic hordes who had poured down from the Pyrenees in the days of Charles the Hammer. But the Norsemen were of sterner stuff than the light chivalry of Abderachman. Where they stopped they took root. They found it impossible to carry off all the treasure they had seized, and therefore determined to stay beside it. Rouen was at first about to be laid waste, but the policy of the bishop preserved it from destruction, while the wisdom of the rovers converted it into a fortress of the greatest strength. Strong walls were reared all round. The beautiful river was guarded night and day by their innumerable fleet, and in a short time it was recognised equally by friend and foe as the capital and headquarters of a new race. Nor were the Normans left entirely to Scandinavia for recruits. The glowing reports of their success, which successively arrived at their ancient homes, of course inspired the ambitious listeners with an irresistible desire to launch forth and share their fortune; but there were not wanting thousands of volunteers near at hand. King and duke, bishop and baron, were all unable to give protection to the cultivator of the soil and shepherd of the flock. These humble sufferers saw their cabins fired, and all their victuals destroyed. Rollo was too politic to make it a war of extermination against the unresisting inhabitants, and easily opened his ranks for their reception. The result was that, in those disastrous excursions, shouting the war-cry of Norway, and brandishing the pirate’s axe, were many of the original Franks and Gauls, allured by the double inducement of escaping further injury themselves and taking vengeance on their former oppressors. Religious scruples did not stand in their way. They gave in their adhesion to the gods of the North, and proved themselves true converts to Thor and Odin, by eating the flesh of a horse that had been slain in sacrifice. It is perhaps this heathen association with horseflesh as an article of food, which has banished it from Christian consumption for so long a time. But an effort is now made in France to rescue the fattened and roasted steed from the obloquy of its first introduction; and the success of the movement would be complete if there were no other difficulty to contend against than the stigma of its idolatrous origin. Yet the recruits were not all on one side, for we read of certain sea-kings who have grown tired of their wandering life, and taken service under the kings of France. Of these the most famous was Hastings, whom we saw defeated at the end of the last century, on the banks of the river Lea. He is old now, and so far forgetful of his Scandinavian origin that some French annalists claim him as a countryman of their own, and maintain that he was the son of a husbandman near Troyes. He is now a great landed lord, Count of Chartres, and in high favour with the French king. When Rollo had established his forces on the banks of the Eure, one of the tributaries of the Seine, the ancient pirate went at the head of an embassy to see what the new-comer required. Standing on the farther bank of the little river, he raised his voice, and in good Norwegian demanded who they were, and who was their lord. “We have no lord!” they said: “we are all equal.” “And why do you come into this land, and what are you going to do?” “We are going to chase away the inhabitants, and make the country our home. But who are you, who speak our language so well?” The count replied, “Did you never hear of Hastings the famous pirate, who had so many ships upon the sea, and did such evil to this realm?” “Of course,” replied the Norsemen: “Hastings began well, but has ended poorly.” “Have you no wish, then,” said Hastings, “to submit yourselves to King Charles, who offers you land and honours on condition of fealty and service?” “Off! off!—we will submit ourselves to no man; and all we can take we shall keep, without dependence on any one. Go and tell the king so, if you like.” Hastings returned from his unsuccessful embassy, and the attempt at compromise was soon after followed by a victory of Rollo, which decided the fate of the kingdom. The conquerors mounted the Seine, and laid siege to Paris; but failing in this, they retraced their course to Rouen, and made themselves masters of Bayeux, and of other places. Rollo was now raised to supreme command by the voices of his followers, and took rank as an independent chief. But he was too sagacious a leader to rely entirely on the favour or success of his countrymen. He protected the native population, and reconciled them to the absence of their ancient masters, by the increased security in life and property which his firmness produced. He is said to have hung a bracelet of gold in an exposed situation, with no defence but the terror of his justice, and no one tried to remove it. He saw, also, that however much his power might be dreaded, and his family feared, by the great nobility of France with whom he was brought into contact, his position as a heathen and isolated settler placed him in an inferior situation. The Archbishop of Rouen, who had been his ally in the peaceable occupation of the city, was beside him, with many arguments in favour of the Christian faith. The time during which the populations had been intermixed had smoothed many difficulties on either side. |A.D. 911.|The worship of Thor and Odin was felt to be out of place in the midst of great cathedrals and wealthy monasteries, and it created no surprise when, in a few years, the ambitious Rollo descended from his proud independence, did suit and service to his feeble adversary Charles the Simple, and retained all his conquests in full property as Duke of Normandy and Peer of France.

Already the divinity that hedged a king placed the crown, even when destitute of real authority, at an immeasurable height above the loftiest of the nobles; and it will be well to preserve this in our memory; for to the belief in this mystical dignity of the sovereign, the monarchical principle was indebted for its triumph in all the states of Europe. No matter how powerless the anointed ruler might be—no matter how greatly a combination of vassals, or a single vassal, might excel him in men and money—the ineffable supremacy of the sacred head was never denied. This strange and ennobling sentiment had not yet penetrated the mind of Rollo and his followers, at the great ceremonial of his reception as a feudatory of the Crown. He declined to bend the knee before his suzerain, but gave him his oath of obedience and faith, standing at his full height. When a stickler for court etiquette insisted on the final ceremony of kissing the foot of the feudal superior, the duke made a sign to one of his piratical attendants to go through the form instead of him. Forth stalked the Norseman towards the overjoyed Charles, and without stooping his body laid hold of the royal boot, and, lifting it with all his strength up to his mouth, upset the unfortunate and short-legged monarch on his back, to the great consternation of his courtiers, and the hilarious enjoyment of his new subjects. But there was henceforth a new element in French society. The wanderers were unanimously converted to Christianity, and the shores of the whole kingdom perpetually guarded from piratical invaders by the contented and warlike countrymen of Hastings and Rollo. Normandy and Brittany were the appanage of the new duke, and perhaps they were more useful to the French monarch, as the well-governed territories of a powerful vassal, than if he had held them in full sovereignty in their former disorganized and helpless state. Language soon began to exert its combining influence on the peoples thus brought into contact, and in a few years the rough Norse gave place to the Romanized idiom of the rest of the kingdom, and the descendants of Rollo in the next generation required an interpreter if any of their relatives came to visit them from Denmark.

But the true characteristic event of this century was the first establishment of real feudalism. The hereditary nature of lands and tenements had long been recognised; the original granter had long surrendered his right to reclaim the property on the death of the first possessor. Gradually also, and by sufferance, the offices to which, in the stronger periods of royalty, the favoured subjects had been promoted for life or a definite time were considered to belong to the descendant of the holder. But it was only now, in the weak administration of a series of nominal kings, that the rights and privileges of a titular nobility were legally recognised, and large portions of the monarchy forever conveyed away from the control of the Crown. There is a sort of natural feudalism which must always exist where there are degrees of power and influence, and which is as potent at this moment as in the time we are describing. A man who expects a favour owes and performs suit and service to the man who has the power of bestowing it. A man with land to let, with money to lend, with patronage to exert, is in a sort of way the “superior” of him who wants to take the farm, or borrow the money, or get the advancement. The obligations of these positions are mutual; and only very advanced philosophers in the theory of disunion and ingratitude would object to the reciprocal feelings of kindness and attachment they naturally produce. In a less settled state of society, such as that now existing, or which lately existed, at the Cape of Good Hope and in New Zealand, the feudal principle is fresh and vigorous, though not recognised under that name, for the peaceful or weak are glad to pay deference and respect to the wielder of the protective sword. In the tenth century there were customs, but no laws, for laws presuppose some external power able to enforce them, and the decay of the kingly authority had left the only practical government in the hands of the great and powerful. They gave protection in return for obedience. But when more closely inquired into, this assumption of authority by a nobility or upper class is found to have been purely defensive on the part of the lay proprietors, against the advancing tide of a spiritual Democracy, which threatened to submerge the whole of Europe. Already the bishops and abbots had got possession of nearly half the realm of France, and in other countries they were equally well provided. Those great officers were the leaders of innumerable priests and monks, and owed their dignities to the popular will. The Pope himself—a sovereign prince when once placed in the chair of St. Peter—was indebted for his exaltation to a plurality of votes of the clergy and people of Rome. Election was, in fact, the universal form of constituting the rule under which men were to live. But who were the electors? The appointment was still nominally in the people, but the people were almost entirely under the influence of the clerical orders. Mechanics and labourers were the serfs or dependants of the rich monasteries, and tillers of the episcopal lands. The citizens had not yet risen into wealth or intelligence, and, though subject in their persons to the baron whose castle commanded their walls, they were still under the guidance of their priests. No middle class existed to hold the balance even between the nobility and the Church; and the masses of the population were naturally disposed to throw power into the hands of persons who sprang, in most instances, from families no better than their own, and recommended themselves to popular favour by opposition (often just, but always domineering) to the proceedings of the lay aristocracy. The labouring serfs, who gave the vote, were not much inferior in education or refinement to the ordained serfs who canvassed for their favour. Abbacies, priories, bishoprics, parochial incumbencies, and all cathedral dignities, were held by a body distinct from the feudal gentry, and elevated, mediately or immediately, by universal suffrage. If some stop had not been put to the aggressions of the priesthood, all the lands in Christendom would have been absorbed by its insatiable greed—all the offices of the State would have been conveyed to sacerdotal holders; all kings would have been nominated by the clerical voice alone, and freedom and progress would never have had their birth. The monarchs—though it is almost mockery to call them so in England—were waging an unsuccessful war with the pretensions of St. Dunstan, who was an embodiment of the pitiless harshness and blind ambition of a zealot for ecclesiastic supremacy. In France a succession of imbecile rulers, whose characters are clearly enough to be guessed from the descriptive epithets which the old chroniclers have attached to their names, had left the Crown a prey to all its enemies. What was to be expected from a series of governors whose mark in history is made by such nicknames as “The Bald,” “The Stammerer,” “The Fat,” and finally, without circumlocution, “The Fool”? Everybody tried to get as much out of the royal plunder as he could. Bishops got lands and churches. Foreign pirates, we have seen, got whole counties at a time, and in self-defence the nobility were forced to join in the universal spoil. Counties as large as Normandy were retained as rightful inheritances, independent of all but nominal adhesion to the throne. Smaller properties were kept fast hold of, on the same pretence. And by this one step the noble was placed in a position of advantage over his rival the encroaching bishop. His power was not the mere creation of a vote or the possession of a lifetime. His family had foundations on which to build through a long succession of generations. Marriage, conquest, gift, and purchase, all tended to the consolidation of his influence; and the result was, that, instead of one feeble and decaying potentate in the person of the king, to resist the aggressions of an absorbing and levelling Church, there were hundreds all over the land, democratic enough in regard to their dislike of the supremacy of the sovereign, but burning with a deep-seated aristocratic hatred of the territorial aggrandizement of the dissolute and low-born clergy. Europe was either in this century to be ruled by mailed barons or surpliced priests. Sometimes they played into each other’s hands. Sometimes the warrior overwhelmed an adversary by enlisting on his side the sympathies of the Church. Sometimes the Church, in its controversies with the Crown, cast itself on the protection of the warrior, but more frequently it threw its weight into the scale of the vacillating monarch, who could reward it with such munificent donations. But those munificent donations were equivalent to aggressions on the nobles. There was no use in their trying to check the aggrandizement of the clerical power, if the Crown continued its gifts of territory and offices to the priests and churches. And at last, when the strong-handed barons of France were tired out with the fatuity of their effete kings, they gave the last proof of the supremacy they had attained, by departing from the line of Charlemagne and placing one of themselves upon the throne. Hugh Capet, the chief of the feudal nobles, was chosen to wear the crown as delegate and representative of the rest. The old Mayors of the Palace had been revived in his family for some generations; and when Louis the son of Lothaire died, after a twelvemonth’s permissive reign, in 987, the warriors and land-owners turned instinctively to the strongest and most distinguished member of their body to be the guardian of the privileges they had already secured. This was an aristocratic movement against the lineal supremacy of the Crown, and in reply to the democratic policy of the Church. But the Pope was too clear-sighted to lose the chance of attaching another champion to the papal chair. |A.D. 987.|He made haste to ratify the new nomination to the throne, and pronounced Hugh Capet “King of France in right of his great deeds.”

Hugh Capet had been first of the feudal nobility; but from thenceforth he laboured to be “every inch a king.” He tried to please both parties, and to humble them at the same time. He did not lavish crown-lands or lofty employments on the clergy; he took a new and very economical way of attaching them to his cause. He procured his election, it is not related by what means, to the highest dignities in the Church, and, although not in holy orders, was invested with the abbacies of St. Denis and St. Martin’s and St. Germain’s. The clergy were delighted with the increase to the respectability of their order, which had thus a king among its office-bearers. The Pope, we have seen, was first to declare his legitimacy; the bishops gave him their support, as they felt sure that, as a threefold abbot, he must have interests identical with their own. He was fortunate, also, in gaining still more venerated supporters; for while he was building a splendid tomb at St. Valery, the saint of that name appeared to him and said, with larger promise than the witches to Banquo, “Thou and thy descendants shall be kings to the remotest generations.”

With the nobles he proceeded in a different manner. His task, you will remember, was to regain the universal submission of the nation; and success at first seemed almost hopeless, for his real power, like that of the weakest of his immediate predecessors, extended no further than his personal holdings. In his fiefs of France proper (the small district including Paris) and Burgundy he was all-powerful; but in the other principalities and dukedoms he was looked on merely as a neighbouring potentate with some shadowy claims of suzerainty, with no right of interference in their internal administration. The other feudatories under the old monarchy, but who were in reality independent sovereigns under the new, were the Dukes of Normandy and Flanders, and Aquitaine and Toulouse. These made the six lay peerages of the kingdom, and, with the six ecclesiastical chief rulers, made the Twelve Peers of France. Of the lay peerages it will be seen that Hugh was in possession of two—the best situated and most populous of all. The extent of his possessions and the influence of his name were excellent starting-points in his efforts to restore the power of the Crown; but other things were required, and the first thing he aimed at was to place his newly-acquired dignity on the same vantage-ground of hereditary succession as his dukedoms had long been. |A.D. 989.|With great pomp and solemnity he himself was anointed with the holy oil by the hands of the Pope; and he took advantage of the self-satisfied security of the other nobles to have the ceremony of a coronation performed on his son during his lifetime, and by this arrangement the appearance of election was avoided at his death. Its due weight must be given to the universal superstition of the time, when we attribute such importance to the formal consecration of a king. Externals, in that age, were all in all. Something mystic and divine, as we have said before, was supposed to reside in the very fact of having the crown placed on the head with the sanction and prayers of the Church. Opposition to the wearer became not only treason, but impiety; and when the same policy was pursued by many generations of Hugh’s successors, in always procuring the coronation of their heirs before their demise, and thus obliterating the remembrance of the elective process to which they owed their position, the royal power had the vast advantage of hereditary descent added to its unsubstantial but never-abandoned claim of paramount authority. The effects of this momentous change in the dynasty of one of the great European nations were felt in all succeeding centuries. The family connection between the house of France and the Empire was dissolved; and the struggle between the old condition of society and the rising intelligence of the peoples—which is the great characteristic of the Middle Ages—took a more defined form than before: aristocracy assumed its perfected shape of king and nobility combined for mutual defence on one side, and on the other the towns and great masses of the nations striving for freedom and privilege under the leadership of the sympathizing and democratic Church; for the Church was essentially democratic, in spite of the arrogance and grasping spirit of some of its principal leaders. From hereditary aristocracy and hereditary royalty it was equally excluded; and the celibacy of the clergy has had this good effect, if no other: Its members were recruited from the people, and derived all their influence from popular support. In Germany the same process was going on, though without the crowning consummation of making the empire non-elective. |A.D. 962.|Otho, however—worthier of the name of Great than many who have borne that ambitious title—succeeded in limiting that highest of European dignities to the possessors of the German crown, and commenced the connection between Upper Italy and the Emperors which still subsists (so uneasily for both parties) under the house of Austria.

In England the misery of the population had reached its maximum. The immigration of the Norsemen had been succeeded by numberless invasions, accompanied with all the horrors of barbarism and religious hatred; for the Danes who devastated the shores in this age were as remorselessly savage, and as bitterly heathen, as their predecessors a hundred years before. No place was safe for the unhappy Christianized Saxons. Their sufferings were of the same kind as those of the inhabitants of Normandy when Rollo began his ravages. Their priest-ridden kings and impoverished nobles could give them no protection. Bribes were paid to the assailants, and only brought over increasing and hungrier hordes. The land was a prey to wretchedness of every kind, and it was slender consolation to the starving and trampled multitudes that all the world was suffering to almost the same extent. Saracens were devastating the coasts of Italy, and a wild tribe of Sclaves trying to burst through the Hungarian frontier. At Rome itself, the capital of intellect and religion, such iniquities were perpetrated on every side that Protestant authors themselves consent to draw a veil over them for the sake of human nature; and in those sketches we require to do nothing more than allude to the crimes and wickedness of the papal court as one of the features by which the century was marked. Women of high rank and infamous character placed the companions of their vices in the highest offices of the Church, and seated their sons or paramours on the papal throne. Spiritual pretensions rose almost in proportion to personal immorality, and the curious spectacle was presented of a power losing all respect at home by conduct which the heathen emperors of the first century scarcely equalled; of popes alternately dethroning and imprisoning each other—sometimes of two popes at a time—always dependent for life or influence on the will of the emperor, or whoever else might be dominant in Italy—and yet successfully claiming the submission and reverence of distant nations as “Bishop of all the world” and lineal “successors of the Prince of the Apostles.” This claim had never been expressly made before, and is perhaps the most conclusive proof of the darkness and ignorance of this period. Men were too besotted to observe the incongruity between the life and profession of those blemishes of the Church, even when by travelling to the seat of government they had the opportunity of seeing the Roman pontiff and his satellites and patrons. The rest of the world had no means of learning the real state of affairs. Education had almost died out among the clergy themselves. Nobody else could write or read. Travelling monks gave perverted versions, we may believe, of every thing likely to be injurious to the interests of the Church; and the result was, that everywhere beyond the city-walls the thunder of a Boniface the Seventh, or a John the Twelfth, was considered as good thunder as if it had issued from the virtuous indignation of St. Paul.

But just as this century drew to a close, various circumstances concurred to produce a change in men’s minds. It was a universally-diffused belief that the world would come to an end when a thousand years from the Saviour’s birth were expired. The year 999 was therefore looked upon as the last which any one would see. And if ever signs of approaching dissolution were shown in heaven and earth, the people of this century might be pardoned for believing that they were made visible to them. Even the breaking up of morals and law, and the wide deluge of sin which overspread all lands, might be taken as a token that mankind were deemed unfit to occupy the earth any more. In addition to these appalling symptoms, famines were renewed from year to year in still increasing intensity and brought plague and pestilence in their train. The land was left untilled, the house unrepaired, the right unvindicated; for who could take the useless trouble of ploughing or building, or quarrelling about a property, when so few months were to put an end to all terrestrial interests? Yet even for the few remaining days the multitudes must be fed. Robbers frequented every road, entered even into walled towns; and there was no authority left to protect the weak, or bring the wrong-doer to punishment. Corn and cattle were at length exhausted; and in a great part of the Continent the most frightful extremities were endured; and when endurance could go no further, the last desperate expedient was resorted to, and human flesh was commonly consumed. One man went so far as to expose it for sale in a populous market-town. The horror of this open confession of their needs was so great, that the man was burned, but more for the publicity of his conduct than for its inherent guilt. Despair gave a loose to all the passions. Nothing was sacred—nothing safe. Even when food might have been had, the vitiated taste made bravado of its depravation, and women and children were killed and roasted in the madness of the universal fear. Meantime the gentler natures were driven to the wildest excesses of fanaticism to find a retreat from the impending judgment. Kings and emperors begged at monastery-doors to be admitted brethren of the Order. Henry of Germany and Robert of France were saints according to the notions of the time, and even now deserve the respect of mankind for the simplicity and benevolence of their characters. Henry the Emperor succeeded in being admitted as a monk, and swore obedience on the hands of the gentle abbot who had failed in turning him from his purpose. “Sire,” he said at last, “since you are under my orders, and have sworn to obey me, I command you to go forth and fulfil the duties of the state to which God has called you. Go forth, a monk of the Abbey of St. Vanne, but Emperor of the West.” Robert of France, the son of Hugh Capet, placed himself, robed and crowned, among the choristers of St. Denis, and led the musicians in singing hymns and psalms of his own composition. Lower men were satisfied with sacrificing the marks of their knightly and seignorial rank, and placed baldrics and swords on the altars and before the images of saints. Some manumitted their serfs, and bestowed large sums upon charitable trusts, commencing their disposition with words implying the approaching end of all. Crowds of the common people would sleep nowhere but in the porches, or at any rate within the shadow, of the churches and other holy buildings; and as the day of doom drew nearer and nearer, greater efforts were made to appease the wrath of Heaven. Peace was proclaimed between all classes of men. From Wednesday night till Monday evening of each week there was to be no violence or enmity or war in all the land. It was to be a Truce of God; and at last, all their strivings after a better state, acknowledgments of a depraved condition, and heartfelt longings for something better, purer, nobler, received their consummation, when, in the place of the unprincipled men who had disgraced Christianity by carrying vice and incredulity into the papal chair, there was appointed to the highest of ecclesiastical dignities a man worthy of his exaltation; and the good and holy Gerbert, the tutor, guide, and friend of Robert of France, was appointed Pope in 998, and took the name of Sylvester the Second.

ELEVENTH CENTURY.

Authors.

Anselm, (1003-1079,) Abelard, (1079-1142,) Berengarius, Roscelin, Lanfranc, Theophylact, (1077.)

THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.

And now came the dreaded or hoped-for year. The awful Thousand had at last commenced, and men held their breath to watch what would be the result of its arrival. “And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.” (Revelation xx. 2, 3.) With this text all the pulpits in Christendom had been ringing for a whole generation. And not the pulpits only, but the refection-halls of convents, and the cottages of the starving peasantry. Into the castle also of the noble, we have seen, it had penetrated; and the most abject terror pervaded the superstitious, while despair, as in shipwrecked vessels, displayed itself amid the masses of the population in rioting and insubordination. The spirit of evil for a little season was to be let loose upon a sinful world; and when the observer looked round at the real condition of the people in all parts of Europe—at the ignorance and degradation of the multitude, the cruelty of the lords, and the unchristian ambition and unrestrained passions of the clergy—it must have puzzled him how to imagine a worse state of things even when the chain was loosened from “that old serpent,” and the world placed unresistingly in his folds. Yet, as if men’s minds had now reached their lowest point, there was a perpetual rise from the beginning of this date. When the first day of the thousand-and-first year shone upon the world, it seemed that in all nations the torpor of the past was to be thrown off. There were strivings everywhere after a new order of things. Coming events cast their shadows a long way before; for in the very beginning of this century, when it was reported that Jerusalem had been taken by the Saracens, Sylvester uttered the memorable words, “Soldiers of Christ, arise and fight for Zion.” By a combination of all Christian powers for one object, he no doubt hoped to put an end to the party quarrels by which Europe was torn in pieces. And this great thought must have been germinating in the popular heart ever since the speech was spoken; for we shall see at the end of the period we are describing how instantaneously the cry for a crusade was responded to in all lands. In the mean time, the first joy of their deliverance from the expected destruction impelled all classes of society in a more honourable and useful path than they had ever hitherto trod. As if by universal consent, the first attention was paid to the maintenance of the churches, those holy buildings by whose virtues the wrath of Heaven had been turned away. In France, and Italy, and Germany, the fabrics had in many places been allowed to fall into ruin. They were now renovated and ornamented with the costliest materials, and with an architectural skill which, if it previously existed, had had no room for its display. Stately cathedrals took the place of the humble buildings in which the services had been conducted before. Every thing was projected on a gigantic scale, with the idea of permanence prominently brought forward, now that the threatened end of all things was seen to be postponed. The foundations were broad and deep, the walls of immense thickness, roofs steep and high to keep off the rain and snow, and square buttressed towers to sustain the church and furnish it at the same time with military defence. It was a holy occupation, and the clergy took a prominent part in the new movement. Bishops and monks were the principal members of a confraternity who devoted themselves to the science of architecture and founded all their works on the exact rules of symmetry and fitness. Artists from Italy, where Roman models were everywhere seen, and enthusiastic students from the south of France, where the great works of the Empire must have exercised an ennobling influence on their taste and fancy, brought their tribute of memory or invention to the design. Tall pillars supported the elevated vault, instead of the flat roof of former days; and gradually an approach was made to what, in after-periods, was recognised as the pure Gothic. Here, then, was at last a real science, the offspring of the highest aspirations of the human mind. Churches rising in rich profusion in all parts of the country were the centres of architectural taste. The castle of the noble was no longer to be a mere mass of stones huddled on each other, to protect its inmates from outward attack. The skill of the learned builder was called in, and on picturesque heights, safe from hostile assault by the difficulty of approach, rose turret and bartizan, arched gateway and square-flanked towers, to add new features to the landscape, and help the march of civilization, by showing to that allegorizing age the result, both for strength and beauty, of regularity and proportion. For at this time allegory, which gave an inner meaning to outward things, was in full force. There was no portion of the parish church which had not its mystical significance; and no doubt, at the end of this century, the architectural meaning of the external alteration of the structure was perceived, when the great square tower, which typified resistance to worldly aggression, was exchanged for the tall and graceful spire which pointed encouragingly to heaven. Occasions were eagerly sought for to give employment to the ruling passion. Building went on in all quarters. The beginning of this century found eleven hundred and eight monasteries in France alone. In the course of a few years she was put in possession of three hundred and twenty-six more. |A.D. 1035.|The magnificent Abbey of Fontenelle was restored in 1035 by William of Normandy; and this same William, whom we shall afterwards see in the somewhat different character of Conqueror and devastator of England, was the founder and patron of more abbeys and monasteries than any other man. Many of them are still erect, to attest the solidity of his work; the ruins of the others raise our surprise that they are not yet entire—so vast in their extent and gigantic in their materials. But the same character of permanence extended to all the works of this great builder’s[B] hands—the systems of government no less than the fabrics of churches. The remains of his feudalism in our country, no less than the fragments of his masonry at Bayeux, Fecamp, and St. Michael’s, attest the cyclopean scale on which his superstructures were reared. Nor were these great architectural efforts which characterize this period made only on behalf of the clergy. It gives a very narrow notion, as Michelet has observed, of the uses and purposes of those enormous buildings, to view them merely as places for public worship and the other offices of religion. The church in a district was, in those days, what a hundred other buildings are required to make up in the present. It was the town-hall, the market-place, the concert-room, the theatre, the school, the news-room, and the vestry, all in one. We are to remember that poverty was almost universal. The cottages in which the serfs and even the freemen resided were wretched hovels. They had no windows, they were damp and airless, and were merely considered the human kennels into which the peasantry retired to sleep. In contrast to this miserable den there arose a building vast and beautiful, consecrated by religion, ornamented with carving and colour, large enough to enable the whole population to wander in its aisles, with darker recesses under the shade of pillars, to give opportunity for familiar conversation or the enjoyment of the family meal. The church was the poor man’s palace, where he felt that all the building belonged to him and was erected for his use. It was also his castle, where no enemy could reach him, and the love and pride which filled his heart in contemplating the massive proportions and splendid elevation of the glorious fane overflowed towards the officers of the church. The priest became glorified in his eyes as the officiating servant in that greatest of earthly buildings, and the bishop far outshone the dignity of kings when it was known that he had plenary authority over many such majestic fabrics. Ascending from the known to the unknown, the Pope of Rome, the Bishop of Bishops, shone upon the bewildered mind of the peasant with a light reflected from the object round which all his veneration had gathered from his earliest days—the scene of all the incidents of his life—the hallowed sanctuary into which he had been admitted as an infant, and whose vaults should echo to the funeral service when he should have died.

But this century was distinguished for an upheaving of the human mind, which found its development in other things besides the bursting forth of architectural skill. It seemed that the chance of continued endurance, vouchsafed to mankind by the rising of the sun on the first morning of the eleventh century, gave an impulse to long-pent-up thoughts in all the directions of inquiry. The dulness of unquestioning undiscriminating belief was disturbed by the freshening breezes of dissidence and discussion. The Pope himself, the venerable Sylvester the Second, had acquired all the wisdom of the Arabians by attending the Mohammedan schools in the royal city of Cordova. There he had learned the mysteries of the secret sciences, and the more useful knowledge—which he imported into the Christian world—of the Arabic numerals. The Saracenic barbarism had long yielded to the blandishments of the climate and soil of Spain; and emirs and sultans, in their splendid gardens on the Guadalquivir, had been discussing the most abstruse or subtle points of philosophy while the professed teachers of Christendom were sunk in the depths of ignorance and credulity. Sylvester had made such progress in the unlawful learning accessible at the head-quarters of the unbelievers, that his simple contemporaries could only account for it by supposing he had sold himself to the enemy of mankind in exchange for such prodigious information. He was accused of the unholy arts of magic and necromancy; and all that orthodoxy could do to assert her superiority over such acquirements was to spread the report, which was very generally credited, that when the years of the compact were expired, the paltering fiend appeared in person and carried off his debtor from the midst of the affrighted congregation, after a severe logical discussion, in which the father of lies had the best of the argument. This was a conclusive proof of the danger of all logical acquirements. But as time passed on, and the darkness of the tenth century was more and more left behind, there arose a race of men who were not terrified by the fate of the philosophic Sylvester from cultivating their understandings to the highest pitch. Among those there were two who particularly left their marks on the genius of the time, and who had the strange fortune also of succeeding each other as Archbishops of Canterbury. These were Lanfranc and Anselm. |A.D. 1042.|When Lanfranc was still a monk at Caen, he had attracted to his prelections more than four thousand scholars; and Anselm, while in the same humble rank, raised the schools of Bec in Normandy to a great reputation. From these two men, both Italians by birth, the Scholastic Philosophy took its rise. The old unreasoning assent to the doctrines of Christianity had now new life breathed into it by the permitted application of intellect and reason to the support of truth. In the darkness and misery of the previous century, the deep and mysterious dogma of Transubstantiation had made its first authoritative appearance in the Church. Acquiesced in by the docile multitude, and accepted by the enthusiastic and imaginative as an inexpressible gift of fresh grace to mankind, and a fitting crown and consummation of the daily-recurring miracles with which the Mother and Witness of the truth proved and maintained her mission, it had been attacked by Berenger of Tours, who used all the resources of reason and ingenuity to demonstrate its unsoundness. |A.D. 1059.|But Lanfranc came to the rescue, and by the exercise of a more vigorous dialectic, and the support of the great majority of the clergy, confuted all that Berenger advanced, had him stripped of his archdeaconry of Angers and other preferments, and left him in such destitution and disfavour that the discomfited opponent of the Real Presence was forced to read his retractation at Rome, and only expiated the enormity of his fault by the rigorous seclusion of the remainder of his life. The hopeful feature in this discussion was, that though the influence of ecclesiastic power was not left dormant, in the shape of temporal ruin and spiritual threats, the exercise of those usual weapons of authority was accompanied with attempts at argument and conviction. Lanfranc, indeed, in the very writings in which he used his talents to confute the heretic, made such use of his reasoning and inductive faculties that he nearly fell under the ban of heresy himself. He had the boldness to imagine a man left to the exercise of his natural powers alone, and bringing observation, argument, and ratiocination to the discovery of the Christian dogmas; but he was glad to purchase his complete rehabilitation, as champion of the Church, by a work in which he admits reason to the subordinate position of a supporter or commentator, but by no means a foundation or inseparable constituent of an article of the faith. Any thing was better than the blindness and ignorance of the previous age; and questions of the purest metaphysics were debated with a fire and animosity which could scarcely have been excited by the greatest worldly interests. The Nominalists and Realists began their wordy and unprofitable war, which after occasional truces may at any moment break out, as it has often done before, though it would now be confined to the professorial chairs in our universities, and not exercise a preponderating influence on the course of human affairs. The dispute (as the names of the disputants import) arose upon the question as to whether universal ideas were things or only the names of things, and on this the internecine contest went on. All the subtlety of the old Greek philosophies was introduced into the scholasticisms and word-splittings of those useless arguers; and vast reputations, which have not yet decayed, were built on this very unsubstantial foundation.

It shows how immeasurably the efforts of the intellect, even when misapplied, transcend the greatest triumphs of military skill, when we perceive that in this age, which was illustrated by the Conquest of England, first by the Danes, and then by William, by the marvellous rise and triumphant progress of the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, and by the startling incidents of the First Crusade,—the central figure is a meagre, hard-featured monk, who rises from rank to rank, till he governs and tramples on the world under the name of Gregory the Seventh. It may seem to some people, who look at the present condition of the Romish Church, that too prominent a place is assigned in these early centuries to the growth and aggrandizement of the ecclesiastical power; but as the object of these pages is to point out what seems the main distinguishing feature of each of the periods selected for separate notice, it would be unpardonable to pass over the Papacy, varying in extent of power and pretension at every period when it comes into view, and always impressing a distinct and individualizing character on the affairs with which it is concerned. It is the most stable, and at the same time the most flexible, of powers. Kingdoms and dynasties flourish and decay, and make no permanent mark on the succeeding age. The authority of a ruler like Charlemagne or Otho rises in a full tide, and, having reached its limits, yields to the irresistible ebb. But Roman influence knows no retrocession. Even when its pretensions are defeated and its assaults repulsed, it claims as de jure what it has lost de facto, and, though it were reduced to the possession of a single church, would continue to issue its orders to the habitable globe.

Like the last descendant of the Great Mogul, who professed to rule over Hindostan while his power was limited to the walls of his palace at Delhi, the bearer of the Tiara abates no jot of his state and dignity when every vestige of his influence has disappeared. While ridiculed as a puppet or pitied as a sufferer at home, he arrogates more than royal power in regions which have long thrown off his authority, and announces his will by the voice of blustering and brazen heralds to a deaf and rebellious generation, which looks on him with no more respect than the grotesquely-dressed conjurers before a tent-door at a fair. But the herald’s voice would have been listened to with respect and obedience if it had been heard at the Pope’s gate in 1073. There had never been such a pope before, and never has been such a pope since. Others have been arrogant and ambitious, but no one has ever equalled Hildebrand in arrogance and ambition. Strength of will, also, has been the ruling character of many of the pontiffs, but no one has ever equalled Hildebrand in the undying tenacity with which he pursued his object. He was like Roland, the hero of Roncesvalles, who even in defeat knew how to keep his enemies at a distance by blowing upon his horn. When Durandal foiled the vanquished Gregory, he spent his last breath in defiant blasts upon his Olifant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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