HISTORY

OF THE

CHRISTIAN CHURCH

BY

GEORGE H. DRYER

Volume II

THE PREPARATION FOR MODERN TIMES

600-1517 A. D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PART I.

THE FOUNDATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CKURCH.

I. The Byzantine Empire.

II. Rise of Mohammedanism and the Caliphate.

III. The Merovingians.

IV. The Empire of Charlemagne.

V. The Conversion of the Teutonic Nations.

VI. The Constitution of the Church: History of the Papal See.

VII. Theological Thought and Controversies.

VIII. The Church Life.

PART II. THE FORMATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH.

I. The Byzantine Empire.

II. The End of the Caroliingian Dynasty, and the New German Empire.

III. The Invasions.

IV. Feudalism.

V. The Conversion of the Northern and Eastern Nations.

VI. The Constitution of the Church—History of the Papal See.

VII. Theological Thought.

VIII. The Church Life.

PART III.

THE CULMINATION OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH.

I. The Crusades.

II. The States of Modern Europe.

III. The Papacy and the Empire.

IV. Christian Thought.

V. The Church Life.

PART IV. THE DECLINE OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH.

I. The States of Europe.

II. The Constitution of the Church.—The Papacy.

III. Christian Thought.

IV. The Church Life.

PART V. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

I. Pictures from Medieval Life.

II. Results and Conclusion.

THE LITERATURE.

THE purpose of this sketch is to help those who would read further in the history of the Middle Ages; but a few words are due to those who have not found history attractive to them, and to whom this book seems repellent as a mass of names and dates. “Are we to learn all these?” they ask in horror. My dear reader, no; as soon think of committing to memory the names of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays to understand the poet. They are needful to refer to—you wish to know who they are, and their relation to the play; but the action of the drama will sufficiently impress the leading characters on the mind.

To read history, read it first as you would a novel, giving your attention to the main action and the leading characters, and do not fear to skip the hard or uninteresting passages. The only dates necessary to remember are those at the head of the several parts, eight in the whole book. History, thus read for its action, the work and character of the men and women who have shaped the life of succeeding generations, surpasses in interest, in variety and strangeness* of incident, any romance.

This history is a story of life—of life crude and full of violence, but full also of vigor and strong contrasts. To understand the life of the Middle Ages, there are no three books in English better than Shakespeare’s historic plays from King John to Henry VIII; then, allowing for the coarseness of some of them—and that is true to the life of the time—Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” and, with the same limitation, the book of English Ballads published by Macmillan. These give a better idea of the life of the Middle Ages than most histories.

To these should be added Dante’s “ Divine Comedy,” for the religious and intellectual side of that life. Longfellow has given us an excellent translation; those of Cary and Parsons are cheaper and in more convenient form. It is well worth the trouble it costs to understand one of the greatest poets of all time. Wagner’s music and the Nibelungen Lied make us familiar with the non-Christian ideals of the Middle Ages. The song of Roland acquaints us with the ideals of Chivalry, the Chronicles of Froissart with its actual life. From these ideals, Tennyson drew his inspiration and conception for his “Idyls of the King,” and Lowell for “Sir Launfal’s Vision.” Longfellow in his “Golden Legend,” and Sir Walter Scott in “Ivanhoe” and “The Talisman,” seek to make mediaeval life familiar to us. An acquaintance with any of these will help us to see and feel the life of the Middle Ages. They will help to understand their history, and their history will help to understand them.

Read, then, the book a second time, with attention enough to the dates to fix firmly the two ideas of succession and contemporaneousness. That is, what events which interested you took place before or after Charlemagne, St. Bernard, or Innocent III, or any other character who has attracted your attention. Fix their relative position, which can easily be done by comparing their dates. If a date is to be remembered, write it down in its succession as before or after some other event in which you are interested. Pay attention to cause and effect; notice why Boniface must come before Charlemagne, and Hildebrand before Innocent III, and both before Boniface VIII.

Then make clear who were contemporaries with any character with whom you may be specially interested, it it may be St. Francis or John Huss, St. Catherine or Savonarola.

Take Savonarola beside Pope Alexander VI, Lorenzo de Medici, and Charles VIII of France, with whom he came directly in contact; at that time lived Maximilian I of Germany, Henry VII of England, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and, more renowned than either, Christopher Columbus. Michael Angelo and Albrecht Durer were young men, while Raphael, Luther, and Zwingli were youths in school. If these names are read up in any good encyclopaedia, and then is read some inexpensive book, like Mrs. Oliphant’s “Makers of Florence,” a good idea is gained of the times in which Savonarola lived. Those who have access to public libraries will find great assistance in the use of Poole’s “Index of Periodical Literature.” Such association of persons or events fixes dates. Associate the death of Savonarola with the discovery of America, and the date of his work and suffering can never be forgotten.

On the other hand, dates are essential. Who can understand the American Revolution if he does not know that the Stamp Act preceded the Declaration of Independence; or who can understand the Civil War if he does not remember that Bull Run was before and not after Gettysburg? So in the Middle Ages. We must know whether Godfrey of Bouillon came before or after St. Louis, whether St. Boniface or Boniface VIII was the earlier, whether John Huss preceded or followed Martin Luther. It is the fact of succession, not the exact date, that is to be remembered, though often the date will fix itself in making clear the order of succession. Thus a history must have dates, and many of them, and mention many characters whose names it is not important to remember. In this great story of the life of Christendom for nearly a thousand years, we must ask three questions : What are the great events? What are the great characters? What are the chief institutions, usages, or ideas developed or influential in its course? Then these three merge into one: How did this life, or history, prepare the way or influence the life of our times ? The history which answers accurately and impartially these questions fills well its part, one that does not fail of its purpose.

For the student, or one who wishes to read further, the following list is made: First are given (a) the works which are accessible to the English reader, then (d) the chief works in German and French, and (c) the sources which are almost altogether in Latin.

On the Period of the Middle Ages.

(a) The general Church histories of Neander, Giese-ler, Hase, Kurtz, Moehler, and Alzog, all translated from the German. Neander is full and devout in spirit, but not attractive in style. Gieseler is profitable for those who can read Latin, as he gives well-selected, copious, and reliable extracts from the sources; Hase has an attractive and flowing style; Kurtz is a reliable text-book, improved with successive editions; Alzog gives the Roman Catholic view; Moehler is the most recent, and if but one can be used, it is to be preferred. Of English writers, Gibbon’s “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” read in connection with Milman’s “History of Latin Christianity,” gives the best general view. Philip Smith’s “Student’s Ecclesiastical History,” Vol. II; Hardwick’s “History of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages,” edited by Bishop Stubbs; SchafFs “Church History,” and Sheldon’s “History of the Christian Church.” All three of the last named are reliable, interesting, and valuable. Slighter and more introductory are Trench’s “Lectures on Mediaeval Church History,” Church’s “Early Middle Ages,” and “Emmerton’s “Study of the Middle Ages.” Always valuable are Hallam’s “State of Europe in the Middle Ages,” and Stubbs’s “ Lectures on Mediaeval and Modern History.”

(6) Of German works, untranslated, perhaps the most helpful are the Church Histories of Kraus, “moderate Catholic,” Langen, “Old Catholic,” and Hergenrother, “Ultramontane.” Karl Muller’s Kir-chengeschichte is the latest Protestant work.

(c) The sources are found in the great collections of Migne’s “ Cursus Patrologiae Latinae,” “Acta Sanctorum,” Bouquet, “Recueil des Historiens de Gaul;” Partz and Waitz’s “Monumenta Germanica;” Ry-mer’s “Foedera;” Raynaldus, “Continuation of Baron-ius;” Roll’s Series of English State Papers; Mansi’s “Concilia;” “Bullarium Magnum;” Jaffe and Pott-hast’s “Regesta Rom. Pont., 1304.”

Byzantine Empire.

(a) Gibbon. Findlay’s “History of Greece,” Vols. II-V; Bury’s “ History of the Later Roman Empire,” 2 vols. In one volume, Oman’s “Story of the Byzantine Empire.”

Mohammedanism and the Saracens.

(a) Muir’s “Life of Mohammed,” in 4 vols.; Wells-hausen’s Article in EncyclopaediaBritannica; “ Koran,” translated by Palmer, 1880; Gilman’s “Story of the Saracens;” Stanley Lane-Poole’s “Story of the Moors in Spain,” and “ Story of the Barbary Corsairs;” Creasy’s “Ottoman Turks;” Ockley’s “History of the Saracens.” (6) Sprenger and Noldecke, “Lives of Mohammed.”

Merovingians and House of Charlemagne.

(a) Mombert’s “ History of Charles the Great;” Mul-linger’s “ Schools of Charles the Great.” (6) Hauck’s “ Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands,” Vol. II, Martin’s “Histoire de France.” (c) “Gregory of Tours;” Eginhard’s “Vita Carolis Magni;” Jaffe’s “Monumenta Carolina.”

i6

Literature.

The Invasions.

(a) The general histories of France, Germany, and England. Freeman’s “Norman Conquest,” 5 vols. Green’s “ Conquest of England.” Johnson’s “ Normans” (in Epochs of History Series), (c) Ordericus Vitalis, “ Historia Ecclesiastical”

The Conversion of Europe.

(a) Maclear’s “Apostles of Mediaeval Europe;” Smith’s “Mediaeval Missions;” Merivale’s “Conversion of the Northern Nations;” Montalembert’s “Monks of the West;” Green’s “Making of England.” (3) Hauck’s “ Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands;” Maurer’s “Verkehrung des Norwegischen Stammes zum Christenthum;” Biidinger’s “ Oestreichs Ge-schichte bis zum Ausgang des i3ten Jahrhunderts;” Dehio’s “ Geschichte des Erzbisthums Hamburg-Bre-men bis zum Ausgang der Mission,” 2 Bande, 1877. “Philaret” translated into German by Blumenthal; “Geschichte Russlands.” See especially, “Giese-brecht on Otto of Bamberg.”

(c) Baeda’s “ Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglo-rum ;” “Adam of BremenFleming’s “ Collectanea Columbana;” Jaffe’s “Monumenta Moguntia;” “Acta Sanctorum;” “Gallia Christiana.”

The Papacy and the Constitution of the Church.

(a) Hatch’s “Origin of Church Institutions in Modem Europe;” Hefele’s “Conciliengeschichte,” Vols. III-VI; Gregorovius’s “ Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mit-telalter,” Vols. I-X. Both of these standard works have just appeared in an English translation. There are no better guides. Hefele is a Roman Catholic of the liberal school; learned, accurate, and fair. Greg-orovius is non-Christian, but learned, sympathetic, and a most interesting writer. In the latter period, 1300-1517, Creighton’s “History of the Papacy During the Period of the Reformation,” 4 vols.

Literature.

17

(b)    Von Raumer’s “ Geschichte der Hohenstaufen,” 6 vols. Giesebrecht’s ‘‘Geschichte der Deutschen Kai-serzeit,” 6 vols. Lamprecht’s “ Deutsche Geschichte,” 5 vols. Pastor’s “ Die Papste der Renaissance,” 3 vols. Strong Roman Catholic, but able and fair in his statements ; not yet translated.

Donation of Constantine.

(6) Friedrich’s “Die Constantinische Schenkung;” Von Sybel’s “Historische Zeitschrift,” 1880; “Scheffer-Boichorst in Mittheilung des Instituts fiir osterreich-ische Geschichte, Band X.”

(c)    Letters of the Popes, in Migne, especially Innocent III and Boniface VIII. Jaffe’s “Monumenta Gregoriana,” for Hildebrand; Holder-Egger’s “Lambert of Hersfeld;” Platina’s “Lives of the Popes,” edited by Benham; Linus’s “Paul II;” Mirbt’s “Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstthums.” This last is a most valuable book. No better service could be done to the cause of historic truth and righteousness than to publish this volume with an English translation on the opposite page.

The Crusades.

(а)    General histories: Michaud’s “ Histoire des Croi-sades,” 3 vols., and “ Von Sybel,” in one volume, are both standards and both translated. Cox’s “ Crusades ” (in the Epochs of History series) is the best short account. Dollinger has a very instructive essay, “The Beginning of the Eastern Question,” in the Selected Essays published in English. Pears’s “The Fall of Constantinople,” best account of fourth Crusade. Guizot’s “St. Louis and Calvin.”

(б)    Von Raumer’s “Geschichte der Hohenstaufen” is good.

States of Modern Europe.

(a) Hallam. Freeman. Green’s “ Short History of the English People,” Vols. I, II. Ramsay’s “ Houses

i8

Literature.

of Lancaster and York,” 2 vols. Stubbs’s “Selected Charters and Constitutional History of England,” 3 vols., most important. Hallam’s “ Constitutional History of England.”

(6) Martin’s “Histoire de France,” 17 vols. Guizot’s “Histoire de France,” 6 vols., translated. Michelet’s “Histoire de France,” 17 vols., first six translated in 2 vols. Dury’s “Histoire de France,” and “du la Moyen Age,” have been translated, and are interesting, but are not up to the present standard of scholarship in accuracy and reliability. Giesebrecht and Lamprecht give the best and latest popular histories of Germany. Bryce’s “Holy Roman Empire,” invaluable. Lewis’s “History of Germany” and Hunt’s “History of Italy” are in one volume.

Theological Thought.

(а)    Hefele’s “History of the Councils;” Sheldon’s “History of Doctrine,” 2 vols.; Fisher’s “History of Doctrine;” Allen’s chapter on “Middle Ages in the Continuity of Christian Thought;” Vaughn’s “Hours with the Mystics;” Erdmann’s “History of Philosophy ” (excellent English translation), 3 vols.

(б)    Haureau’s “De la Philosophie Scholastique,”

2 vols.; Preger’s “Geschichte der deutschen Mystik im Mittelalter;” Harnack’s “ Dogmengeschichte,” Vol. Ill (English translation).

(c) “ Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals,” ed. Hinschius; “ Monographs.”

(a) Essays on Hildebrand and Anselm; Stephen’s “Ecclesiastical Essays;” “Life of Anselm ” by Hasse; “ Life of St. Bernard,” by Neander and Morison ; best by Storrs. Article on Roger Bacon in Enclyclopaedia Britannica. “St. Elizabeth;” Charles Kingsley’s “A Saint’s Tragedy;” Ullmann’s “Reformers before the Reformation;” Lechler’s “Wycliffe;” Gillett’s “Life

Literature.

19

of Huss;” “Savonarola;” “Life,” by Villari, 2 vols.; Ranke, Hase, Pastor.

(5) Remusat’s “Abelard;” Hergenrother’s “Pho-tius, Patriarch of Constantinople,” 3 vols.; Warner’s “ Thomas Aquinas,” 3 vols.; Werner’s “ Duns Scotus.” Hase’s “St. Catherine of Sienna.

Church Life.

(a) Neander’s “Memorials of Christian Life;” “ Hef-ele.” H. C. Lea: “History of Sacerdotal Celibacy,” “History of the Inquisition,” 3 vols.; “Superstition and Force;” “Wager of Battle, Ordeal, and Torture;” “ Studies in Church History;” “ Rise of the Temporal Power and Benefit of the Clergy;” “History of Auricular Confession,” 3 vols. The works of no American historian are more worthy of a careful perusal. Brace’s “Gesta Christi.”

(5) Dollinger’s “Die Secten des Mittelalters;” Jansen’s “Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes,” Vol. I; Uhlhorn’s “Charity in the Christian Church,” Vol. II. (I think this volume is translated; I used the German.)

Architecture, Music, and Art.

(a) Liibke’s “History of Art;” Reber’s “History of Mediaeval Art;” Fergusson’s “History of Architecture;” Scott’s Lectures on the “ Rise and Development of Mediaeval Architecture;” Essay on “English Church Architecture;” Norton’s “Studies on Church Building in the Middle Ages;” March’s “Latin Hymns with English Notes;” Caswell’s “Lyra Catholica” (translations) ; Schaff’s “ Christ in Song;” Woltmann and Woermann’s “ History of Painting.”

Social Life in the Middle Ages.

(a) Guizot’s “ History of Civilization in France;” LaCroix’s “ Manners, Customs, and Usages of the Middle Ages,” and “Religious and Military Orders of the

20

Literature.

Middle Ages;” Vinogradoff’s “English Villainage;” Ashley’s “Introduction to English Economic History and Theory,” 2 vols.; Cunningham’s “Growth of English Industry and Commerce,” 2 vols.; Lecky’s “History of European Morals,” 2 vols., and “History of Rationalism,” 2 vols.

(6) Gautier’s “Chivalry;” Von Raumer’s “Ge-schichte der Hohenstauffen,” Vols. V-VI; Inama-Sternegg’s “Ausbildung der grossen Grundherrschaf-ten in Deutschland;” Lamprecht’s “Economic France, 1000-1100;” Burkhardt’s “The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy ” (2 vols., English translations), which is the best single authority on the period. Symonds’s “The Renaissance in Italy,” (4 vols.), more brilliant than Burk-hardt, but not more valuable. Villari’s “ Niccolo Macchiavelli and his Times” (4 vols., English translations).

In this volume the name Mainz is preferred to Mayence, Aachen to Aix la Chapelle, Regensburg to Ratisbon; but after full consideration, Cologne is preferred to Koln, and Charlemagne to Charles the Great.

Note.—This work aims to tell the story of the Middle Ages ; to tell it clearly, with interest, comprehensiveness, and precision. The interest depends upon a perception of the progress of the action of the great drama unfolded in its pages. This action centers in the history of the papacy. Those unfamiliar with the history of these centuries will do well to read this book in the logical order of its dramatic action. That is, the sixth chapter of Parts I and II, the third chapter of Part III, and second chapter of Part IV. Then should be read the conversion of the Teutonic and the Northern Nations, the Invasions, Feudalism, and the Crusades. Afterward the chapters on Church Life; then the other chapters will come into their proper place, as the interest shall direct.

INTRODUCTION.

The Middle Ages are farther removed from Americans than from any other civilized people. Around us are no memorials of their existence. Neither mediaeval cathedrals nor castles greet our vision, unless we cross the sea. Their knighthood, their caste, and their customs never touched our soil. With us are no memorials of the Crusades or of the Inquisition. As a Nation, we are Protestant, and we have no familiarity with an elaborate church-service, whose language, ritual, and vestments date from these ages, or vividly represent them. It requires greater effort for us than for others to realize the existence and life of those times, whose fundamental principles were inequality in society and before the law, authority in religion, and the rule of the privileged classes.

It would be an immense mistake to conclude that therefore they have no interest for us, and hence the effort was not worth making. We can not drop almost a thousand years out of Christian history. God was in those ages, and his paths are worth our tracing. Because influences are invisible and indirect, they are not the less powerful. Growth is ever of this nature, and yet is the most transforming element in human life and society. The revival of interest in the life in the Middle Ages—led by Sir Walter Scott in England, Schiller in Germany, and Victor Hugo and his brilliant compeers in France—known as Romanticism, has been one of the most remarkable intellectual movements of the nineteenth century. It powerfully affected literature, history, and every kind of art. The novel, the drama, painting, and, most of all, architecture, have been molded by it. It is largely responsible for the revival of the Roman Catholic Church on the Continent, and the growth of the High Church ritualistic movement in England, and makes itself felt now in the domain of economics and sociology. We can safely say that one of the most significant tendencies of the latest of the Christian centuries, of the age in which we live, can only be understood through some accurate idea of the course and results of the history of the Middle Ages. There is a unity in history, and all succeeding ages are built upon the foundations then laid down.

Indeed, errors concerning later times are much more easily corrected, and much less dangerous to society and religion, than false conceptions of the character and issue of the mediaeval life and Church. Questions arising from them confront us in society, in the press, and at the ballot-box. To a Protestant Christian and patriot, this knowledge is essential. Protestantism never ignores facts; it always faces truth with an open mind; it can not afford to base faith or judgment upon ignorance or false representation.

This volume is an effort on a restricted canvas to portray the Church and life of the Middle Ages. An eminent scholar has said all mediaeval history is Church history. Certain it is that there is no understanding of Church history which does not take into account the wonderful conservatism of the Byzantine Empire, the conquests of the Saracens, the work of Charlemagne, feudalism, the heathen invasions, the rise of the cities, and the formation and growth of the States of modern Europe. The conversion of the Northern and Eastern nations, their discipline and training, the development of the Church and the course of Christian thought, are firmly outlined. The great center of the whole history, the formation, growth, development, culmination, and decline of the papacy, are treated in detail, as affording the richest instruction to the citizen and the Christian. The endeavor has been to give an accurate presentation of the facts. With the works of eminent scholars of the Roman Catholic Church always at hand, and always consulted, the author is not aware of a statement of fact here made which they would deny. On this ground, and in all endeavors after holiness, the imitation of Christ, and doing Christ’s work among men, Protestants and Catholics may stand together, and speak well of each other’s work. The Middle Ages belong to both, alike in their glory and in their shame. But we have a right, in this nineteenth century, to know the truth, to set it forth plainly, and let it speak for itself. On the other hand, an author’s opinions, clearly distinguished from the facts, are always interesting, and of as great value as the facts and reasons he brings to their support, and no more.

Emperors and kings, some of them not often surpassed in ability and uprightness; and the long line of popes, in which every shade of character appears, sometimes with a juxtaposition and contrast that is startling; and saints and scholars, missionaries and reformers, heroes and martyrs,—lend luster to these pages. What manifoldness and vigor of life, what loftiness of aim, what unselfishness of purpose, what

2 4

Introduction.

gentleness and valor, what sacrifice and devotion, illuminate this record! The noblest thing in the world is a Christian life, and its result a Christian character. These were not wanting in the Middle Ages. There is, to be sure, a reverse side, of violence and fraud, deceit and lust; and we may not conceal, what Christians of every name deplore, the abuses in the Church, of simony, celibacy, indulgences, and the inquisition; but the Lord of the Church was in these ages, and no generation was without witness to his power. This history teaches by its warnings as well as example. No life can fail to be enriched by companionship with the missionaries, mystics, and saints of these centuries. They won three-fourths of Europe to the Christian faith; they reared Christian institutions, and trained the new races; they are our spiritual ancestors; they fulfill the “increasing purpose” of Him who, as King of ages, is also King of saints.

PART FIRST

THE FOUNDATION OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH.

Chapter I.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

The one Christian empire in these centuries, acknowledged in the West, as in the East, as succeeding to the rule of Augustus and of Constantine, was the Roman Empire of the East, with its capital at Constantinople. Its history for the first two hundred years, from the death of Maurice to the fall of Irene (603-805), is one of perpetual conflict with the armies of Islam. The Mussulman warriors wrested from it the fairest of its provinces, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and finally all Africa; but were repulsed with great loss from the walls of Constantinople in two memorable sieges. These victories on the Bosporus were as decisive as that of Tours. The empire was the one invincible bulwark of Christendom. She deserves to share in the imperishable glory of the victors of Marathon and Salamis; like them she saved European civilization from Oriental barbarism. She not only preserved the soil of Europe from the invader, but also the old culture and civilization in their unconquered seats, which, amid all decay, was the wonder and admiration of Teutonic Europe from the days of Heraclius until its fall before the Crusaders in 1204. The splendor and refinement of the capital, the training necessary for the service of the imperial administration or the Church, preserved the treasures and traditions of learning amid the encroaching invasions of the barbarians on the north and west, and of the Saracens on the south and east. The power and stability of its administrative system are seen in the fact that, while savage tribes made successive inroads into the Balkan peninsula, until finally they founded a Bulgarian kingdom in its center, 679-784, amid the unceasing wars with the Saracens, the empire never became a military monarchy, but was ruled by law; and, so long as a worthy representative of the reigning house could be found by hereditary descent, it preserved commercial relations between the East and West.

The empire continued in the closest alliance with the Church. Though religious thought and life had become sterile, stagnant, and superstitious, the image controversy brought in a better era, and purified the Church while strengthening the State. The people had as little part in this rule as in the Roman imperialism. The popular feeling could only find expression through the aristocracy of the capital or the factions of the circus. The value of the empire to its subject populations can be estimated by contrasting the history of the Balkan peninsula, since its fall in ^J453» with that of the rest of Europe.

This era opens with the last years of Maurice, his dethronement and cruel death, and the succession of Phocas. the savage usurper, Phocas. His reign 603.610. _{was one Q}f domestic anarchy, and of feebleness and loss in the conduct of foreign affairs, varied only by the caprices of the blood-thirsty despot. The time of forbearance at length came to an end. Never before since Constantine had a rebellion, favored by the people, led a general to the throne of the empire. Heraclius, the governor of Africa, in 610, sent his son, Heraclius, to end the intolerable weakness and tyranny of the reign of Phocas.

The capital received him gladly, and the citizens, putting Phocas to death, crowned him emperor. Heraclius is one of the most interesting Heraclius. figures of Byzantine history. In the sue- 610-641. ceeding thirty years of his life are crowded contrasts of victory and defeat, conquest and loss of dominion, which can only be compared with the career of Napoleon. During the first twelve years of his reign, he reformed and strengthened the empire and the army for a life-and-death struggle with Persia, then at the height of her power under the able and successful Chosroes. He renewed the spirit of the empire, secured the support of a jealous and mutinous aristocracy and the resources of the Church. In these years of preparation the Persians had taken possession of Egypt and Palestine, Damascus and Syria, overrun Asia Minor, and encamped at Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople. In six successive campaigns, 622-628, Heraclius not only won back these lost provinces, conquered Armenia, but overthrew the Persian Empire, and made peace at its capital. This ended the long struggle between the empires of Rome and Persia. In 634 the Saracens began their victorious promulgation of the Koran by the sword in the provinces of the empire. The hardly-contested and decisive battle of the Yarmuk was fought in August, 636, and Damascus and Syria were lost to the empire. In 636, Heraclius, sick in body and diseased in mind, left the southern provinces to their fate, and

Foundation of Medijeval Church.

withdrew to Constantinople. Jerusalem and Alexandria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia were soon in the hands of the followers of the Prophet of Mecca. Heraclius rallied once more, in 638. He sent a great army against the Saracens, but he could no longer command armies or win victories. Already suffering from the dropsy, his career was ended by it in 641. He had saved his country when in the throes of tyranny and anarchy, and achieved the greatest conquest that ever fell to an emperor of Constantinople. He had put a final end to a war of centuries in duration, which had threatened his reign, his capital, and his empire. But instead of the conquered foe arose another, stronger and more dangerous; and the conquests of the Crescent erased the remembrance of his own in the irretrievable loss of almost half the empire.

But, at least, the gratitude of the land he had so faithfully served did not fail his house. His descend-Constans. ants for four generations and for a hun-642-668. ^red y_ears f_rom hi_s coronation, held the rule of the empire. They and he were strong men, able rulers, and chaste in their lives. The two sons of Heraclius, Constantine and Heraclonas, reigned for a few months, until 642, when Constans, the son of Constantine, a lad eleven years of age, came to the throne. In 662, having strengthened the authority of the empire, but being personally unpopular as a Monothelite, and for other and minor reasons, he left Constantinople. His design was to increase the power of the empire in Italy and Africa. For six years he ruled successfully in Sicily, until 668, when he was assassinated at Syracuse. He was a strong and independent ruler, and in spite of the growing power of the Saracens, he left the empire stronger than he found it.

Constantine IV, son of Constans, came to the throne on the death of his father. He withstood the banded forces of the califate under Moa- Constantine wiyah, as they besieged Constantinople ^lv* ^6<S8-⁶⁸s-every year from 672 to 677. He conquered a brilliant peace, which was signed in 678, whereby the Calif paid a yearly tribute to the empire. In 679 the Bulgarians founded their kingdom between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains. In this reign, in 680, was held, at Constantinople, the sixth Ecumenical Council, which defined the orthodox doctrine of the two wills in Christ. Constantine died in 685, leaving the empire at peace, and the succession to his son, but sixteen years of age, Justinian II.

Though a rash and cruel ruler, Justinian was neither foolish nor feeble. After a reign of ten years, his loss of Armenia to the Saracens, and Justinian 11. the oppressions of his ministers, made 685-711. easy his overthrow by his general, Leontius. His nose and tongue were slit, and he was banished to the Crimea. While there; he married the daughter of the Chagan, or king of the Khazars. Enduring a banishment of ten years, he then sailed for Constantinople, to assert his right to the empire. On the way a furious storm arose. One of his attendants said to him: “Lo, now we perish. Make a compact with God for your safety, that if he restores you to your sovereignty, you will take vengeance on none of your enemies.” Justinian answered angrily: “If I spare a single one of them, may God drown me

32 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

here.” This shows his ruthlessness and determination. The twenty-two years from the banishment of Justinian to the accession of Leo I, 695-717, were years of disorganization and anarchy.

Leontius reigned three years, when a general, Apsimar, came to the throne, and assumed the name Leontius, of Tiberius II. Leontius suffered the 695-698. same mutilation which he had inflicted upon Justinian, and was suffered to retire to a monastery.

Tiberius ruled well, and held his own with the Saracens until Justinian’s return, in 705. Justinian Tiberius, regained the empire; his two unfortunate 698-705. predecessors were beheaded by the furious tyrant, whose tiger thirst for blood was a real madness. He “raged rather than reigned/’ until overthrown and put to death in 711.

Philippicus held the helm of state for two years. Anastasius II reigned with credit for the same length Philippicus. of time, until overthrown by the rebel-7"-7*3. lious legions of Asia Minor, who placed ^An“*?^af_I^u_^{s U}‘ at their head the weak Theodosius. He Theodosius hi. was proclaimed emperor, and feebly held 7»5-7«7. the reins of power until the arrival of the Isaurian, in 717, when he laid them down. All three of these emperors were spared their lives, but were sent into banishment. With Leo the Isaurian came to the throne three generations of strong antf successful rulers. They are called iconoclastic emperors, for their zeal against images and their worshipers.

Leo was an able general and a man of affairs, who ruled with a strong hand. He repressed the aristocracy, reformed the army and the State. In his

The Byzantine Empire.    33

contest with image worship he sought to purify the Church and society. His imperishable service to Christendom was the repulse of the Saracen army of 180,000 men under Moslemah, who besieged Constantinople a full year, from August, lm hi. 717, to August, 718. He began his con- 717=740. test against image worship in 726. In 731, Lower Italy and Illyricum were taken from the jurisdiction of the See of Rome, and added to that of Constantinople. Leo gained a brilliant victory over the Saracens in 739, and died in 740, leaving the empire to his son Constantine.

Constantine V had a long reign of thirty-five years. He ruled with ability, energy, and skill. In his wars against the Saracens he was successful; Constantinev. though the Lombards took Ravenna in 740-775. 750, and Pepin founded the temporal power of the pope in 754. The empire suffered a fearful visitation of the plague, 745-747. With even greater zeal than his father, Constantine entered into the contest against image worship, and for political and economic reasons he also sought the overthrow of monasticism. In this he went farther than popular sentiment would afford him support. He was rationalistic, merry, and pleasure-loving. Although his reign *was a stormy one, he carried out his plans while he lived, and left the empire to his son at his death in 775.

Leo was a consumptive young man, who knew that his time was short. Like his father and grandfather, he was an iconoclast. His arms .

.    Leo IV.

inflicted a severe defeat upon the Sara- 775-780. cens in 778. His death, in 780, left the empire to his son, a lad ten years of age, under the guardianship

3

Foundation of Medieval Church.

of his wife, the Empress Irene, an able and ambitious woman.

Constantine and the empress mother, Irene, reigned together until 790, when the former reached Constantine his twentieth year. The power had w. 780-797- been in his mother’s hands. For two years he asserted his right to rule alone, and then weakly consented to a joint government, 792-797. In the latter year, Irene and her advisers caused him to be deposed and blinded.

Irene ruled alone for five years, until her deposition in 802. She favored the worship of images.

Irene. Under her rule, in 787, was held the sev-797-802. enth Ecumenical Council, which restored them to their former position in the Church. During these years the Sclavs and Bulgarians made permanent and wider settlements in the Balkan peninsula. Irene ruled the empire for twenty of the twenty-two years since the death of her husband. She laid down her power with dignity, and lived afterward so as to retain the respect even of her enemies. The iconoclastic emperors, even if their policy failed in the end, had renewed the Byzantine Empire, repelled the armies of the Saracens, and maintained peace and respect for his ^dominion amid the settlements of the barbarians in the lands of the Balkan peninsula.

This sketch of the history of the Roman Empire of the East will make more clear the rise and development of the Saracen power, traced in the chapter which follows.

Chapter II.

RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM AND THE CALIFATE,

Mohammed, who has more widely influenced the race than any religious teacher since Jesus Christ, was born at Mecca, in 570. His father died before his birth, and his mother while he was still a child. He was cared for by his paternal uncle, Mohammed. Abu Talib, whose family was at once nu- 570-632. merous and poor. The celebrated Ali, son of Abu Talib, was the prophet’s cousin, and afterward the husband of his favorite daughter, Fatima. Mohammed began his life-work as a shepherd, tending the sheep and eating the berries of the desert. In his twenty-fifth year he entered the house and business of the wealthy widow, Kadijah. In her service he traveled in Syria and Palestine. Though she was much older, in a brief time Mohammed became her husband. The marriage was a happy one. While Kadijah lived, he had no other wife, and she fully entered into his religious life and plans. Two of their sons died young; their most famous daughter was Fatima. This marriage and his successful business ventures gave Mohammed an assured position and influence in his tribe and city. He was a tall, well-built man, with fair complexion and black hair. His countenance was prepossessing, and his bearing was attractive.

With prosperity did not come peace. His religious struggles endured for years, during each of which,

35

36 Foundation of Medieval Church.

for a considerable period, he withdrew to Mount Hira for religious meditation. He had a tendency to visions, without loss of inner consciousness. Mohammed was influenced by Arab devotees, or Hanifa, who taught as the supreme duty, Islam, or resignation to the will of God; by the Jews, from whose Scriptures he drew a great part of the laws of the Koran, especially as affects marriage and ceremonial purity; but more by the nameless Christian ascetics, with whom, in religious life and conceptions, he was most akin. Unfortunately for him and for the world, he knew the Christian Scriptures only in their perversion through the heretical sect of the Madzeans. He abhorred the prevalent idolatry, and denounced it in the spirit of the Hebrew prophets. His long vigils, prayers, and meditations at length brought him peace. His chief idea was the restoration of the purified patriarchal religion of Abraham.

He began to preach in 610, when forty years of age. For three years he taught in private, winning to his doctrine his wife Kadijah, his cousin Ali, the afterwards famous califs, Abubekr, Othman, and others. These united in small circles for prayer, and for the practice of the new religion. The rulers and influential Meccans turned against him; but his uncle, Abu Talib, stood by him. In 616, his uncle, Hazam, and the future calif, Omar, a young man of imposing figure and strength of will, joined him. Soon after began a struggle with the heads of the Koreish, which resulted in his excommunication. At this time his two great benefactors and supporters passed away, Kadijah and Abu Talib. In 620 he met men from Medina, and made such an impression upon them

Rise of Mohammedanism.

37

that, in 621, twelve of them began, in Medina, successfully to preach his doctrine. In March, 622, seventy-five converts invited him to come to Medina. June 8, 626, is the beginning of the Mohammedan era, the date of the Hejira, or flight from Mecca to Medina. There is a tradition that in this flight he hid in a cave; the pursuers, following hard upon his track, traced him thither, but seeing a spider’s web woven across its mouth, they thought it impossible he should have entered. Thus the fate of Mohammedanism hung upon a spider’s thread.

However this may be, Medina gave him a cordial welcome; its inhabitants received his teachings, and it became one of the holy cities of Islam. Here he built the first mosque, and lived a life attractive in its simplicity and equality. He developed his judicial talent in deciding difficult cases, in which he had great success, and secured an immense spiritual ascendency over the Arab tribes, while forming them into a political-religious State. He was a man of insight, experience, and ripe judgment; his decisions were according to truth and sound understanding. He increased the respect for the rights of property, for woman in marriage, and'ameliorated the characteristic cause of tribal feuds by reserving capital sentence to himself. He founded his State—for his teaching became now quite as much political as religious—upon the feeling of religious fellowship, which did away with all tribal divisions, feuds, and wars. With the acceptance of Islam came peace and order, instead of the previous tribal anarchy. The new doctrine, and the State founded upon it, were protected and extended by the sword. The Meccans were defeated

38 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

at Bedr, in December, 623. The Jews of Medina were attacked, the men put to death, and the women and children sold into slavery, in 627. Two years later, the Jewish city of Khaibar was taken. In 628 the Meccans entered into a treaty, or rather a truce, with Mohammed, and in 630 they submitted to his authority. In March, 632, he made his first pilgrimage to Mecca, and while making preparations to attack the Christians of the Roman Empire of the East, he died, at Medina, June 8, 632.

The new doctrine of Islam, the motive power of Mohammedanism, was the unity of God and the divine mission of Mohammed, the prophet of God. The religious duties enjoined were: Prayer five times daily, ablutions, almsgiving, fasting the month of Ramadan, and pilgrimage to the holy places of Mecca and Medina. With these were bound, of course, the acceptance of the Koran, and hence the system of Mohammedan law and membership in the religious-political State of Islam. The creed was simple; the practice, plain, comprehensible, and, in the main, salutary. Evangelical Christians sympathize with him in his war with idolatry and against the images, pictures, and crowd of saints and mediators, raised up between God and man by the degenerate Christianity of the East. On the other hand, the claim of Divine authority and an infallible, unchangeable, irrepealable character for his revelation, is a most stupendous one. No other religious reformer has made a like claim for so large a deliverance, or so minute a code of rules and regulations. The Jewish sacred books were mediated by many great souls during many ages. The Christian revelation of the one and only Savior and

Rise of Mohammedanism.

39

Son of God comes to men through writers of such different temperament and wide range of feeling and conceptions as Matthew and John, as James, Peter, and Paul. But the scale of one man’s being and capacity for a score of years was to compass all the possibilities of the development of Islam in all times, regions, and races. The Christian revelation deals in principles and illustrative applications. Mohammed’s is composed of specific precepts, and is minutely regulative. The acceptance of the Koran has brought unity, peace, and order to races in the tribal stage of civilization, and while inspiring their valor and giving a motive for conquest, it immensely augmented their military force. This is seen in the history of the Arabs, the Moors, the Turks, and the Tartars. Though seats of civilization and culture were founded on the banks of the Ganges, the Tigris, and the Gua-dalquiver, it was the power of a military monarchy availing itself of the resources of subject nations and races, and never the development of their own power, into a peaceful state and a progressive civilization, which gave splendor and renown to the courts of Agra and Delhi, of Bagdad and Cordova. Through its inherent defects it has brought moral and material, intellectual and spiritual stagnation to all races who have accepted it, and forbidden their advance beyond the half-civilized stage of culture. Its chief contrast and bitter opposition have been against the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation and Redemption in Christ. In Islam there is no reconciliation with God, but only blind fatalism and mute submission, which knows no sinless love that sacrifices, no Divine communion and salvation.

40 Foundation of Medieval Church.

The darkest blot upon the life and character of Mohammed, and in its results the most pernicious of his teachings, is his dealings with women, and the position ascribed to them in his religion. Few men have owed more to a woman than Mohammed owed to his first wife, Kadijah. Until he was fifty-two years of age, ten years before his death, he lived blamelessly the husband of one wife, though he married the widow of an Abyssinian two months after her death. His woman in Mo-third and favorite wife was Ayesha, the hammedanism.dajjghter _Gf Abubekr. With success came degeneration to lust and cruelty. After the taking of the Jewish quarter at Medina, he caused seven hundred Jews to kneel before a trench, and their heads were stricken off because they would not embrace Islam. He then compelled-the Jewess, Raihana, to accept his doctrine and become his wife. Two years later, after the slaughter of Khaibar, he married another Jewess, Safiya, whose father and husband he had put to death. Secret assassinations removed his enemies at Medina, a practice that has so often darkened the reigns of Mohammedan sovereigns. He had restricted the Mussulmans to four wives; but he himself broke over the limit, and justified it by a revelation. Remarking the beauty of Zeinab, the wife of Abu Zeyd, one of his devoted followers, he claimed her for himself, and the husband submitted without complaint. At his death he left a mourning harem of nine widows.

The example of a religious teacher colors the development of the religion which he founds; but the poison was in Mohammed’s teaching as well as his practice. The Koran has nothing for woman.

Rise of Mohammedanism.

4i

Wherever it has gone, the curse has come upon womanhood. It leaves her in doubt as to whether she has a soul. With covered face, she meets the gaze of man and the light of heaven. The custom of polygamy makes impossible family and social life, and poisons, at their source, the successive generations of the race. How different would have been the history of Eastern civilization and religion, if to the preaching of monotheism, the one God, Mohammed had added the teaching of marriage with one wife; if the last ten years had been as pure as the previous half-century of his life! But in fact, polygamy, the degradation of woman, and the progressive deterioration of the race have followed the cry of the Muezzin from the Ganges to the Euphrates, and from Cordova to Constantinople.

THE CAUEATE AND THE SARACEN CONQUEST.

On the death of Mohammed, the community at Medina chose his friend and father-in-law, Abubekr, as his successor. The situation demanded decision, energy, and skill, and Abubekr showed TheCaiifsof himself equal to the occasion. Although Medina, his reign was cut short by death, in August, 634, he had consolidated the sway of Islam, and sent it forth on its career of conquest. He was succeeded by Omar, the most impressive figure among the califs— tall, powerful both in body and in mind, endowed with a resistless will, devout, abstemious, and just, he made the Saracen arms feared wherever came their name, and caused the standards of the prophet to be established at Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Persepolis, in the ten years of his rule. He was assas

Foundation of Medieval Church.

sinated, November, 644, by a laborer, who had been driven to desperation by absurd fiscal oppression, which so often followed the arms of the califs. Oth-man, the last calif of Medina, was nearly seventy years of age at his election. After ruling twelve years, he perished in a rebellion, being killed in his own house, in 656. Ali, the cousin of the prophet and husband of his daughter, strove for the fallen standard of the califate, and the Mussulman dominions were rent by civil war from the death of Othman until the assassination of Ali, in 661. Thus ended the thirty years’ rule of the successors of the prophet who were with him at Medina. Only one of them, and he only after a brief rule of two years, died a natural death. Henceforth rebellion and bloodshed rarely ceased to stain the throne of those who succeeded to the califate. If three of the first four califs filled bloody graves, they brought war, ruin, and subjugation to the nations. Damascus fell before their arms in 635. The imperial army was defeated in the hard-fought battle of the Yarmuk, August 20, 636. Jerusalem fell into the hands of the unbelievers in 637, and the Persians were defeated the same year in the battle of Kadisiya. In 639, Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Babylon were in the hands of the Saracens. Egypt was taken in 641, and Persia conquered after the battle of Nehawend in the same year.

The governor of Damascus, at the death of Othman, was his nephew, Moawiyah, a man of genius, The califate of amiable, polite, and generous. He made Damascus.    _task _{to aven}g_e his uncle, and gain

the califate for himself. This came to pass on the death of Ali, leaving him in undisputed possession

Rise of Mohammedanism.

43

until his own decease, in 680. Thus he became the founder of the Ommiades, or Califs of Damascus. During his reign the arms of Islam went forth only to enlarge its conquests. Before 670, North Africa was conquered as far as Susa, and Kairwan was founded. Bokhara, Samarcand, and the East as far as the Indus, was overrun by 675, and Armenia, Cyprus, Cos, Crete, and Rhodes were taken in this reign by the Saracens. But they were ingloriously repulsed before the walls of Constantinople, after a siege of five successive years. Yezid I, son of Moawiyah, succeeded him. The party of Ali rebelled against him. The battle of Kerbela was fought October 9, 680, in which perished Hosein, the son of Ali, and it resulted in the permanent division of the Mohammedan world. Medina, having risen in rebellion, was taken, and its inhabitants massacred, August 26, 683. In the same year, Yezid died, and was succeeded by his son, Moawiyah II, who reigned but forty days. A distant relative, Merwan I, came to the throne, but reigned only two years before his death, in 685. Abd-al-Melik now became calif. He was a most able and energetic ruler. He struggled first with rebellions, taking Cufa, November, 690, and Mecca two years later. His lieutenant, Musa, conquered all North Africa by 701. On the death of Abd-al-Melik, his son, Walid, succeeded him, reigning from 705-715. In these years the crescent shone over ever-widening realms of rule. Bokhara and all Tartary across the Oxus, as far as the frontiers of China, acknowledged the sway of the prophet. Large conquests were made in Western India, while to these acquisitions from the heathen were added the Christian lands of Armenia and Spain.

44 Foundation of Medijeval Church.

Tarik, a general of Musa’s, crossed over into Spain in 711. In a battle, he defeated and slew King Roderick, and in a few years the whole country was in the hands of the Mussulman, except the mountainous northwest corner of Gallacia. The speedy conquests of Christian lands, like Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Spain, show that there was a complete inward decay of Christian faith and morals, as well as of political organization. The bravest resistance may be overpowered by the weight of superior numbers or skill, but where no resistance is made, that must be lightly prized which the conquered lose.

Soliman I, brother of Walid, came to the throne in 715; he died in September, 717, just as his general, Moslemah, began the siege of Constantinople. After a ye,ar before the city, and the loss of a hundred thousand men, he withdrew in utter defeat. Omar II, a rigid Mussulman in religion, held the califate from 717 to 720; and Yezid II, brother of Soliman and Walid, from 720 to 723. Hashem, strict in his religious faith, reigned for the next twenty years; but this lengthened reign was not one of increasing strength and conquest. The califate began to decline, and the arms of Leo the Isaurian to prevail. In the seven years from his death until the extinction of his dynasty in the East, in 750, four califs held for a short time the falling reins of power (Walid II, Yezid III, Ibrahim, and Merwan II.) Thus fell the dynasty of the Ommi-ades. There had not wanted among them men of refinement and culture, as well as able rulers. Their capital showed their influence and civilization; but in their wide domains there were ceaseless rebellions and bloody requitals, as well as splendid conquests,

Rise of Mohammedanism.

45

and from the last repulse at Constantinople and the battle of Tours their star began to pale.

The most renowned of the Saracen dynasties, the Abbasides, took possession of the califate; they were descended from Abbas, the uncle of Mohammed. The first ruler of this house was Abu Abbas al-Saffah, who ruled from 750 to 754. He exterminated the Ommiades, and established the Abbasides at the cost, so the Saracen historians estimate, of califs of 600,000 lives. His son, Abu Jafar Alman- Bagdad, sur, succeeded him. He ruled until 775, and founded Bagdad, which was thenceforth the capital of his dynasty.

In the first year of the reign of Al-Saffah, Abd-al-Rahman, the grandson of the Calif Hashem, fled for his life from Damascus, the home of his fathers, through Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, finding no rest for the sole of his foot, though pitied and protected by the tribes to which he came, until he received an offer from the Spanish emirs of the rule of the Mussulman States in that peninsula, califs of The previous forty years had been a period Cordova, of disorganization and anarchy in Spain; so they gladly sought a ruler who could establish order; while Abd-al-Rahman was rejoiced to exchange the prospect of sharing the fate of his house, at the hands of men of blood, for a throne. He founded his capital at Cordova, where he reigned ably and successfully for thirty-three years, 755-788. His son, Hashem, 788-796, succeeded him, and built the great mosque of Cordova. His capital outshone the splendors of Damascus, and surpassed its rival at Bagdad in magnificence, wealth, and civilization. His son, Al-

46 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

Hakem, came to the throne at his death, in 796. Thus the reigns of Abd-al-Rahman and his son and grandson corresponded with those of Pepin and Charlemagne over the Franks.

Almansur was followed by his son, Mahdi, who ruled nine years, and was the father of two sons, Hadi and Haroun-al-Raschid. He died while these were young, and left the califate to them in succession.

Califs of Their mother was an unscrupulous woman.

Bagdad. Hadi saw the crowds of suitors at his mother’s palace, where they knew it was for their interest to pay their court, and exclaimed that he had only the name of calif. This was reported to his mother. She presented to Hadi two slaves, who smothered him with pillows, after a reign of less than a year. His brother, Haroun-al-Raschid, the most splendid of the califs, reigned in his stead. His reign, 786-809, was contemporary with that of Charlemagne, with whom he exchanged ambassies. He conducted successful campaigns against the Greeks during the reign of Irene and her successor, Nicephorus.

Chapter III.

THE MEROVINGIANS.

It is most difficult to form a satisfactory conception of the settlement of the Frankish conquerors upon the soil of France. One hundred thousand warriors, it is said, formed the army of invasion. To these barbarian chiefs and their followers _{The Merovin}. fell, almost without a blow, the most civil- gian Times, ized and wealthiest province of the em- ^{4y6,6281 7}°^2, pire beyond the Alps. The civilization of Rome was peculiarly marked by the predominance and power of municipal organization. The booty of the cities, seats of industry and culture, amazed their conquerors; but they were not attracted to this alien mode of life. The Frankish warrior lived to fight and to eat and drink; war was his ordinary occupation, the chase his pastime. The confinement and settled order of the cities were hateful to him. He established himself in the open country, with his warriors, his family, and his slaves. If he came 'to the towns, it was only to fall a speedy prey to their corruption.

The Frankish nobles did little directly, after the first spoil of the invasion, to injure the life of the towns; but the conquest dried up the

’ , , .    ^    ^ , The Cities.

sources of their prosperity. No one cared for the repair of the roads. More fatal still, none could guarantee their safety. The country was filled with armed Franks, living by violence and plunder, and when not fighting against others, with themselves.

47

48 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

There was no demand for the articles considered necessary by civilized society, and so the industries and trade of the cities soon decayed. What remained was under the guidance and rule of the bishop and the protection of the Church. The population dwindled; many cities were wholly abandoned, and the Frankish kings and nobility made the only towns where they held their courts. They preferred the free, untrammeled life of the country, and as agriculture was almost the only necessary art, this country life prevailed in that portion of the former cultivated land, which the needs of a scattered and warlike population rescued from the encroaching forest. The former inhabitants became the tenants, under different forms of tenure and servitude, of the barbarian chiefs.

It was a time of injustice, violence, and fraud. The succeeding generations of the Frankish conquerors

^ _A seem to have combined in themselves the

Dark Ages. .    ......    . , ,

vices of civilization, with the coarseness and brutality of barbarism. These are dark ages. The life of the Frankish nobility is fairly reflected in that of their kings. Religion had the restraint of fear, but exercised little influence to reform the morals or purify society, unless men renounced the world and entered the monastic ranks.

The conversion of Clovis and the work of St. Martin, of Tours, took place in the preceding period. But Clovis, in order to establish the rule of the Franks in his own house, without scruple, caused the death of his relatives. He stirred up his nephew against his father, and when the young man had committed the desired murder, he marched against him, and took from him his dominion and his life.

The Merovingians.

49

Another brother he told to reach farther into the chest to seize the royal treasure of his father, and while he was stooping over, one of his retinue ciovis. struck him with his battle-ax, and killed 476-511. him. This sanguinary beginning was followed by crimes of blood in every generation of his successors, until they wholly lost their power under the rule of their mayors of the palace.

At the beginning of this period the third generation of the house of Clovis, whose descendants were called Merovingians, reigned in the three Frankish kingdoms of Austria, Neustria, and Burgundy, comprising the territory of modern France, Belgium, Central and Western Germany, and Switzerland. So far as these movable courts may be said to have a capital, that of Austria was at Aachen, of Neustria at Paris, and of Burgundy at Vienne.

Chilperic reigned at Paris, while his brother, Sige-bert, ruled from Aachen, or in Austria. In his absence, the wife of Chilperic gave birth to a

’    , ,    1 Chilperic.

son. Fredegonde, her servant, suggested 562=584. it should be immediately baptized. The sigebert. mother objected, that there were no spon- ^s62=575*

_ ,    1    Fredegonde.

sors. Fredegonde declared that there was 564-597. no reason why the mother should not act Brunhild, in such an emergency, and she followed 566=613. her servant's advice. On Chilperic’s return, Fredegonde informed him of the birth of his son, and that the mother had unwittingly forever divorced herself from him by becoming godmother to her own child; as by the law of the Church the relation of sponsor, equally with that of blood, was a bar to marriage, and the mother had thus placed herself within the pro

50 Foundation of Medieval Church.

hibited degrees of relationship. Fredegonde took the place of the discarded wife. Meanwhile, Sigebert, brother of Chilperic, had contracted an honorable marriage with Brunhild, the daughter of the Gothic king, Athanagild, who reigned at Toledo, in Spain. Brunhild was a woman of rare beauty, intelligence, and imperious will. Chilperic desired a like alliance, rather than a wife of servile origin; so he sent to the court of Toledo, and demanded the hand of Galswin-tha, the sister of Brunhild. The princess used every pretext to delay her leavetaking, but at last set out. Her premonition was not in vain. Within a year she was found strangled in her bed, through the wiles of Fredegonde. From thenceforth, Brunhild lived only to avenge her sister. Her unscrupulous rival, Fredegonde, however, succeeded in procuring the assassination of Sigebert, the husband of Brunhild, and her own husband, Chilperic. More than once her agents were detected in attempts upon the life of Brunhild. Yet this woman, stained with every crime of blood and lust, by her political ability in dealing with the Frankish nobles, in an era of violence, preserved her influence, and died in peace in 597. Brunhild survived her. She saw her children and her children's children sit upon the thrones of Austria and Burgundy, while she held the reins of power. With her desire for the higher culture and the more settled order of Rome, she alienated the nobility, impatient of control, who rose against her. She was taken, bound hand and foot to the tail of a wild horse, and dashed to pieces, in 613.

After this catastrophe, the power of the Frankish kingdoms fell to the son and grandson of Fredegonde.

The Merovingians.

5i

But this was for a brief time only. Within twenty years from the death of Brunhild, the power of the Frankish monarchy had passed into the hands of the first mayor of the palace. For more than one hundred years the feeble and incapable princes of the house of Clovis reigned, without power and without respect, until 752, when the real ruler of the Franks took the title of their king, and the Merovingians, a house of blood and violence, and then of utter and shameful weakness, passed from history.

Chapter IV.

THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE.

The crude violence and barbarism of the times of the Merovingian kings throw into high relief the task of their mayor of the palace, the founders of the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin of Landen, so called Rise of the ^^rom domain near Liege, exercised the Caroiings. royal authority under the title of mayor 628-752. ^ palace, and confirmed the rule of

Pepin of Lan=    .    . .

den. 628=640. his house m passing it to his son, thus

Grimoaid. becoming the ancestor of the Carolingian 640=660. _race kj_ng_S

Pepin died in 640, and left his son, Grimoaid, to succeed him. After exercising the royal authority for twenty years, he sought to establish it in his family by deposing the cowardly and incapable kings of the house of Clovis, and crowning his son, Hildebert. The attempt was premature; the Frankish nobles rose against them, and father and son were put to death.

Pepin d’ Heristal, the son of a daughter of Pepin of Landen, who married the son of Arnulf, bishop Pepin d* Heris-of Metz, restored the fortunes of his house, tai. 686=713. _SUCCeeded to the post of mayor of the palace, which was now evidently a necessity, and held it for twenty-seven years, until his death, in 713.

The famous Charles Martel was a younger son of Pepin d’ Heristal by a polygamous marriage. Charles consolidated the kingdom, and added to it the rich 52

The Empire of Charlemagne. 53

territory of Provence. The hosts of the Saracens, after the conquest of Spain, crossed the Pyrenees and took Narbonne, and threatened the complete conquest of the land. Charles met them near Charles Mar-fours, in October, 732, and, after an ob- ^tel- 713-741. stinate resistance, completely defeated them. This was one of the great decisive battles of the world. For his service on the day of Tours, Christendom owes Charles Martel an inextinguishable debt of gratitude. Had he been defeated, in the divided and disordered condition of the Christian States, all Western Europe would have shared the fate of the Spanish peninsula. Charles had no higher title than that borne by his father and great-grandfather, but he left the power undiminished to his son, when he died at fifty-one years of age, in 741.

Pepin le Bref, though small in stature, was an able general, and a born ruler of men. He aided St. Boniface in his missionary labors, began that p_epin le Bref. alliance with Rome which was so helpful 741,752,768. to his race, and laid the foundations of the temporal power of the Roman See. In 752 he was crowned king with the consent of the pope, and the royalty which had been in the, house of Clovis since 476, passed to the house of Pepin of Landen, which had wrought unceasingly to this end, through success and defeat, for one hundred and twenty years. At his death, in 768, Pepin left to his sons, Charlemagne and Carloman, the most firmly consolidated and powerful kingdom that the Teutonic conquerors, in the course of four hundred years, had been able to rear upon the lands once belonging to the Empire of Rome. The house of Pepin, while seeking its own

54 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

fortunes, formed a great dominion, and made possible the reign of law among those who, in the progress of centuries, were gradually learning its value. Under its sway, and through the labors of its leaders, were united the former kingdoms of Austria, Neustria, and Burgundy, and the Provence.

This kingdom came to the sons of Pepin, Charles the Great or Charlemagne, and Carloman. The Empire of brothers reigned together from the death Charlemagne, of their father, October 9, 768, to that of 768-814. Carloman, December 4, 771. From that time, Charlemagne reigned alone until his death, January 28, 814. Charlemagne is the greatest name in the political history of Europe between Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a tribute to his greatness that the empire of the first Napoleon was consciously modeled on that founded one thousand years before by the greatest of Frankish princes. If he did not raise his people to a stage of continuous political and national development, from which they should advance through succeeding ages, as did Edward I of England, and Otto I of Germany, or found a dynasty to reign eight hundred years as did Hugh Capet, or even establish long-prevailing principles of administration, as did Henry I and Henry II of England, he accomplished a task such as was attempted by no other prince of the Middle Ages. His reign was epoch-making for Europe and for civilization. He advanced all Europe, by forty-six years of strenuous and unremitting endeavor and with consummate genius for administration, to a height of civilization and political well-being such as had not been seen since the great days of Rome, and gave

The Empire of Charlemagne. 55

her collective might a unity and force such as has not been realized since. Charlemagne, born to a kingdom, was not a conqueror like Caesar and Napoleon; his work may rather be compared with that of Constantine or Peter the Great, though Aachen can hardly vie with Constantinople or St. Petersburg, or the transforming influence of his reign leave any such memorial as the adoption of Christianity, or of Western civilization. It was the fault of his age and his own misfortune that the work he wrought was too great to be preserved by feebler hands than his own. The next generation saw the dissolution of the structure raised by the great Charles, and two centuries later, the last remnant of his dominion had passed from the last sovereign of his race. But his rule left a remembrance of unity, of order, and of law, which never failed of influence on the succeeding ages.

The work he wrought was, in fact, never undone. As a warrior, he was unwearied in subduing by his arms the Saracens on the south, the conquests of heathen Frisians on the north, the Saxons Charlemagne, on the east, and the Avars on the southeast, as well as the Lombards in Italy. This work was done for all time. A few scattered bands of Saracens might make forays from the sea, or even establish themselves, for a brief time, in fortified positions on the soil of France, but all the age-long weakness of the rule of his successors never tempted a Moslem army north of the Pyrenees, and though the Spanish march might have been given up, it was to form a Christian State. He made an end to the Lombard dominion in Italy; and in extending the papal jurisdiction, he founded the temporal dominion of the pope, which endured to our

56 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

own day. The Avars suffered a final defeat, and the Frisians were subdued and became Christians. In thirty-three campaigns against the Saxons, though personally engaging them but twice in arms, he broke their power and subdued their heathenism, and thus raised up the firmest support of German Christianity and the greatest colonizing power among the Germanic races. Charlemagne may well be called the defender of Christendom. We must not forget the cost in blood and suffering in those forty years of war, or that the economic condition of the less wealthy freemen was ruined by this continuous military service.

Charlemagne was the first great legislator of Teutonic Christendom. He was wise, unwearied, and Charlemagne even minute in his regulation and super-as Legislator. _vi_si_{on Q}f the interests of the Church and the State. He organized the government of the empire. Each count was responsible for the public order and administration of his territory. Not satisfied with meeting the nobility, lay and spiritual, in council twice a year, he sent through his dominions mis si dominici, or itinerant justices, representing the imperial authority, and whose business it was to see that the bishops and nobles observed the laws. In his semi-annual assemblies of the prelates and landed nobility, the chief legislative and administrative measures were considered and decided upon. Thus he secured the assent and co-operation of the great nobles and of the Church. He made to prevail the idea of law, the law of the empire as against the custom of the tribe and the arbitrary rule of the aristocracy. His Capitularies are the earliest specimens of national legislation. They show a knowledge of the people and the

The Empire of Charlemagne. 57

time, a spirit of wisdom and justice which would make his fame secure if he had done nothing else.

Equally great, considering the condition of the times just emerging from four centuries of crude barbarism, was the service which Charlemagne rendered to learning and intellectual culture. He read German, Latin, and Greek, and spoke the two His Aid to former languages with ease, though un- Learning, able to write his own name. Yet he sought instruction from Peter of Pavia and Alcuin in grammar, arithmetic, astronomy, rhetoric, and dialectics. He enjoyed the diversions of learning even at the table, and formed the school of the palace for the sons of the great nobles of the court. All that concerned the intellectual development of his people was of interest to him. It was his wish that the humblest should know the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and he urged strenuously the duty of preaching in the native tongue.

The impulse which he gave to art was not wholly lost in the cruel times which followed. He aided the building of churches and bridges. The service to biographer particularly mentions the great Art-wooden bridge over the 'Rhine at Mainz, which was burned a short time before his death, and which he wished to replace with one of stone. So the palaces at Aachen, Nymwegen, and Ingelheim surpassed all that the men of that time had seen north of the Alps. But the great architectural monument of his reign is the oldest Christian church in Germany, the cathedral at Aachen, built by Italian architects and adorned with costly marbles from Ravenna, as well as planned after the Church of San Vitale of that city. This

58 Foundation of Medieval Church.

first of cupola or domed churches north of the Alps may well be considered the ancestor of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Hildesheim and Spires, of Worms and Mainz. One can not stand within these walls, where the great emperor was buried, and where seven and thirty German emperors were crowned, who claimed at least political descent from Charlemagne, without feeling how much of the power and traditions of the great ruler lived after him, influencing the minds of men in the ages succeeding the extinction of his house.

No work of Charlemagne was more important in its influence upon after ages than his alliance with the Charlemagne P^aP^acy> ^the establishment of the States of and the the Church, and his policy of civil indeChurch. p_enci_{ence) a}nd yet of strict accord with the head of Western Christendom. His restoration of the Roman Empire, December 25, 800, when, by Pope Leo III, in St. Peter’s at Rome, he was crowned emperor, colored all history for a thousand years. It determined the independent political and religious development of the W^Test, and the final break with the empire of the East at Constantinople. Charlemagne was a convinced and sincere Christian, a regular attendant upon Christian worship. He saw that the service was conducted with dignity and order, and enjoyed taking part in it. His care for the Church and his part in the image controversy added materially to his fame. Though a Christian, he looked upon the conversion of the heathen with the eye of a statesman. As his father had aided St. Boniface, so Charlemagne sympathized with and supported the missionaries who carried on his work. If his forced mass

The Empire of Charlemagne. 59

conversions and baptism of the Saxon leaders and people can not be defended, at least he was right in seeing that, as long as they retained their heathenism, there could be no peace for the empire. To them, with their religion and stage of culture, war was a necessity. 'The one charge of cruelty against him was caused by the resistance of these people. In the campaign of 782 he caused 4,500 Saxon prisoners to be put to death at Verden. The act was as bad in policy as in morals, and stirred up the last possibilities of resistance among this brave and stubborn people.

Charlemagne was tall in stature, large, and powerfully built. His head was round, his eyes large and animated, his nose a little larger than usual, _CharIemagne,_s with fair hair, his countenance was cheerful Personal and joyous. His bearing was one of dig- ^Appearance* nity and authority. In form and manner, as in qualities as a general and statesman, he most nearly resembled Constantine. Long years of rule and success did not make him either suspicious or cruel. He was always temperate in food and drink, and hated drunkenness. He delighted in the chase and martial exercises until his latest days. His record as a husband is not exemplary. But if he divorced Desideria, the daughter of the Lombard king, and had concubines after the death of his wives, at least he did not live in polygamy, as his ancestors had done. One wife, Hilde-garde, he loved faithfully until her death, and left his empire to her sons. The last days of Charlemagne were clouded with domestic sorrows, and darkened with premonitions of the evil times which were to follow. His favorite daughter, child of Hildegarde. died in 810; her brother, Pepin, king of Italy, a year

6o Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

later; while Charles, his eldest son and heir, who alone of his offspring gave promise of ability to carry on his father’s work and perpetuate the glory of his reign, died in 811. Finally, in January, 814, the greatest sovereign of the Middle Ages was laid to rest in his royal chair of state, with his imperial robes about him, at Aachen. His sword and scepter, like King Arthur’s brand Durandal, had vanished forever from among men. It was well; there was no one to wield them. They would have been of no value to the princes of his house, and to the mightiest of the successors to his title, in the thousand years from his death to the extinction of the empire in 1806, they would have been as useless as the bow of Ulysses.

This survey of the external conditions of Christianity in the East and in the West prepares us to understand its missionary activity and inner development.

Chapter V.

THE CONVERSION OF THE TEUTONIC NATIONS.

The invading bands of Saxons and Angles, reenforced from the old home on the banks and lands surrounding the Lower Elbe, slowly drove the Britons from the lands of their fathers, and, taking complete possession, founded modern England. How slow the process was, and how stubborn the resistance, Green tells us, when he says: “It took nearly thirty years to win Kent alone, and sixty to complete the conquest of Southern Britain, while the conquest of the rest of the island was only wrought Out after two centuries of bitter warfare. But of all the German conquests, this was the most thorough and complete.” After one hundred and fifty years of this contest, when the result was assured and the work in great part accomplished, Gregory’s missionaries, with Augustine (594604) at their head, came to Kent, and succeeding in winning the king, Ethelbert, the husband of the Christian princess Bertha, and the great mass of his people, Augustine consecrated Justus bishop of _Conversion Rochester, in 604, and Mellitus bishop of of Saxon the East Saxons, with his seat at London. ^En&^,and-On the death of Ethelbert, 611, and his nephew, Sae-bert, king of the East Saxons, in the same year, their sons proclaimed themselves heathen, and Christianity was overthrown. Justus and Mellitus fled to Gaul, and Laurentius, the successor of Augustine at Can-

61

62 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

terbury, was only prevented from following them by a vision. He remained, and succeeded in re-establishing the Christian faith in Kent. Ethelbert had been won largely through his Christian wife, Bertha. Now their daughter, Ethelburga, became the wife of Edwin, king of Northumberland, from whom Edinburgh is named. Paulinus was consecrated a missionary bishop in 626, and accompanied Ethelburga. Pope Boniface V sent presents to the king and queen. Paulinus appeared before the king’s Witan, or council of wise men, and preached to them the Christian gospel. Baeda tells us the story. After hearing Paulinus, an aged Ealdorman arose, and said: “So seems the life of man, O king, as a sparrow’s flight through the hall when one is sitting at meat at winter-tide, with the warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the icy storm without. The sparrow flies in at one door, and tarries for a moment in the light and heat of the hearth-fire, and then, flying forth from the other, vanishes into the darkness from whence it came. So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight; but what is before it, and what after it, we know not. If this new teaching tell us aught certainly of these, let us follow it.” The heathen priest, Coifi, not only gave his assent, but was the first to hurl his spear of defiance in the heathen temple. The king and his court were baptized on Easter-eve, 627. The people accepted Christianity with their king. Paulinus labored with them six years; the pope sent him his pallium as archbishop of York; but his success was not of long duration. The heathen king, Penda of Mercia, defeated and slew Edwin at the battle of Hatfield, 633, and the work of Paulinus was undone. Only a

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 63

single deacon remained faithful through the years of heathen triumph which followed. Paulinus fled to Kent, where he was made bishop of Rochester.

Missionaries owing obedience to Rome came to East Anglia, Wessex, and Sussex. Sigebert, king of East Anglia, became a Christian while an exile in Gaul. On his return and reception of the kingdom, he invited Felix, a Burgundian bishop, to accompany him. Felix obtained the pope’s sanction for his mission in 630, and became the apostle of East Anglia, with his seat at Dunwich, afterward removed to Norwich. An Irish monk, Fursey, worked with him in cordial co-operation.

The monk Birinus obtained permission from Rome to undertake a separate mission in England, and was consecrated missionary bishop. He landed in Wessex in 634. After winning the king of the West Saxons, who was baptized 635, he gained also his people. The Saxon Winnex was consecrated first bishop of Winchester.

Sussex was evangelized by the efforts of Bishop Wilfrid, who was educated among the Irish monks of Lindisfarne, but who went to Rome, and was ever after zealous for her authority. He labored among the South Saxons five years, from 681 to 686, and gained the last of the invading tribes that remained heathen. His cathedral seat was fixed at Selsey, afterward removed to Chichester. The Roman missionaries wrought alone, with no help from their brethren of the same faith among the Britons. There were reasons for this. The Britons were hardly inclined to seek to evangelize their heathen and victorious enemies. The invaders were scarcely disposed to

64 Foundation of Medieval Church.

accept the faith of the people they had conquered and dispossessed. Too much blood had been shed between them. Then, there were differences of usage, such as the shape of the tonsure and the time of celebrating the Easter feast. But the main difference between these two Christian Churches on English soil was, that communion with the missionaries of the South meant obedience to Rome. The Britons, or Welsh as they came to be called, did not care to add to the bitterness of English conquest, subjection to the ecclesiastical claims of Rome. And yet these Roman missionaries won only about one-fourth of the English conquerors to the Christian faith. The conversion of England came from a race whom they despised, and a Church with whom they would hold no communion.

Of all the lands of Western Europe, Ireland never bowed to the empire of Rome. Of all these lands, she alone was never ravaged and ruled by the Teutonic conquest. Hence, she possessed the Celtic blood Condition of unmixed, and the tribal organization and Ireland. usages unchanged, when Roman civilization and Teutonic arms and customs had twice changed the face of Europe. Ireland received the gospel through the preaching of Patrick; but that did not change the Celtic temperament or the tribal civilization. The Irish became Christians, but their religion conformed to their political organization. The monasteries became the religious centers of their clans. There was no hierarchy. The monk and abbot were everything, the functions of a bishop were confined to ordinations, and his own toil gained for him a scanty living. The result was, that an immense num

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 65

ber of earnest men crowded into the monasteries. There, in the only quiet refuge amid the storms of the barbarian invasions, and the greed and violence of the succeeding centuries, the Church of Ireland developed centers of sound learning and missionary zeal.

The loose organization made impossible effective Church discipline, while the monastic separation from the laity prevented the victory of the Church over the predominant vices of Irish life, the tribal wars, and the loose sexual relations. Thus, both in political and moral culture, Ireland remained behind the other nations of Europe. But she gave rich gifts to Christendom. With the lavish generosity which is characteristic of this people, before establishing their own prosperity, or perfecting their own organization, they gave themselves to the work of Christianizing England and Southern Germany, and of re-establishing Church discipline, and founding the best schools of the age in France and Italy. They carried into this work the passion and pathos which are the peculiar gifts of their race. They brought with them the gospel, the monastery, and the penitentials. Everywhere their work showed missionary zeal, self-denial, ana moral earnestness.    '

St. Columba, in the last half of the sixth century, coming from Ireland, founded the monastery of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland. In thirty years of labor, 565-595, he firmly estab- irishML.on-lished his work, and died a year before the ^{aries in} arrival of Augustine in Kent. From this ^Eng,and* missionary center went forth the evangelists who, through their labors and those of their successors, were to Christianize all England but its southern

5

66 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

coasts and East Anglia, and to succeed in establishing Christianity at York and London, where the Roman missionaries failed. After the death of Edwin of Northumbria, Eanfrith, son of the former king, Ethelfrith, came to the throne. He and his two brothers, Oswald and Oswy, had been educated at Iona, and had there become Christians. Eanfrith returned to heathenism, and lost his kingdom and his life within one shameful year. Oswald came from Iona to the vacant Northumbrian throne, won a great victory over the Britons, who were ravaging his land and greatly extended his kingdom in his reign, from 635 to 642. He at once called for missionaries from Iona to win his kingdom to the Christian faith. The most celebrated of these was Aidan, who established his episcopal seat and a monastery for the training of native clergy, at Lindisfarne, in 635. When the heathen Mercian king, Penda, killed Oswald in the battle of Marshfeld, in 642, as he had killed Edwin nine years before, the younger brother, Oswy, came to the throne. Oswy was true to the Christian faith, which he had received in exile; he increased the power of his kingdom, and thirteen years after, he defeated and slew, in the battle of Winwaed, Penda, who had slain four Christian kings of the English. Oswy reigned with honor until his death, in 670. In these years, all Northumbria was won, through the zealous labors of the teachers from Lindisfarne, to the Christian faith, and the failure of Paulinus was retrieved. More than this, Oswy’s daughter married Peada, son of the heathen Penda. Through her, Peada became a Christian, and the missionaries in her train won the people of central England to the gospel. The

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 67

first bishop was consecrated in 653. Thirty-seven years after the flight of Mellitus from London, in 653, Cedd, who had been trained at Lindisfarne, was sent, by Bishop Finian from his work in Mercia, to take up Christian work in London, and was consecrated its bishop the next year. After the defeat of Penda, 655, all England soon became Christian, except isolated Sussex, which was won by 687.

Irish Christianity had not waited for Oswald’s invitation to Aidan to begin missionary labors. A half century before, Irish evangelists were at _{Irish Missions} work on the Continent. One of the first on the and ablest of these was the monk, Colum- ^Contlnent-ban. Born in Leinster in 543, he was edu- ^st-^CoIumban-cated at Bangor, on the coast of Down, under St. Comgall. He remained in the monastery until 575. When over forty years of age he began his missionary labors. Fie traveled through France until he reached the court of Gontram, king of Burgundy. From him he received the gift of the ruined .castle of Annegray in the Vosges, where he founded his first monastery. Five years later he removed to Luxeuil, and as the monastery grew, founded another at Fontanes. Here he labored for twenty-four years. His earnestness, culture, and strict discipline raised up enemies against him among the secularized clergy and at the court. Columban was accused, before a Synod in 602, on account of differing from the Roman usage in the tonsure and time of celebrating Easter. Fearlessly he defended himself, and, though condemned both here and at Rome, he held his ground. Numerous re-enforcements came to him from his native land. He states that at this time seventeen of

68 Foundation of Medieval Church.

his brethren had died in the service of the monastery at Luxeuil. Columban was no respecter of persons, and at length he aroused a more dangerous enmity. He rebuked the licentious life of King Theudric, and forbade him to enter the chapel of his monastery while polluted with his unrepented sin. The infant child of the king, born in adultery, he refused to bless, and denounced, with equal plainness, the royal grandmother, the celebrated Brunhild, for allowing and favoring such immorality, and foretold the extinction of the king’s rule and of his house. At no time and in no land was there more need of Christian reproof of flagrant sin among the great. Columban rendered a signal service, which afterward bore good fruit. But the boldness of his adherence to Christian principle and pastoral duty, drove him from his beloved home and work at Luxeuil. Under royal orders, he was escorted to the coast to embark for Ireland, in 610. He escaped, and came to the courts of Neustria and afterward Austrasia, and finally began mission-work on the shores of Lake Zurich. From thence he soon removed, and founded the monastery of Bregenz, on Lake Constance. As the Burgundian king gained possession of the country, Columban left the care of this foundation to his pupil, Callus, afterward St. Gall. The veteran missionary pushed on over the Alps, and among the Lombards founded the celebrated monastery of Bobbio. There he died, November 21, 615. Columban knew Greek and Hebrew, was familiar with the Latin poets, and wrote in a style which showed refined taste, a proof of the thoroughness and extent of Irish culture at this time. Luxeuil and Bobbio became renowned as centers °f learning, the former even

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 69

more for its missionary activity. From its walls came forth the most influential bishops and teachers of the time, so that it became a kind of monastic capital of Gaul. Columban brought in a high standard of morality, the use of penitential ordinances, thus making the authority of the Church support decency and good morals, and a rigid and severe monastic rule, which prevailed for fifty years after his death, but finally gave way to the milder rule of St. Benedict. Courageous, learned, and devout, no man of his time rendered greater service to Christianity. Had he been more gentle and more diplomatic, he might have been more immediately successful, but could hardly have left a greater name, or a more inspiring example, in an age which sorely needed both.

The significance of Columban was seen, not alone in the work he wrought, but in the crowd of Irish and Scottish monks who followed in his footsteps, and took up missionary work on the Continent. Among them we note Columban’s pupil, Gallus, who, with more pleasing manners and a knowledge of the German tongue, won great success in Switzerland, and founded the celebrated monastery of St. Gall, and established Eustasius, who succeeded him at Luxeuil. So Fridlin founded the monastery of Sack-ingen on an island in the Rhine near Basle, and Trud-pert one south of Freiburg. Abbot and bishop, Pir-min seems probably to have been of Irish descent. He founded the famous monastery of Reichenau, and wrought in Alsace, where he established the monastery of Murbach, and afterward founded that of Hornbach, where he died in 753. Wurzburg knew Kilian, who, on account of his strict Christian re

70 Foundation of Medieval Church.

quirements, was killed, with his companions, by a chief of the country, named Gozbert. Many of these monks thronged to the work of preaching to the heathen in Switzerland and Bavaria. They retained their British customs, including the marriage of priests. Boniface found them well established in the next century. During this time, wrought the Frankish Rupert, bishop of Worms, 695-711, who founded the monastery of St. Peter at Salzburg; and near the same time, Emmeran, bishop of Poitiers, who founded a monastery at Regensburg, and there met a violent death.

The Irish missionaries organized no system of Church government. The monasteries which they founded were independent of each other; there was no cohesive bond which could make their influence powerful and permanent in society. They educated no clergy, and founded no national Church. Others reaped the harvest of their sowing.

Following these Irish-Scottish missionaries, and most important of all to the mission-work of the English Mis= Middle Ages, was that carried on by the sionsonthe Anglo-Saxons from England. They went Continent. ^_rst ^ h_eath_en Frisian tribes, whose dwellings extended from the Scheldt to the Weser. Work had been begun among them by the hermit Amandus. When on a visit to Rome, he believed himself called to this mission-work. Chlotaire II, 613-623, made him bishop, with his seat at Ghent. Here he sought to make baptism compulsory, and became so unpopular that he left the work among the Frisians, and went to preach the gospel among the Sclavs on the Danube and in Carinthia. Being there unsuccessful, he returned to Ghent, where he founded

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 71

two Benedictine monasteries. He then went south, founding monasteries, and in 647 became bishop of Maastricht, later Liege. Here he became discouraged in his attempts to reform the clergy and uproot heathenism among the people. He resigned his see, and worked among the free Frisians north of the Scheldt and the Basques of the Pyrenees. Not more untiring or devoted, but far more successful, was Eligius. He was a favored child of fortune. Of high birth, Roman-Aquitanian descent, gracious manners, and popular address, his skill as a goldsmith gave him access to the courts of kings; while his attractive bearing and eloquence and knowledge of men and women won for him the hearts of the people. He enjoyed the friendship of Chlotaire II and Dagobert. His large fortune, won by labor at his art, he gave to the founding of monasteries, and the adornment of churches and burial-places of saints. He was appointed bishop of Ver-mandois, and fixed his residence at Noyon, afterwards famous as the birthplace of John Calvin. Here he wrought zealously in preaching, disciplining the halfheathen Franks, and doing successful missionary work among the Frisians until his death, in 658.

The first of the Anglo-Saxons to visit these tribes was the abbot and bishop, Wilfrid of York, who found a favorable reception with the Fris- _wmibrord ian king, Aldgild, in 677. This king’s successor, Radbod, 679-719, opposed, first, the Franks, and afterward, the Christian mission-work. The evangelist of the Frisians was Willibrord, a scholar of Wilfrid’s, educated at Ripon, near York. Wlien he was twenty years of age, he was sent to Ireland to complete his training. There he studied twelve years.

72 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

In 690, with twelve companions, he was sent to Friesland. Being unsuccessful on account of Radbod’s opposition, he visited, first, the court of Pepin, and then Rome. The arms of Pepin were successful, 696, and Willibrord then went again to Rome, where he was consecrated archbishop of the Frisians, November 22, 696. His mission now had rapid success, but the work met a severe check in the conquest of Radbod, 714-718. Charles Martel defeated Radbod in 718, and the following year he died. In 734 the bishopric of Utrecht was completely established. Willibrord died in 739, after almost a half-century of missionary activity among the Frisians.

The greatest of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, the greatest missionary of the Middle Ages, in many re-winfrid, or spects the ablest and most successful since Boniface, apostolic times, was Winfrid, or Winfrith, known by the Roman name, which he assumed, of Boniface. He was born of a good family, at Credi-ton, near Exeter, about 670, and educated at the monastery of Nutscelle, near Winchester. In 716 he sought to begin his missionary work among the Frisians with Willibrord. On account of Radbod’s victories, his work was unsuccessful, and, after a year’s absence, he returned to England. Encouraged by Bishop Daniel, of Winchester, he went through the Frankish kingdom to Rome, in 718. He came into very cordial relations with Pope Gregory II, and after a study of the Roman ritual and ecclesiastical law, sent by him to the untamed German tribes as a missionary, May 15, 719. On his return, he visited Luitprand, king of the Lombards, and coming over the Brenner Pass, visited Bavaria, and en

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 73

deavored to begin his work in South Thuringia, near Wurzburg. He wished, not only to abolish the remains of heathenism, but to bring the Celtic preachers and clergy into obedience to the canonical rules of Rome. Here he was again unsuccessful, and sought the court of Charles Martel, perhaps for needed help for this work, when he heard of Radbod’s overthrow, and went again to join Willibrord in his work among the heathen Frisians. There he labored about Utrecht three years, 719-722. In this last year lie preached in the neighborhood of the Salm and Saar and in Hesse. In 723 he made his second visit to Rome, and was made regionary bishop of Germany— that is, bishop without a see. He took the oath of submission of a suffragan bishop to the pope. His aim was to carry out Roman principles of ecclesiastical order and direct dependence upon the Roman See, as against Celtic, or even recalcitrant Frankish bishops. After a visit to Charles Martel, and obtaining from him a safe conduct, and with a letter from the pope to the chiefs and people, he began again in Hesse and Thuringia his mission-work, in 724. His missionary apprenticeship of eight years was now complete. Twice he had failed, in Frisia and at Wurzburg. Twice he had visited the Roman court, and twice that of Charles Martel; more than all, he had had three years of missionary training in the field under the veteran and successful Willibrord. He was now well past fifty years of age; just at the threshold of his life-work. If he had died then, men would have pronounced his life a failure; he had done nothing but prepare for his work. But what a preparation that was—how broad and solid its foundations! How dif

74 Foundation of Medieval Church.

ferent from that of Columban, and how different in its results!

Boniface, in the maturity of his powers, had come to know himself, his time, and his work. He had been disciplined by failure, and by tedious, but indispensable, practical training. He not only knew the people, but he was also well acquainted with the two strongest powers in the world, the Frankish monarchy and the Roman See. His work had been thoroughly studied, and his plan of action determined. He believed the support of the Frankish prince, Charles Martel, necessary to its accomplishment. He wrote later to his old friend, Bishop Daniel, of Winchester: “Without the aid of the prince of the Franks, I should be unable to rule the people and the presbyters of the Church, or to defend the clergy, the monks, or the handmaids of God; nor could I prevail without his command or fear to prohibit pagan worship or sacrifice to idols in Germany.^,, He was an Englishman— that is to say, he loved order, and shared in the political instincts of his race. With the clear judgment of an experienced statesman, he came to the settled conviction that only the authority of the Papal See could establish a sound and stable Church organization among the Teutonic tribes. Christianity to him signified peace, established order, and civilization, and not tribal anarchy. No one who knows the German race and its history will deny that Boniface brought to it the gifts and discipline which most it needed.

To this work, Boniface brought qualities which no training could give. His devotion never failed him, and brought him to a martyr’s death; his courage never hesitated to face danger or opposition; his

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 75

determined will wrought to a fixed aim, and made success and failure alike bend to its realization. He had the qualities of a great teacher and administrator. He could attract and persuade men. Joy- character fully the young Strum, the scion of a noble ^{of Boniface}* Bavarian house, took leave of his weeping parents, in order to follow him on his pilgrimage; while the reading of a single letter was sufficient to fasten forever to him the young Gregory, the grandchild of the Abbess Adula, of Pfalzel, near Treves. Like Charlemagne, he had a genius for details, while bringing his largest plans and operations into the unity of a symmetrical whole; and he knew when and how to press for their realization, or to withdraw for the time, or wholly alter his plans, with a patience and persistence all his own.

With these qualities and this training, Boniface began his work in Hesse. At Geismar, near Fritzlar, was an immense oak, long venerated by _Boniface._s the pagan population as Thor’s oak. He Work in determined, with the assistance of those ^Germany* faithful to him, to cut it down. When he began, a great crowd of pagans were present, who cursed among themselves the enemy of their gods; but when, aided by a breeze, the mighty tree fell, it broke into four pieces the whole length of the trunk. The former cursing pagans, now believing the Christ whom Boniface preached victorious, blessed the Lord; while he made from the oak an oratory or place of prayer, which he dedicated to St. Peter. For the next fourteen years he wrought steadily at the task of converting the German peoples of Hesse and Thuringia, and establishing among them Christianity, with Christian

76 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

order, manners, and discipline. He founded monasteries near Erfurt, at Bischofsheim, and at Fritzlar. Gregory II died in 731. The favor which he showed Boniface was enhanced by his successor, Gregory III, who sent him the pallium of an archbishop, with authority to consecrate bishops to care for the increasing crowds of converts.

In 738, Boniface made his third visit to Rome. Pope Gregory required the bishops in Switzerland and Bavaria to hold Synods, over which Boniface should preside, and the clergy of Thuringia and Hesse to be obedient to the bishops whom Boniface should appoint. In October, 739, he wrote to Boniface, congratulating him on having won 100,000 Germans to the Christian faith, and praising him for instituting the four Bavarian dioceses at Salzburg, Regensburg, Passau, and Freising. In Hesse and Thuringia three bishoprics were founded in 741, at Erfurth, Buraburg, and Wurzburg, and a year or so later another at Eich-stadt, with his nephew, Willibald, as its first occupant.

A new field was now opened for the activity of Boniface. He was, through the instrumentality of Boniface’s the national Synods, to bring in order and ^0rgofⁿthe^{i0n con}^^rm Christianity in the German and German Frankish Churches. After eighteen years church. ₀f preaching and founding, he was now to display the qualities of a great Church ruler. His first Synod was held in April, 742. Boniface presided, not only as archbishop, but as papal delegate, and specially protected and favored by Carloman. The Synod of Lestines was held in 743. In the same year, Boniface consecrated archbishops of Reims, Rouen, and Sens. The first Synod of Neustria was held at

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 77

Soissons, in 744, and a general Frankish Synod in 745. At this Synod, Bishop Gewilip, of Mainz, was deposed. The last Frankish Synod was held in 747. In these five years, Boniface accomplished an immense work in bringing in order and discipline, and, it must be added, obedience to Rome, among the Churches of the two kingdoms. The canons show the scope and value of the work. He aimed at three things: The discipline of the clergy; the abolition of heathen practices and superstitions, with the bringing in of Christian morals, especially as regards marriage and the observance of Sunday; and securing strict obedience to the canons and usages of the Roman See.

Boniface did not always carry through his plans, and met with the determined opposition which always falls to the lot of the conscientious Church administrator. His metropolitan constitution of Gaul, with its three archbishoprics, failed. The princes, Pepin and Carloman, did not wish to lose their hold on ecclesiastical affairs. Boniface desired his archiepiscopal seat to be at Cologne; the pope approved of the plan, and issued the necessary charter. The way in which this purpose was thwarted throws a curious light upon the manners of the time. Gewilip was bishop of Mainz. His father, Gerold, was his predecessor in the see. In the Frankish fashion, he had taken part in Carloman’s army in war against the Saxons in 743, and had been slain in battle. His son, Gewilip, was then a layman, and an official at the Frankish court. Carloman appointed him to his father’s see, and had him consecrated. In the next year, Carloman led a new campaign against the Saxons, and Bishop Gewilip was in his train. He discovered who had slain

78 Foundation of Medieval Church.

his father, and invited him to a secret meeting by the river Weser. The man, unsuspecting, came, and Ge-wilip assassinated him with his own hand. In the Synod of 745, through the strenuous efforts of Boniface, he was deposed. The archbishop, much against his will, was compelled to take the vacant see, and make Mainz, instead of Cologne, the seat of the archbishopric. To it, as the metropolitan see of Germany, were subject the bishoprics of Wurzburg, Erfurth, Buraburg, and Eichstadt; also Tungern, Cologne, Worms, Spires, and Utrecht, with Augsburg, Strass-burg, Constance, and Coire; later were added Pader-born, Halberstadt, Hildesheim, Verdun, and even Prague and Olmiitz. The papal confirmation of this arrangement, in 745, only reached Boniface in 751.

Iⁿ 745> was founded his favorite monastery of Fulda, in a place beautiful for situation on the banks Founds the ^e little river of the same name, under Monastery of the leadership of his pupil, the Abbot

* Sturm. It was a seat of learned studies, as well as of spiritual culture, as was Bischofsheim for women, under the care of Lioba, a relative of Boniface. At Fulda the great missionary desired to be buried, and in the crypt of the cathedral may now be seen his tomb.

In the midst of all these cares and labors, Boniface never lost his interest in his old home. He kept Boniface and up a constant correspondence, not only England.    ^j_s f_ri_end_Sj b_ut _with the most influ

ential prelates of England. His example and exhortations drew to his side abundant re-enforcements for his work, and brought in better order and discipline in the English Church, as is shown in his corre

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 79

spondence with the archbishop of Canterbury, and the canons of the English Synod of Cloveshoe.

When the last of the Frankish Synods was held, Boniface was already an old man; yet, though with a failing body, he had all the spiritual Death of ardor of his youth. His heart yearned Boniface, over the Frisians, among whom he began his ministry. Age admonished him that he might not return, and he was ready for, and perhaps desired, martyrdom. He made known his wishes in regard to his burial. In 755 he left the scene of more than thirty years of toil and conquest among the Germans. He preached, baptized, and confirmed converts among the Frisians. He appointed a day, the 5th of June, 755, to meet a large number of them for confirmation at a place called Dorkum. When he arrived, instead of a crowd of Christian converts coming to meet him, he was attacked by a band of pagans. Boniface, seeing how useless it would be, forbade defense, and strengthened and confirmed his fellow-sufferers with earnest exhortations from the Scriptures, saying: “Be strong in the Lord, and rest upon the grace of his promises; hope in him, and he will set free your souls.” With him fell fifty-two of his companions that June day. At Fulda they show the copy of the Scriptures he held in his hand, pierced with a spear.

Boniface wrought for Christianity, and he also wrought for Rome, accomplishing more for the Papal See than any pope of the five hundred Boniface’s years between the first and seventh Greg- work, orv. This order and discipline which he prized were needed, but they were external. It was hundreds of years after Boniface before Christianity gained com

So Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

plete victory in the German heart and life. It was eight hundred years before a monk of Erfurth did for the inward religious life of the Germans what Boniface did for their external order and organization. In the long and true view of the centuries, and the development of the purpose of the Divine Providence, we may say that the work of Boniface made necessary that of Martin Luther. The apostle to the Germans and the greatest of religious reformers are the two commanding figures in the history of Germany. They dominated the eras in which they lived, and influence all after centuries. Happy the land whose annals are illustrated by two such heroic souls!

The mission-work among the Frisians after the death of Boniface was carried on by his pupil and Missions in friend, Gregory, who came to Utrecht be-

Frisia. f_{ore t}i-,_e ^ay _Gf Dorkum, and as abbot and presbyter of the school and monastery of St. Martin in that city, became the leader of the Frisian Church until his death, 775-780. He succeeded in evangelizing the country from Lamver Zee to Zuyder Zee. He called Albrecht, an Anglo-Saxon, to act as bishop. After Gregory’s death, his nephew, Alberich, succeeded to the see. Among his contemporaries of Anglo-Saxon origin were Lebruin, who wrought on the Yssel and founded the Church at Deventer, and Willehad, whom Charlemagne made bishop of Bremen. Luidger, who was a Frisian by birth, and had been active in mission-work among them from the Ems to the Weser, became bishop in Munster.

The next great Teutonic race to be won for the Christian faith, the one which offered the most stubborn resistance and became the most devoted in its

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 81

adherence, was the Saxon. The brothers Ewald, from England, are said by Baeda to have suffered martyrdom among them. Luidbert, a companion of Willi-brord’s, worked among them, and, being _Mission,_work driven out, founded a monastery on an among the island in the Rhine at Kaiserwerth. Char- ^Saxons* lemagne, in 772, made his first campaign in Saxony, and destroyed the fortifications of their war-god, and their venerated idol-pillar, Irminsul. At the Diet of Paderborn, in 777, the Saxons swore loyalty to him, and many of them were baptized. Widukind soon after raised the whole country in rebellion. This was punished by the massacre of Verden in 782, and then came the general and desperate revolt of 782-785.

Finally, Widukind received baptism at Attigny, in 785, and remained faithful to his vows. After a new rebellion, Charlemagne transported 10,000 Saxons from the neighborhood of Bremen to Franconia. This practically ended the war. The capitularies of 788 imposed the strictest rule upon these so long rebellious Saxons. Death was made the penalty for the murder of priests, offering of human sacrifices, leagues with the heathen, robbery or destruction of churches, refusal of baptism, persistence in heathenism, burning of corpses, and breaking of fasts, except in cases of necessity. On the other hand, churches had the right of asylum for every crime: he who fled to them had security until the next Diet of Justice, and then was safe in life and limb. Voluntary confession to a priest, with the acceptance of penance, was security against capital punishment. These laws were lightened at Aachen in 797, when, for injury to a priest or church or royal envoy, the death penalty

6

82 Foundation of Medijeval Church.

was replaced by weregild double that required of the Franks. But the culprit must build and equip churches, and pay tithes. The following Saxon bishoprics were established: Munster in 803, with Luidger as bishop; Osnabruck earlier still; Paderborn, 806, with a Saxon as its first bishop; Minden; Bremen, where Willehad was bishop, 787-789, but 805 is reckoned as the date of its founding, with Willerich as bishop; Hildesheim; Halberstadt.

This mission-work was carried on in the southeastern part of Charlemagne’s dominions. Bishop Vergil, of Salzburg, pushed it vigorously, and strengthened it by founding monasteries in Carinthia, Styria, and Eastern Tyrol. Mission-work was carried on among the Avars, from Salzburg and Aqueleia as centers. The Avar chieftain, Tudun, was baptized at Aachen in 795.

The work of Boniface would not have had the scope and value which made it so remarkable but for two men who labored in the English Church; one of these died during the youth of Boniface, and the other soon after he received the pallium of an archbishop. The significance of English Christianity in that age, and of Boniface as its representative, was largely due to the life and labors of Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury, and of Baeda, the monk of Jarrow. The way for their work, as well as for that of Boniface, was prepared by the result of the Conference of Whitby.

Oswy was supreme over England after the death of Penda. He married Eanfled, daughter of Edwin and Ethelburga, and granddaughter of Bertha, queen of Kent, who welcomed Augustine. Since her father’s

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 83

death at the battle of Hatfield, she had lived with her mother at the court of Kent, where she had been brought up in the usages of Rome. To these she was naturally attached, while Oswy clove conference of to those of Iona and his friends Aidan and ^Whitby- ⁶⁶4. Finian, who were now dead. The main difference between the Irish as well as the Welsh Christians and the Roman missionaries, was the shape of the tonsure and the time of keeping Easter, though these involved the question of submitting to the ecclesiastical supremacy of Rome. Yet these differences had practical consequences; for while the king kept Easter, the queen was still observing her Lenten fast. This was a court scandal. Oswy felt that a decision must be reached, and called a Synod at Whitby, in 664. The victory fell to the side of the Roman party, through the political designs of the king, and the influence of Bishop Wilfrid.

The consequences of the Conference at Whitby were momentous for Christendom. The order, discipline, and authority of Rome ruled henceforth in the English Church. Through the Middle Ages, no other Church was more devoted or more closely allied to the Roman See. Hence', as English authority came to be acknowledged in Wales and Ireland, the Roman Church prevailed also. Then, as the English missionaries won the German lands to the faith of Christ, they won them also to the organization and supremacy of Rome.

England ^was thus brought into the circle of the influences and organization which made Latin Christendom one, and was made partaker of the training and civilization which prepared for modern times.

84 Foundation of Medieval Church.

The value of this union was soon apparent. After Whitby, Kings Oswy and Egbert, of Northumberland and Kent, united in requesting Pope Vitalian Theodore of to consecrate Vighard, an Englishman, to

Tarsus. _t]_{ie vacan}t see of Canterbury. He went to Rome for that purpose, and died soon after. Some months later, Vitalian chose and consecrated Theodore, a Greek monk, born at Tarsus, as primate of the English Church, 668. Theodore was renowned for his piety and learning, and, at his consecration, was sixty-six years of age. He organized the English Church into seventeen dioceses, upon lines which remained substantially unchanged throughout the Middle Ages. Two celebrated Synods were held by him, at Hertford in 673, and at Hatfield in 680. By 687 he had secured universal acceptance of his constitutional provisions for the government of the English Church. He finished twenty-two years of service, and died in 690. Theodore brought the Greek language and learning, as well as Roman order and organization, to the English Church, and from him and his scholars came the influences which gave England the lead in Latin Christendom in all learned studies for the next century.

Baeda, or the venerable Bede, the first of English scholars, theologians, and historians, was the type of those men whose lives of quiet and retire-

Baeda.    .

ment, and the results of whose patient, persistent, and prolonged toil have made illustrious English scholarship and the English Chtych. Baeda was born at Monkwearmouth, in Durham, England, in 673. At the age of seven, he was taken by Benedict Biscop to his monastery at Wearmouth, to be edit-

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 85

cated. Biscop introduced the erection of edifices in stone and the making of glass windows from the Continent, but his greatest service was the collection of large numbers of books from Rome for the libraries of his two monasteries, situated but a few miles apart, of Wearmouth and Jarrow. This alone made such a life as Baeda’s possible. He spent the remainder of his years amidst these books, and in the work of learning, teaching, and writing, in which he delighted. These seven and sixty years seem like one long, unbroken summer’s day. Baeda was ordained deacon at nineteen and priest at thirty; he refused the election of abbot of his monastery and the invitation of the pope to visit Rome. In the tranquillity of these years of steady application, he mastered all the learning of his time. His chief study was the Holy Scriptures, and upon them he composed twenty-five separate treatises, mostly in the form of commentaries or comments, drawn mainly from the Fathers. He wrote the lives of the abbots of his house, and his “Ecclesiastical History” of the English people; also treatises on the nature of things, what we would call mathematics and natural science,—in all forty-five separate works. He knew Greek and Hebrew, the Latin poets, and the Church Fathers. He quotes Plato and Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, and Lucretius, and, of course, Virgil. He had as large an acquaintance as was possible at the time with astronomy, chronology, arithmetic, medicine, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and music. The fame of his learning and his skill in teaching filled his monastery at Jarrow, which at one time had six hundred monks.

The immortal work of Baeda is his history, ex-

86 Foundation of Medieval Church.

tending from 597 to 731. His painstaking and indefatigable research is remarkable, and still more is the Baeda’s simplicity, force, and beauty with which History. j_{ie te}u_{s t}i_{ie s}t_Qry. Amid the varied learning of his tranquil life, he, like the noble type of scholar which he was, loved his native speech and his native land.

The last scene of his life was as touching and pathetic as anything which he paints. “A few days Death before Ascensiontide in 735, his sickness of Baeda. g_rew upon him, but he spent the whole day in teaching, only saying, cheerfully, to his scholars: ‘Learn with what speed you may; I know not how long I may last.’ The dawn broke on another sleepless night, and again the old man called his scholars round him, and bade them write. ‘There is still a chapter wanting/ said the scribe, as the morning drew on, ‘and it is hard for thee to question thyself any longer.’ Tt is easily done/ said Baeda; ‘take thy pen and write quickly.’ Amid tears and farewells the day wore on to eventide. ‘There is yet one sentence unwritten, dear master/ said the bov. ‘Write it quickly/ bade the dying man. Tt is finished now/ said the little scribe at last. ‘You speak the truth,’ said the master; ‘all is finished now.’ Placed upon the pavement, his head supported in his scholar’s arms, his fac£ turned toward the spot where he was wont to pray, Baeda chanted the solemn ‘Glory to God.’ As his voice reached the close of his song he passed away.”

The fame of English scholarship, which had begun with Baeda, reached its height in Alcuin. Like him, he was born north of the Humber, and in 735,

Conversion of Teutonic Nations. 87

the year of Baeda’s death. He was of a noble family, and educated at York under its archbishop, Egbert, who had been a pupil of Baeda. He was ordained deacon in 767, and had before this visited the Frankish lands and Rome. He met Charlemagne in 767, and again in 780 and 781. He was a teacher and organizer, the friend and admirer of the great emperor, and the most learned man of his time. The quality of his mind is shown in his theological works, especially his writings in the adop-tionist and image controversies. His letters are invaluable records of his time. From Alcuin came the taste for learning at the court of Charlemagne, and whatever influence toward learned studies which remained in France in the next age, and until the founding of the universities.

Chapter VI.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH: HISTORY OF THE PAPAL SEE.

The extravagant claims of popes, like Pelagius I, to universal obedience under penalty of punishment by the civil power, and of Leo I to universal appellate jurisdiction, found very little acknowledgment during this period. The twenty-eighth canon of Chalcedon, according equal rank to the patriarch of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome, was affirmed by the second Council of Nicsea. The canons of the Quin-sext Council, 692, emphasize the difference in discipline between the Churches of Rome and the East. The loss of the great patriarchates of Alexandria and Jerusalem, with the larger part of that of Antioch, did not make the patriarchs or emperors of Constantinople any more submissive to the Roman See. If the Monothelite controversy injured the respect of the patriarch of Constantinople, it did not enhance that of the See of Rome, as both Sergius and Hono-rius alike came under the same condemnation and anathema of the sixth Ecumenical Council. Spain and North Africa were lost to the Roman Church through the Saracen conquests, 680-720. The loss of Lower Italy and the Illyrian province in the Balkan peninsula to the See of Constantinople through the image controversy, 732, was even more significant. It made the rule of the patriarch of Constantinople conterminous with that of the Greek language and 88

The Constitution of the Church. 89

empire. There was no recovery of this real loss of power and influence until the pontificates of Gregory II and Stephen II. The one received the homage and obedience of the Germanic converts of Boniface, whose ecclesiastical constitution was to prevail over all Western Europe; and the other, who received from Pepin le Bref authority over the Greek cities taken by the Lombards, and by the Franks given to the pope, which marks the beginning of his temporal power.

The popes of the first half of the seventh century were not significant in character or work. The average length of their pontificate was about five years. The papal elections were confirmed by the Greek emperors, as the popes were subjects of the empire. The pontificates of Honorius, 625-638, and _{Popes of} Martin, 649-655, will demand attention in Seventh the account of the Monothelite controversy; ^Centur^* of the remaining popes, history knows only Boniface V, 619-652, as corresponding with and sending gifts to Edwin and Ethelburga, king and queen of Northumberland; John IV, 640-642, as condemning the Ecthesis of the Emperor Heraclius; and Theodore, 642-649, a Greek, of Jerusalem, as skillfully pursuing a policy of opposition to the Monothelite views of the emperor.

Ten popes occupied the Papal See for the remainder of the century, and four more before we meet a significant name, that of Gregory II. Greek influence is seen in the fact that three of these popes were Syrians, three Greeks, and two others educated in Sicily. Indeed, the East and Italy, under the sway of the Eastern Empire, seem to have furnished the

90 Foundation of Medieval Church.

popes from 600 to 715. Eugenius I, 654-657, resisted the Monothelite heresy, and Agatho, 678-681, made all possible preparations to secure a decision against it from the sixth Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 680. Vitalian, 657-672, chose Theodore, of Tarsus, as archbishop of Canterbury, while Sergius, 687-701, consecrated Willibrord as archbishop of the Frisians. Constantius, 701-715, visited Constantinople after the return of Justinian II, and was on familiar terms with that furious tyrant. Justinian confirmed his authority at Rome, while the pope fully acknowledged the imperial power in the Roman duchy. The emperor did not succeed in securing the acknowledgment of the canons of the Quinsext Council of 692, except so far as they did not contradict the decrees of the apostolic chair.

With Gregory II, a born Roman, opens a new era for the Papal See. The average length of the Popes of ^reigⁿ °f the ten popes who ruled from the Eighth Rome for the remainder of the eighth Century,    \_{s m0}re than twice that of those of

the preceding century. These men were Romans. The alliance with Boniface and the Germanic races, and with Pepin and the Caroling princes, changed the policy and the position of the popes in relation to European politics and to the Church at large. This change in the center of gravity of papal power was marked and abiding. From the days of Gregory I to the Italian campaign of Pepin, the papal policy was to play off the Lombards and the Greek emperors against each other, so as to secure their own freedom of action and increase of authority. The treatment of Martin I, 649-655, showed what the popes had to

The Constitution of the Church. 91

expect if the imperial power had been stronger, or the imperial residence nearer. On the other hand, the greed and treachery of the Lombards were well known, and the last thing the popes desired was to be left helpless in their hands. When, in 727, Pope Gregory could have overthrown the imperial power in Italy, he preferred to support it, and the conquest of Ravenna by the Lombards was delayed for twenty years. But finally Ravenna fell, and the Lombards seemed about to become masters of Italy. Pope Stephen II called upon the Greek emperor in vain. The dread of the popes for a thousand years, from Zachary to Pius IX, that Italy should become a united nation, seemed to be about to be realized. Pope Stephen then inaugurated the traditional policy of the Papal See, the policy relied upon by Leo XIII, of calling to his aid the rulers of the Frankish nation. The missionary conquests of Boniface enlarged at once the rule of these kings and the authority of the popes. However little respect there might be for the papal office at Constantinople, or however little heed the Lombards might give to the papal threats, the work of Boniface tended largely to augment the power, increase the respect, and enhance the authority of the pope of Rome in the Frankish Empire and England, while his temporal authority in Italy, under the protection of the Western emperor, made valueless the friendship of the emperor of the East. The Eastern patriarchates were lost to the Saracens, leaving Rome and Constantinople confronting each other, and each the spiritual head of a separate empire. With the claims of Rome, which the conversion of the Teutonic nations did not tend to modify, the schism be

92 Foundation of Medieval Church.

tween the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches became only a question of time. The Church of Rome, the Church of Western Christendom, became predominantly Teutonic in character, as it drew its support and exercised its authority almost altogether over the Teutonic nations. The Church of the Middle Ages is no longer Catholic, it is ruled from Rome; but it is the Church of Teutonic Christendom.

Gregory II, 715-731, is the greatest pope of these centuries. His letters to Boniface and Charles Martel reveal the man. His statesmanlike views made him a worthy successor of Gregory the Great. He aided Boniface to the full extent of his power, and resisted to the utmost the iconoclastic plans of Leo the Isaurian.

Gregory III, 731-741, carried out assiduously the plans of his predecessor. He was a warm friend of Boniface. He called upon Charles Martel, but in vain, for help against the Lombards. Lower Italy and Illyria were lost to the See of Constantinople during his pontificate.

Zachary, 741-752, made peace between the Greeks and Lombards, and authorized Pepin le Bref to take the crown hitherto worn by the descendants of Clovis, with the words, “It seems better and more useful that he should be called king who has all royal administrative power, than he who wrongfully is called king.”

Stephen II, 752-757, went to France, crowned Pepin and his sons, and secured their aid against the Lombards. Stephen and his brother Paul, 757-767, were unceasing in calling upon Pepin for help. The impression produced by the papal correspondence of

The Constitution of the Church. 93

this period is that of utter dependence upon the Frankish princes.

Hadrian, 772-795, ruled twenty-two years. He was the warm friend of Charlemagne. Eginhard tells us the king wept when he heard of his death, though he had been forced to reject his extravagant demands in favor of the papacy.

The pontificate of Leo III, 795-816, was almost as long. A party, led by the relatives of Hadrian, accused him of crimes, and shamefully ill-treated him. He fled to Charlemagne for protection and vindication. The king of the Franks sent his officers to Rome to investigate the charges. They were there a year before they reported to Charlemagne in person. The pope was then allowed to affirm his innocence by oath. Leo also took an oath of fealty to Charlemagne. He crowned him emperor, Eginhard says, against his will, December 25, 800.

Few pages in history are read with more interest, are more obscure, or have been the object of more partisan misrepresentation, than the origin Donation of of the temporal power of the pope of"^;Constantine* Rome. The facts seem to be as follows: A legend was fabricated, relating that the Emperor Constantine the Great had been a leper, and was miraculously healed. Its origin was in Rome, in the latter half of the fifth century. The occasion of it seems to have been to combat the twenty-eighth canon of the Council of Chalcedon (451), making Constantinople equal in rank with Rome; so, to exalt the See of Rome to a supremacy over all the Churches of the world by a lying legend of Constantine’s conversion and cure through the pope at Rome. The legend of the

94 Foundation of Medieval Church.

acts of Sylvester was pronounced of unknown authorship in the decrees of Pope Gelasius after 495. The legend received additions, and about the middle of the eighth century came out in the form in which we know it. In this new form it professes to be from Constantine himself. In the introduction, he ascribes his conversion and healing to Pope Sylvester, whose person and office he exalts. Then follows a profession of faith in accordance with the creed of the Church. He then recounts the fact of his leprosy, and that he was about to slaughter a large number of young children, with whose blood he should fill a font in the capital, and, in accordance with the counsel of heathen priests, bathe therein to heal his disease. In his sleep, two men came to him, who warned him against such cruelty and shedding of innocent blood, and told him of Pope Sylvester hiding in a cave in Mount Soracte, fleeing his heathen persecutors; he would show him what to do and heal him of his leprosy, whereupon he should restore the Church and renounce his idolatry. Having told his dream to the pope, he was told that the visitants were St. Peter and St. Paul, and sending his deacon to bring their images, the emperor recognized them as those who had appeared to him in his dream, and submitted himself to the spiritual counsel of Sylvester. After a period of penitence and fasting, he renounced the devil and his works, and was baptized with a trine immersion, when immediately his leprosy was cleansed. For this he grants gifts to the pope and Church of Rome. The pope is exalted above the imperial power and any earthly throne, the Church of Rome is made the head of all the Churches of the

The Constiuttion of the Church. 95

earth. He gives to Sylvester the Lateran palace, the city of Rome, and all the provinces of Italy and the western regions, leaving the places and cities to the power and dominion of Pope Sylvester and his successors. Then follows a lengthened description of the insignia, ornaments, and appointed dress of kingly rule, granted to the pope and to the Roman clergy. He further states that he held the bridle and acted as esquire to the pope through reverence to the blessed Peter, and that the same reverence should be shown to his successors in imitation of his example. And, finally, he removes the seat of his empire from Rome to Constantinople, because where the Lord of Heaven has placed the chief priest and the head of the Christian religion, it is not right that the emperor should have power.

All that concerns the gifts of the emperor was forged about 750, probably by Paul I, brother of Stephen II, then a deacon. It was sent to Pepin when Pope Stephen was negotiating for his flight from Rome to the Frankish court and his reception there. A striking proof of this is found in the fact, recorded by the chronicler, that Pepin met the pope almost three miles distant; and, descending from his horse, with great humility he prostrated himself to the earth, with his wife and sons and his nobles, venerating the most holy pope. Then performing for him the office of an esquire, he led him to a place near his own throne. Where is anything like this prescribed? Nowhere, but in the last forged portion of this Donation of Constantine.

Pope Hadrian I shows, in his letter of 778 to Charlemagne, that this document was laid before him

96 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

in 754. Charlemagne's opinion of it is shown in the Caroline Books sent to Pope Hadrian, in 794, in which, with Alcuin’s help, a thorough and complete exposure was made, not only of the forgery of the later portion, but of the falsity of the whole Sylvester legend. The pope, in his reply, did not venture to defend this most impudent and shameless fraud. A curious comment on papal policy is found in the fact that the great popes, like Leo IX and Innocent III, and the papal advocates, never ceased to quote from the forged Donation of Constantine all through the Middle Ages, and its character was not finally exposed until Laurentius Valla undertook the task about 1440. On the other hand, the Caroline Books, partly no doubt on account of their opposition to the worship of images, as well as this exposure of the forged Donation, disappeared from sight. Only one manuscript of them was known; this was printed by an anonymous publisher in 1549, and the manuscript is in Paris. In 1759, the Abbot Froben Forster, of Regensburg, wrote to the Vatican for a copy which he heard was there; but was informed that it could not be found, and so gave up the idea of publishing them in his magnificent edition of Alcuin’s works. In i860 a learned Catholic professor in Bonn tried to throw doubt on the genuineness of the only Paris manuscript, when, in 1866, Professor Reifferschmied found the missing manuscript of the Caroline Books in the library of the Vatican.

While this was the origin of the forged Donation of Constantine, it is still in dispute just what Pepin, in 756, and Charlemagne afterward, gave the pope. A reference to some document, given by Pepin to

The Constitution of the Church. 97

Stephen, is made three times by Pope Stephen, in letters dated from 754-756. What the contents of these documents were is left to conjecture, except that it promised aid to the Roman Church, and to secure to her the restitution of her rights. Nothing further or more definite is found until the narrative of the life of Hadrian I, in the Liber Pontificalis, in the next century. This gift of Pepin, 754, is said to have been confirmed by Charlemagne in 774, and is there thus defined: “From Luna (present Sarzana), with the island of Corsica, then in Suriano, then in Monte Bar-done—that is, in Verceto—then in Parma, then in Regio, and afterwards Mantua and Monte Cilicis, together with the whole exarchate of Ravenna, as it was formerly, and the province of Venetia and Istria; and, besides, the whole duchy of Spoleto and Beneventum.” No such Donation, which includes almost the whole of Italy, is credible. It is in plain contradiction to the correspondence of the popes, which has come down to us, and to the policy of Charlemagne. Papal historians claim a gift from Pepin in 754, a confirmation and enlargement of it by Charlemagne in 774; again in 780 or 781, and a third grant in 787. There are no such documents, or descriptions of such documents of contemporary origin, in existence. This, with a court as careful as the court of Rome of all documents which could support its claims, is most significant. Title deeds and charters, and copies of them, were, of all things, preserved by the Church with jealous care; these, the most important in her archives, would be especially guarded. The conclusion is irresistible, the description in the “Life of Hadrian” is false, and, so far as ascribed to Pepin or

7

98 Foundation of Medieval Church.

Charlemagne, is a forgery. And, too, whatever documents were given by Pepin or Charlemagne were so limited in scope and so unimportant in value, if not flagrantly contradictory to the papal pretensions, that they were never produced, and were not preserved, as they injured more than helped the claims of Rome. For all purposes of reference, the Donation of Constantine, or the version enlarged and made more definite by the author of the “Life of Hadrian,” and ascribed to Pepin and Charlemagne, was much more valuable.

In fact, the course of events brought about the changes above indicated. Stephen II met Pepin at Pontignon, January, 754; afterward he went with him to Paris, and there crowned Pepin and his two sons; later, in an assembly of Carisiacum, a royal castle near Noyon, aid was promised Stephen. In this year, Pepin came in force to Italy, and brought the Lombard king, Aistulph, to his terms, though to enforce them he had to make another campaign. In 768, after his father’s death, Charlemagne married the daughter of the Lombard king, much to the consternation of the pope, but divorced her a year later. Charlemagne led the third Frankish campaign against the Lombards in 774, during the progress of which he visited Rome for the first time, at Easter. He was in Rome again in 781, 787, and 800. He took Desiderius, king of the Lombards, prisoner, and sent him to a monastery, and proclaimed himself king of the Franks and Lombards in 776. In 787 he brought to submission the duke of Beneventum.

From this account, it will be seen that Pepin needed the support of the papal authority to secure

The Constitution of the Church. 99

the Frankish crown. The pope needed his aid against the Lombards. Neither of them had any great love for the Greek Empire. Pepin ran little risk, and the pope won large gains if the territory taken by the Lombards from the Greeks were made over to the pope by the Franks. The Greek emperor could not enforce his claims; the only title of the Lombards was force of arms; this they lost when defeated by the Franks. Hence, there was given to the pope, with no strained pretensions and no extravagant and indefinite boundaries, as the result of these political relations, the territory which formed the beginning of the Papal States. This included the duchy of Rome, on both sides of the Tiber, and the exarchate of Ravenna. Charlemagne had no idea of setting up in Italy a papal empire, but desired to confirm to the pope a territory which should make him independent of his surrounding neighbors, and able to be the faithful ally of the imperial house, and yet in which his supremacy as emperor and patrician of Rome should be fully acknowledged. This was proved by the homage and oath Pope Leo took to him in 796, when he acknowledged the superiority of the royal patricians, instead of that of the Gree'k emperor.

The influence of this spurious Donation of Constantine, is seen from the fact that from a clause in it conferring a supposed jurisdiction over “the.islands,” Pope Hadrian II gave Ireland to Henry II of England, and Pope Alexander VI divided the Western Continent between Spain and Portugal.

On Christmas, 800, Charlemagne attended mass at St. Peter’s with a great retinue, and sat opposite the altar. The pope advanced and placed a gold

ioo Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

crown upon his head, while the people cried out, “Charles, most pious Augustus, crowned of God; to the great and peaceful emperor, life and victory!” Coronation Then was he hailed by all as emperor of of the Romans. Charlemagne said that he Charlemagne. ^ k_now    pope’s intention, or

he would not have been present. Some have thought he desired to unite in himself the Eastern and Western Empires, as he claimed that the Empress Irene, as a woman, was unfit to rule, and afterward sought to marry her. Others, that he desired to avoid any seeming assent to such forged claims as had been presented to his father at his coronation. The more probable view is, that all had been arranged between Charlemagne and the pope; that he expected to be crowned, but intended to crown himself, as Napoleon did in 1804. As, however, he came to the altar at the conclusion of the reading of the Gospel in the service, the pope anticipated him, and himself placed the crown upon the emperor’s head. He adored the emperor in the Byzantine fashion, and afterward anointed Charles and his sons—the father to the empire, and the sons as his heirs. Whatever may be the fact, this coronation marks the political separation of Eastern from Western Christendom, and the beginning of the independent life of Western Europe.

The position of metropolitan in the new constitution of Teutonic Christendom was very different from The that in the ancient Church. There the Metropolitan. _WOrk of the office was mainly disciplinary; the deciding of appeals in Church Synods and giving consent to the choice of a bishop. This old constitution perished in Spain in the time of the Arab con

The Constitution of the Church, ioi

quest, and in France in the general dissolution of discipline. Boniface laid down the lines of the system, which Charlemagne completed. The metropolitan was the keystone of the arch of ecclesiastical order and discipline, which he would make take the place of the prevailing dissoluteness and anarchy. Through the Synods of the metropolitan, the highest criminal in Church or State might be reached, and a general prevalence given to ecclesiastical law and discipline. Thus, the metropolitan could see that the bishops were men of good character and repute, that they were attentive to their work, and that the counts of the emperor paid some regard to Christian morals and the rights of the Church. The sole appeal from a metropolitan Synod for clergyman or layman, bishop or count, was directly to the emperor. In Boniface’s plan, the metropolitans were to be as strictly subject to the pope as the bishops to the metropolitan. But the development was far otherwise. The archbishop was a high functionary of the court, the first noble in the land, and next in precedence to the king as the head of the clergy. He was chosen by the king. Much of his business was the king’s business. Often he was the first minister of state, the confidential adviser of the sovereign, and charged with the most difficult diplomatic negotiations. The frequent consequence was, that the archbishop, overcharged with business of state, became secularized, and regarded himself mainly as an officer of state, and of the royal or imperial court. The bishops were limited in their authority by him, and often felt his abuse of power. This made the way for appeals from his decisions to the Roman See. The legates of the pope made their

io2 Foundation of Medieval Church.

way to his court and to his Synods. His being brought to account was often a gain for both good morals and religion.

If the metropolitan was the head of the ecclesiastical system, the diocesan bishops were the motive The Diocesan power of the whole organization. The Bishop. bishop in the ancient Church first had charge of a single society or Church, then of the Churches of a community, and finally and chiefly of a city. The Churches of the city were under his immediate jurisdiction, and the Churches of the surrounding country were affiliated with them. After the Teutonic conquest a totally different constitution was needed. Boniface introduced this on the Continent, as Theodore of Tarsus did in England. The first step in this organization was the subordination of the clergy of a definite district to the bishop of its chief city; then, the co-ordination of the bishops of a province in a corporation, with the metropolitan at their head. The result was, not only every citv, but every little group or village was under a bishop, as the bishop exercised jurisdiction over the whole district, of which the city was the center. The presbyters who belonged to this district, or diocese, had to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the bishop, and take an oath of obedience to him. In this system of government, the duty of preaching came to belong particularly to the bishop, so that his visitation was a kind of missionary journey. Confirmation came to be the especial ordinance of the bishop, and afterwards was made a sacrament. His especial function was discipline. He exercised this, both as an official of the Church and of the State. He was ordinarily

The Constitution of the Church. 103

intrusted in his visitation with the investigation of cases of murder, adultery, etc., “which were against the law of God, and which Christian men must avoid.” Before all else, he was to root out the remains of heathenism. He was to see to the maintenance of a Christian society and a Christian State. In his office, as in that of archbishop, were met the duties which he owed both to the Church and to the State. He had his place, not only at the Church Synods, but at the king’s council, and ranked before the highest nobility of his diocese.

The churches in the country were generally built by the owners of the estates on which they were situated. They had complete control over

,1    *    1 1 11    1    The Parish.

them; they could sell or mortgage them or tear them down. They appointed the clergymen, and dismissed them at their pleasure, and paid them what they pleased. Many of these churches were not consecrated. Hence, Charlemagne wrote to his vassals and officials: “Let it be said to you that it has come to our ears, how some of you in great presumption are disobedient to your bishops and the authority of the laws and canons; I mean that you, with incredible audacity, 'refuse to present presbyters to their bishops ( to take oath as one of the diocesan clergy); yet more, that you do not shrink from taking away clergymen from other churches, and you dare to appoint them in yours without consultation with the bishop. . . . We command and desire herewith, that none of our vassals, whoever he may be, from the least to the greatest, venture in things which are God’s to disobey his bishop. If any man does contrary to this, let him know that without doubt he,

io4 Foundation of Medieval Church.

unless he speedily alter his course, must give account therefor in our presence.” In a district, only a single church would be consecrated and possess the right to have baptism administered in it. These were called Baptismal Churches and Peoples’ Churches. Such churches must be served by a presbyter, not a deacon or lower cleric, who was called an archpresbyter or rural dean; they had a right to the tithes of the district in which the church was situated. This arrangement led gradually to the recognition of the right of every consecrated and endowed church to have the tithes from the lands about it. So Charlemagne ordained, in 803, for Lombardy: “Certain villages must belong to a certain Church in respect to mass, baptism, and preaching, and they must pay their tithes to the Church.” This development led to the limitation of the right of patrons in the churches which they owned. He who nominated a clergyman to a church, must present him to the bishop; later, these churches must have an assured income and glebe, and they were then consecrated, while the right of dismissal was limited.

The Church dues were at first all paid to the bishop; but the great Church Councils of Worms

and Paris, in 829, gave to the bishop one-

Tithes.    ’    . _P . .    ^y .

quarter, not one-third, of the income from the parish Churches. In 844, it was determined that he should receive at his visitation a bushel of grain, a flask of wine, or a pig, or not more in value than six denars. Tithes were not known in the first seven centuries; they were a consequence of the Church reformation of Charlemagne. In origin, they spring from the Church and the State. They were first paid

The Constitution of the Church. 105

as rent for the use of church land. Later, they were identified with Levitical tithes. Alcuin advised Charlemagne to deal leniently with the Saxons in regard to tithes, saying that the Franks, who were born in the Christian faith, only paid them in full on actual compulsion. The turning-point in regard to tithes was the Council of Valence, 855, where tithes were considered as ground-rent, and enjoined as of universal obligation of payment upon all Christians. The oldest civil ordinance in regard to tithes was that of Charlemagne, in Bavaria, 799. The Council of Aachen, 801, decided that one-third of the tithes should be devoted to the church edifices, one-third to the poor and strangers, and one-third to the clergy. The same division is found in the English laws of King Ethelred. Charlemagne’s Capitulary, 803, for Church affairs in Saxony, ordained that every church should be endowed with a church-yard and 240 acres of land, and a servant and maid for every 120 parishioners. The threefold division of the parish income prevailed; hence, in some sense, there was a Church parochial care of the poor.

The bishops and archbishops were chosen by the king. The bishops appointed or confirmed the selection of the clergy.

Chapter VII.

THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT AND CONTROVERSIES.

The great Creeds of the Church had been settled in the first six hundred years of her history. In 630 arose a controversy which closed the development of Christological doctrine. The Monothelite con-Monotheiite troversy arose through the efforts of Ser-Controversy. gj_{us Q}f Constantinople and the Emperor Heraclius, to find terms on which the moderate Monothelites could unite with the Church and strengthen the empire. This was supposed to be found in the formula concerning the person of Christ, that he was of one substance with the Father, of two natures in one person, and, Sergius would add. one human-divine will or energy. In this conception, the will belongs to the person of our Lord, and not to the nature. Such a union, through the use of this formula of the Monothelites with the Church, was brought about at Alexandria through the patriarch Cyril in 633. Sergius joyfully communicated the news to Pope Hono-rius at Rome, who replied, in a carefully-prepared dogmatic epistle, saying: “Where only one person is, there is only one working, and therefore only one will, whence we confess one will in our Lord Jesus Christ,” and professed to be in full accord with Sergius. In 634, the monk Sophronius became patriarch of Jerusalem, and, in his inaugural letter and confession of faith, came out decidedly for the doctrine of 106

Theological Thought.    107

two wills in Christ, showing that a nature without a will was only passive, and could not be affirmed of either God or man, so that if in Christ were united the two perfect natures, there must have been a Divine and human will united in his person. The human will was that incorrupted by sin and the fall, and hence always in accord with the Divine. We do not know whether Sergius received this letter of Sophronius or not; but Honorius wrote him a second letter, in which he says: “It is wholly vain to ascribe to the Mediator between God and man one or two energies/’ and that he has admonished Sophronius, who had sent his letter to him, that he should not persist in the expression, “two energies.” The effect of this assent of Honorius to the doctrinal position of Sergius was to induce the Emperor Heraclius to yield to the persuasions of the patriarch, and issue, in 638, the Ec-thesis. In this document, the use of one energy or two energies is forbidden, as alike dangerous; “the latter expression leads to the reception of two contradictory wills in Christ, while Christ has only one will, the human nature moving itself only according to the God-Logos which it has received.”

Pope Honorius died in'October, 638, and Sergius in December of the same year. In 641, John IV declared against Monothelitism as heresy, and his successor, Theodore, came out strongly for the same opinion. Sophronius being dead, the Abbot Maximus was the ablest theologian on their side; he had been formerly private secretary to the Emperor Heraclius. Heraclius died in 641; his grandson issued the Type in 648. It simply forbade any controversy whether one should believe in one or two energies,

io8 Foundation of Medieval Church.

or in one or two wills, under heavy penalties. Pope Martin, who had been papal secretary, or representative at Constantinople, thought the time favorable to isolate the emperor, and draw the whole power of the orthodox to himself. He convoked a Synod of 105 bishops at the Lateran, October, 649. The Synod was very thorough in its dogmatic treatment, but was a conspiracy against Constantinople, and the doctrine of one will and the Type were condemned in the strongest terms. Martin sought to play the part of archbishop of the Orient, sending a circular-letter with the conclusions of the Lateran Synod. The emperor sent the imperial exarch to seize the pope, for he had never confirmed his election. This took place June 15, 653. He was accused of treasonable communications with the Saracens. Having remained a year a prisoner on the island of Naxos, he reached Constantinople, September 17, 654. There he was cruelly and shamefully treated, and banished to Cher-son in March, 655. In September of that year death ended his sufferings.

The doctrine was finally defined at the Council of Constantinople, which met September 10, 680, and continued in session until September 16,

Definition    ,    , . ,    , .

of the 681, about 170 bishops being present.

Doctrine. They issued the following definition: “We

^nonoriuT *^eac^ th^{ere are} two natural energies,

* indivisibly, unchangeably, inseparably, in-confusedly, in our Lord Jesus Christ—namely, the Divine and human energy; as Leo I says: ‘For either (from nature) acts in union with what is peculiar to the other/ ” The Council not only declared the faith, but it anathematized, or cursed as heretics, its op-

Theol ogical ThoUGHT.    109

posers, in the following terms: “With these (Sergius of Constantinople, Cyrus of Alexandria, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter of Constantinople, and Theodore of Pharan) shall be shut out of the holy Catholic Church of God, and anathematized, the former Pope Honorius of Old Rome, because we found in his letters to Sergius that he followed according to all his opinion and confirmed his godless doctrines/’ Here we have an infallible Council, condemning as heretical an infallible pope of Rome when he spoke ex cathedra on a disputed question of doctrine. There is no question that Honorius used heretical language, and was anathematized therefor by a universally acknowledged Ecumenical Council, which defined for the Church the orthodox faith. For Protestants, who receive the action of popes and Councils only so far as they agree with the Holy Scriptures, and for whom these Scriptures are their sole rule for faith and practice, it may be of no great weight; but so far as it affects the question of papal infallibility it is of vital importance. The Church says the Council was right, the infallible pope wrong. The only defense possible is, that Honorius was guilty of unclear thinking, and in intention was not heretical. Granting that this defense is valid, what does it avail a wandering world, and a Church needing Divine guidance, to appeal to an infallible head of Christendom, who, with the best intentions, is as liable to be mistaken as they are? Nay more, Pope Leo II, in confirming the acts of the sixth Ecumenical Council, used the following language: “I received the holy sixth Council, which, through the Divine Providence, was lately held in the royal capital, . . . and in which were condemned Cyril, Ser

no Foundation of Medieval Church.

gius, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter, and also Macarus, with his disciple Stephen, and also Poly-chronius, a new Simon, who confessed and preached one will and operation in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Here we have an infallible pope condemning another, both speaking ex cathedra, and deciding on points of doctrine. Moreover, the popes for some time took an oath, in which they “acknowledged the sixth Ecumenical Council, which laded with eternal anathema the new authors of heretical doctrine, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter of Constantinople, with Honorius, who fostered their evil declarations.” Well might the great and learned Church historian, Dollinger, when asked “to immolate his judgment,” and accept the decrees of the Vatican Council concerning the infallibility of the pope, say that he might as well ask his questioner to declare there never existed such a person as Napoleon Bonaparte. Papal claims can only be maintained by sinning against the truth of history. Macarus, bishop of Antioch, was deposed by the Council for Monothelitism, and a sect of dissenters, called Maronites, arose, with their seats about Mount Lebanon. They still exist, though more than half of them are united with the Church of Rome.

The next doctrinal controversy which disturbed the Church was, as the others, of Eastern origin, and image strongly colored with political aims. Leo Controversy, the Isaurian came to the throne in a time of utter disorganization of the empire after twenty-two years of anarchy. His task was a thorough reformation and invigoration of the State, the army, and civil society. This task he accomplished. One of the obstacles in the way was the superstition and

Theological Thought.

hi

ignorance, which was corrupting the very life of the people. Probably at his accession, Leo was a convinced opponent of image-worship, and his reformatory work assured him that they were responsible for much of the superstition, corruption, and weakness which he set himself to correct. After being on the throne nine years, in 726 he issued his first edict against image-worship. In this, he was supported by Theodore, archbishop of Ephesus, and son of the former emperor Aspimar, or Tiberius II. In this edict he did not command the images to be destroyed, “but only to be placed higher, so that no one might kiss them, and thus bring discredit on that which was otherwise worthy of respect.” He also took down pictures which were abused to superstitious uses and false miracles. In doing this to a venerated picture of the Savior at Constantinople, the women set upon the imperial officer and killed him. Certain it is that the measures against images reformed the army, strengthened the State, and purified the Church, and brought greater moral vigor into society. To understand the standpoint of the opponents of image-worship, some facts have to be taken into consideration. The Jews, from the time of'the Maccabees, generally understood the second commandment as forbidding not only the worship of the likeness of any living thing, but also the making of it. So, of course, believed the Mohammedans in their conflict with idolatry. More than that, many of the early Christian Fathers, such as Tertullian, Clemens of Alexandria, and Origen, adopted this view. All the ancient Fathers held that representations of God, or even of Christ, were unlawful; there was a consensus of opin

ii2 Foundation of Medieval Church.

ion against the worship of images in every sense. The first representations of Christ were entirely symbolical; but later historical and ideal portraitures were blended, and later still came historical portraiture and pictures representing the Old and New Testament history, such as those of which Paulinus of Nola speaks, to instruct the ignorant who could not read.

With the old tendencies to idolatry yet strong, and the superstition practiced of exalting the saints Abuses of ^to P^ositi°ⁿ and worship formerly ac-image- corded to the gods and goddesses, abuses worship. _eyery _crep_t j_n< Serenus, bishop of

Marseilles, cast out the images from the churches, as producing direct idolatry, 590-600. In 456, the Empress Eudocia sent to Pulcheria a picture of the Virgin, purported to be painted by St. Luke. By 544 they told of the picture of Christ at Edessa, that it was sent to King Abgarus by Christ himself. An image of Christ of Divine origin greatly encouraged the imperial army in 590. Gregory of Tours tells of a picture of Christ which shed blood when injured by a Jew. Leontius of Cyprus, 590, said that a flow of blood from images was a frequent occurrence. He also said: “I, worshiping the image of God, do not worship material wood and colors, God forbid; but laying hold of the lifeless representation of Christ, I seem myself to lay hold of and to worship Christ through it.” In a passage read at the second Council of Nicsea, 787, and loudly acclaimed by it, it is declared: “Worshiping the image of Christ is spoken of as worshiping Christ, and not to do so is a deadly sin.” Photius, the later patriarch, says: “He who does not worship the image of Christ, does not wor

Theological ThoUGHT.    113

ship Christ, though he may think he worships him.” Well did the Iconoclasts say that this generation had made gods of the images. In 726, Gregory II wrote to the emperor, in reply to a letter received from him, a “most insolent and unchristian epistle,” in the strongest manner defending the use of images, but not meeting the complaint that such objects were abused to idolatry. In a second edict, 730, all images were ordered to be taken out of the churches.

Leo died in 740. His son, Constantine V, issued the third edict against image-worship in 741. After a revolt of the image-worshipers had been suppressed in 743, the work was pushed with more vigor. In 754 he assembled a Council at Constantinople, of 338 bishops, under the lead of Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus, which sat from the 10th of February to the 8th of August. Its acts are lost, but from

, ,    1    Iconoclastic

what was reported at the second Council council

of Nicaea, we learn that it confessed the ^of_t?°₀p^ⁿ’ faith of the six Ecumenical Councils; declared idolatry to be devilish in its origin, and the combination of Christianity and idolatry to be of the same authorship; that the Eucharist which our Lord instituted is the only permitted representation of him; condemns the sinful art of painting which contradicts the fundamental article of the Christian faith, the Incarnation (no picture or statue can represent the two natures in Christ), and the dead art received from the heathen which would seek to bring to life again the saints who live with God; quotes against them John iv, 24; Deut. v, 8; and Rom. i, 23, 25; and concludes by ordaining that, “if any one dares to make such an image, or to honor it, or set it up in a church or in

8

ii4 Foundation of Medijeval Church.

a private house, or keep it in concealment, a cleric shall be deposed and a monk or layman anathematized, and fall under the imperial laws as contrary to the commandments of God, and an enemy of the dogmas delivered by the Fathers.”

From this Council until 780 there grew up a generation which saw no images in Christian worship. Failure of But the decisions of the Council of 754 iconociasm. _COuld not prevail. They contradicted all sense and desire for artistic development, which, among a people inheriting the traditions of the Greek race, could not be forever repressed. They did not find another channel for, or nourish the devotional spirit which clung to, the worship of images. In prosecuting the overthrow of images, and for political reasons, Constantine V came into direct conflict with monasticism. It was no longer a question of abolishing abuses, it was a question whether the Church should have any independent existence apart from the will of the emperor. The religious spirit of the time came to be on the side of the image-worshipers, and their cause did not lack for martyrs. Finally, a woman, Irene, brought up to worship images, came to the throne of the Byzantine Empire.

The seventh General Council was called by her influence. In 786, its sittings were broken up by the seventh soldiers of the imperial guard, who were Ecumenical on the side of the iconoclastic and suc-^Counci,‘ cessful emperors. In 787, it met again at Nica^a. Three hundred and seventy-five bishops were in 'attendance from the 23d of September to the 24th of October. It decreed that “the venerable and holy images should be set up in the same manner as the

Theological Thought.    i i 5

figure of the precious and life-giving cross; both those which are in colors and tessellated work, and those of other suitable material, in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, on walls and boards, on houses, and by the wayside; the images, to wit, of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, and of the one undefiled Lady, the holy mother of God, and of the honorable angels, and all saints and holy men. For the more frequently they are seen in their pictured resemblance, the more are those who behold them stirred up to the recollection and love of their prototypes, and to render to them (the images) salutation and honorific worship; not ideal true supreme worship, according to our faith, which is due to the Divine nature alone, but that, as the pious custom of the ancients held, an offering of incense and lights should be made in their honor in the same manner as to the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, and to the holy Gospels and other sacred ornaments. For the honor of the picture passes on to the original, and he who worships the image, worships in it the person of him who is therein depicted.”

In the West, the papal support of the image-wor-shipers, as sustaining the rights of the Church against the emperor, did not win the support of the i_mage_ Frankish kings. At the Council of Gen- Worship in tilly, 767, legates from Rome and Con- ^{the West}* stantinople were present under the presidency of King Pepin. The Council decided: “Images of the saints made up (mosaics), or painted for ornament and beauty of churches might be endured, provided that they were not had for worship, veneration, or adoration, which idolaters practice.”

ii6 Foundation of Medieval Church.

The Caroline Books, written under the name and sanction of Charlemagne, but by Alcuin, went into the subject exhaustively against the decrees of the second Council of Nicsea. The great Council of Frankfort, held 794 by Charlemagne, and attended by three hundred bishops, (jeclared that they rejected with contempt and unanimously condemned the adoration and service, which the Synod of the Greeks had declared under anathema, to be to “the images of the saints as to the Divine Trinity.” This rests on a misconception or mistranslation of the acts of the Council of Nicsea; but the whole effort is to refute the Nicsean Council. The image controversy goes over into the next period; but the decisions of the second Nicsean Council prevailed, though without any conciliar decrees the statues have vanished from the Churches of Greek Christendom. The second Council of Nicsea did not compare favorably with the sixth General Council in dignity, ability, or work. The acts make an impression of intellectual deterioration, but the image controversy had not been in vain. Its canons are reforming canons, and mark a decided improvement in the life of the Church.

The Adoptionist Controversy arose in Mohammedan Spain, from the teachings of Elipandus, archbishop _The of Toledo. His chief supporter was Felix, Adoptionist bishop of Urgel, in Charlemagne’s Spanish Controversy. dominions, _anci _a skillful theologian. They held that Christ was the Son of God according to his Divine nature, but not according to his human nature, which he had adopted. They did not mean to deny the unity of the Divine-human person of Christ, but their opponents regarded their doctrines as a revival

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of Nestorianism. Pope Hadrian I pronounced against it. Felix was present at the Synod of Regensburg, 792, and there recanted his erroneous opinions; from thence he went to Rome, where he adjured them in the presence of the pope. Returning to Spain, he fled to Saracen territory, and renewed the controversy. The Synod of Frankfort, 794, again repudiated this doctrine. Alcuin and Paulinus wrote against them. Finally, Felix appeared at the Synod of Aachen in 799, and disputed with Alcuin for six days, when he again professed the orthodox faith. Thenceforth he lived at Lyons, under care of its bishop, until his death. Leidrad, bishop of Lyons, and Abbot Benedict of Anaine, wrought in the excited Church of Southern Gaul and Northern Spain. In a short time they won twenty thousand souls. The heresy soon died out, though Elipandus remained inflexible until his death.

Chapter VIII.

THE CHURCH LIFE.

To most readers this subject seems dry, and even repellent; but if we possess the gift of putting things in their right relation, no section of Church history is more interesting or instructive. Great men, great deeds, and even great institutions, represent only forces in the process of historical development. The moral condition of a people, whether of progress or retrogression, their moral stamina, is the resultant of their action and of the great truths by which they lived and wrought. It is this invisible, but most potent element in the life and character of a people, of which we get a view and can form an estimate through the varied details and developments grouped together under this title. As we believe the acceptance of the truths taught by Jesus Christ and his apostles leads to the truest and highest realization of the possibilities of men and nations, the action of Christianity upon the moral and social life of peoples in different stages of culture and civilization is of the deepest interest. This interest is deepened when we mark the reaction of the environment upon Christian life and teaching itself. For this purpose we can have no better guide during this period than the ecclesiastical and civil legislation, as found in the canons of the Synods and the Capitularies of Charlemagne. We refer especially to the Synods of Boniface, 742-747; the English Synod of Cloveshoe, near Rochester, 747; the Roman Synod, 118

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743, and the Greek Councils of 692 and 787. These cover all Christendom, and throw a strong light upon the seventh and eighth centuries of our era.

All Christian discipline and reform of morals must begin with the clergy. A clergy that is not moral in its life can not teach others; a clergy which _DisCip_Hne does not discipline and reform itself, and of the set noble examples of disinterestedness and ^c,er^y* self-sacrifice, can not help society to acquire these virtues. A vicious clergy is a proof of extreme social demoralization, as was the case before the Reformation, and before the French Revolution. A reform that elevates the nation must act directly upon the clergy, and often springs from among them. One-half of the legislation before us bears upon the condition and reform of the clergy.

It was high time. The men who preached the gospel, and founded Christian institutions in Gaul and among the Franks, were men of pure life Founders of and inspiring example. Of nineteen bish- ^the Church in

10    1 r /-s -I    O    1    Gaul and

ops at the Synod of Orleans, 538, twelve among the of them were canonized by their contem- Franks, poraries. These bishops were generally men of Roman Gaul, and of large wealth. They left their property to the Church and to the poor, and freed their slaves. Thus, Desiderius of Auxerre, 635, freed a thousand slaves, and provided them with land. Their spirit may be discerned from Perpetuus of Tours, who says in his will: “You Christ’s poor, you thirsty, you beggars, you sick, you widows and orphans, you, I say, I make my heirs.^,, After mentioning some legacies, he says: “All I possess, the farms, meadows, pastures, woods, vineyards, gardens, waters, mills,

i2o Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

gold, silver, clothes—all that once was mine, I bequeath to you as my heirs.”

But as time passed on, the Roman and Frankish races began to intermingle, with the consequence that

Demoralization^new g^enerations possessed no longer of the Frank- the virtues of their fathers, but their vices, ish ciergy. _com^j_ne(j those of their enemies. The Merovingian history shows the fearful corruption of the court, and could not fail directly to affect the Church. The kings appointed the bishops; they were often Franks, and not seldom warriors of the royal retinue. Gregory of Tours, at the close of the sixth century, tells of some of the fearful results. Two brothers, Salonius and Sagittarius, who were bishops, put on helmet and breastplate, not only for war, but for plunder. With their fellow-bishop,Victor of Troyes, they attacked castles, abused and ravaged. Bishops had to guard against assassins sent by a fellow-bishop or their archdeacon. Fredegonde found no difficulty in hiring priests or monks to carry out her murderous designs.

From this point the Church had advanced, but its condition, under Charles Martel, when Boniface began his labors, was not edifying. The two metropolitan archbishoprics of Rheims and Treves were given together to a certain Milon, a companion in arms of Charles, who had nothing of a clergyman except the tonsure. His nephew Hugh received the archbishopric of Rouen, the bishoprics of Paris and Bayeux, and two great abbeys. Bishoprics were given as benefices to favorites of Charles, and vacancies were left unfilled, while the lands and villages of the see were divided among the nobility of the diocese.

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“In that unhappy time/’ says the history of the archbishops of Treves, “the goods of the Church were ravaged, the property of the bishops was dispersed, the religious houses were destroyed.” Another author of the time says: “The clergymen were no longer judged by their bishops; the priests and bishops were ordained by the bishops of other provinces. Some barbarians who did not know how to read, and who, with difficulty, abjured Wodan or Forsith for Christ, installed themselves with the women, their soldiers, and their hunting dogs, in the episcopal palaces of the Gallic cities, and believed themselves the most regular bishops in the world, if they only had their light hair cut round on the skull, and put on a chasuble over their iron jacket.” Hincmar of Rheims, in the next century, says: “The Christian religion was almost abolished in the provinces of Gaul and Germany/’

We find the following points aimed at in the legislation of this period: Rome would bind the bishops to herself, and provides that those who re- The New ceived episcopal consecration at Rome Legislation, must report annually, by the 15th of May, in person or by letter. English bishops must travel through their dioceses annually. German priests must not bear arms, and must be subject to their bishops; every strange bishop or priest must be examined before the Synod. What a revelation of the state of society when clergymen are forbidden to bear arms; and yet how many centuries were to elapse before great German prelates would cease to lead their retainers to battle! They were the chief reliance of Frederick Barbarossa.

i22 Foundation of Medieval Church.

English priests were to be examined in knowledge and morals before ordination; they must not be busied with secular affairs, or dwell in the houses of laymen. They must not be drunken or avaricious, or use offensive language. Boniface writes against the drunkenness of the English, saying: “This is specially the vice of the pagans and of our nation. This do neither Franks nor Gauls, neither Lombards, Romans, nor Greeks.” Instances are recorded of priests tarrying at the tavern till midnight, and then going to the altar to say mass when too intoxicated to proceed with the service. In the canons for the Roman clergy we see the spirit of strict discipline and order even in details, and the care taken for decency and dignity in worship. If Rome gained supremacy through these things, it was not without long and painstaking effort. Ordinations must take place in January, April, July, October. No bigamist or stranger could be ordained. Bishops, priests, and deacons must not wear secular clothing, or go out without their cloak. Priests must not let their hair grow. No bishop, priest, or deacon could carry a cane to the altar, or stand before it with covered head. If a priest began a mass, he must finish it.

With the decrees of the Greek clergy, we come to the vices of an old civilization. Not bearing arms Decrees for ^or drunkenness, but simony, is the prevail-the areek ing vice. This giving money for positions Church. -_n Q_lurch _was strenuously denounced by both the Greek Councils. They provide also that no priest shall leave his church without permission of his bishop, and they must wear their own garb, even when on journeys. The ordination of priests takes

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place at thirty years of age, deacons at twenty-five, subdeacons at twenty, and deaconesses at forty; thus there are ten years of training between the grade of subdeacon and priest. Clergymen may not keep a public house, or take interest upon money lent, or take part in a horse-race, or stay at the games after a wedding, play at dice, or go upon the stage. A hundred years later, it was decreed that no bishop should consecrate a church without relics, which shows the reaction from the iconoclastic spirit, and explains why the altar-cloth in the Greek Church must contain relics. The abuses of clergymen acting as stewards, or having charge of the households and ceremonies of the nobility, and of having a plurality of Churches from which to draw salaries without performing service, were pointed out and provided against.

In Churches which set up their law against both the Old and New Testaments, in decreeing that their clergy shall be unmarried, the relation of clerical clergymen to women always calls for at- * ^ tention. The legislation of this period in regard to it is remarkable, as it marks definitely the division between the Greek and Roman Churches. The German legislation is crude and simple. It provides that women must not live in the houses of the clergy, and that unchastity in a priest or nun shall be punished with imprisonment, on fare of bread and water, for two years. In England there was no legislation; so we conclude that married priests were not disturbed, as was the case through most of the Middle Ages in that country. .

The Roman and Greek Synods had definite, though divergent views. The Roman bishops decreed

124 Foundation of Medieval Church.

that no woman should live in the house of a bishop, or in the houses of priests or deacons, except a mother Decrees Con- ^{or a near re}^^ati^ve* The Greek Council of cerning 692 declared that priests, deacons, and sub-Ceiebacy. beacons might remain in marriage with one wife; they must not separate from their wives, but are forbidden all second marriage. A bishop must separate from his wife; he must still provide for her, but not live near her; she may enter a convent, or serve as a deaconess. The result is, that all Greek priests may marry before ordination, and the bishops are taken almost exclusively from the monastic orders. If any one thinks a married clergy has no influence with an ignorant population, or that their administration tends to lessen the reverence of the people for the sacraments or Christian worship, he evidently does not know the Greek Church. If they are less intelligent than their Western brethren, other causes are responsible; while to their example may be due, in part, the fact that the Sclavic races are more free from the taint of sexual corruption than any other in Europe. They alone never had a celibate clergy.

Something of the gains which came with Christianity to our ancestors may be, in part, apprehended, Teutonic if we consider what the old Teutonic reSuperstitions. ligion was. From the “Indiculus Super-stitionum” or list of heathen practices, which the bishops and clergy are to see are discontinued, and which are usually assigned to Boniface's Council of Lestines, 743, though some think it belongs to the Saxon Conquest, a generation later, we obtain a view of the old heathenism in its influence upon the customs and life of the people.

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125

Our heathen ancestors were accustomed to offer sacrifices for the dead, eating and drinking over their graves. Sometimes graves were violated

7    . .    .The Dead.

for superstitious purposes. They were inclined to make saints indiscriminately, as they honored all who died in battles as heroes who were called to dwell in Walhalla. They needed to be restrained from desecrating Christian churches, and from feasting or drinking in them. They were accustomed to sacrifice swine in February, at the Feast

Sacrifices.

of the Ascending Sun. Sacrifices were ' offered at holy rocks and sacred fountains and rivers, and in holy groves and woods; they also made huts of branches in the fields for the private worship of heathen gods. So they sacrificed to Wodan and Thor, and celebrated Freya’s feast with rent clothes and shoes, and held feasts in the woods, with the sacrifice of nine horses’ heads. They also made images of the gods out of dough and bread, and human figures out of bread, which they consecrated to the gods. Like all heathen religions, they had their divi- Auguries and nations and auguries. They wore amulets Divinations, of metal, wood, or parchment written with runes, and divined from the actions of birds, horses, and oxen. They prophesied, with pagan rites, according to the direction of smoke from the hearth, the putting of the right or left foot out of bed first on rising or in crossing a threshold, or the meeting first a sheep or a swine on leaving the house, or by casting lots. The darker phases of superstition _Witcheg were not wanting—those which cost so much blood in the later ages. They swore over the heads or brains of animals. They surrounded the

126 Foundation of Medieval Church.

house or yard with a ditch to keep off witches. The old Germans had a superstition that witches ate the hearts of men; so, to prevent this misfortune, they began to burn the witches and to eat their flesh, which Charlemagne forbade under penalty of death. They had superstitions in regard to the changes

The Weather.    ^v    .

of the moon, and eclipses, and in respect to men who were said to make weather with drinking horns and spoons, and they called the days of the week after the heathen gods. Some of this heathenism remains among us; for we have but to turn to a calendar to find the gods of the Teutons and the Romans. Christian teaching affected most vitally the

Marriage    P^eoP^^{e re}g^ard to marriage and

the observance of the Christian Sabbath. While the Germans had reverence for women, and were not inclined to sensual sins, yet they had freedom of divorce, polygamy, concubinage, and very little idea of the restraints of relationship. Much of the rude and simple modesty was lost when they came in contact with a corrupt civilization. The Christian Church grappled boldly with the prevalent vice, and for no other achievement has she more deserved the gratitude of civilized society. We must lament that with this high meed of praise must be mixed no small blame. The celibacy of the clergy and of the monastic life produced a low and almost brutal view of marriage, which was but ill repaired when the Church elevated it to a sacrament; while in creating spiritual relationship and extending the degrees of those of blood as a bar to marriage, or the occasion for its dissolution, she forged bonds and caused an amount of misery which alone would justify a great reforma

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tion. If that of the sixteenth century had done nothing else, it would have earned an inextinguishable debt of gratitude from mankind.

The German legislation provided for the punishment of adultery, bigamy, incest, indecency, and unnatural crimes. It also decreed that spiritual relationship, father or mother acting as sponsor at baptism or confirmation, forever separated them; the Greek and Roman Synods enforced the principle that spiritual relationship, even more than that of blood, was a bar to marriage. German bishops de- _Legi_Siation creed that those living in forbidden mar- about riage could not commune without doing ^Marr,a^^e-penance. The Roman and Greek Synods denounced punishment against those who should carry off a maid or a widow to marry her, which seems a strange crime in a settled civilization. The Roman Council forbids any one marrying a nun, or the widow of a priest or deacon, and denounces the marriage of Christian women with Jews, while the Greek legislation forbids all intermarriage of orthodox and heretics.

Heathenism knew no Sunday rest. Everywhere it is a Christian institution, the Jewish Sabbath prevailing only among their own people. Few _Sunday gifts of Christianity to a toiling, sorrowing world have been of greater benefit. The legislation of this period is only from the Northern nations, who had but recently emerged from heathenism. The English canons very sensibly begin with the clergy. They must lead in this as in every moral reform, and they can do more to injure it than any other class of men. The Synod requires that Sunday be observed regularly by all. Abbots or priests on this day shall

128 Foundation of Medieval Church.

remain in their monasteries or churches, celebrating mass and refraining from all worldly business; they are not to travel, except when necessary, and must teach those under their care. The people shall be often invited to attend Church, and come to the preaching and the mass. The German Synod provided briefly and sternly: “Sunday must be kept; if a free man hitches up oxen on Sunday, let him lose his right ear.”

Some other matters touching morals came before these Synods. The German prelates decreed that he who coins false money must lose his hand. A robber, for the first offense, shall lose an eye; for the second, his nose; while for the third, death is the penalty. The Roman bishops anathematized a Christian who sells a slave to a Jew; the Greek required a slave to be freed before three witnesses, while abortion is punished as murder. In regard to cruel mutilations, it should be remembered that there were no prisons except in the monasteries, and these solely for their inmates. Criminals, without money or friends, were difficult to reach except by such means.

Positive Christian precepts for universal observance are found only in the regulations of the Greek Positive ^an<^ English Synods. Contrary to the Ro-Christian man custom, fasting on Saturday is for-Precepts. ^^den by Greek canons, as are the publishing of false acts of martyrs. The whole week after Easter is to be kept as a Church festival. Women must not speak during divine service. Love-feasts in the Churches are forbidden. We mark a turning-point in ecclesiastical art, and one abhorred by the Iconoclasts, in a canon of the Council of 692:

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“In future, on the pictures, instead of a lamb, shall be represented a human figure of Christ.”

The English canons provide that “the Litanies, or rogationes, shall be accomplished with great reverence by the whole clergy and people. The relics of the saints shall be borne before them, and the people, on bended knees, shall call upon God for the remission of their sins. Fasts shall be held in April, July, and October, after the manner of the Roman clergy. Not only boys, but adults, married and unmarried, shall be exhorted to commune. All shall be diligently admonished to give alms. Attention is to be given to the singing of the Psalter. The redemption of penances is rejected. Well do they say in regard to it: “Before all, must every one pray for himself with contrition of heart, and then invite other servants of God to common prayer with him. He who does otherwise, does not diminish, but rather increases his sins.”

The Synods of Boniface and the Capitularies of Charlemagne would have been of little value if there had been no preparation for them, and no |_nf|_Uence means for their enforcement. Columban of the had brought a penitential discipline from ^pen,tent,aIs* the Irish cloisters. Proba'bly a part of the Penitential which bears his name is from him. From this part we can see how he sought to discipline the crude and savage customs, and the coarse and brutal sins of the age. The first section deals with the monks and clergy, and prescribes penalties for homicide, various sensual sins, perjury, fraud, theft, fighting, and misbehavior at the sacrament. The second section, which deals with the laity, provides penalties less severe for the crimes above mentioned, and adds to them

130 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

penances for the practice of pagan rites, and for intercourse with heretics. Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus, 688-690, is the author of the first Penitential seen in England. It was largely based on the canons and practice of the Greek Church. The use of these books prepared the way for the legislation of Boniface and Charlemagne. This was enforced both by the State and by the Church. The bishop traveled annually through his diocese, and with him came a royal commissary. Seven irreproachable Synodical judges were appointed in every community. After the visitation of the clergy by the bishop, there followed the investigation of the sins of the laity—murder, adultery, homicide, theft, etc. The Church punishments were usually fasts or abstinences, for gross sins, for a long series of years. Those resisting sentence were punished with the greater excommunication, which was supported by the civil power, that cut off the offender from entering a church, or holding any intercourse with Christian people.

The Germans did not take kindly to the public penances, which had been the rule in the ancient Private and Church. The signs of such penitence, cut-Penitentiai ting of the hair, and laying aside of weap-Confession.    _seemec} _to them a degradation of the

dignity of a free man. This tendency was aided by the pastoral influence of the monasteries, whose inmates naturally sought to guide the laity according to the conceptions and practice of the monastic life. This marks the beginning of a great change in the pastoral care and Christian life of Western Europe. In 850, the Synod of Paris decreed that “if any one confess in secret and voluntarily, let him do penance in se

The Church Life.

cret; if, on the contrary, he has been publicly and notoriously convicted, or has so confessed, let it take place publicly before the Church, according to the known guides of penance.^,, Moeller says: “It now appeared advisable to confess to the priest, but no proper compulsion existed; no Council had, as yet, ordained that all believers should go annually to confession. There was a very lively consciousness that the duty of confession only consists in the obligation to confess one’s sins to God, and that it is on this that the real forgiveness of sins, which is God’s attribute, depends. The reconciliation, which was to be completed by the priest, was conceived not as judicial, but as deprecatory/’

In connection with the imposition of penance grew up the practice of their redemption. The Penitentials of Theodore provided for drunkenness a Redemption of fast of fifteen days; for making another Penance, drunk, forty days; for homicide, from three to seven years. This was a long time. Baeda counseled a composition or redemption; for a week’s fast, to repeat three hundred Psalms kneeling; for a month, fifteen hundred Psalms; or for a year’s penance, to pay twenty-six shillings to the poor, about $65 in present value. The Penitentials of Rheims established substantially the same scale. A man was also allowed to hire another to repeat his Psalms, or to endure his fast, and so redeem his penance. This abuse was prohibited by the Council of Cloveshoe, but it still persisted.

The Church, in its turn, sanctioned the oath by compurgators, by which the accused and a number of reputable men swore to his innocence, the ordeal,

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and the wager of battle; which were anything but Christian methods of settling disputes, which she repudiated in the next period.

The Rule of Benedict gained a final victory in this period. Monasteries stood yet almost universally under the supervision of the bishop. Monks sought to force their way into the pastorate,and the people gladly The Monastic resorted to them for confession. Double

^Life* monasteries of monks and nuns, under a single administration, are found, both in the East and in the West, but are looked upon with disfavor. Establishments for noble ladies, the so-called canon-esses, begin at the close of this period. The English legislation provided that the seven canonical hours for prayer and the repetition of the Psalms must be observed. Monks and nuns must obey their superiors, and no controversies be allowed among them. They must not wear luxurious clothing, and their meals must be free from drunkenness, luxury, and buffoonery. The convent people must partake of the communion. None shall be received into a convent without a requisite test of morals, but once received, they must be borne with. Monks and nuns must always wear their habits, and can no longer dwell in the houses of the laity. They must return to the cloisters where they took their vows, and the return must not be denied them. We here have a significant view of the disorder, at that time, in English monasti-cism. Yet the monasteries, during this period, were centers of industry, learning, devotion, and the arts of life. It may be doubted if they ever rendered greater service than when society was in this stage of culture.

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i33

The utter disorder of clerical life, the influence of the monkish ideal, and the example of Augustine, may be discerned in the institution of the ca- The Canonical nonical life, according to which all the ^Life* clergy of a city lived in common in the house of the bishop, or one built for them under his care, and the clergy of the villages under the archpresbyter. The author of this rule was Chrodegang of Metz, who, in 754, published his decree concerning the regulation of the clergy of the city of Metz: That they should have a mind zealous in divine worship, be obedient to the bishop, bound to each other in love, glorying in zeal, but far from controversy and all offenses. The rule was designed for the discipline of the clergy, and to provide for their support, which had been seriously impaired by the encroachments upon the property and income of the bishop. In 782, Charlemagne decreed that the clergy who did not live according to canonical rule should be subject to military service. These enactments were further defined and made more obligatory by the Capitulary of Aachen, in 803.

In the canonical life, the clergy lived in a common house with but one entrance, and under lock and key ; their meat and drink and occupations for the hours of the day were according to a prescribed rule. In this way were checked the tendencies to rioting, drunkenness, and immorality; they were also shut out from secular life and business. The rule also sought their instruction and edification. Seven times in the twenty-four hours the clergy were summoned to prayers and the reading of the Psalms. Daily they came together to celebrate mass, and to hear the reading of a portion of the Scriptures, the canons, the Rule, or a tract or

134 Foundation of Medieval Church.

sermon helpful to the Christian life. So, gradually, was overcome the ignorance of the clergy. The instruction of the younger clergy in the country fell to the archpresbyter; in the cities, to an official called the scholasticus; but in England, cancellarins,—hence our chancellor as a university officer.

The instruction and training of the multitudes of nominal Christians, who had renounced their old gods and accepted baptism in obedience to or imitation of their chiefs, was no light task. The Celtic and Roman clergy knew the Latin tongue, and used it in the liturgy. In it they taught the Lord’s Prayer, the worship and Creed, and the Baptismal Formula. Boni-lnstruction. f_{ace was} g_reatly scandalized at one of the native clergy, who baptized in the name of “Patria, Filia et Spiritus Sancta” instead of “Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” The pope, to whom Boniface appealed, thought the act should be judged from the intention of the priest, and that the candidates had received Christian baptism. If this shows the ignorance of the native clergy, we can, on the other hand, judge of the difficulties of preaching in their own untutored tongue, or through an interpreter. The result was, that the liturgy, with which the officiating priest was familiar, and in a tongue unknown to the people, generally comprised the service. Charlemagne exerted himself to have Latin homilies, largely composed from extracts from the Fathers, translated into the German tongue, and preached to the people; but his efforts had little practical effect. He succeeded in having translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Baptismal Formula. He required that every one should know and be able to repeat the

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Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the list of sins found in Gal. v, 19-21, and should commune thrice a year. What the English bishops desired, we see from the canons of Cloveshoe, where they provided that the priest must translate and expound into the native tongue the Creed, the Lord s Prayer, and all the words of the mass, and the Formula of Baptism, and what these things spiritually signify. All priests were to hold holy service in the same manner, teach the faith of the Holy Trinity, instruct every one in the Creed, and give to the children or their sponsors the Baptismal Formula, or renunciation and vows.

The Roman liturgy and Gregorian chant supplanted the other forms of worship, such as the Moz-arabic in Spain. The first organ came from Greece, in the time of Pepin. There was brought in a great improvement in the dignity and order of the worship.    ^ _#

A change of yet more momentous significance

took place in this era in the worship of the Churches. Masses were regarded as daily sacrifices _Private for daily sins. Masses were also said in Masses and cases of need, of drought, flood, or sick- ^“^s_a'_d°^r ness; since Gregory the Great they were regarded as bringing relief to the souls of the dead. Prayer was made for the dead in general at mass, and this gave rise to the special endowment of masses for the dead for definite persons. Objection was made to low, or private, masses, at which the celebrating priest alone communes. This was a new custom, and much opposed in the eighth century; in the beginning of the ninth, it was rejected by the Synods; but by the middle of that century it became common. The larger

136 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

Churches provided for these private masses by the erection of a considerable number of altars, as a priest could read but one mass at one altar in a day. How this usage lent itself to abuse we see from the Spanish Council of Toledo, which interdicted the holding of such masses for the living, in order that they may soon die. Masses for the dead were held from three to thirty days after and on the anniversary of the decease. Leagues for the dead arose from this time from the same conception of accumulated benefit for the dead through the recital of masses. We have the agreement concluded at Attingy, 762, of forty-four prelates. It provides that at the death of one member of the League, each of his associates shall repeat one hundred Psalms and read one hundred masses for his soul. In 769, the same custom was introduced among the Bavarian clergy. The Synod of Frankfort, 798, formed such a League, and, at the request of the em^ peror, admitted Alcuin to its benefits. Later, the reading of such masses became a regular official arrangement.    •

Pilgrimages were most frequently made during this period to Rome. Boniface writes to Cuthbert,

archbishop of Canterbury, imploring him

Pilgrimages.    *    ^    .

and his Synod to prohibit such pilgrimages, both to the women of the nobility and to such as had taken the veil, saying very few returned unharmed, and there was scarcely a city of Lombardy, Germany, or Gaul, where there were not fallen women of the English race. Paulinus of Aquileia made the like prohibition for the women who had taken the veil in his diocese.

The Church of this age strove under greatly al

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tered conditions to preserve its ancient glory of caring for the poor. In this, the early Frankish Church earned especial praise. The Synodal acts show how zealous they were in this work. Nowhere else do we find so great solicitude for the needy,

.    , ,    _r 1 Charities.

or that it lay so near to the hearts of the bishops. The ruin of industry made it' almost impossible for a landless man to secure a support, so that the slaves, becoming free, fell almost always into beggary. These men, for whom there was no occupation, had letters given them regularly, authorizing them to beg in a certain district. In this early Frankish Church arose the matricnla, where the poor of the Church lived in a building near the church edifice. They were supported from the Church funds, and were numbered among its servants.

Hospitals- and refuges for the sick and infirm were founded, but often their property was diverted to other uses. Charlemagne, in a series of capitularies, 794-813, sought to secure the care and support of the landless men, and the abolition of beggary. He orders that all holders of benefices and vassals care for the slaves and all belonging to the benefice; that they shall provide for'their own households and for the poor out of the crops of the year, and hence shall not sell their crops too short, or raise the price exorbitantly in time of famine. Every one shall care for those in any way dependent upon him, is the ruling maxim. Men are required to nourish their own poor from their benefice, and not allow them to go elsewhere to beg; and where such are found, unless they labor with their hands, no one shall give them anything. He sought also the restoration of the

138 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

xenodochia, or houses for the sick, needy, and especially strangers.

Meanwhile, the gifts of the kings, the nobility, and the people, poured in upon the Church. Never Gifts to the *ⁿ ^^{ie anc}i^ent Church had its property ap-Church proached such possessions as came to it and the Poor. f_rom early Frankish kings. The Teutonic conquerors gave generously what they had taken easily, and knew not how to prize. Chilperic, 561584, said that his treasury had become poor, and his riches had fallen to the Church. At the end of the seventh century, one-third of all the real estate of his kingdom, Neustria, belonged to the Church. What once came into her hands, never voluntarily left them. Her care of the Church lands greatly advanced agriculture among the new nations.

The possession of such real estate demanded the care of a steward to oversee the lands of a bishop Church or large convent, if it was cultivated by Property. _Serfs; if cultivated for a share of the crops, still the care of the rentals and looking after the property was no small task. The very magnitude of these possessions, and the needy condition of the State, whose only revenues were from the crown domains and the support of the landed nobility, invited plunder, and made necessary some arrangement between the Church and State. We have already seen how Charles Martel dealt with Church property. Boniface, in his first Synod, 742, procured judgment from Carloman that alienated Church property should be restored, which was more than could be carried out. On the other hand, Pepin decreed, in the Synod of Soissons, that Church property should be given back so far as

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it was necessary to prevent the monks and nuns from suffering need, but the remainder should remain in the hands of the laity, who should pay to the Church a rent therefor. The Synod of Lestines, 745, provided that Church property should remain as pre-carium in the hands of the present possessors. That is, they should hold the estates during their lives, upon payment of an annual rent of one shilling for every household; but at death, it should fall back to the Church. In case of need, the prince could renew the precarium to another person; in most cases it was prolonged to the heirs of the first holder, or given to another one. Later, some of the property came back, as we see from the restitution documents of the next century. But there remained many monasteries in lay hands, and there were royal abbeys and royal hospitals, whose revenues were in the possession of the king. Under Charlemagne, the revenues of the archbishopric of Treves went to the king; and he himself was abbot of Murbach. He ordered that the occupants of Church lands, besides the ordinary tithes, should pay a second tenth.

This abundant liberality was not wholly disinterested. The Teutonic benefactors expected large recompense. The teaching that almsgiving Motive took away sins, and that rich gifts won ^forQ^|ving* the Divine favor, found ready acceptance, as it accorded with their own customs of paying money as a punishment for crimes. The less they understood the profounder doctrines of the Christian faith, or the less their lives approached the standard of Christian morals, the more readily they gave to the Church and to the poor. With these tendencies wrought the

140 Foundation of Mediaeval Church.

direct teaching of the Church. The most learned man of this period, and the ablest theologian in the West, Alcuin, the friend of Charlemagne, writes: “O, how unhappy will he be who shall burn forever in fire; who, surrounded by fearful darkness, hears nothing but the voices of those howling, and the terrible gnash' ing of teeth; who feels nothing but the biting flames, the arctic cold, and the poison-fangs of serpents! To escape such a fearful fate, O friend, no endeavor is too great.” Almsgiving is a chief means to this end, for Alcuin says: “His own riches are a man’s redemption. If we love gold, let us send it before us to heaven, where it will be laid up for us. Let us surrender treasures in the present world, that in the future world we may possess them. For the hand of the poor is the treasure-chamber of Christ. Christ is the best protector of riches.” In so rude a time, when earthly possessions were so insecure, who would not make sure of eternal joys, and escape the fearful torments of hell? The effect of this teaching is seen in the formula for bequests used by the great monastery of Reich-enau: “For the whole volume of the Holy Scriptures proclaims with pious exhortations to Christians, what also the thunder voices of the gospel make known through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that we must give alms to the poor if we would escape the punishments of hell; wherefore the Lord also says: ‘Sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.’ Confiding in this salvation-bringing admonition, I give,” etc.

fart Second.

THE FORMATION OF THE MEDIAEVAL CHURCH.

141

Chapter J.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

The Byzantine Empire, from 800 to 1000, was yet the strongest power among the Christian nations. It possessed the best army, the strongest fleet, the widest and most profitable commerce, and an administration which, in spite of incurable defects, gave greater peace and security and a larger measure of justice than was elsewhere enjoyed by an equal number of the earth’s inhabitants. This assured it large revenues, and made it, by far, the wealthiest State, and with the use of more movable and fixed capital than any other power in the world. At Constantinople were more learning, art, and refinement than elsewhere in Europe. The morals of the court, in spite of Michael the Drunkard, Constantine IX, and the Empress Zoe, compared favorably with the courts of Bagdad, Cordova, or papal Rome. The rule of the iconoclastic emperors and of the Basilian dynasty preserved the power and enlarged the bounds of the empire. Nicephorus II and John Zimisces brought it to the height of military renown. Fiscal oppression, dynastic revolutions, administrative corruption, depopulation, and unsuccessful war, permanently weakened the power and stability of the Byzantine State, the inheritor and administrator of the law of Rome.

After the fall of Irene, the grand treasurer, who had dethroned her, reigned as Nicephorus I. He

144 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

enforced political order, but increased the burden of taxation. Defeated by Haroun-al-Raschid, he was

forced to pay tribute to the Saracens. He ^N,<8o2-°8|^U|! * was defeated and killed by the Bulgarians

Michael I. j_n g_IIf Qf his _sk_ull they made a royal Si2^bSv^«    _#

drinking-cup. Michael, the husband of his daughter, Procopia, reigned less than two years. He was a weak and bigoted prince, and was beaten by the Bulgarians. Leo the Armenian took possession of the government, while Michael retired to a monastery, where he lived until 845. He was the father of the celebrated patriarch Ignatius.

Leo the Armenian inclined to the iconoclastic party, which was strong in the army. He was opposed by the Leo v the ^^amous Theodore Studita. He annihilated Armenian, the Bulgarian army at Mesembria, and

813-820. _ma(j_e f_avorable treaties of peace with the Saracens of the East and West. He sought sincerely, and in the main successfully, to increase the prosperity of the State and of the people. Fearing the rebellious Michael 11 the intrigues of his old friend and general, stammerer. Michael the Amorian, he imprisoned him 820-829. _un(j_er sentence of death. The friends of Michael rallied, released him, assassinated the unsuspecting emperor while taking part in divine service, and raised Michael II from a prison cell to a throne, on Christmas, 820. Michael, his son, and grandson, formed the Amorian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, 820-867. He entered the army as a private soldier, and rose to the rank of general. The founder of the new dynasty married Euphrosyne, daughter of Emperor Constantine VI. The Saracens took Crete in 823, and began the conquest of Sicily

The Byzantine Empire.    145

in 827. Michael was tolerant in his rule, but inclined to the Iconoclasts.

Theophilus, his son, was one of the most accomplished of the Byzantine emperors, but a stern iconoclastic bigot. He was learned, just, and Theophilus. upright. The historians record an anec- ⁸²9-842. dote which illustrates the ruling trait of his character. Theophilus was riding by, when a man stepped out from the crowd and demanded justice. The emperor asked the cause of his complaint. Whereupon the petitioner declared that the horse upon which the emperor rode was his. Inquiry was made, and Theophilus found that the charger had been taken from the owner by an officer, who had presented it to the emperor. Theophilus paid the owner 140 silver byzants, equal to $98, or twice what the horse would have brought in the market.

The imperial troops took and destroyed Za-pestra and Samosata. In 838, Calif Motassem, through his generals, defeated Theophilus, and destroyed Amorium, the cradle of the imperial house, massacring thirty thousand Christian prisoners. Notwithstanding his defeat, Theophilus left his empire strong and unimpaired to his son, who was but three or four years of age. For the next _Michaeithe fourteen years the government was in the Drunkard, hands of Empress Theodora. She ruled in ⁸⁴²"⁸⁵⁷* the main wisely, honestly, and well, but shamefully neglected the education and moral training of her children. Her first act was to restore the banished images, in 842. She thus secured the friendship of the clergy and the Church. After giving a strict financial account of her administration, she resigned the gov-

10

146 Formation of Medieval Church.

eminent in 856, but lived until 868 to lament the vices and crimes of her son, the emperor, and of Thekla, his sister, who equaled him in dissoluteness of life. Michael was, at first, under the influence of his uncle, Bardas, through whom Ignatius was deposed and Pho-tius made patriarch in 857. The Saracens and imperial troops ravaged Asia Minor in 863. In one campaign the former carried into slavery seventeen thousand Christians, while the latter retaliated by carrying off twenty thousand captives. This gives us some idea of the effect of those w^ars which, with grinding taxation, finally depopulated Asia Minor, once populous and wealthy, but for nine hundred years showing only the w^reck of former prosperity and civilization. In this year a Saracen army of forty thousand men was destroyed or taken captive. After a rule of ten years, the Csesar Bardas was killed by the emperor’s command, and his murderer, Basil, was made colleague and emperor. Two months afterward he caused the assassination of the dissolute and incapable Michael, and reigned in his stead.

Basil, the founder of the Macedonian dynasty, which ruled the Empire of the East for a period of Basil the ^al^m°st two hundred years, 867-1057, with Macedonian, increasing prosperity and power until near 867-886. j_{ts c}j_ose^ _came to Constantinople as a day-laborer, and first found employment as a groom. His skill in breaking horses attracted attention and patronage. Later, he became the boon companion of Michael the Drunkard, and the husband of his cast-off mistress. Through two atrocious murders he mounted the throne. At once he banished Photius, to secure the support of the party of Ignatius and of Rome.

The Byzantine Empire.

i47

He adopted the Basilika, or code, which had been begun by Bardas, and was henceforth to be the law of the empire. He laid it down as a principle, from which his house never departed, not to increase the imperial taxation, and it is due largely to this policy that his dynasty attained its success, and the empire its prosperity. In 876 he waged a successful war against the Saracens.

Basil was succeeded by his son, Leo VI, who was a conceited pedant and an incapable prince, a lover of ease, a mild but arbitrary despot. The _{VI the} new emperor at once deposed the patri- Philosopher, arch, the learned and able Photius, to make ⁸⁸⁶"9^,2« way for his brother Stephen, a lad eighteen years old. This was the era when Theodora and her daughter controlled the papacy at Rome. Peace had prevailed with the Bulgarians for more than seventy years, 814888. Leo broke the peace, and lost an army, and then renewed the peace, in 893. Alexander, a brother of Leo, more degraded than Michael IV, reigned from 912 to 913.

Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus, was the only son of Leo by his fourth wife, Zoe Carbunospina. He was seven years of age when he became _Constantine sole emperor. His mother was the regent. vii.

In 917, the Bulgarians defeated the Greeks ^9I3“^957, with immense loss. Romanus, the grand admiral, was made emperor and colleague, December, 919. The April preceding, Constantine had married Romanus. his daughter, Helena. Romanus was 9*9-934. weak, morbid, devout, and superstitious. From the death of Romanus, Constantine was sole emperor until the end of his reign. He was learned, and his

148 Formation of Medieval Church.

historical writings are of great value as an account of contemporary events. Generous, kindly, and upright, he led a pure and attractive family life, but was possessed of feeble character and without talent for government. “His weakness prevented him from being a good sovereign, but his humanity and love of justice prevented him from being a bad one/’

His son, Romanus II, at the age of twenty-one, succeeded him. He was tall and handsome, mild and Romanus 11. good-natured like his father, but ruined his 959=963. health by excesses. The great event of his reign was the conquest of Crete, 962, after it had been in the possession of the Saracens one hundred and thirty-five years.

The Empress Theophano was regent for the children of Romanus II. On the 6th of August, 963, Nicephorus 11. the victorious conqueror of Crete was 963-969. called to her side as husband and emperor. Nicephorus was then fifty-one years of age, upright and honorable. He made “an able emperor and a faithful guardian of the imperial children.” Cold and severe in temperament, to carry on successful wars, he increased the taxation and left episcopal sees vacant that the State might receive their revenues, and hence he was unpopular with the people and the clergy. His wife, Theophano, and his nephew, John Zimisces, conspired against him. As John reproached and slew him, the ablest general and one of the most virtuous sovereigns of Constantinople, cried out, “O God, grant me thy mercy!” He had taken from the Saracens, Crete, Cyprus, Tarsus, and Antioch, and made tributary Damascus, the former capital of the califate.    ^

The Byzantine Empire.    149

John, one of the most ungrateful murderers who ever came to a throne, at once discarded the Empress Theophano, throwing upon her all the guilt _John , of the murder of his uncle and benefactor, Zimisces. and married Theodora, daughter of Con- ⁹⁶⁹"⁹⁷⁶-stantine VII. John was not a cool intriguer, but an unscrupulous, thoughtless, generous, and able general. In 970 he defeated the Russians, who invaded the empire and laid siege to Constantinople. He took Amida and Berytus from the Saracens, and in the campaigns of 974 and 975 he marched victoriously from Mount Taurus to the Tigris, and from the Tigris to Mount Lebanon. The next year he died of a sudden illness.

Basil II, son of Romanus II and brother of Theophano, the empress of Otto II, now came to the throne at the age of nineteen, and reigned for nearly fifty years. Basil was a firm and _querorofthe courageous ruler and an able general, but Bulgarians, rapacious and cruel. He warred against ^{976 W25}‘ the Bulgarians from 990-1018, and finally completely broke their power. This conquest gave greater security to the Eastern Empire than it had known for four hundred years. His arms were successful in Armenia and Syria. On Basil’s Constantine death, his brother, Constantine VIII, vm. came to the throne. He was then sixty- ^,025'¹⁰²⁸-seven years old, and had known nothing of the cares of government, living only for pleasure. His fears made him suspicious and cruel; to his Romanus 111. worthless companions were given the great '<>²⁸->⁰34. offices of State. On the death of Constantine, Romanus, a noble, sixty years of age, was forced to

150 Formation of Medieval Church.

divorce his wife, and marry the late emperor’s daughter Zoe, who was now of the age of forty-eight, and had no reputation to lose. On the death

Zoe*    •    .

1028-1050. of her first husband, she married Michael', the Paphlagfonian, a man of beautiful face

Michael IV.    7 .    -1    tt-    u

1034-1041. and form, but an epileptic. His nephew, Constantine Michael V, reigned for four months after

ix. the death of his uncle. The last husband 1042-1054. 2oe was Constantine IX, a worthless ruler. In his reign took place the final separation of the Greek from the Latin Church. A Russian invasion was defeated in 1043, and Armenia was subjugated in 1045. The Turks overran the country and began the dispersion of the Armenians and the ruin of Asia Minor, 1042-1048. Constantine was suc-Theodora. ceeded by Theodora, the sister of Zoe, at *054-1058. thjg time seventy-six years of age, and as Michael vi. virtuous as her sister had been dissolute. She chose Michael, a general of reputation, as her associate and successor. After her death, his age and proved unfitness to rule made way, through an aristocratic revolution, for Isaac Comnenus, who came to the throne September 2, 1057.

Isaac I was the son of a favorite officer of Basil II, who was his guardian after his father’s death, and Isaac 1 began his career, after receiving the best Comnenus. education of his time in the monastery of 1057-1059. studion, the imperial body-guard. He was a man of no ordinary powers of mind, and began the attempt to reform the empire. The emperors of the Basilian dynasty were not the equals of those of the Isaurian line. They did not appreciate the value of the Byzantine administration, and the class by

The Byzantine Empire.

whom it was carried on, and instead of improving and strengthening it, they broke down its traditions and destroyed it by concentrating all power in the court, and filling official positions with favorites. Not only was the civil service broken up, but the aristocracy was neglected and had no part in the government, which was carried on by a cabinet of court favorites, through whom not only great offices of State, but the command of armies came to be intrusted to eunuchs. The result was the neglect and disorder of the civil and judicial administration and the increase of financial burdens, while the power of the State declined. Meanwhile, the pageants at Constantinople of the hippodrome, the court, and the Church, became yearly more expensive; the repairs of distant ports, aqueducts, and roads, and the civil and judicial administration of the provinces, were so neglected as not only to weaken the ties which bound them to the empire, but to render property insecure. The armies had been more and more recruited from foreign mercenaries. The Christianization and civilization of Western Europe now deprived the imperial forces of their best soldiers, and from this time they lost forever their former superiority. The new emperor strove to make way against these evils by reforming the court, the finances, and the abuses of administration. His reign was short. In 1059 he repulsed an invasion of the Hungarians and Patzinaks. Soon afterward he was taken ill, and, supposing himself at the point of death, he adopted the monastic garb. Passing by his brother, he appointed as his successor, Constantine Ducas, as best fitted to govern the empire. Isaac recovered, but preferred to remain a monk.

152 Formation of Medieval Church.

Isaac made a fatal mistake in judging the character of his successor. Constantine Ducas had been Constantine ^{an a}^^e minister when directed by a su-

x, Ducas. perior, but on the throne he was sluggish, 1059-1067. _vaj_n^ _ancj avaricious. He augmented the burdens of taxation and increased the abuses of administration by farming the revenues. He economized by neglecting the military stores and supplies for the imperial armies, and disorganized them by appointing civilians to military positions, that they might draw the pay of defenders of the empire. The fate of the population thus depended upon the personal character of the emperor. His avarice caused the loss of the two great fortresses of the empire in the East and West in 1064, Ani and Belgrade, and allowed the Turks to subjugate the Armenians, whose power had been the best defense against their attacks.

Constantine had left the empire to his wife, Eudocia, as the guardian of their son, Michael VII. The . next year she married Romanus Diogenes,

1067-1071.    a brave and skillful general, of a noble Romanus iv Romanus was a generous ruler,

Diogenes, an able officer, but too rash and presump-

1068-1071.    tuous for a general. After two unsuccessful campaigns against the Turks, through his lack of care and treachery in his own camp, he lost the great battle of Manzikert in 1071, and was taken prisoner by Alp Arslan. The defeat at Manzikert caused a rebellion against the emperor, led by John Ducas, in favor of his nephew, the son of Constantine X. The empress was compelled to take the veil; Romanus was blinded so barbarously that he died soon after.

Michael VII had a liberal education, became a

The Byzantine Empire.

i53

grammarian and rhetorician, but was a worthless prince—weak, vain, and suspicious. The Turks broke the Byzantine power in Asia Minor. Their Michael vn. policy had been to enrich their followers, *071-1078. and increase their number by rapid raids for plunder, and so to impoverish and depopulate the open country that they could establish permanent nomad encampments. In this reign, Soliman laid the foundation of lasting Turkish dominion in Asia Minor by gaining the agricultural population. This he did by giving to the serfs of the vast estates of the Byzantine aristocracy the land they occupied on paying a fixed tribute to the Turkish Government. In 1078, Michael was dethroned by an aristocratic rebellion, and retired, with his son, to the monastery of Studion.

Nicephorus III, who now came to the throne, was an old, idle voluptuary; the palace exhibited a scene of debauchery; and the administration, of Nicephorus 111. disorder and rebellion. He had married >078-1081. Maria, the wife of Michael VII, though he was yet living. She, in order to secure the power for herself and her son, adopted as her son, Alexius Comnenus. He entered Constantinople, April 1, 1081, and was crowned the next day; while Nicephorus retired to a monastery. The reign of Alexius, 1081-1118, and ot the Comnenian dynasty, 1080-1185, had begun. This will be considered in connection with the Crusades.

At the beginning of this period, the califate was at the height of its power and splendor under Haroun-al-Raschid. A few years later, he died at Tus, in Persia, at the age of forty-seven. Haroun-al-Raschid had carefully arranged the share each of his sons

i54 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

was to receive of his dominions after his death, and had sworn them to observe the treaty of partition thus The Caiifate. made. But Calif Amin, 809-814, the elder 800-1085. _son> sought to deprive his brother Mamun of his share of the inheritance. Mamun rebelled; his generals besieged Bagdad for two years. In 814 the capital fell, and the perjurer was slain.

Mamun, 814-833, was the most learned and one of the ablest and most splendid of the sovereigns of Bagdad. He caused translations to be made from the Greek of works on astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. He died while on the march against the imperial armies in Asia Minor.

Motassem, 833-842, his brother, succeeded him. He defeated the Greeks and destroyed Amorium, but from his time the dynasty became the puppet of Turkish guards at Bagdad. The power of the caiifate under Haroun-al-Raschid, like that of his great contemporary, Charlemagne, did not survive the life of his sons.

Wathek, 842-847, and Motawakil, 847-862, the sons of Motassem, bore rule for the next score of years. Meanwhile, the Armenians revolted from the caiifate, and the Greeks took and burned Damietta. From this time the Turkish guards controlled the califs. Two of the best of these, Motaz, 866-869, ^an^ Mohtadi, 869-870, strove to throw off their chains, but were put to death by the Turks. Under the next calif, Motamid, the caiifate lost Eastern Persia in 879, and Egypt in 884. In the reign of his successor, Motadid, the sect of the Carmathians arose, which made conquests in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. The Fatimite dynasty took possession of Egypt in 915, and reigned

The Byzantine Empire.    155

until the time of the Crusades. After 932, the califate was reduced to the province of Bagdad; yet it lingered on in shame and degradation for more than three hundred years. Kaim, 1035-1075, one of the titular califs, called in the Turkish armies. They took Bagdad in 1055, but the shadowy successsion kept on until the Mongols under Halagu captured Bagdad, February, 1258, and made an end of the califate. It had endured six hundred and twenty-six years from the death of Mohammed. This changeful and stormy period, from 800 to 1050, witnessed the greatest renown of the Byzantine arms, the conquest of the Bulgarians and the practical overthrow of the califate; but also the beginning of the irretrievable decline of the Roman Empire of the East. The Turks appeared upon the scene as the heirs of the califate and the destined conquerors of Constantinople, an event deferred for more than three hundred years by the progress of the Crusades, and which could only take place after their failure. The Turkish is the last of that great series of Asiatic invasions, which, from the days of Xerxes—nay, from those of our Aryan ancestors, the Celts, the Teutons, and Sclavs—pressed on to take possession of Europe.    .

Chapter II.

THE END OF THE CAROLINGIAN DYNASTY, AND THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE.

The two elder and abler sons of Charlemagne died before his own death. The empire passed to the third son, Louis the Pious. Though exemplary in morals, it would be difficult to conceive a greater Louis contrast to the imperial father than this the Pious, irresolute and listless son, or a prince more

814-840. ^fitted to rule, whom a monk’s cowl better became than the crown of the mighty empire which he inherited. The first ten years, though marked by grave mistakes,'were preserved from disaster through the organization of the great Charles, which survived his death. In 817, Louis divided his empire, in the event of his death, among his sons. Lothair, the eldest, whom he made co-regent, was to receive Aus-trasia, and the greater part of Germany; Pepin, Aquitaine; and Louis, Southern Germany or Bavaria, Carin-thia, and Bohemia. This division angered Bernard, the son of the emperor’s brother Pepin, king of Italy, who rose in rebellion against his uncle. He was defeated and taken prisoner, his eyes were put out, and in three days he died, in 818. His kingdom was given to Lothair. For this cruel sentence, four years later, the emperor did public penance. In 819, Louis married, for a second wife, Judith, daughter of Count Welf, of Bavaria, who, in 823, bore him a son, named Charles, afterward called the Bald. All the endeavors 156

New German Empire.

i57

of this beautiful and able woman were concentrated upon securing a dominion for her son equal to or greater than that of his brothers. She succeeded, but her success was the ruin of the imperial house. Louis canceled his former division, in 829, and left the West Frankish kingdoms to Charles, then six years old, with only Aquitaine for Pepin, and a lessened dominion to Lothair and Louis. The older sons rose in rebellion against their father. In 833 he was forced to abdicate and retire to a monastery by the Council of Soissons. The divisions among the rebellious sons were as bitter as their enmity against their father. Pepin and Louis united against Lothair, and their father was reinstated in his imperial authority, 835, being recrowned at Metz.

After the death of Pepin, in 838, he proposed to divide the empire between Lothair and Charles, so as to exclude Louis from any enlargement of his domains. Louis took up arms, and, while resisting him, the incapable and unhappy son of Charlemagne died on an island in the Rhine, near Mainz, in 840.

Lothair succeeded to the title of emperor, and strove to regain the rule of the dominion of the great Charles. But Louis the German and Lothair. Charles the Bald united against him, and 840-855. after one of the bloodiest battles of the cen- Louis tury he was defeated at Fontenay, in 841. ^th|₄^g^ⁿ' By August 11, 843, the empire of Charle-

j* • 1 1    1 •    A    Charles

magne was divided among his grandsons, the Baid. Lothair received Italy and a narrow terri- 840=877. tory between the Rhone and the Rhine, reaching to the North Sea; Louis the German received the portion of the empire east of Lorraine; Charles the

158 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

Bald received France, or the part of the empire west of Lorraine.

Thus were grouped, for the first time, the modern nations of France, Germany, and Italy, under their own rulers; nations which have never been reunited, except temporarily by Napoleon I.

Lothair, with his kingdom weakened by the incursions of the Normans and the Saracens, divided his dominions among his sons in 855. His eldest son, Louis II, had been already crowned emperor, in 850. Lothair retired to a monastery, and died on the 28th of September of the same year, at sixty years of age.

Louis had reigned with his father as king of Italy since 844, and emperor since 850, when, five years Louis 11. later, he became sole possessor of the title 855-S75. fi_rst borne by Charlemagne, but it was little more than the title which he bore until his death, in 875, without heirs of male descent. His brother, Lothair 11. Lothair II, ruled the long middle kingdom 855=869. _{on t}he west of the Rhine. From him it has been called Lothringia, or Lorraine, until this day. It has always preserved a semi-independent existence, while a part of the old French monarchy, as now when it is united with the new German Empire. Lothair died, without male heirs, in 869. By the treaty of Mersen, his kingdom was divided between his uncles, Louis the German and Charles the Bald.

Louis the German was a wise and able ruler, the most capable of the descendants of Charlemagne, with the possible exception of the Emperor Arnulf. By the treaty of Verdun, he received all Germany east of the Rhine, and Spires, Worms, and Mainz on the west bank. By the treaty of Mersen, 870, he received the

New German Empire.

i59

greater part of the dominions of Lothair II. He hoped to succeed to the imperial title on the death of his nephew, Louis II, but Charles the Bald anticipated him. He was in arms against this brother when, at seventy years of age, he died, in 876. He had shown himself courageous and skillful, leaving a firmly consolidated dominion.

The younger of these brothers, Charles the Bald, received the imperial crown, left vacant by the death of his nephew August 12th, on the 17th of December, 875. He did not wear it long, for after an inglorious reign, he died October 13, 877. He had shown himself a friend of learning and a courteous gentleman, well able to hold his own against his warlike brothers, to whom his birth had been most unwelcome. His reign, however, was an era of disaster to his people, whom he could not protect from the ruthless ravages of the Normans, and whose savage raids he aided rather than hindered by his cowardly policy of buying their retreat from his realms. They were sure to return stronger and more avaricious than before. He completed the thorough disorganization of the State by the decree of Kiersi, by which feudalism was fully founded, and the royal power permanently weakened in France.

Charles the Fat, third son of Louis the German, was a thoroughly incapable prince, upon whom fortune showered thrones and dominions. He ^^hap^,e® succeeded his father in his rule of Swabia 881=887*. in 876. The throne of his brother Carloman, king of Italy, came to him in 880. The crown of the empire, without owner since the death of Charles the Bald, became his early in 881. In 882, through the death of his

i6o Formation of Mediaeval Church.

brother Louis, all the rest of Germany became his, and on the death of Carloman, grandson of Charles the Bald, 885, the domains of that king were added to his realm, so that, for a season, the lands of Charlemagne were nominally under the rule of one of his weakest descendants. He was deposed in 887, and died in a monastery in 888. Charles the Fat was the last legitimate descendant of Louis the German to bear rule. His line had died out in a little over twenty years from his death.

The feeble reign of Charles the Bald was succeeded by still more feeble ones. That of his son, Louis the Stammerer, endured but eighteen months,

Louis the    ;.    ⁰ .    ⁷

stammerer, when he died, at the age of thirty-three,

and His Sons. leaving three sons and a daughter. The

877=929.    ^&

two older sons, Louis III and Carloman, divided the kingdom, and fought to protect their country from the Normans, but they were snatched away by death while at the opening of their manhood: Louis, alter a three-years’ reign, when less than twenty years of age; Carloman, two years later, and not older. Their crown, after the inglorious reign of Charles the Fat for two years, came to their epileptic brother, Charles the Simple, who was born after the death of his father. He ruled over France from 898 until his death, in 929. His most notable act was the treaty of Clair-sur-epte, in which he gave the land now known as Normandy to the Normans, and to their chief, Rolf, his daughter, Gisela, as wife.

Louis d’ Outre Mer (beyond the sea) was the son of Charles the Simple by his English wife, the sister of King Athelstan, born in 921. At his father’s death, when but eight years of age, he and his mother

New German Empire.    161

went to the English court. Seven years later, he began his reign, 936-954. After a stormy career, he died of a fall from his horse, at the early age of _{Lou|g d}, _0utre thirty-four. His son, Lothair, came to the Mer and His throne on his father’s death, when but thir- ^Sons* ⁹²⁹"⁹⁸⁷* teen years of age, and reigned from 954 to 986. The younger son, Charles, became duke of Lothringia, 987-992, while Louis the Fifth, the last of the descendants of Charlemagne to sit upon the Frankish throne, after reigning a year from the death of his father, Lothair, died in May, 887, when only twenty years of age. Hugh Capet succeeded to the vacant throne. In this line of princes was no sovereign of first-class abilities. Two, Charles the Fat and Charles the Simple, were below the average of intelligence and ability. Yet the last rulers of this house showed no lack of vigor, but a succession of early deaths prevented any successful achievement. The value of personality in those rude times is shown by the career of Arnulf, the illegitimate son of Carloman, son of Louis the German. He defeated the Normans in a great battle, and ruled with vigor and success. Chosen king of the Germans on the deposition of Charles the Fat, he became emperor in 896. His death, in 899, was an irretrievable calamity to the empire, from which it did not recover for half a century. His rule passed nominally to his son, Louis the Child, who was six years of age at his father’s death, and who followed him to the tomb in his twentieth year, in 912. Thus ended the race and rule of the descendants of Charlemagne.

Arnulf was the last prince of Carolingian blood to be crowned emperor of Rome. At his death,

11

162 Formation of Medieval Church.

his title passed to his younger son, Louis the Child, but the government and finally the royalty Kings of Ger= ^{fel1 to} Conrad I, who reigned from 911 many. to 918. He struggled manfully, but un-899=963. successfully, with insufficient resources, to 9^ef⁼ meet the heathen invaders of Germany—

man empire.    «■

Saxon House. ^^ie Normans on the north and west, and 918-1024. the Hungarians on the east. At his death Henry i. he recommended the election of Henry the 9»9-936. p_owi_erj duke of Saxony, as king of the Germans. His own line reappeared one hundred years later, in the person of Conrad II, and the Salian emperors descended from him. Henry I, surnamed the Fowler, was a wise and energetic king, and in a very real sense the founder of the German nation. He called his open-air-loving people, dwelling in scattered villages, into cities; taught them how to live together, to fortify their common home, and to resist and beat back the invaders. At Merseburg and Meissen he planted strongholds and founded bishoprics, thus turning the tide of conquest in the East in favor of the Germans.

Henry was succeeded by his son, Otto I, the ablest prince of his house, and with Charlemagne, the only otto 1. one of the German emperors, called the 936-973. Great. Otto carried on his father’s work of consolidating and extending the German power. The English princess Editha was his first wife; she died in 946. Otto married, 951, for his second wife, the wise Adelheid, of Burgundy, whose career was more romantic than any novelist would dare to make that of his heroine. He renewed the empire of Charlemagne, which had been in abeyance for sixty years.

New German Empire.

Otto and Adelheid were crowned at Rome, February 2, 962. Otto reigned with increasing power and splendor until his death in 973. The mighty emperor lies buried beside his first wife, the English Editha, in the cathedral at Magdeburg, whose archbishopric he founded. Otto I began that imperial connection and rule in Italy which was such an immense drain upon the abilities, men, and resources, which should have gone to the building up of a strong, united German nation, but which was frittered away in exhausting and fruitless campaigns in the Italian peninsula, from 962 to 1250, or for almost three hundred years. The holy Roman Empire of Otto and his successors was very different from that of Charlemagne. That included all of Christendom on the continent of Europe, except the lands of the Greek emperor at Constantinople, united under a powerful monarch. The empire now included neither France nor Northern Spain, and while England and France were becoming strong monarchical powers, the holy Roman emperor was at the head of a powerful feudal nobility, which he controlled by his personal influence or military prowess, and while they became stronger through a strict rule of hereditary descent,' the headship of the German Empire was weakened by the tendency to become an elective office. The influence of the Ottos upon the papal elections was to elevate the papacy from its deepest moral degradation, and so to help Christendom to a nobler Church life. But this very effort and success brought about the ruin of the empire. Otto strengthened the hand which struck it down.

Otto II married Theophano, sister of the Greek emperor Basil II, a cultivated and noble woman. The

164 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

ideas of the empire and imperial rule changed from the Frankish ideal and freedom of Charlemagne to otto 11. the despotism, ceremonies, and cruelties 973-985. ₀f the Byzantine court. Adelheid governed during the minority of her son, as did The-ophano during the longer minority of the third Otto, otto hi. Adelheid survived her son Otto II, who 983-1002. died _at twenty-eight, and lived until 999, while Theophano died in 991, her son Otto III dying in 1002, in his twenty-second year. These women deserved well of the German nation. They not only ruled well themselves, but brought up their sons as pure and cultivated sovereigns. The glamour of all-embracing imperial despotism and the air of Italy bore them to the grave at the opening of their career.

The last Otto was succeeded by his cousin Henry II, who, with his wife, Cunegunda, was canonized as a saint by the Church. He ruled wisely

Salian

Emperors, both Church and State, and at his death, 1024-1125. j_n 1024, the German nobility elected Con-conrad ii, rad II, duke of Lorraine, a descendant of 1024-1039. Q_onra(j _the f_oun(i_{er Q}f the Salian line of

1039^056 ^emP^erors* Conrad II, a strong and vigor* ous ruler, added Burgundy to the German Empire. Henry III maintained the reputation of his father and of the Ottos, while more scrupulous in Church affairs than Conrad II. His death was most unfortunate for his country and his house. His six-year-old son had already been crowned king, and suc-Henry iv. ceeded as Henry IV, under the guardian-1056-1107. _shjp ₀f hj_{s mo}ther, Agnes of Poitou. She was no such woman as either Adelheid or Theophano. Weak and unstable, her government commanded no

New German Empire.

respect from the people or the nobility. Neither she nor her favorites knew how to rule. The strong and hard Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, with the basest treachery, seized her son at Ivaiserwerth, in 1162. Though the royal boy, but twelve years old, plunged fearlessly into the Rhine, the effort to escape was vain. Very early in life he experienced the unscrupulousness and cruelty of that ecclesiastical power which was to pursue him until after his death. Later, Archbishop Adelbert, of Hamburg, took charge of him, and allowed him to go to the extreme of license; but the coarse and general accusations of sensuality are refuted by the devotion of his wife, Bertha, his own vigorous life, and the absence of mention of illegitimate posterity. His mother, Agnes, gave herself to priestly influence and good works. To Germany’s undoing, the first French woman wore the imperial crown. The papacy had found its opportunity; the reign of a widow and a minor in Germany corresponded with the era of Hildebrand. German king and pope met in mortal conflict. Henry IV was attractive in person and manner, an able diplomatist, knowing how to win men; but from the bitter experience of his youth he was suspicious, and like one born to power, despotic in means, even to beneficent ends. Though a brave soldier, he was not a good general. He survived the humiliations of Canossa and Tibur, found generous support from the cities like Worms, and raised up the ablest and most dangerous of the anti-popes, Wibert of Ravenna, whose abilities and character made him worthy of a better fate. Gregory VII died in exile, at Anagin, 1085. Henry’s star seemed in the ascendant.

Chapter III.

THE INVASIONS.

THE NORTHMEN.

The pirate raids, the warlike expeditions, the settlements and conquests of the Northmen, the Scandinavian races of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, fill the three centuries from 787 to 1090. The sphere of their devastation and conquest extended from Greenland to Moscow, and from Iceland to Sicily. They conquered, settled, and held the Faroe Isles, Iceland, Greenland, the Shetlands, Hebrides, Orkneys, Eastern Ireland, Normandy in France, thrice England, and Naples and Sicily. From their ranks came the boldest of the Crusaders, from Bohemond and Tancred to Richard Coeur de Lion.

In their own land they were stalwart petty lords and land-owning peasants, loving and tender in their homes, with a pathetic strain of poetic feeling; in their wrath they were like their Northern storms, unmeasured and cruel. Industrious, and with a keen eye for trade, they were pitiless pirates on the sea; they killed, plundered, burned, and carried into slavery the victims of the fairer, richer, and more civilized lands of the Christian South. They were thorough heathen, not only eating horse-flesh, but having human sacrifices. They regularly exposed children which they did not wish to rear, and though not sensual, and their women had great influence with them, their loose marriage relations formed a strong contrast 166

The Invasions.

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with the requirements of Christianity. Robbery, accompanied with murder and slavery, was their crowning vice. They were destroyers of all that civilization or Christianity had accumulated or held dear. Although they were vigorous, hardy, and brave, they were also cunning and cruel. Little was originated by them, but they assimilated readily and thoroughly. They became the best representatives of the current feudalism, noted for their pride, their splendor, refinement, chivalrous manners, and their love of war and law-suits. Their lands showed the finest architecture in Europe, while in ability at the council-board, in skill at the tourney, and in bravery in battle, they were unsurpassed in Christendom. In courtly manners, in devotion to the Church, in civil, judicial, and financial administration, the descendants of these rude heathen of the North surpassed all their contemporaries, and left an indelible impress upon Western civilization. They were not profound in thought, grand in design, or capable of forming a great State, except as a factor, in which they lost their language, race, and very name. Nevertheless, for a time longer than from the conversion of Constantine to the death of Gregory the Great—that is, longer than the era of the Teutonic migrations and conquests—they filled Europe with their name, its terror and renown. From them is traced the descent of the present reigning houses of the British and Russian Empires.

They did not begin their plunder and invasion of other lands because forced from their own by foreign invaders, as was so often the case with the Teutonic tribes. Whatever the impulse, it came from within. The increase of population may have made emigration

168 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

from the Northern peninsula necessary; restiveness under a stronger and more settled form of government, which trenched upon their independence, may have contributed to this end. Certain it is that the The impulse ^nati^ye l°^ve of adventure was quickened by to these the reports brought back to them of the invasions. _weaj^ _Qf ]_ancj_s the south and west.

The ease of the first robber voyages, the rich booty which the chiefs and their following of peasant farmers brought back with them, made the young and stalwart men long for like adventures and rewards. In these raids they risked only their own persons; their families and their homes were safe by the fiords and coasts, where they had learned to love and rule the sea. Even their crops could be safely harvested before they left for what might bring them a warrior’s death, but was sure to bring more wealth and costly furnishings to their Northern homes than they had ever before seen. There was nothing in their religion or customs which restrained their ravages or mitigated their ferocity. Their ships were admirably fitted for quick and rapid movement. When they wished only to stop for a few hours and gather spoil without opposition— for they lived from the lands along which they sailed— they stole out from their ships and drove off all the cattle within reach. If they desired to attack, murder, burn, and plunder, they seized horses immediately upon landing, and ravaged the country far and wide before resistance could be made. Booty and captives were crowded into their long boats, and before any force could be gathered they were far away upon the sea.

The name of the rovers, Wikings or Vikings, is

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169

from wick, a creek. The Vikings were the creek men, named from the inlets where they moored their swift ships, and from which they sprang upon Routes of the their prey. These boats were not fitted for vikings, the open sea, but twenty-four hours of good weather and fair wind brought the Norse sailors to the Shetland Islands, thence they could coast by the Orkneys, the Hebrides, Western Scotland, Northern and Eastern Ireland; while those more adventurous could sail north to the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. These routes they followed in the ninth and tenth centuries. Their Danish cousins could follow the coasts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, from the mouth of the Eider to that of the Garonne, and easily strike across the channel to the southern and eastern coasts of Britain.

The first mention of raids from these Northmen is in 787, when some of them landed in the South of England, and killed the reeve who went

-    Viking Raids.

out to meet them, supposing they were peaceful traders. They were first seen in Ireland in 795. For thirty years they ravaged its coasts and plundered its religious houses, before making the first permanent settlement at Armagh in 832. About 850 they came to Iceland, which had been partially settled from Ireland. Meanwhile, for fifty years, they had been plundering on either side of the English Channel. In 793 they plundered and burned the monastery, and killed the monks of Lindisfarne, the seat of St. Cuth-bert. In 797, the holy houses of Benedict Biscop and Baeda, Wearmouth and Jarrow, shared the same fate. In the following year, Iona, the seat of St. Columban’s monastery, and the most venerated missionary site in

170 Formation of Medieval Church.

Britain, was destroyed by them, and, like St. Hilda’s cloister at Whitby, was never restored. It seemed as if the heathen Vikings had a special hatred against the holiest places in Britain, as Canterbury was more than once pillaged by them between its first and last capture, 838 and 1012. In 837 they were in Hampshire, the next year they were in East Anglia and Kent, and in 851 they came with three hundred and fifty ships; pillaging London, they pushed into the heart of England. Meanwhile, the southern shores of the channel and the Frankish kingdom felt even more severely the injury caused by their devastations. In 810, Godfrid, one of the Danish chiefs, with two hundred ships, made a descent across the Elbe upon Frisia, and defeated the Franks in three battles. From 830 on they ravaged the coast almost every year, from the Elbe to the Rhine. They burned Hamburg in 840. Their incursions were first checked in this region by the victory of King Arnulf at Louvain, in 891. Meanwhile, they directed their attention to the kingdom of Charles the Bald. They sacked Rouen and Nantes, at the mouth of the Seine and the Loire, and ravaged the country of the Garrone as far as Toulouse, in 844. The next year they took and plundered Paris; Saintes and Limoges shared the same fate; while, in 848, they took Bordeaux, and made it their headquarters. From this time they were masters of the western part of France, moving from river to river and plundering at their will. In 850 they pillaged the entire coast from the Rhine to the Seine.

The settlers at Armagh, 832, seem to have been Danes, as were those who took Dublin before 838, and erected there a fortress in 842. They founded

The Invasions.

171

Waterford, Limerick, and Cork as towns and ports of trade. In 852, Norse settlers came to Dublin, under Olaf the White, and became masters _{( (} of the Scandinavian settlement. He ruled for nearly twenty years, or until 871. On his death, his queen, Aud, a Christian, went with a numerous following to Iceland, where they settled the better part of the island. The descendants of Olaf the White ruled in Dublin for one hundred years. The plans for extending the rule of the Norsemen over Ireland where shattered at the battle of Clontarf, where the Irish were victorious, 1014; but their rule at Dublin remained until the Norman soldiers of Strongbow, under command of Henry II, took Dublin in 1170. The Norse dominion endured for more than three hundred and twenty years, and was a strong race element in Eastern Ireland.

The Norse kings of Dublin, with their fellow-countrymen, took possession of Sutherland, Ross, and Murray. Jarl Sigurd married the daugh- _{Scotland and} ter of Malcolm, king of Scotland; their the daughter married the king of the Hebrides, ^,s,ands* which became tributary. The Orkneys were under Norse supremacy, 900; Hebrides, 950. The Isle of Man became tributary to the Norse conquerors of Dublin, 980; about the same time they became predominant in Iceland. They discovered and settled Greenland in 985, and discovered Vinland, on the North American coast, south of Newfoundland, in 1003.

Egbert, the first king of England, ruled from 802 to 839. He was succeeded by his son, Ethelwulf, from 839 to 858, who visited Rome in 856, and marked Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald, the

172 Formation of Medieval Church.

year of his death. Four sons of Ethelwulf succeeded him—Ethelbald, from 858 to 860; Ethelbert, from Danes in 860 to 866; Ethelred, from 866 to 871; England, youngest and, like David, greatest of all, Alfred, from 871 to 901.

Alfred, the only English king called the Great, was born at Wantage, in 849. At the age of four years he

Alfred went with a company of English nobles to the Great. Rome, where he remained for three years, returning in his father’s train in 856. The years from 864, when the pirates ravished Kent, until Alfred came to the throne, were a period of invasion and distress. The Danes came no longer to plunder and go away; they came to take possession of the land. They came to East Anglia under Ivar the Boneless in 866, and remained over winter. In the spring they turned toward the North. They took York and conquered Northumbria in 867. Their conquest was the ruin of the wealth and learning of the land. The great abbeys of Ely and Croyland were taken by them in 869. Mercia, or Central England, paid tribute to the Danes. A new and larger expedition came to English shores under Guthrun. They pushed up the Thames and encamped at Reading to invade Wessex. They were met and defeated at Ashdown by King Ethelred, who died soon after, leaving the crown and invaded land to his brother Alfred, then twenty-two years of age. Almost the first act of his reign was to buy the retreat of the Danes, as resistance with the resources at his command was hopeless. In 874, the Danes wintered in Mercia, and sacked and burned the great abbey of Repton, which had been the burial-place of the Mercian kings. The Danes seized Exeter in 876;

The Invasions.

i73

Alfred blockaded and took it in the spring of 877; but the next year the Danes returned in overwhelming force. Alfred retired to the isle of Ethelney, in whose swamps he strayed for three months. Finally, he defeated the Danes at Ethandune, or Edington, in May, 878. At the Peace of Wedmore, signed shortly afterward, there was left to Alfred, Wessex, the Kingdom of Kent, and the lesser half of Mercia; the bulk of the island was in the hands of the Danes. After 875 they began to plow and till the land they had conquered. Most important of all, Guthrun, their chief, became a king and was baptized.

Nowhere else in Europe did the Northmen make such a proportionate conquest of the land, except in Iceland and Sicily. In wealth and resources, it more than equaled all the Scandinavian realms. The Danes plundered London in 880; but in 886, London and a part of Essex, called Middlesex, became part of Alfred’s kingdom. “From that year, more than from any other, dates the foundation of a national English monarchy.” In 893, seven years later, two hundred and fifty Danish vessels sailed for Southern England, while eighty made their way up the Thames. They ravaged Hampshire and Berkshire in 894, and then all Danish England rose to help them. Alfred captured their ships in the river Lea, defeated the Danes, and practically ended the war, 896.

The invasions of England were preceded by cruel harryings and slaughter in Northern France, and even the lands of the Mediterranean. In 859 the robber bands sailed up the Somme for the first time, and plundered and burned the city of Amiens. Their brethren from the Seine took Noyon, and led captive

174 Formation of Medieval Church.

the bishop and a crowd of clergy and people, slaying without pity those for whom they did not expect a good ransom. Another fleet sailed to Spain, plundered Andalusia, oenetrated to Seville, and

Northmen .    .    ^A    ,

on the wintered m Southern r ranee. In 860 they

pillaged the valley of the Rhone to Valence, and then turned to the Italian coast, where they sacked Pisa and other maritime cities. Famine and pestilence followed everywhere their horrible devastations, which ruined commerce and agriculture. In 874 they harried the lands of the Scheldt, the Meuse, and the Rhine as far as Aachen. Paris was sacked three times in the forty years previous to 886. But the tide now began to turn. In 875, Charles the Bald drove them from Angers; in 878, Alfred defeated them at Ethandune; Louis the Stammerer, at Saulcourt, in 881. Odo, son of Robert the Strong, count of Paris, drove them from that city in 885, while Arnulf gained such a decisive victory over them at Louvain, in 891, that they never again attempted a settlement on German soil.

The era of the Vikings and their raids was over. While their ships went forth to plunder as long as their home-lands remained heathen, still the settlements in Ireland and Iceland, the Scottish Isles, and, above all, in England, had drained the strength of the warlike population. The increasing power of resistance, and the defeats of Paris and Louvain, had taught them that the days of easy raid and plunder were done. The settlement of Normandy still further emphasized this fact. In 912, at St. Clair-sur-epte, the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, gave to the Viking chief, Rolf, and his companions, the province of Normandy,

The Invasions.

i75

and his daughter in marriage, on condition that he should be baptized as a Christian, and take an oath of fealty to him as his lord. It is related that, according to the custom, Rolf was told that he must kneel before the sovereign at the latter ceremony. This the independent Danish chief scorned to do, but finally allowed one of his retinue to perform the act for him. The rude Northman knelt as required, but on arising seized the king by the feet and overturned him. Charles was inclined to be angry at the insult, but seeing the mailed men around him, thought it best to pass it off as a good joke.

Northmen from the Loire raided Burgundy in 925, and Aquitaine in 930; Danes from England entered Normandy in 1000, but the systematic plunder of the years from 840 to 912 was past. It would be difficult to form a conception of the murder, pillage, slavery, burning, destruction, famine, and pestilence caused by this period of pitiless heathen ravage. These Viking warriors, with so tender love for wife and child in the Northland, hewed down defenseless priests without mercy, tossed helpless babes from spear to spear, and carried away the mothers, bereft of husband and child, into hopeless slavery.

We must now follow the settlement of the Danes in Normandy and England, and the double conquest of England by the Danes and Normans, _{The Norman} which distinguished English history of the Duchy, eleventh century. Rolf was succeeded by ^9,2,°35-his son, William Longsword, 927-943. In 931 the Britons rose in rebellion against the Normans, but they were crushed. Avranches and Coutances, including the peninsula of Cotentin and the Channel Islands,

176 Formation of Medieval Church.

were annexed to Normandy. On the murder of William, he was succeeded by Richard the Fearless, who ruled for more than fifty years, 943-996. Richard married Emma, sister of Hugh Capet, king of France, in 960. From the accession of Richard, all Normandy, save the newly-settled districts of the West, was Christian and spoke French. Richard I was succeeded by his son, Richard the Good, 996-1026. These were thirty years of peaceful progress for Normandy. His daughter, Emma, married Ethelred II, king of England, in 1002. She became the wife of two kings of England, one Saxon and one Danish, and the mother of two English kings, one from each marriage. The long reigns of the first two Richards were followed by the short one of Richard III, 1026-1028. On his death, Normandy fell to his brother, Robert the Devil, 1028-1035. After a rule of seven years, Robert set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and died on the way thither, at Nicasa, July 2, 1035. Before leaving the land, he called his nobles together, and made them swear allegiance to his illegitimate son by Har-leva, daughter of a tanner of Falaise. William, duke of Normandy and conqueror of England, was born in 1028, and was therefore seven years of age when his father left him as sovereign of the land in the midst of a proud and turbulent nobility.

Alfred was succeeded by his son, Edward the Elder, 901-925, who was a soldier and a ctatesman. With the aid of his sister Ethelflead, he conquered Essex, the valley of the Thames, East Anglia, and all Central Britain. Under his son Athelstan, these conquests were enlarged by the submission of Northumbria and the defeat of the Scots, Welsh, and Norse,

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at Brunanburgh, 937. Athelstan gave Northumbria to Eric Bloodaxe as under-king, who had been driven from the throne of Norway. Edmund, brother of ⁴ Athelstan, was but eighteen when he came to the throne. The next year all Danish Eng- _Englandfrom land rose in rebellion, led by Olaf Sihtric the Death of from Norway, son-in-law of the king of ^A|!"**°*_t^he the Scots. Central Britain was invaded in ₀f the 943, and the next year peace was con-eluded, according to the terms of which Olaf received baptism, though to Edmund was left little more than the lands which gave obedience to his grandfather, Alfred. But in 944, Edmund rallied his forces, and, driving out Olaf, reduced Danish England to submission. Edmund had won all England, and we may conjecture what Saxon England might have been if a long reign had been granted to him; but in May, 946, Edmund saw at his banquet-board a banished robber, who resisted when the servant bade him withdraw. The king grappled with him, and the robber gave him a fatal blow with his dagger. He was followed by his younger brother, Edred, 946-955, who held Danish England in submission, and secured a final conquest. After Edred came two sons of Edmund—Edwy, 955^_95^> ^an<^ Edgar, 958-975. Edgar came to the throne at sixteen; his rule was one of peace and order. Edgar’s sons, Edward the Martyr, 975-97$, and Ethelred II, 978-1016, succeeded to his throne. Edward was but sixteen when crowned, and nineteen when assassinated through the nobles, who formed the party of his stepmother and her son. Ethelred II, the Unready or Unwise, was but ten years of age when he sue-

178 Formation of Medijeval Church.

ceeded to his brother’s throne. His reign of thirty-eight years was the most shameful England ever knew. He married Emma, daughter of Richard, duke of Normandy, through whom came the Norman claim to the English throne. The only redeeming trait of the reigns of the descendants of Alfred, from 879 to 1066, was the short reign, of seven months, of Edmund Ironside, 1016, son of Ethelred.

The Danes were held in check on the side of Germany by the vigor of her rulers. Gorm was thor-_D . _h oughly defeated by Henry I, in 934. Otto I Conquest of conquered Harold Bluetooth in 965, and England. _caused him to receive baptism and pay

I0i4°i043«    ,    .

tribute. After Otto’s death, they invaded the German borders, but were completely overthrown by Otto II, 974. Ten years later, in union with the Wends, there was a Danish terror in the lands of the Elbe and the Weser. The invading army was cut off to the last man at Gelinesmoor, 994. They made peace with Otto III, in 996. Eric, king of Sweden and Denmark, became a Christian. He died in 995. Harold Bluetooth had been in contact with Christian peoples all his life, and had accepted baptism at the hands of his conqueror in the thirtieth year of his reign; but was still a good deal of a heathen. Swein was a son of King Harold by a maid of the household of one of his nobles. The king seems to have hated him, and he was brought up by the chief, who was his mother’s protector and lord. Swein was a thorough heathen, and early took to a life of seafaring and plunder. He was in England on these raids, 980-986. Returning, he fought with his father for the Danish crown. Harold was wounded in battle,

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and died soon afterward, 986. Two years later, Swein was driven from Denmark by Eric, king of Sweden, and again by his son Olaf. With Olaf Tryggvason, of Norway, Swein attacked London, 994, but was driven off. Six years later, Swein was undisputed master of Denmark. The English massacred all the Danes within reach on St. Brice’s day, November 13, 1002. The next year Swein attacked England on the east and south. Danish attacks were renewed in the years 1007, 1009, 1010, and 1012. The Danes were bought off by heavy tribute. Swein made his final attack in July, 1013, when Danish England rose to support him. Ethelred having left for Normandy, Swein was master of all England before the end of the year. Swein died in February, 1014; Ethelred came back, and Canute, son of Swein, attacked and took Wessex, 1016. In April, 1016, Ethelred died at London. Canute won the battle of Assandun, and after the death of Edmund Ironside, in November of the same year, he was left undisputed master of England.

Canute was born in 994, and when he took the English crown he was but twenty-two years of age, having already ruled two years over Denmark. _{Canute and} He was the ablest ruler England had seen His Sons, since the days of Alfred. Though stern ^,0,6“¹⁰-*²-and even cruel at first, he determined to rule England as an English king, and he gave her greater peace, prosperity, and good government than she had known for forty years. He married the Norman Emma, wife of Athelstan, who seems always to have preferred Canute and his sons to the relatives of her first marriage. Canute became a convinced Christian. He made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1027. The next year

180 Formation of Medieval Church.

he took Norway from Olaf Haroldson, and exercised a preponderance and influence at the Swedish court. Three kingdoms owning his sway in wealth and power, he was not inferior to the emperor himself. But his might did not survive his death, 1035, when only in the forty-first year of his age. His sons had none of the kingly qualities of their father. The oldest son, Harold, reigned from 1035 ^{t0 I0}40> ^ancl Emma’s son, Hardicanute, from 1040 to 1042. Ethelred had left two sons by Emma, Alfred and Edward. Alfred, Edward the f°^ul treachery, was seized, blinded, and Confessor left to die at the monastery of Ely. Ed-1043-1056. _war(^ _caiied the Confessor, more of a monk than a king, was called to the vacant throne; but Godwin, the able minister of Canute, and after his death, in 1053, Godwin’s son, Harold, ruled until the last of the line of Egbert and Alfred was laid in the chapel of the stately Westminster Abbey, which he had reared, and which became the last resting-place, not only of her kings, but of the greatest of the English race, the noblest burial-place in Christendom.

THE NORMANS.

At Edward’s death, Godwin and his son had ruled England for more than forty years. They had accumu-^    lated in their hands the wealth and power

The Norman

Conquest, of the kingdom. While extending their

^,o66, own dominion, they had ruled wisely and well. The peace, order, and prosperity of Canute’s rule had been prolonged. Civil war had been avoided, peace had been maintained, and no English blood had been shed for political crimes. There is no doubt that Harold, son of Godwin, was the choice of Eng

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land as Edward’s successor, and that William, duke of Normandy, had not a single partisan of English blood in the land, nor any valid claim to the English crown by heredity or any other right. Had Harold kept his brother his friend, instead of making him his enemy, or had he reared up sons in legitimate marriage, as well as had brothers to stand by his side, there might have been no Norman conquest.

William, duke of Normandy, fatherless at seven, and yet a sovereign of rude, hard, untamed men who willed to have no lord over them, learned wmiam to rule in the thirty years between the the death of the pilgrim at Nicaea and his royal ^Conqueror* cousin at Westminster, for William’s father and Edward’s mother were brother and sister. At nineteen, William had become master of Normandy by the battle of Val-es-Dunes. He not only remained master, but kept busy his warlike nobility, commanding their obedience and devotion by his success in arms and skill in government. William was a large, powerful man, a thorough soldier, an able diplomatist, a statesman far-seeing and wary, who never neglected an influence, however slight, which could tell in his favor. Sincere in his Christian'belief, he was devout and chaste. Legal in his conceptions of morality, he had a strong sense of justice. Ambitious and determined to gain his ends, he preferred to win by fair means rather than foul ones, but did not shun cruelty and the heaviest oppression when he thought them necessary. In the age of Hildebrand he stands forth as the one strong character and will, who knew what he wanted and forced the world to give it to him. Well is he called the Conqueror.

182 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

Harold was crowned king of England, January 6, 1066. In May, his brother Tostig, whom he had made earl of Northumberland, but whose unfitness for rule had caused a rebellion and made necessary his removal, sought an alliance with William of Normandy, and when that failed, with Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. In September, Harold and he sailed to invade his brother's kingdom. They defeated the Northumbrians at Fulford. The English, under Harold, met them at Stamford Bridge, September 25, 1066, and in the great defeat that followed, Tostig and Harold Hardrada fell on the field. They had caused the ruin of the English nation and two hundred years of servitude for the English race; for, three days after Stamford Bridge, William landed at Pevensey. The 14th of October the Norman invaders came upon the English, near Hastings. The night before, the Normans had devoutly prayed and confessed their sins. There was feasting in the English camp. In the morning, the Norman knight, Taillefer, rode out in advance of the line, tossing and catching his lance and sword, and singing the songs of chivalry; and then, rushing foremost to the attack, he was the first to fall. Stern and doubtful was the battle. The Normans were steadily repulsed until they feigned to fly, when, contrary to the orders of their king, the English broke their line, the Normans rushed in, and the strength of the English people lay thick about the standard of their fallen king. Alfred’s race died with Edward the Confessor; Alfred’s people died with Harold. When a new English people stands on English soil, Dane and Norman, as the result of three great and successful Scandinavian invasions, are

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Englishmen. A nation hardened and united by invasion, defeat, and centuries of oppression, comes to the front in Christendom.

The Normans did not come into the Mediterranean like their ancestors, the Northmen, merely to plunder. At first, as armed knights returning from a ^ .

^{0    0}    Normans In

visit to the Holy Sepulcher, they took serv- Lower Italy ice with one or the other of the contending ^{and Sici,}y*

.    .    1021-10Q0.

parties in Southern Italy. Gaining victories thus, these hardy warriors won a footing in the sunniest of Italian lands. By 1021 they had founded the county of Aversa, and, forty years later, that of Capua. This was inconveniently near the States of the Church, and in their incursions they made no distinction between Church and secular property. In 1053, Leo IX raised an army to put an end to their plundering. He was defeated and taken prisoner, ending the campaign by receiving their oaths as vassals of the Roman See. The most celebrated of these Norman adventurers was Robert Guiscard, the sixth of the twelve sons of Tancred, of Haute-ville, near Coutances, in Normandy. He came to Southern Italy in 1053, being made the chief of his house by the death of his older brother, Humphrey, in 1057. Two years later, he was made duke of Apulia and Calabria, and took Durazzo in Epeiros in 1082, then sacked Rome in 1084, and died the same year, while planning an expedition against Constantinople. Humphrey, William of the Iron Arm, and Drogo, brothers of Robert, warred and won in Italy; but the richest conquest fell to the younger brother, Roger. Robert had made an end of the Greek dominion in Italy, in 1077, four hundred and fifty years

184 Formation of Medieval Church.

after Belisarius’s conquests for Justinian. Roger put an end to the Saracen dominion in Sicily. Palermo was taken in 1072, Syracuse in 1086, and the whole island by 1093. The Norman rule was now finally established, and lasted until the heiress of the Norman reigning house married the son of Frederick Barba-rossa, 1189, their son, Frederick II, becoming heir at once of the German Empire and of the Sicilian kingdom, where he was reared, learned to rule, and loved to reside.

Rurik and three companions from Scandinavia came to Novgorod in 862, and there founded a princi-Northmen in pality. One of the company afterward Russia. founded Kieff. Rurik reigned until his death, in 879. He was succeeded by his son Igor; his guardian, Oleg, conquered Kieff. Igor married Olga in 903. In 911 the Russians, after attacking Constantinople and being repulsed, signed a peace with the empire. Most of the signers bore Scandinavian names. Igor died in 941, and left his kingdom to his son, Swatislaw, with his mother as guardian. She became a Christian in 955. Vladimir, son of Swatislaw, a cruel and licentious heathen who killed his brother, was baptized in 988. His son Yarosloff, the legislator, succeeded him, and reigned until his death.

The Normans, under Robert Guiscard, sacked Rome in the pontificate of Gregory VII; they flocked to the standards of Godfrey of Bouillon, and by his side scaled the walls of Jerusalem, as later, by the side of Baldwin of Flanders, those of Constantinople. Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, the three great capitals of Christendom, saw their defenses taken, their

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185

citizens slaughtered, and their wealth and public monuments wasted by Norman assailants.

The Normans were not the only invaders of these centuries. The Avars invaded Bavaria in 788, and Charlemagne warred against them for ten ^ years; but their dominion was broken in 795. They were driven from the lands between the Ems and the Danube, and the Sclavs took their place. They vanished after two hundred years of rule, having escaped from the Turks, but succumbing to the Franks.

THE BULGARIANS.    «

The Bulgarians settled in the Balkan peninsula south of the Danube, and founded a kingdom there in 679. They reduced the Sclavs of Macedonia to tribute, 775-784. The lands from the Danube to the Balkan Mountains were occupied by them from 679 to 1000. They ravaged Thrace to the walls of Constantinople, in 921 and 923. In the latter year, they took Adrianople,and afterward made peace with the Greeks. They ravaged Servia in 927. The Bulgarians were defeated by the Russians in 970, and in the next year the country was conquered by the Greeks. Soon afterward, the second Bulgarian kingdom arose. Against this, Basil II warred almost without cessation from 990 to 1018, when the Bulgarians submitted. Encouraged by the successful revolt of Servia, they rose against the Greeks in 1041, but were defeated. They founded the third Bulgarian kingdom in 1187; it flourished until 1246, but endured for more than a century longer. The Turks defeated them at Kossovo, 1388, and took possession of the country, 1393.

186 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

THE WENDS.

The Wends were the first of the Sclavic tribes and nations with which the Germans came in contact. They seem to have settled in Central Germany between 575 and 625, when the German population had been drained off by the invasions consequent upon the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. From 850 to 900 they held the valleys of the Saale, the Middle Elbe, and all eastward. Under Henry I, war was waged against them with ruthless cruelty and slaughter on both sides. At the battle of Lenzen, in 929, it is said that 120,000 Wends were slain. After the battle of Rocknitz, 955, the slaughter of the prisoners lasted all night. Margrave Gero invited thirty Wendish princes to be his guests at a banquet, and murdered them all at his table. In their turn, the Wends reveled in burning, murder, and destruction. When they took Waldsleben, in 929, they slaughtered all of every age and both sexes. In 955 they cut down to a man a garrison which had surrendered to them. They took Havelburg and Brandenburg in 983, and rose in rebellion three times in the eleventh century. Hamburg and Bremen were both plundered by them.

THE SARACENS.

While the Normans were devastating the northern shores of Christian Europe, not less daring or less cruel were the ravages of the Saracens in those of the Mediterranean. They took possession of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles, from which they pillaged the Christian mainland. They even established themselves on the Garlignano, in Southern

The Invasions.

187

Italy, from 881 to 921, and before that had ravaged the Campania to the walls of Rome. For a time they established themselves in "Southern France, and the shores of Christian Spain, France, and Italy were annually plundered for property and slaves. The rise of the Norman dominion and the naval power of Pisa and Genoa, put an end to Saracen invasions in the Western Mediterranean, though the Balearic Isles were not taken from them until 1238.

THE HUNGARIANS.

The Hungarians first appear on the northern shores of the Black Sea from 642 to 668. In the latter half of the eighth century their kingdom stretched from the Caucasus to the Caspian. They fought with the Greeks against the Persians in 626, and later against the Bulgarians. The original stem of the race may now be found dwelling in small communities on the middle course of the Volga, the Ural, the Irtisch, and the Obi. They first came into the German Empire in 862, and on the Danube and the Elbe they made settlements. Invading Italy in 899, they left the country a desert behind them; but they were repulsed from Venice by the fleet of the republic, and defeated by King Berengar on the Brenta. The lands of the Central Danube were invaded by them in 900, and those of the Middle Elbe in 906. In 907 they defeated the Bavarians, and pressed on over the Rhine and Moselle to the Garonne. Regino of Treves at that time said: “The Hungarians surpass the wild beasts in cruelty. They kill the children and the aged, while the fields are white with the bones of the slain.” While their army was away, in 899, the Petschengens

188 Formation of Medieval Church.

took possession of the Hungarian lands between the Danube and the Don. This made necessary the new settlement in what is now called Hungary. They left scarcely a church standing in Pannonia in 900; in the same year they invaded Bavaria, while Carinthia suffered a like fate in the year following. In 924 they burned Pavia, and after plundering the Campania to the walls of Rome in 937, they reached Capua and Beneventum. Again they stood before Rome in 942; five years later, reaching Otranto, they ravaged Northern and Central Italy, from 942 to 952. Meantime, the measure meted out to Italy fell to Germany also. They invaded Thuringia, Saxony, and Franconia in 908; the next year, the Upper Rhine; and the year following, Eastern Germany and Northwest Bohemia. In 915, with the Wends, they burned Bremen; two years afterward they plundered Lorraine and destroyed Basel; and again, after two years, they ravaged Southwest France. About the middle of the century the Hungarians rallied again, and made a final effort. The Germans first defeated them in 948, and in 950, Otto I invaded Hungary. In 951 they were in Aquitaine all summer; three years later they devastated the Rhine region again, and returned to their homes by way of Burgundy and Italy. The next year they started on a similar campaign, but were met and finally defeated on the Lechfeld, south of Augsburg, by Otto I, August 10, 955. The size of the Hungarian army, which was here cut to pieces, is given at 100,000 men. The heathen princes who were taken in battle were hung before the gates of Regensburg. Thrace, as far as Constantinople, was ravaged by the Hungarians in 934 and 943; but in 959 they were defeated by

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189

the Greeks. This ended the invasion of Southeastern Europe. The Norman conquest of Sicily ended the era of the invasions, and that of the Crusades then began. Europe suffered from the Mongols, an invasion which conquered Russia about 1240, and held it in subjection for two hundred years. Then came the Turks, who disquieted Christian Europe from the fall of Constantinople until John Sobieski repulsed them under the walls of Vienna in 1683. Since that time Europeans have been the colonizing invaders of other lands.

Chapter IV.

FEUDALISM.

The feudal organization, in its forms of more or less perfect development, dominated the life of the Middle Ages. These were so different in different times and lands that it is difficult to give a general view which holds true of the fate of a particular age or country. This form of organization arose in France, became dominant under Charles the Bald, and by the year iooo it was the prevailing form of social and political organization in Western Europe. It had its beginnings in the circumstances of the Teutonic Conquest, and so permeated the constitution and life of European Christendom that only two great revolutions—the Puritan in England, and the French Revolution—broke its power. Its dissolution as a social as well as a political factor, has been the work of the democracy of the nineteenth century. A form of political and social life, so powerful and so long dominant, must have had good reasons for its existence, however contradictory it may be to our social customs, political life, forms of thought, or notions of right.

The feudal organization was the supremacy of an aristocratic caste. Its fundamental principle was the inequality of the different classes in society. The members of this class alone bore arms; they owned the land; they were the noble class, the gentlemen, 190

Feudalism.

and their families alone were of gentle blood. They formed the army and the court; by right of birth they held the high offices of State, and the majority of the higher clergy were from their ranks. On The Feudal the Continent they were absolute lords on Regime, their lands; exacted dues and administered justice, including the infliction of sentence of imprisonment, mutilation, and death, according to their own arbitrary will. They looked down with a contempt and disdain, of which we can form little conception, on the ignoble mass of society beneath them. But one power, the Church, could check their excesses or punish their crimes. For the Church they had a genuine, well-founded respect, and even fear; though the fact that the aristocratic spirit pervaded the higher ranks of the clergy often prevented the application of Church principles, however formally acknowledged.

The virtues of the feudal nobility were those of a military caste; they were brave, and, like their barbarian ancestors, they loved fighting, and virtues of never shunned to die in battle. They Feudalism, fought the enemies of their country and of Christendom, as well as their own in their personal and family feuds. They fought in defense of their superiors, their land, and their house. To their equals they were courteous, as became men who always wore a sword by their side to resent an insult. They were loyal to duty, and fought in defense of their dependents as of their own property or friends. In the use of money they were generous, or even extravagant. They were near and accessible. The king was far away, the lord was near. Quick defense and ready protection were the main things needed in those disordered times.

192 Formation of Medieval Church.

Their faults were those of their class. They were proud, arrogant, unspeakably ignorant, arbitrary, and Faults of cruel. The vicious defect of the organiza-Feudaiiam. ^ion _Was, that in spite of usage, custom, the Church, and the king, there was no law to protect the weak against the strong. All depended upon the personal character of the lord; the temptation to the capricious, unjust, and cruel use of absolute power was always present, and not often successfully resisted.

Under the Roman Empire, there was the personal relation of patron and client. “The client was person-Origin of ^a% subject to his patron in return for pro-the Feudal tection and maintenance. The entire reSystem. i_ati_{on G}f th_e client to the State was through the patron. By the act of commendation, the weak freeman submitted himself personally to a patron in return for the protection which he could not give himself.” This was common during the times of the Teutonic Conquest. Under the laws of Rome, the owner of an estate could bestow it for a fixed period, but not alienate it, upon some one else who entered into possession of the estate and its income, being in some way subject to the owner, or making him some return, though not the same as for a rented estate. Such an estate was a benefice. A small proprietor would surrender his estate to a powerful neighbor for his protection, and receive it back as a benefice. The Germans, before the conquest, knew the tie which bound the chief and his following through reciprocal personal obligation. The chief provided for the support of his military retinue; they lived at his court, and fought his battles. They rendered him personal service, and scorned to survive his fall in battle. These

Feudalism.

i93

different elements came together on the soil of France, and from their union came the feudal system. In theory, all the land belonged to the king, which he gave in large estates, or fiefs, to great nobles, on condition of their rendering him military and court service. The nobles divided these domains under similar conditions among their vassals, down to the knight’s fee, large enough to furnish a single horseman.

It was thus to the companions in arms of the Teutonic chiefs that the great spoils of the conquest came. Lands, towns, and villages were theirs, not as the conquest of their arms, but as the grant of their king. Thus were portioned out great estates, first as prce-carhim, or for a life-rent; then as benefice, which could descend, by consent or favor of the king, from the father to the son or other heirs. The process by which these estates finally became strictly hereditary was a long one. The tendency existed from the days of Clovis, but was legally confirmed only in 877 by Charles the Bald, through the Capitulary of Kiersi. This confirmation made the nobilty independent of the king, and completed the feudal organization. From being dependent on the king for favor and the prosperity and jurisdiction' which followed it, the king became dependent upon the nobility for the maintenance of the State and the exercise of his authority.

While this process was going on from above, establishing a territorial aristocracy, the same result was hastened even more rapidly by the necessities of the lower classes of society. The Franks who first invaded France were freemen. They received lands as the result of their great success; but as freemen they were pledged to render military service. The wars

13

.94 Formation of Medieval Church.

of the chiefs, and especially the prolonged and incessant campaigns of Charlemagne, gave the ordinary freeman little opportunity to cultivate his land. They commended themselves and their land to powerful lords, who could afford their families support and protection. This, which the Frankish freeman did as a last necessity, thus becoming the man of his lord and released from direct military service to the king, took place much easier among the conquered population. These were either free or slaves. Slavery was no longer profitable. The landless man could not support himself when there was no manufacture or trade, but fell into beggary and dependence. On the other hand, there was abundance of land awaiting tillage. Gradually the free and servile classes fell into serfdom—that is, they came to belong to a lord, who gave them land to till for a fixed rent, or working so many days in the week on the lord’s domains. He then had his cottage, but rarely took part in war, for which he was but ill fitted or armed, and if his own plot failed, he could call upon his lord for food in famine, as well as for protection in case of invasion.

The land came almost entirely into the possession or control of the military class. This came to pass through grant from the king, through the Church choosing them as patrons for the defense of its property, through commendation by the smaller proprietors, and through fraud and open violence—the strong taking possession of the lands of those who were unable to defend them. The evil times following the reign of Charlemagne, the raids of the Normans, the Saracens, the Wends, and the Hungarians, the incessant private wars, the floods, droughts, and famines,

Feudalism.

i95

contributed to this result, until it became the strictest law that every man must have his lord; the lordless man was an outlaw.

This was largely the result of economic conditions. Where great masses of land were in the hands of the king, or his nobles, or the Church, it was Economic impossible to till it with slaves or hired ^Con(iitions. labor. The lack of trade or of an industrial population left little market for any surplus. The landlord sought the security and care of his property, and the wellbeing of his tenants and serfs, so that the tillage of his land could be carried on. He sought certain and fixed return from his estates, paid generally in kind, so he could rely upon sufficient supplies to support his household and his men at arms, and provide for his expenses at the king’s court. Upon the prosperity of his dependents, in the last analysis, rested his power. His lands unpeopled were valueless. If the population were prosperous, they yielded the larger revenue through the innumerable incidents of feudal taxation.

The feudal organization resisted to the last the imposition of a common tax for the support of the State. A common tax was the rendering Feudal of a common service, a confession and ex- Taxation, hibition of equality. The feudal noble paid no taxes. His military service, his war-horse, coat of mail, and lance were always ready, which he paid personally as his dues to the State and to the king. He was privileged. Taxes were paid only by the non-privileged.

To be sure, he held his lands by tenure of military service. From this were deduced the feudal dues, or reliefs. If the holder of the fief died, and left a minor

196 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

son unable to perform military service, then the lands fell to the king during his minority; he could take Feudal their produce or sell the use of them to Reliefs, vvhom he would. As with wardship, so with marriage. If the lord died and left his land to a daughter, the military service owed by the land demanded that the king should see that the husband was friendly to him, a man on whom he could rely, and who was capable of rendering him service. So the king married the heiress to whom he would, not seldom for a large price. In the same manner, when the lord died and his son was of age, and capable of rendering the required service, he must kneel before the king, place his hands in the king’s, and take oath to be his man, whereupon the king invested him with his lands. For this investiture the king demanded a price, and this was the feudal heriot, which was paid when lands passed from one hand to another. The archbishops, bishops, and spiritual nobility held their lands by the same tenure; but when money was demanded of them for the transfer of the lands belonging to the abbey or the see, the act was simony.

All tenants of the king—that is, the nobility—gave in addition gifts on the birth of an heir to the throne, on the conferring of knighthood upon the crown prince, on the marriage of the king’s daughter, and for the ransom of the king when taken prisoner by the enemy. Later, the military service, which was usually limited to forty days, and could not be required beyond the bounds of the kingdom except by consent of the peers, was commuted in England by a tax, or scutage, from each knight’s fee, from the time of Henry II, 1154-1187.

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If the feudal noble or seigneur was privileged, and paid no taxes, there was no end to those he imposed upon his vassals, serfs, and depend- scigneuriai ents. The French historian, Martin, sums Taxation, up this taxation thus: “All is struck by the taxation of the lord—personal property and real estate, the crops, and articles of manufacture, the land and the water; there are tolls at the gates and upon the bridges, and even the passage from one quarter of a city to another when it was divided among several lords, as was not seldom the case; there are charges of every kind upon sales and exchanges, upon receipts and profits; no calling can be taken up, one can neither build nor tear down a house, nor do in any way any act of civil life without paying a fee to the lord; they can not grind their wheat except at the lord’s mill, bake their bread except at the common bakery; he is chained to the commune where he dwells, as the serf to his glebe. He pays sens and taille for his house, for his land, for his person, that of his wife, and of his children. The civic population was able to support the burden of the regular taxes, which they could provide for in advance; but the measure was heaped up by the extraordinary tolls and taxes, and by the demands for forced labor and exactions, which were nothing less than intolerable robbery. The lords and their people bought on credit from the trading class all kinds of produce and merchandise, and they almost never paid. Horses and carts are placed under requisition; furniture, bedding, and forage are seized for the use of the lord and his suite when he makes his way into the city or village.” Deductions were made from all merchandise sold in the markets; there

198 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

was the toll of salt, the charges for fishing and for hunting; the lord must receive such and such a quarter of the beast killed, and the tenth of all grains and wines.

“Still worse was the profanation of justice. The iniquity of the privileged judicatures had no limits. The citizen was sure of nothing, except his condemnation;, upon the most absurd accusations he was crushed with fines to confiscation and ruin. The pretended judges divided the fines with the lord. The confusion was sometimes such, that in the same city were five or six officers bearing the same title, and each holding court. If one were acquitted or ransomed by the one, he might be seized again by the other.”

Politically, feudalism was the rule of this military, land-owning class. They stood between the king and Political the people, and drew to themselves the Conditions, resources and rule of the country. This went so far in France in this period that the king had but the shadow of royal power. Hugh Capet, 987999; his son, Robert I, 996-1031; and his successor, Henry I, 1031-1060; and Philip, 1060-1108, were overshadowed by their powerful nobles. From the beginning of the next century, with Louis the Fat, the royal power asserts itself until. the fall of the direct descendants of St. Louis and the accession of the house of Valois, or for two centuries. Then came the humiliations of the Hundred-Years’ War, and the infamous treacheries and dissensions of the aristocracy were finally curbed by Louis XI. In England, William the Conqueror made every man holding land swear direct allegiance to the king, so that feudalism

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never reached its full development in that country. What it would be was felt during the anarchy of Stephen’s reign. The Wars of the Roses, 1450-1485, decimated the English aristocracy, and its political power was annihilated by the Tudors.

In Germany, the kings raised up the spiritual nobility, the metropolitans and bishops, as a counterpoise to the growing power of the temporal nobles.. In state and dignity, in wealth and power, they surpassed the proudest princes of the empire, and into their hands came the transaction of most of the affairs of State. Thus were held in check the feudal nobility until the strife of the Investiture and the fall of the Hohenstaufens involved the ruin of the empire, and made the German nation a prey to a crowd of feudal potentates, who humiliated the German name, and made its history the saddest and most shameful of modern nations until the rise of the Prussian absolutism ended the political rule of the aristocracy.

In Italy, the rise of the cities prevented the development of feudal principles, except in the Norman dominions and under the German domination, which came to an end with the fall of the Hohenstaufens. In Spain, feudalism, strengthened by war with the Moors, succumbed as a political power to the absolute rule of Charles V, and the despotism of Philip II.

Socially, feudalism was the perpetuation of permanent classes in society through privileges and disabilities which were entailed by hereditary de- social scent from generation to generation. ^Condlt,ons-Every man’s life was marked out for him by the circumstances in which he was born. In this estate he had definite duties to perform, and could claim the

200 Formation of Medieval Church.

fulfillment of definite privileges of protection, assistance, or support. He had no worry about making his way, acquiring a fortune, or changing his position in life. In the vast majority of cases, this was simply impossible. The son of a serf might acquire wealth or fame, but could never shake off his servile origin, or relieve his children of the taint, unless by the rarest of chances—when his services were eminent and attracted the attention of the king, so as to be ennobled by him, or he entered the clerical or monastic life, or became a citizen of a free or chartered city. Neither he nor his children could enter the clerical ranks without his lord’s consent. The caste spirit was as really, though not as rigidly, present in the Church as in the State. In the Church, it did not of itself bar promotion, but only extraordinary ability or favor surmounted its obstacles. In the cities, the sole places in the Middle Ages where noble birth did not rule, and where the serf, staying a year and a day, became a free citizen, even there the calling and work of men generally descended from father to son. A peasant’s son could not change his calling for a trade after he became twelve years of age, but must his life long follow the plow. Duty there was stern, fixed, and determined. There were privileges of the class, estate, or calling, but nowhere in the whole society was there freedom. All was determined by status, or the state in society in which a man was born: except in narrow and prescribed bounds, there was no freedom of personal action or contract.

This feudal system presented a firmly-bound and fast-closed social organization, in which each individual and class was in a fixed position of subordination,

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with reciprocal rights and duties. It was local in its character. There were no general or public interests. If the Church was an exception, yet in the Church each individual and each trade had its patron saint and especial protector. The family was the great unit, especially with the nobilty. Then came the estate or class. The country was only the little territory which owed allegiance to the same prince. The political organization was local, the administration was local; there were no general laws. The economic conditions and measures were local, and so were the provisions for defense and public welfare.

Yet this system of caste, of authority, of war, of disorder and disorganization, of license for the great, but neither law nor liberty, was an advance upon the despotism of the Roman Empire. Under the latter, slavery, the organization and oppression of capital and ruinous taxation, undermined the prosperity and drained the resources of the people, and led to a steady decrease in the population in spite of the peace and order which it assured. Under the feudal system slavery passed away, and, amid perpetual war, disorganization, and tyranny, the population increased so as to overflow in the Crusades and in the colonization of Eastern Europe. There was a marked advance in the strength and well-being of the people.

Chapter V.

THE CONVERSION OF THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN NATIONS.

The great historic result of this period, the conversion of the Northern and Eastern nations of Europe to Christianity, was the necessary consequence of their contact with Christian peoples. It must have taken _The place, or Europe would have returned to Scandinavian barbarism. The conflict was inevitable, Peoples. ^ _conc|itj_ons irreconcilable. Heathenism was robbery, plunder, slavery, and murder; the ruin of industry and commerce, of wealth, learning, and religion. Its progress was the checking of civilization at the rudimentary agriculture stage, hardly above that of the pastoral nomad. The same facts meet us to-day in Africa. If murder, plunder, and a slave-trade worse than any Europe ever saw, ceases in Africa, it will be because Africa, in government and religion, becomes Christian. Only so will be healed “the open sore of the world,” and way be made for settled order, for commerce, industry, and a progressive civilization. In the era of the invasions, the dwellers on the banks of the Elbe and the Rhine, the Somme, the Seine, and the Loire, the coast of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, looked upon the Viking pirates as the Western settlers in this century looked upon the American Indian, with his war-paint on and white scalps in his belt, dancing in the light of burning homes and by the corpses of murdered fami-202

Northern and Eastern Nations. 203

lies. The acceptance of Christianity by these Northern nations was the cessation of these horrors, and the approach of peace and civilization. For such races a heathen civilization is a contradiction in terms; the time for it is forever past.

While this is true from the standpoint of historic development and the advance of human society, it is 310 less true that the wild Vikings and Northern robbers were human, and had hearts and minds to which the teachings of the All-Father—the Love that died to cleanse men from their sins, and the Life that rose again, a pledge of immortal life for men—came with the help and healing that has, in all ages, made the uplifted Christ the Savior of men and nations. The Christian faith won the Northern nations, because He who formed men is its Author.

While the historic movement of civilization followed the wake of Christian ideas, that have only to be received to disclose their blessings, elevate the individual, the tribe, and the nation, various means were employed or combined to produce this result. Christianity came to the Scandinavian nations through captives taken in their raids, through travelers and traders from Christian lands coming among them; but, most of all, through their own people visiting Christian lands, and becoming acquainted with the Christian faith, its teachings, worship, and society. The closer contact of settlement, familiar acquaintance, and intermarriage, hastened the change. To these influences, working silently and unceasingly upon individuals, must be added the work of the missionaries, and the influence and commands of their chiefs and kings. Their co-operation and interaction must now be traced.

204 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

At the Reichstag of Mainz, Harold of Denmark, his wife, son, and whole train, numbering four hun-

Anskar ^^re(^ persons, received baptism on St.

and His John’s-day, June 24, 826, Emperor Louis

Mission. _tj_ie pi_{ous anc}j _tj_{ie em}p_ress acting as godparents. A Christian clergyman was needed to accompany them to their home, and Anskar, a monk of New Corvey, offered himself for the mission. Anskar was no commanding figure like Boniface, but his name the Christian Church will never let die while she keeps in remembrance those whose love and faith make their work immortal. The first of the missionaries to the heathen Scandinavian folk was at this time twenty-five years old. Twenty years before, on the death of his mother, his father had brought the child from his home, probably not far away, to the monastery of Corvey, near Amiens. That mother, so early lost, never ceased to influence her mystic and sensitive child, who often saw her face in his dreams. He entered with enthusiasm into the asceticism, the religious services, and the study of the cloister life. When a call was made for volunteers to found New Corvey among the recently converted Saxons, Anskar was one of the first to join the colony, and was present at its founding, August 6, 822. Now, four years later, with the Danish king, he journeyed down the Rhine and across the Weser until he came to Schleswig, a trading-post in South Jutland, at the mouth of the latter river. Here they founded a school and built a church. His companion, Authbert, sickened, and went back to New Corvey, where he died at Easter, 830. Anskar probably returned with him, as he was present at the Synod of Worms, 829. The next year,

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now alone, he pushed his missionary work farther. With a company of traders he visited Sweden, going to the court of one of the kings at Birka. Here he found a favorable reception, and staid a year and a half. Hergier, one of the first counselors of the king, received baptism, through all after-changes remaining true and steadfast. He built a church on his ancestral estate at Birka. Anskar returned in 831. In November of the same year he was nominated by Emperor Louis the Pious, and consecrated archbishop of Hamburg by the emperor’s brother, Drogo, archbishop of Metz. This election was confirmed by Gregory IV at the Synod of Verona. He was now bishop of the Saxon lands on the Lower Elbe, with his episcopal seat at Hamburg. His office of archbishop gave him power to consecrate bishops for his Northern mission; and he was special papal legate to further this work. At the same time, the emperor gave him the revenues of the monastery of Turholt for his support. The next year, Anskar returned to his work in Danish Jutland. Here he labored faithfully and unwearyingly for the next fourteen years. His hope was in reaching and training the youth. Young sons of heathen parents he sent to the monasferies of Hamburg and Turholt. Sometimes he bought boys for this purpose from slave-dealers. He labored with such zeal that he broke up the trade in Christian slaves. Besides little places for prayer, he built four churches. At Easter and Pentecost he baptized, but his most important work was in the cloister and school at Hamburg. The Treaty of Verdun, 843, gave his monastery of Turholt to Charles the Bald, king of France, and so cut off his supplies. The Danes captured and burned Hamburg in 845*

2o6 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

Anskar saved from the flames only his life and the relics of the Church. The work of nineteen years seemed to have ended in the smoke and ashes of his episcopal seat.

Gauzebert, nephew of Ebo, archbishop of Rheims, and supported by him with all needful supplies, had been consecrated missionary to Sweden in 832, and set out for his work that year. He labored with some success at Birka, until, in the heathen uprising of 845, he was driven out. Abandoning the mission, he became bishop of Osnabriick, in Germany. At the Synod of Mainz, 847, the bishopric of Bremen was united with the archbishopric of Hamburg, with its seat at Bremen. Anskar’s scruples and disinterestedness led to a confirmation of the arrangement by the Synod of Mainz of the next year. Finally, as against the claims of the see of Cologne, the pope ratified the archiepiscopal see of Hamburg-Bremen in 864. Anskar made a second visit to Sweden, probably about 852, as the Church had been without a clergyman for seven years, since the flight of Gauzebert. Anskar consecrated a new church. Christianity became predominant in two districts in Sweden. Anskar consecrated his favorite scholar, Rimbert, as bishop ot Sweden, and Gauzebert’s successor. Then he returned to his work in Denmark. He was often the imperial ambassador at the Danish courts. He preached frequently, and his preaching went to the heart; revered by the great, confided in by the lowly, young and old were irresistibly drawn to him. Simple, unselfish, and unwearied in labor, he rose above the darkness and confusion of an evil time. He succeeded at the courts of heathen kings, with the Roman curia, and

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with his brother prelates. Endowed with energy, a penetrating wisdom, quietness and elasticity of spirit, he was quick to sympathize, and ready to help the needy or the suffering. What was legal, one-sided, and narrow in him, was of his time. While he left but a handful of churches in Sweden and Denmark as fruits of his thirty-four years of toil, the power of heathenism was broken. His success shows that to the humble, rather than to the self-seeking, come the great rewards. Amid weeping friends and scholars, he died at Bremen, February 3, 865. An incident in his labors reveals the man. When visiting a sick man, the patient said he was healed; the multitude cried out at the sign. Anskar said: “If I might be worthy of this from my Lord, I would ask of him but one miracle: that he, through his grace, would make me a good man.” Well may his statue stand at Bremen, the capital of his see.

Rimbert, who had been bishop in Sweden since 850, was chosen his successor, and held the see for twenty-three years, 865-888. For the first _MlMionary eleven years he traveled repeatedly Work from through Sweden and Denmark on mission- ^Bremen* ary journeys. When, in 876, he was disabled by rheumatism, so that he could no longer perform those labors, he consecrated Adalhag to go on with the work. But now came on evil days; the Vikings ravaged the land from 783; the Saxons were defeated by the Danes near Hamburg in 880. The bishops of Hildesheim and Minden, and eleven counts, lay dead on the field. In 884 they invaded Frisia; Archbishop Rimbert putting himself at the head of what people he could gather, drove them off. Wends and Hungarians

208 Formation of Medieval Church.

joined the Danes in the work of destruction. Bremen was sacked and plundered by the Hungarians in 918. The missionary activity of the see ceased from 875 until 966, when the victories of Otto the Great brought in new relations with the Scandinavian peoples.

The Viking raids fell with pitiless severity upon the Christian clergy and the religious houses, especially in Ireland, which was studded with Contract with monasteries, in which were stored the Christian treasures and precious heirlooms of the people. Their wealth and their lack of defense attracted at once the robber bands from over the sea. They despised the priests and monks, who could not fight, and cut them down without mercy; while the churches and monasteries were plundered and left in smoking ruins. The destruction was complete; the learning for which the schools and monasteries of Ireland had been famous from Columban’s time, and which were never in a more flourishing state, vanished forever. So, in Northern England, the home of Baeda and Alcuin. When Alcuin heard of the ruin of Wearmouth and Jarrow, he wrote: “He who can hear of this calamity, and not cry to God in behalf of his country, has a heart not of flesh, but of stone.” “When the Danes first appeared off her shores,” says Green, “England stood in the forefront of European culture; her scholars, her poets, her libraries, had no rivals in the Western world.” With their coming went to ruin the whole civilization of the North, and with Whitby and Jarrow went Croyland and Ely. England did not recover from the blow until long after the Norman Conquest. King Alfred said: “So clean was learning decayed among English folk, that

Northern and Eastern Nations. 209

very few there be on this side Humber that could understand their rituals in English, or translate aught of Latin into English, and I ween there were not many beyond the Humber.” In the land beyond the Humber, the home and pride of English monasticism and learning, civilization and culture wholly passed away for centuries to come, and “it remained the rudest and most ignorant part of Britain.” Though the wealth, learning, and industry of the country were ruined, the Danes had come to stay. When they settled, and especially when they intermarried, they became Christians. We know only of the chiefs through whom this change came, but the like experience must have been the lot of many of their followers through the stress of circumstances, and independently of the action of their chiefs. Christianity had its teachings, its worship, its daily life, its institutions, and its clergy. Heathenism had nothing in comparison to offer, and when, in a strange land, the choice must be made, there is little question on which side the decision would fall. Then the converted Dane, or Norseman, had more or less intercourse with and sometimes revisited the old home; sometimes, indeed, went back to stay. All this had most important bearing on the dissolution of heathenism and the acceptance of Christianity.

We can trace this effect especially with respect to the Scandinavian kings. Several Danish chiefs are mentioned as receiving baptism between conversion 826 and 900. Then, in 912, came the bap- «««» tism of Rolf, and his settlement in Nor-    '

mandy; as Guthrun had been baptized after the Peace of Wedmore, in 878, and had settled in East Angha.

14

210 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

So when Olaf, son of Sihtric, and Eric Bloodaxe came to rule Northumbria as under-kings, they received baptism. This is more marked in the case ot the kings of Denmark and Norway. Denmark became united under one king in the reign of Gorm the Old, 860-936. His son, Harold Bluetooth, was defeated by Otto the Great, made tributary, and received baptism, 965. From this time Christianity was firmly established in Denmark. His son, Swein, became a Christian during his exile in England, 9861000, and his grandson, Canute, received Christianity in the same land. Since his time, the kings and people have been 'Christians.

How the people looked upon Christian missions and the acceptance of the faith comes out very clearly in the speech of a noble at the Swedish* court during Anskar’s first visit. “Hear me, O king and people, you know that this God, to those that hope in him, is a mighty helper. Many of us have proved this when in peril by the sea, and often in all kinds of dangers. Why should we reject what we know is useful? Think, fellow-countrymen, if once our gods fail us, it is good to have another God near, who always and in all places can and will help.”

The work which Gorm wrought in Denmark was done in Norway by King Harold Fairhair, 890-932.

Norway Wh^en P^ast- seventy years of age, a maid of the palace bore him a son, whom he called Hakon. His father seems to have cared little for him, and he was brought up by his mother. King Athelstan of England sent a sword to King Harold Fairhair, and when he accepted it the ambassador told him it was a sign of vassalage. King Harold planned a re

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quital; he sent Hakon, then a child, to Athelstan, and when the king took the boy upon his knee, Harold’s ambassador told him he owned him as his son. “I have sent you the son of my maid, who is now yours to rear,” were the words of the Norwegian king. King Athelstan was at first very angry, but the child received kind treatment. Harold died in 932. A year or two later, Hakon came to Norway; the people were discontented with the rule of Eric Blood-axe, his half-brother, and chose Hakon king at Trondheim, in 934. The next year Eric was driven from the land.

King Hakon, 934-961, came to the assembly at Trondheim, where the peasants had assembled in great numbers. King Hakon said it was his command and prayer that the peasants and the tenants, great and small, with all the people, young and old, the women and men, should be baptized, and should believe on one God, on Christ the Son of Mary, but give up all heathen gods and sacrifices, and keep every seventh day holy, refraining from labor, and also fast one day in the week. As soon as the king had brought this before the people there arose violent murmurs. The peasants complained that the king would withdraw labor from them with their old faith, and said {hey would not be able to till the land. The laborers and slaves cried out that they could not work if they did not eat. They said that it was the hereditary fault of Hakon, his father, and his whole race, that they were so sparing with food, even if they were generous with gold.

At the close of the fall season there was a sacrificial feast at the capital, to which the king came. Before

2i2 Formation of Medieval Church.

this he was accustomed, when he was where sacrifices were offered, to eat in a house by himself with his King Hakon friends. The people were displeased that and the at so great a popular festival he should not Heathen, pj-ggj^g _at the feast. Jarl Sigurd said he must do this. So he sat in his high seat. When the first cup was poured out, Sigurd spoke the words of consecration, and devoted it to Odin, drinking o;it of the horn of the king. King Hakon took the horn, and made over it the sign of the cross. Then spake one of the heathen leaders: “Why did the king do that; will he not offer sacrifice?” Jarl Sigurd answered: “The king does as all do who trust in their own power and strength, consecrating their beaker to Thor: he made the sign of the hammer over it before he drank.” The next day the people thronged to the king, and pressed him to eat horseflesh. At no price would the king do this. Then they called upon him to eat the broth; he would not do that either. They demanded that he should eat the fat, which he also refused. As they were about to attack him, Jarl Sigurd sought to appease them. He called to them to cease from their confusion, and prayed the king to open his mouth over the handle of the kettle, where the steam of the horseflesh came upon it. Then the king wound a linen cloth about the greasy handle of the kettle, and opened his mouth over it; but when he had done so, and gone again to his high seat, neither of the parties was content.

At the July feast they threatened the life of the king. Jarl Sigurd was again the mediator. To content them, the king was forced to eat some pieces of horse liver, and drank from the consecrated bowl

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without the sign of the cross; but immediately after the meal the king left the place. This shows that compulsion was not all on one side, and that peace, without the submission of one or the other party, was difficult, if not impossible. It is pathetic to read that King Hakon, victorious but dying of his wounds, said if he recovered he would go to Christian lands, leaving his kingdom to his cousins, and repent for what he had done against God. His work had not been in vain; he had gathered a not insignificant number of Christians, who could not only hold together, but increase. He had showed Christianity to the people, and won them from their first abhorrence of it, making an opening, so that public opposition against heathenism could be ventured.

Jarl Hakon, a zealous heathen, ruled Norway from 963 to 995. Olaf Tryggvason was the grandson of Harold Fairhair, born after his father was oiaf killed in battle; he was reared by his Tryggvason. mother. When but a boy, he was compelled to flee the land, and to seek friends in Russia. On the way, being captured by Viking rovers, he was sold as a slave. He was recognized and ransomed by his mother’s brother. Then he was brought up at the court of Waldemar, grand duke of Russia. He began life for himself as a Viking on the shores of the Baltic. Sailing out into the North Sea, he raided the Danish, Dutch, Frankish, and British coasts. He was baptized in England, about 993. In 994, he was in the alliance with Swein on the Thames. Ethelred bought him off, and the same year Jarl Hakon died. Olaf immediately sailed for Norway; chosen king at Trondheim, he won all Norway in 995* He brought

2i4 Formation of Medieval Church.

to Norway with him, Bishop Sigwald and some English clergy.

Olaf Tryggvason was the idol of the minstrel and the ideal of a Norse king. He was tall in stature, with a clear complexion and keen, brown eyes; brave in battle, quick and skillful as no other among the Northmen in knightly exercises; gay, splendid, generous, kind of heart and of a noble mind; but sternest of men in anger, and pitiless in the torments he visited upon his enemies. Olaf traveled through his domains, and gathered the chief men of a district about him, and, either by persuasion or force, brought them to accept baptism; and then he met the people in their assemblies, and sought to win them also. “He commanded all people to receive the right faith; but he measured out heavy punishments to those who spoke against it; some he had slain, others were mutilated in hands or feet, and some he drove out of the land.” He saw the people in the assembly baptized, and then left the clergy to baptize the women, the young people, and all who had not been at the assembly. The altars he broke down, and destroyed all the idols, burning the heathen temples and building churches in their places, in which he put clergymen.

At Trondheim, they threatened King Olaf’s life if he did not sacrifice as his predecessors had done. He persuaded them to allow him to defer his decision until the great midwinter heathen festival. Before the appointed day the king invited the prominent men of the surrounding country to a banquet. He declared to them that if he went back to heathenism it would be necessary to reconcile the heathen gods, whom he had so grievously offended; to make a great sacrificial

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offering of human victims, and not indeed as formerly of slaves and criminals, but the chief men of the land, and among them he named six who were present. They agreed, if this was the case, they must come over to his faith. This threat, and the pressure exerted by a numerous retinue, caused those present to be baptized, to swear to keep the faith, to renounce all heathen sacrifices, and to give hostages for their relatives. With a strong escort, Olaf went to the midwinter feast. He found his heathen adversaries already assembled. They repeated their demand that he should sacrifice. A chieftain, Jarls-Keggi, made a speech, and explicitly demanded that he should do as former kings had done. With a great outcry the people applauded this declaration. King Olaf said he would do as he had promised them; but first he must go into the temple and become acquainted with the sacrificial service. This contented them. They went into the temple unarmed, as was their custom. The king bore a gold-mounted halbert in his hand. Having entered the temple, Olaf stepped up to the idols and struck with his halbert the image of the chief god, Thor; his people did the same to the other idols. At the same time, some of.the king’s retinue slew JarLs-Keggi, the chief of the heathen party. Then those present were baptized and gave hostages; the remaining people were baptized by the clergy, and the king sought to be reconciled with the house of Jarls-Keggi.

Such high-handed proceedings made enemies. The king carried to all lengths his desire to enforce baptism. He sought the hand of the widow of King Eric of Sweden; all was arranged; her ambassadors came to meet Olaf to perfect the details. Olaf re

216 Formation of Medieval Church.

quired that they should at once be baptized. When they demurred, and said they must first consult the representatives of their people, Olaf, in a rage, broke off the marriage. The humiliated queen eagerly accepted the hand of Swein, king of Denmark. The forces of Sweden, Denmark, and the discontented nobles of his own country, prepared to attack Olaf. He sailed to meet them, and found them lying in wait at the island of Swolder. It was in the year iooo. Allowing Olaf’s fleet to sail by, except eleven ships which were with the king, they closed in upon him. Olaf was in his great ship, the Long Serpent, and clad in his royal armor. The Swedes attacked him, and were beaten off; the same fate befell the Danes; then the Norse bore down upon the royal ship. They failed in their first attempt; but in the second they boarded the Long Serpent. The king fought, as his skill and courage gave him power, until the last man fell; then, throwing his shield over his head, he leaped into the sea. Thus ended the career of the second baptized king of Norway, the king who gave Christianity firm footing in the land. He was but thirty-two years of age, and had reigned but five, yet he made Christianity prevail in Norway, the Shetlands, Hebrides, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and even Greenland. For fourteen years, Swein and the heathen nobility ruled Sweden; then another Olaf came.

Olaf Haroldson, or St. Olaf, was the son of Olaf Grenfell, and descendant from Harold Fairhair. Olaf st oiaf Grenfell died in 994, and in the year following his death was born his son Olaf. His mother married Sigurd, a relative of his father, and Olaf was brought up in his house. At twelve

Northern and Eastern Nations. 217

years of age his followers greeted him as king, and he began his life at sea. He plundered the coasts along both sides of the Baltic and in Russia, finally sailing westward to Friesland and England. He took part in the storming of Canterbury by the Danes, but afterward, with Thorkell, entered the service of Ethel-red, and in 1013 accompanied him to Normandy, where he fought with Duke Richard II against Odo, duke of Chartres. He was baptized probably when he took service with the English, 1012 or 1013. Olaf sailed to Norway, where he won the battle of Nesjar, on Palm Sunday, 1015, which made him master of the whole land. Olaf Haroldson was of medium stature, very thick-set and strong; men called him Olaf the Fat. He had a broad face, light complexion tinged with red, beautiful, sharp eves that were fearful to see when he was angry. His morals were good; he was silent, generous, and avaricious. “He loved both to receive and to give.” Olaf re-established Christianity at Trondheim, and thenceforward for the remaining years of his life his efforts were devoted to confirming and extending the Christian faith. He was more prudent, but quite as determined as Olaf Tryggvason, and he was successful. Since his reign, Norway has been Christian. Bishop Sigwald and the English clergy sought to discourage the violent measures of the king, but in vain. Political, quite as much as religious, reasons urged the king to this course.

There was one result of Olaf’s measures besides the acceptance of Christianity. The Norse narrative says: “Since he came into the kingdom, he made peace in the land, so that all robbery was done away, and he was so strict against it that no punishment

2i8 Formation of Medijeval Church.

less than life or limb reconciled him. Neither the prayers of the people nor the offering of goods was oiaf's of any avail.’’ The poet Sighvat says: Severity “Those guilty of robber raids offered to the noble-hearted king red gold to buy their ransom, but he rejected it. With the sword he had their heads stricken off.” That could no heathen king of Norway have done. The pillage ceased, and forty years later the last Norse invasion of England went to utter ruin over the corpse of Harold Hardrada, at Stamford Bridge. Few gains of Christianity have been greater.

In 1025, King Canute sent word to Olaf to acknowledge him as his lord, and to hold Norway as a fief from Denmark, which Olaf refused. Having unsuccessfully attacked the Danes, he was forced to leave his own land in 1028. In 1030 he sought again to win the throne, but was defeated and killed in battle. His son, Magnus the Good, reared in Russia, returned to Norway in 1034, and on Canute’s death he regained his father’s throne, and ruled both Norway and Denmark from 1042 until his death, five years later. His son was Harold Hardrada. Christian kings ruled over a Christian people in Norway after Olafs death. He was canonized by the Church. Churches of St. Olaf, or St. Olave as the English call him, perpetuate his name in London, as in the Northern lands.

Olaf, king of Sweden, called the Lap-king, reigned from 993 to 1024. His father, Eric, had been baptized „    in Denmark, but relapsed into heathenism.

Sweden.    ^r    .

His mother married Swein, king of Denmark. Olaf was baptized about 1000. With his son, Anund Jacob, who succeeded him, he was a firm friend of Olaf Haroldson of Norway. The Swedish kings

Northern and Eastern Nations. 219

from this time were Christians. Stenkieh¹,, 1056-1066, was very earnest in his Christian profession and influence. Swedish Gothland now became thoroughly Christian. Under Inge the Elder, 1108-1112, the heathen temple at Upsala was burned, and the land became Christian. Its kings had been Christians for nearly a century. It will be seen that the progress of Christianity was much less violent and more slow in Sweden than in Norway.

Iceland had been visited by Christians before any Norseman had seen it. The widow of Olaf the White, a sincere Christian, had settled there in _IceIand 874. Frederick, bishop of the Hebrides, was the first missionary preacher in Iceland. He wrought there from 981 to 985. He brought wood from the Hebrides to build the first Christian church in Iceland in 884, and furnished it with a bell. After four years of missionary labor, Frederick returned to Germany, and died in Saxony. Olaf Tryggvason sent Dankbrand, a man whose Christianity was like his own, to establish the Church in Iceland. Dankbrand, who had been a knight, fought with his heathen adversary and killed him, then went on with his work of proclaiming the Prince of peace. Christianity prevailed among the people. At the Al-thing, or General Assembly, of the people, in the year 1000, Thor-gier, seeing the divisions among them, and fearing bloodshed, proposed that all the people should acknowledge Christ and receive baptism, all temples and idols should be utterly destroyed; but secret sacrifices—the exposure of children and eating of horseflesh—should not be punished. This was adopted. Olaf Haroldson sought to do away with these heathen

220 Formation of Medieval Church.

practices. Greenland accepted the Christian faith in iooo.

Before this, the Danes in England and France had become Christians. The sister of Athelstan, king of England, married Sihtric, the Norse king of Dublin, and afterward of Northumberland, in 926. It is probable that by this time intermarriages between Danes and Irish were common, as they were between Danes and English after 950, and perhaps before. This could only take place generally where Christianity was accepted. The process was very rapid in Normandy, where within thirty years from the first settlement all the land, except that recently settled, was Christian.

The conversion of the Sclavic nations followed a different course of development. The Irish and the conversion of Anglo-Saxons had sent out a host of zeal-the sciavic ous missionaries, who successfully won the Nations. ;p_rank_{s an(}j the Frisians, the Germans, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes to the gospel. The lack of this missionary zeal in the mediaeval German Church is the marked feature of its history. With a very few honorable exceptions, German missionary work followed in the wake of German conquest and of German colonization. The German missionary depended on the influence of the landed nobility, or the arms of crusading knights, to give efficacy to the gospel he preached. The inactivity of the bishoprics founded by Otto I in Wendish lands seems inexplicable. With the exception of Anskar, who was not a German, and his two immediate successors, and glorious Otto of Bamberg, the zeal which flamed in the breasts of Boniface and Raymond de Lull seldom

Northern and Eastern Nations. 221

glowed in the mail-clad bosoms of the German episcopate or their clergy.

On the German conquest, the Wends became the free servants of the lords whose lands they cultivated. But in Upper Franconia it was different; _Conversion there it was Sclavic land. The Elbe and of the the Saale were the natural boundaries be- ^Wends* tween the Germans and the Sclavs in Northern Germany; but the Wends pressed forward into Thuringia, Hesse, and the region about Fulda. They were in firm masses on the Upper Main and about Bamberg. They lost their language, and without compulsion readily accepted Christianity. Fourteen churches were built among them by command of Charlemagne. Yet in 1058, nearly three centuries later, the Synod of Bamberg lamented the prevalence of heathen superstitions and the lack of Christian piety among the Sclavs. The work, however, was not in vain; they became Germans and Christians.

Very different was the progress of Christianity among the northern Wends. Otto I founded the bishoprics of Brandeburg, Havelberg, and Altenberg on Wendish territory, and this arrangement was confirmed by the pope 'in 948. The archbishopric of Magdeburg was established over these in 962. Five years later, the heathen temple at Stargard was de-troyed, and of eighteen northern Wendish districts, or gaus, all but three became Christian through the efforts of the Hamburg archbishop. In the rebellion of 983, when Hamburg was burned the second time, all this mission-work was destroyed; this was a time of martyrdom for Wendish Christians. Work among the Wends from this time was largely determined by

222 Formation of Medieval Church.

their political relations to Germany. Brun of Quer-furt and Gunther, monks, preached among them in the years iooo to 1017.

Gottschalk was sent by his heathen father, a Wend-ish prince, to be educated at the cloister school of St. Michael at Liineburg. While there, his father was slain by a Saxon deserter. He escaped and gathered a band of Wends to avenge his father’s death. Gottschalk killed the Saxons, burned the churches, and wasted the country. It is said that he was taken by the Saxon duke Bernard, who admired him and set him free. He went to England and took service under Canute, where he became a Christian. After the king’s death, he married the daughter of Canute’s nephew, the Danish king, Swein Estridson. Through his influence he took possession of his father’s dominions, and greatly extended them. This was about 1040. Wends were baptized, churches restored, and cloisters for monks and nuns were founded at Mecklenburg, Lii-beck, Oldenburg, Senzen, and Ratzeburg. About one-third of the Wends became Christians. The eastern Wends rose against Gottschalk in 1055, and defeated the Germans in September, 1056. But Gottschalk restored and retained his rule for ten years, until the heathen rebelled against him and slew him, June 7, 1066, at the same time martyring the priests and John, bishop of Mecklenburg. The Germans made successful campaigns against them the next two years, but little permanent result was attained. The sons of Gottschalk came into possession of a part of his dominions, and the dukes of Mecklenburg trace their descent from them.

The great missionary bishop of this period is Otto

Northern and Eastern Nations. 22$

of Bamberg, the apostle of Pomerania. Otto was born of a poor but noble family in South Germany. Early in life he went to Poland, where he otto of taught the children of those who could Bamberg, not afford to pay him. He attracted the attention of the duke, and by him was employed in his negotiations with the German emperor. Henry IV was pleased with him, and called him to his court, and then to an office in his chancellery. In 1103 he gave him the bishopric of Bamberg. Otto was faithful to Henry IV when pursued by his son. Henry V trusted him, though Otto occupied a mediate position between the demands of Henry and those of the pope. He was at the Synod of Worms, which concluded the famous Concordat, and the next year went at the head of a splendid ambassy to Rome. In ability, character, and influence, no man stood higher in the German episcopate. Otto was now more than sixty years of age, but his heart yearned over the heathen, whom he came to know when in Poland. In May, 1124, he set out, in all the state of a bishop of the Church, through Bohemia and Poland. Wratislaw, the duke of Pomerania, was inclined to Christianity; his wife was a Christian, and'he had been baptized when a prisoner in his youth. He made profession of the Christian faith. Otto labored until the next Easter, visiting Kaim, Wollin, and Kolberg, but making his headquarters at Stettin, where he caused the heathen temples to be destroyed. Those desiring baptism he commanded to receive instruction seven days, and to fast three. In this missionary tour he baptized over twenty-two thousand of the people. Three years later, Otto made a second missionary journey to Pome

224 Formation of Medieval Church.

rania, confirming his converts and visiting Wolgast, his stay extending from April to December, 1127. Little more was done among the Wends until Henry the Lion broke up their heathenism, and coerced them to Christianity, in the latter part of the same century.

The Sclavic prince Priwina was baptized during the reign of Louis the Pious, some time before 830.

Conversion Churches were built by him in his domin-of the ions, including one at Moosburg, his cap-

Moravians.    became a prince of the empire in

848. Wratislaw became duke of the Moravians and acknowledged the German supremacy in 864. Swato-pulk, his nephew, a Christian, began his reign in 870, and four years later became practically independent. Germans, Italians, and Greeks had preached among the Moravian Sclavs, and in 852 they were spoken of as a recently-converted people. Methodius, general and prince of his native city, Thessalonica, became a monk and a missionary. For twelve years he labored among the Khazars, 851-863. The next year, in company with his brother Constantine, a scholar and librarian of St. Sophia at Constantinople, he came to Moravia. They preached and held service in the Sclavic tongue, translating into it the Bible and the liturgy. They went to Rome in 867, where Constantine, though only forty-two years of age, died two years later. Pope Hadrian II sent Methodius back in 870, with permission to use the Sclavic liturgy. John VIII prohibited its use in 879, and ten years later, for political reasons, Swatopulk rejected it. After three journeys to Rome, and twenty-two years of missionary labor for the Sclavs, Methodius died in 886. Swatopulk founded a great dominion, extend

Northern and Eastern Nations. 225

ing to the Vistula, driving out and defeating the Germans. He was the greatest of the Sclavic princes, and died in 894. The German emperor, Arnulf, was the son of Luitswinda, a Sclav from Carinthia. The sons of Swatopulk ruled as vassals of the empire until their kingdom was swallowed up in the invasion of the Hungarians and Bohemians in 900. The bishopric of Olmutz was founded in 1063.

Fourteen Czechish princes of Bohemia were baptized at Regensburg in 845, and the heathen population submitted to Christianity, as they pre- conversion sented it to them, in 848. Wenzel, duke ^of Bohemia, of Bohemia, 920-935, was taught the Christian faith by his grandmother, Luidmilla, who was afterward murdered by the heathen because she was a Christian. In Wenzel’s reign, churches were built throughout the land. Wenzel’s brother, Boleslaw, assassinated him at the church door. Boleslaw, 935"9^7» who was a man of ability, after fifteen years resistance, submitted to Otto I in 950, and became a Christian. Wenzel was canonized, and became the patron saint of Bohemia. Otto II founded the bishopric of Prague, and placed it under Magdeburg.

Woytiech, or Adalbert, was the son of a Bohemian noble, who was educated at Magdeburg, and became a priest, 967. In 976 he became tutor of _{st Adalbert}. Otto III, and always had great influence over him. Adalbert was chosen bishop of Prague in 983. Five years later he went to Rome, and became a Benedictine monk there in 99°- There was a strong mystic if not fanatical tendency in Adalbert’s nature. He came back to Prague in 992, and sought to carry out the Roman regulations in regard

15

226 Formation of Medieval Church.

to forbidden degrees of relationship in marriage, the building of churches, and tithes. Again he left his see, and was in Paris in 997. During his absence his four brothers and their families were slaughtered by his enemies. He went to preach the gospel to the heathen Prussians, and was martyred by them, April 23, 997-

Dubrawka, the daughter of Boleslaw, brother of Wenzel, and duke of Bohemia, married Miecislaw, Conversion duke of Poland. She was a Christian, and of Poland. h_er husband was baptized the following year, 967. The gospel was preached among the Poles by devoted workers. In the year 1000, Otto III went to Gnesen, where were interred the remains of his martyred friend, St. Adalbert, and raised Gnesen to the seat of the archbishopric and primacy of Poland. Under it were the bishoprics of Kohlberg for Pomerania, Cracow for Chrobatia, and Breslau for Silesia, Posen remaining at first under Magdeburg. Boleslaw Chrobry formed a great Polish kingdom, and took Kieff, in 1018. The Polish kings were crowned at Gnesen until 1320. After the Peace of Bautzen, 1018, the Poles invaded Germany in 1030; two years later, the Polish duke, Miecislaw II, acknowledged his vassalage to the empire, and married Richenza, daughter of the pfalzgrave of the Rhine, and granddaughter of Otto II. After his death, in 1034, the country was ravaged by the Bohemians, and order was not restored until Boleslaw II, 1058-1101.

The monk Wolfgang preached as a missionary among the Hungarians in 972. Pilgrim, bishop of Pasau, worked among them for twenty years, from 972 to 992, and baptized five thousand converts.

Northern and Eastern Nations. 227

Bultza, a Hungarian chief, was baptized at Constantinople in 951; four years later, he was taken at the battle of the Lechfeld by the Germans, and conversion hanged with the other Hungarian chiefs. ^{of Hu}°ga^ry Dewix, or Gylas, another chief, was baptized soon after Bultza. Geisa reigned at Gran, 975-995. He married Sarroth, the daughter of Gylas, who was a Christian. Geisa was baptized at Quedlinburg in 973. Their son and Geisa’s successor was Waic, or Stephen, 9951038. Stephen married Geisela, daughter of Henry, duke of Bavaria. The archbishopric of Gran, whose occupant was the primate of the Hungarian Church, was founded in 995. Pope Sylvester II sent Stephen a royal crown in the year 1000. Stephen provided that every ten villages should have a church, which should be endowed with land, servants, and cattle for its pastor. Rich gifts were bestowed bv him upon Clugny, Monte Cassino, and cloisters at Niedermun-ster, Regensburg, Salzburg, and a nuns’ convent at Jerusalem. He founded a church at Constantinople, a hospital at Rome, a monastery at Ravenna, and one for Greek monks in his own dominions. Stephen was an organizer, and encouraged preaching to the masses of the people. He became St. Stephen, the patron saint of Hungary, and from him Hungary dates its existence as an independent Christian nation.

Bogoris, king of the Bulgarians, made peace with the Byzantine emperor, and was baptized as Michael in 864. Two years later, Bulgarian ambas- _Conversion sadors were in Rome, and received instruc- of the tions from Pope Nicholas I. Roman ^Bu,^^anans-dreams of supremacy were rudely shattered at the Council of Constantinople, 870, and soon after, the

228 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

patriarch Ignatius established the Greek Church, with an archbishop at its head, among them. The Sclavonic element became predominant through the labor of Bishop Clement, the pupil of Methodius, in Moravia. Under the son of Bogoris, Symeon, 893-927, the Bulgarian kingdom and Churches greatly flourished. Kings and people from this time are Christians.

Constantine, brother of Methodius, won the prince of the Khazars to Christianity about 860. A Chris-Conversion ^^{an c}^^urc^ ^was built at Kieff about 900.

of the Olga, widow of Igor, son of Rurik, founder Russians. _t^_e Russian monarchy, was received with great splendor in Constantinople and baptized in 955. Her son, Swatislaw, refused to become a Christian; but her grandson, Vladimir the Great, 980-1005, married Anna, sister of the Greek emperor Basil II, in 988, and received baptism in the same year. Vladimir returned to Kieff, destroyed the idols, and commanded his subjects to receive baptism; so they went down to the river Dnieper en masse, standing in the water up to their necks and breasts, with children .in their arms, until the priests could baptize them. The idols were destroyed, and henceforth the Russian royal house and its people claimed to be Christians. In 1070, St. Leontius founded Christianity at Rostoff, and suffered there a martyr’s death. By the year 1100, bishoprics were established in Russia, at Kieff, Tschernigoff, Belgorod, Jurjeff, Turoff, Perejaslaff, Vladimir; and in the northwest, at Polosk, Novgorod, and Rostoff.

Chapter VI.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH: HISTORY OF THE PAPAL SEE.

The history of the papacy in this period between the death of Charlemagne and that of Gregory VII presents stronger contrasts than that of any secular government in Europe. No popes ever stated the claims of the papacy to universal and supreme dominion more clearly than Nicholas I and Gregory VII, though Innocent III and Boniface VIII enlarged upon them; while no see in Christendom ever sunk to lower depths of humiliation than Rome under the dominion of the “Senatrix” of Rome and her daughters, and the vicious youths, John XII and Benedict IX, who came to the highest ecclesiastical office in Christendom—one at eighteen, the other at twelve years of age. More popes met a violent death in Rome than emperors at Constantinople during all the palace revolutions of this period.

The popes of the ninth century, except Nicholas I and John VIII, were men of ordinary ability. Their great effort was to throw off the suprem- ^ _the acy of the empire. The weakness and caroling divisions among the descendants of the ^E₈™£^e_g^rg![^s‘ great Charles were so general as to make the endeavor successful. Having succeeded, they fell into the power of the Roman aristocracy, the most crude, turbulent, and wicked in Christendom. From this dominion, so shameful and destructive, the papacy

22 9

230 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

was rescued only by the intervention of the emperors Otto I and Henry III—that is, by the very power from whom they wrought so long to free themselves. In the meantime, the work of extending the Church, and so strengthening in fact the papacy, was done by the humble and faithful missionaries, who won the Scandinavian and Sclavonic peoples to Christianity and to the Church. With the exception of Nicholas I and Sylvester II, this work met with scant support from Rome, though it was the great achievement of the gospel and of civilization in these 'centuries. Leo III, 796-816, died two years after Charlemagne. His successor, Stephen IV, 816-817, crowned Louis the Pious at Rheims, though his father had crowned him before his death without the intervention of the pope. Stephen made the precedent, which after popes were careful to cherish, that the emperor must be crowned by the pope. Paschal I, 817-824, was abbot of St. Stephen’s at Rome, but when elected had never been ordained. He was a quiet man, prudent and determined. He crowned Lothair, son of Louis the Pious, king of Italy. Eugene II, 824-826, was peaceful and generous in spirit. To him was addressed Lothair’s celebrated constitution in regard to the election of the popes. Gregory IV, 827-844, undertook to be an arbitrator in the strife between Louis the Pious and his sons; he went over wholly to the side of Lothair, and returned to Italy, having gained no honor for himself or for the papacy. Sergius II, 844-847, was pope when the Saracens ravaged the Campagna about Rome in 846. Ostia had been rebuilt and fortified to restrain them; but they sailed by it into the Tiber, and came to the walls of the Eternal City. The most

History of the Papal See.

231

famous churches of Rome were St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s, both of which were without the walls. They were enriched with an immense store of ornaments and treasure, the offerings of Christians of all lands for ages. The Saracens plundered these venerated and splendid shrines, second only to the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, and broke open what were supposed to be the tombs of the apostles. Sergius died the following year, it is said, of a broken heart. Leo IV, 847855, his successor, formed a league against the Saracens with the cities of the western coast of Italy, which were threatened by their power. These allies defeated the Saracens in a great naval battle near Ostia in 849. Leo wrought unceasingly for four years in inclosing the suburb, in which was situated St. Peter’s Church, with a strong wall. Hence it was called from him the Leonine City. He crowned Louis II, son of Lothair I, emperor in 850. Benedict III, 855-858, has left to posterity only his name. Between Leo and Benedict falls the legend of the woman, called Joan, who was pope. The fable probably arose from the rule of Theodora and her daughters.

Nicholas I, 855-867, was the ablest pope between the first and the seventh Gregory. He was of noble birth and uncommon personal dignity. Master of what learning the age could command, he united great boldness of action with far-seeing political aims. In his controversy concerning the divorce of Lothair II, he exalted the claims of Rome over the empire; in the Photian controversy, over the Greek Church; in the controversy with Hincmar, over the metropolitans of Western Christendom. He was the first pope to use the false Isidorean Decretals, and his claims were

232 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

the real cause of the separation of the Greek from the Roman Church. Nicholas broke the power of the empire and of the bishops. He exalted the pope of Rome as the head of a spiritual, universal monarchy, the center of unity, and principal of all temporal dominion; hence, supreme over all earthly rulers.

Hadrian II, 867-872, was of the family of Popes Stephen IV and Sergius II. He carried out, as far as possible, the plans of Nicholas I. But in seeking to interfere in regard to the treaty of Mersen, 870, he received a stinging rebuke from Hincmar of Rheims, and was forced to withdraw his claims.

John VIII, 872-882, was the son of a Roman, of Lombard descent. He made peace with the Greeks, confirming the elevation of Photius as patriarch of Constantinople, and ratifying the acts of the eighth General Council, 875. He defeated the Saracens in a naval battle off Cape Circe 111 877; but the next year he had to make peace with them, and pay a heavy tribute. He was two years in France, 878-879, where he went for help. The Saracens meanwhile established themselves in a castle on the Garigliano, from whence they harried the land for the next forty years. Gregorovius says this ambitious intriguer and unscrupulous pontiff had a diplomatic ability that would have astonished the Borgias and Machiavelli, and through his rare gifts of understanding and great energy he was the greatest pope between Nicholas I and Gregory VII. He was murdered in Rome, 882.

The Tuscan popes belonged to or were controlled by the faction of the Tuscan aristocracy, which in the break-up of the empire came to rule Rome. None of them were personally remarkable men, or increased

History of the Papal See.

233

the respect for the papacy. Eleven popes reigned in these twenty-two years. Marinus, 882-884, the successor of John VIII, was an embittered _{Xhe Tuscan} enemy of Photius, and renewed the sen- Popes, tence of Nicholas I against him. Stephen ⁸⁸²'⁹°4-VI, 896-897, an enemy of Formosus, 891-896, caused the dead pope to be taken from his coffin, the corpse placed before a tribunal, tried, and sentenced. Then the three fingers which the pope raised in benediction were cut off, and the body dragged through the streets and thrown into the Tiber. The waters threw it on the bank. The next pope, Theodore, 897, a friend of Formosus, saw that it was given an honorable interment. Deeds of violence were so frequent and so seldom punished that the Roman Council, 898, decreed that the consecration of the newly-elected pope should take place only in the presence of the imperial legates. Of this period, a careful writer has said: “Dante’s hell is only a weak picture of human passions and intrigues compared with the political realities of the Italians and Lombards.”

Theodora, beautiful, able, and shameless, was called the senatrix, the wife of the senator Theophy-lact, and the soul of that great, noble family

tt 1 1    yr    Ru>e of

and its dependents. Her daughters, Ma- Dissolute rozia and Theodora, were as beautiful and    ^at

as dissolute as the senatrix herself. Ma- 904-903. rozia was said to have been the mistress of Sergius IV, 904-911, and through him the mother of John XI, 931-936, while John X, 914-9²⁸> ^{was thc} acknowledged lover of the elder Theodora. The other popes of this time were mainly the instruments of these women. In 932 the son of Marozia was pope,

234 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

and she determined to ally herself with the most powerful and unscrupulous ruler in Italy, Hugo of Provence. Eager for the alliance, he came to Rome. In the former tomb of Hadrian, now castle of St. Angelo, everything was made ready for the marriage; all was provided that could lend splendor to the event. Just before, or just after the wedding, Alberich, a youth eighteen years of age, son of Marozia by her husband, Guido of Tuscany, according to the custom of the time, was acting as page to Hugo. In the performance of his duties, he poured water over Hugo’s hands as he washed them; perhaps awkwardly, some of the water was spilled, when, in his anger, Hugo slapped him in his face. Stung to the quick, Alberich rushed from the palace; called together his relatives and friends. They besieged the castle. Hugo escaped by being let down from the wall by a rope; the defenders were overpowered, and the fortress taken. Thenceforth, until his death in 954, Alberich was the great senator and real ruler of Rome. The popes were his creatures. His son, Octavian, eighteen years old, succeeded to his temporal rule and to the papacy as John XII, 955-963. This pope was noted for his frivolity, his reveling, and his licentiousness. He made his horse a deacon of the Roman Church. Few popes have made a more shameless record than the grandson of Marozia, who died at the age of twenty-six.

Otto I had married Adelheid in 957. They were in Rome and were crowned by John XII in 962. The next year, Otto found that his excesses were so intolerable that it was necessary to depose him; and so was overthrown the fiction, prevailing for five hundred years, that the pope could be judged by no man

History of the Papal See.

235

or authority. Otto caused the election of Leo VIII, 963-965, who was a layman at his election, having been imperial chancellor. The Romans _Period rebelled against him, in February, 964. of the ottos.

....    A    1    1    •    963-1003.

John having died in April, they chose, in May, Benedict V as pope. Otto took Rome in June, when Benedict was delivered to him. In July he was exiled to Hamburg, where he died the next summer. The successor of Leo was the bishop of Narni, of the famous Roman family of Crescentius, who took the title of John XIII, 965-972. Benedict VI, 972-974, was the son of a Roman monk. In consequence of a rebellion, he was thrown into prison and strangled. The party of Crescentius made itself felt at the papal elections. Boniface VII, 974"9⁸5> ^a creature of Crescentius, was a monster of depravity. For his crimes he had to flee to Constantinople, from whence, after an absence of ten years, he returned. Ruling cruelly for a year, he was killed by the people. Benedict VII, 974-983, was a nephew or grandchild of Albench. After the death of Boniface, Peter, bishop of Pavia, was chosen pope by the imperial party as John XIV, 983-984. The death of Otto II left him defenseless to his foes, and he died in prison. His successor, John XV, 985-996, brought little honor to his name. He was avaricious, but provided bountifully for his relatives. In 996, Otto III came to Rome.

On the death of John XV, the same year, Otto caused his cousin, Bruno, bishop of Bamberg, to be chosen pope. He was twenty-eight years old, and took the name of Gregory V, 996-999. This was the first German pope. Two young men, cousins, intelligent, strict in their morals, religious, and full of great

236 Formation of Medijeval Church.

plans, stood at the head of Western Christendom; one emperor, the other pope. One would naturally suppose the opening of the second thousand years since the birth of Christ would see a new era, with great achievements. The new era came, but not with Otto and Bruno; but with Hildebrand and the Crusades. The party of Crescentius naturally opposed the close relationship of the papacy and the empire. They sought an anti-pope, which they found in Phila-gathus, bishop of Piacenza, and ambassador at Constantinople. He was a Greek, of lowly origin, from Calabria, who had been greatly favored by Empress Theophano. She sent him to Constantinople to win the hand of a Greek princess for her son, Otto III, 995. He had hoped to succeed to the papal throne, when Gregory V was elected. With incredible baseness, he betrayed his benefactors, the emperor and the pope, and joined a conspiracy, led by Crescentius and favored by the Byzantine court. He paid a great sum of money, and was made pope, as John XVI, May, 997. The next year, the army of Otto stormed the castle of St. Angelo, and Crescentius was taken and beheaded. John, also, was taken. Great as had been his treason, his punishment outweighed the offense. With barbarous cruelty, his nose and ears were cut off, his eyes and tongue torn out. Wounded and bleeding, he was thrown into a cloister cell at Rome. A few weeks later, a Council was held to judge him. The mutilated pope, whose appearance might move to pity a heart of stone, was brought before it. He was deposed; the papal garments in which he was forced to appear were torn from him; he was placed upon an ass and led in mockery through the streets;

History of the Papal See.

then thrown into a prison, from which he never emerged. The holy Nilus, who came to Rome to plead that mercy might be extended to his mutilated countryman, that he might spend the rest of his days in the quiet of a cloister, departed, declaring the curse of heaven would come upon the pope and the emperor for their lack of pity. The next year the pope was dead, and four years later the emperor also; all their brilliant hopes proving baseless as the fabric of a dream.

The successor of Gregory was the emperor’s tutor, the Frenchman, Gerbert. He was the most learned man in the Western Church. Having been archbishop of Ravenna and Rheims, he was now pope of Rome as Sylvester II, 999-1003. He and his imperial pupil dreamed a fantastic dream of the restoration of a universal monarchy; but death soon showed the futility of their plans. Otto died in January, 1002, and Sylvester in the succeeding year. Arnulf, bishop of Orleans, in an address in a Synod at that city, in 991, gives a vivid account of the papacy under the Ottos. “Once,” said he, “we received from Rome the glorious Leo and the great Gregory: what shall I say of Gelasius and of Innocent, who surpassed all the philosophers in the world in wisdom and eloquence? What do we not see in these times? We have seen John XII riot in shameless lusts and conspire against Otto, whom he himself had crowned. He was driven out, and Leo, recently a layman, made pope. The Emperor Otto left Rome, John turned back, drove out Leo, cut off the nose, the tongue, the fingers of the right hand of his deacon; murdered many of the nobles of the city, and soon after died. The Romans elected in his place Benedict V. Leo,

238 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

returning with the emperor, siezed him, deposed him, and sent him into eternal exile into Germany. Otto II succeeded Otto I; but in Rome a terrible monster, Boniface, ascended the chair of St. Peter, yet dripping with the blood of his predecessor, who surpassed all in violence and outrage. Driven out and condemned by a great Synod, he came back after Otto’s death, overthrew a distinguished man, Peter, former bishop of Pavia, deposed him, and after cruel torments in prison, murdered him.” We share his indignation, when he says: “Where is it written that the innumerable priests of the world, adorned with learning and merit, should submit to such monsters, who are the world’s shame and devoid of all learning, human and Divine?”

Henry II succeeded Otto III, but did not come to Rome for his coronation until 1014. The papacy ~    fell back into the noble families of Rome.

Popes of the

Crescentians The popes from 1003 to 1012, John XVII, Count^of J°^ⁿ XVIII, and Sergius IV, were the Tuscuium. creatures of John Crescentius, son of the 1003-1043* Crescentius who was executed in 998. The younger Crescentius ruled Rome and the papacy until his death, in 1012. His party sought to elect a successor in Gregory; but the party of the counts of Tuscuium prevailed, and the papacy remained in their family for the next thirty-four years. This powerful family were descended from Theodora and Marozia, through Marozia’s first husband and her son, Alberich the Great, senator of Rome. One of this family was now chosen pope, Benedict VIII, 1012-1024. He seems sincerely to have desired the reform of many of the abuses of the Church. He

History of the Papal See.

239

crowned Henry II, and, as his life-long friend, worked heartily with him in his plans for the improvement of the clergy and the Church. On his death, his brother was chosen pope, as John XIX, 1024-1033. He used the papacy for his own and his party’s purposes. Conrad II was crowned by him in 1027. On his death, his sister’s son, a boy twelve years of age, became pope, as Benedict IX, 1033-1046, and hence the supreme head of the Christian Church and infallible successor of St. Peter! For ten years he held this place, and grew up a youth reveling in shameless vice. The Romans rose in rebellion against him in 1044, when, moved by money and the promise of the hand of the daughter of the leader of the insurrection, Benedict renounced the papacy. John, bishop of Sabina, was chosen pope, as Sylvester III, 1044-1046. Gerardo refused Benedict his daughter; the latter reclaimed his right to the papacy; after forty-five days’ reign, Sylvester was driven out of Rome, and Benedict came back, March, 1045. In May of the same year, he sold the papacy to John Gratian, a cardinal priest, for 1,500 pounds of silver. Gratian took the title of Gregory VI, 1045-1046. If a lower depth of shame could come to t'he papacy than the rule of dissolute women, and the wretched youths who sprung from them, it came when the supreme ecclesiastical office in Christendom was sold to the highest bidder. A succession through such sources may be anything else—it is not apostolic.

Gregory VI seems to have been an upright man, with a sincere desire to reform the Church, and to have bought the papacy for that purpose. It is a strange revelation of the moral corruption of the time,

240 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

and of the prevalence of the idea that the end can justify any means, that he seems to have been utterly unconscious of any wrong-doing. Three popes were now claiming the obedience of the Romans and of Christendom, for none of them renounced his claim. The most powerful emperor since Charlemagne, Henry III, now crossed the Alps, and took into his hands the affairs of the Church. He called a Council, at which he presided, at Sutri, December, 1046. All three popes were deposed. So they were declared at a Synod at Rome, December 23d, and on the next day, Sudiger, bishop of Bamberg, was chosen pope, as Clement II, 1046-1047, and consecrated on Christmas-day, after which, Henry III and his wife were crowned.

For three hundred years from Zacharias, 741-750, only four popes had occupied the Roman See who The German ^{were not} Romans or from the States of the

Popes. Church. Only two of these were not Ital-1046=1073. j_ans^ foe German Bruno and the French Gerbert; but now we have a succession of German popes. Henry III, as Otto I, and afterward the Council of Constance, judged and deposed the popes; if there were a form of resignation, it did not alter the fact that the resignation was compulsory. If such men as John XII, Benedict IX, or John XXIII, were in possession of the See of Rome to-day, some power, ecclesiastical or secular, would be found to judge them. That the pope can be judged by no power or authority is an historical fiction. The popes for this period were German prelates, except Alexander II; their choice was sought at the hands of Henry III during his life, and the election was always confirmed by the Imperial Court. Thus the empire rescued the

History of the Papal See. 241

papacy from the power of the Roman aristocracy, and restored it to religious and moral supremacy in Europe. Poppo, bishop of Brixen, reigned a few days, in 1048, as Damasus II. At his death, the ablest of these popes, Bruno, bishop of Toul, a relative of the imperial house, under the influence of Clugny, remarkable for his eloquence, his energy, and his piety, came to the papal throne as Leo IX, 1048-1054. Hildebrand, who had been chaplain of Gregory VI, and had accompanied him in his exile, now came to Rome, and from henceforth until his death guided the policy of the papacy. In his reform Synods in Rome, in France, and Germany, Leo proceeded vigorously against simony and clerical marriage. He made the papal power a reality by his extensive travels and personal influence through his fine presence, attractive manners, and blameless life. Finally, he believed the Norman barons should be driven out of Southern Italy, as in their robber raids they did not spare even the States of the Church. Leo put himself at' the head of an army and marched against them, but he was easily defeated by the first soldiers in Europe, and became their prisoner, June 18, 1053. His captors treated him with great reverence, and he remained among them until March, 1054. The Normans did homage, and took the oath of fealty to him and to his successors as vassals of the Papal See. Thus they acquired in their eyes a legitimate title to the lands conquered by their arms. Henceforth, the Normans were the support of the papacy in its contest with the empire. The gain to the papacy was great; but Leo’s plans were shattered, and he did not long survive the shock.

16

242 Formation of Medieval Church.

His successor, Gerhard, bishop of Eichstadt, took the name of Victor II, 1054-1057, and was a thorough imperialist in heart and policy, and yet Hildebrand maintained his place at the papal court. Cardinal Frederick, abbot of Monte Cassino, brother of Godfrey, duke of Lorraine and margrave of Tuscany, the most powerful vassal of the empire, and husband of Beatrice, mother of the famous Countess Matilda, was the next pope, and reigned as Stephen X, 10571058. Hildebrand now became more influential, and controlled the election of the succeeding pope. After the short pontificate of Stephen, from whom so much was expected, came the election of Gerhard, bishop of Florence, as Nicholas II, 1059-1061. He was a weak character, and wholly under the influence of Hildebrand. Hildebrand was the true author of the famous Electoral Decree, April, 1059, which limited those who should vote at the papal elections to the college of cardinals. This was to make the papacy independent of the empire, as the empire had made it independent of the Roman nobility. The first choice of the college of cardinals fell upon Anselm, bishop of Lucca, a strong man and wholly in sympathy with Hildebrand, who took the title of Alexander II, 10611073. The German court, which felt the new method of election was a blow at the power and privilege of the empire, raised up an anti-pope, Cadalous, bishop of Parma, 1061-1064. The contest raged for three years, and ended in the universal acknowledgment of Alexander II. This blow was struck when the emperor of Germany was a child, and his counselors selfish and divided; it was well-timed—the first great victory of Hildebrand was won.

History of the Papal See.    243

Hildebrand was the son of a Tuscan carpenter, born at Saona, about 1015. He had been a monk at Rome; afterward, as archdeacon, the confi-

,    ’ . .    , , •    r 1 Pontificate

dential minister and business man of the ₀f Roman See. Now, in the prime of life, ^Hi,debrand. for twenty-five years he had been the soul    *

of the papacy, and for fifteen he might as well have reigned, for he ruled. He was a small, pale man, with features plain, even to ugliness. During the funeral of Alexander II, a tumultuous election was held, and against his will, at least as to time and place, Hildebrand was chosen pope. In remembrance of his earliest benefactor, he took the name of Gregory VII. The election was not according to the provisions of the electoral decrees, but undoubtedly Gregory was the choice of the College of Cardinals. No pope ever began his reign with a more thorough knowledge of all the relations and affairs of the Papal See, and of the personality of the rulers in Church and State in Europe. Moreover, Gregory had a clear and well-defined policy, which he determined to carry out, and to whose realization he devoted his life. He had already signalized his purpose to root out simony and clerical marriage. He now demanded that the election of bishops should be freed from the royal authority, for that is the meaning of the prohibition of lay investiture. His ulterior aims were three: (1) The elevation of the papacy above every form of secular dominion, so that the only legitimate ruler should be the vassal of the pope of Rome. (2) The complete subjection of the episcopate to the Roman See. (3) The permanent exaltation of the spiritual over the temporal power in all the lands of Christendom. Ncth-

244 Formation of Medieval Church.

ing less than this was the program of Gregory VII. The pope who proposed to realize this scheme was not a saint, not even a spiritually minded man. But he had the vision of a statesman, the skill and industry of an experienced man of business, the resolution, the devotion, the lack of scruple, the strong will and the cold heart to carry it out. Without doubt, he was convinced of its necessity and righteousness. But few rulers of the Church, who, like Gregory, were sincere in purpose, have had so little of the spirit and method of the Founder of the Christian religion. The conception of the work and character of Gregory here set forth is derived from a careful study of his correspondence.

Gregory was fully convinced, not only in regard to his own plans, but concerning the rulers with whom he had to deal. They did not need to commit any overt act to incur his displeasure, or assure an unfavorable judgment. Within a few weeks of his election, he expressed himself freely in respect to Philip I of France, and Henry IV of Germany, and so of the higher spiritual nobility, the chief bishops of France and Germany. The dominant note in the whole correspondence is one of suspicion, of rebuke, of coarse and repeated threatening. Prelates, able, eminent, and religious, are scolded and menaced in the tone of a rude and arrogant schoolmaster. Men as pure and respected as Liemar of Hamburg are suspended and threatened with the same penalties as the vilest sinners. In his heart, Gregory thoroughly despised men; looking for no purity, holiness, or disinterestedness, he felt no compassion. Yet the singleness and loftiness of his purpose could bind to him men like Peter Damiani,

History of the Papal See.

245

who recognized his defects and called him the good Satan; also women like Empress Agnes, the widow Beatrice, and the strong-minded countess Matilda, as well as party leaders like Hugh of Lyons and Urban II.

His robust good sense, which never failed him, made him the protector of Berengar, and caused him to rebuke Hugh, abbot of Clugny, for receiving Hugh I, duke of Burgundy, into the monastic life. “The shepherds flee, and the dogs, the defenders of the flock, wolves and robbers, without opposition, attack the sheep of Christ. Offer to receive the duke into the quiet of Clugny, and you have caused a hundred thousand Christians to lack a guardian. . . . Charity seeketh not her own. He who loves his neighbor, fulfills the law.”

How fared the execution of this program? For a few years all went prosperously. He bowed the proudest prelates in Christendom to his demands. Gregory thought at first to use the young emperor, Henry IV, to carry out his plans. Henry, in the midst of the Saxon rebellion, caused by his misgovernment and the ambition of the nobility, was at first quite pliant. At the Roman.Synod, Easter, 1075, Gregory forbade all lay investiture of bishops or abbots, on pain of excommunication. In the summer, Henry appointed Tedald archbishop of Milan. On the 1st of January, 1076, papal ambassadors brought a message from the pope to the imperial court at Goslar, threatening him with the ban and excommunication. Henry had suppressed the Saxon rebellion. He resolved to depose the pope. At the Synod of Worms, January 24, 1076, his deposition was pronounced.

246 Formation of Medieval Church.

Ilenrv paid dearly for this rash and illegal act. At the Lenten Synod at Rome, 1076, Gregory pronounced him in his turn deposed, excommunicated, and his subjects released from their allegiance. The German princes at Tibur, in October, 1076, demanded that the king should give satisfaction to the pope, that judgment should be rendered upon him in Germany, and if Henry, by his fault, remained under the ban for a year, another king should be elected. The pope seemed to have attained his end. He wished both parties to yield to him as arbiter, and to render his decision so as to make the empire acknowledge the supremacy of the Roman See. Henry resolved that at all costs the ban should be raised without placing his crown at the disposal of the pope of Rome. At the dead of winter, in a season of unusual cold, with wife and child, and at the risk of their lives, he crossed the Mount Cenis pass, and was in Italy. No appearance could be more unexpected or unwelcome to the pope. He sought for safety the strong castle of Canossa, belonging to the countess Matilda. Gregory needed not to fear the arms of Henry. One thing only the king desired, and that he would have: the absolution of the pope and the retention of his crown. According to all the law and practice of the Church, no priest could refuse absolution and reconciliation to a sinner who showed himself penitent, and rendered the accustomed penance or satisfaction. Henry stood bare-footed in the snow, wearing the shirt of a penitent, before the castle gate of Canossa for three whole days, January 26 to 28, 1077. At night, he broke his fast and slept. What a humiliation for a young and proud prince! Henry never forgot it; the German

History of the Papal See. 247

nation will never forget it while it has independent existence. The pope persisted until the countess Matilda told him that if he refused longer he was a tyrant. At the end of the third day, Henry was reconciled to the Church; he swore to render satisfaction to the German princes according to the judgment of the pope, and to afford him safe conduct to Germany. He then received the communion from the hands of the pope, and they dined together.

No wonder Gregory delayed. Henry’s submission shattered all his plans to decide as arbitrator in the affairs of Germany. The curses and bans of Gregory, four times again repeated, had lost their power. Never again could Henry lose his grasp upon the inheritance of his fathers. Gregory’s harshness at Canossa was a fatal blunder; he had humiliated his enemy past all bounds, but he had not destroyed him or his power to retaliate. Peace so made could hardly be kept. Henry could scarcely restrain the indignation of his subjects. It was impossible for Gregory to fulfill the expectations of his allies in Germany; but he took no straightforward course. He professed to be neutral between Henry and his rebellious vassals, but his legate presided at Forchheim less than two months after Canossa, where, against all law and every obligation, they elected Rudolph of Swabia king. Henry naturally thought it could not have been done without the concurrence of the pope. While his legates were doing all they could to ruin Henry’s cause in Germany, he preserved an apparent neutrality until Henry’s defeat, at Flarchheim, January 27, 1080. The 7th of March, Henry was pronounced deposed and excommunicated, Rudolph being acknowledged as king

248 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

in his stead. The solemn curse did not have the expected effect. Henry, instead of dying within a year, or even a few weeks, as was expected, lived thirty years after the death of Gregory. But Rudolph fell on the battle-field of the Elster, fatally wounded, October 15, 1080. In the meantime, Gregory’s most potent adversary appeared in the field. The Synod of Brixen, June 25, 1080, chose as pope, in Gregory’s place, Wibert, archbishop of Ravenna, who took the name of Clement III, 1080-1100. He was the ablest, most eminent in talents, learning, and piety, of all the anti-popes who have disquieted the possessors of the Roman See. He was worthy of a nobler fate. Henceforth, Gregory’s pontificate was a succession of disasters. The letter of Gregory to Henry, bishop of Metz, proves how the pope and his cause were injured by this turn of affairs. There is, indeeed, a striking contrast in the tone of his letters at the beginning of his pontificate and those during this period. Something of the haughtiness, the threatening, and the expectation of immediate submission is wanting. Henry crossed the Alps for three successive years, beginning with 1081, and in the last year he besieged Rome. At last the city, which at so many sacrifices had been faithful to Gregory, opened its gates to Henry. Wibert was consecrated as Clement III, in the Lateran, March 24th, and crowned Henry and his wife Bertha, March 31, 1084.

Gregory never yielded, nor would he make any compromise. He called in the Normans. They came in the latter part of May. Henry could only withdraw. The allies of Gregory ravaged, plundered, burned, and destroyed, as no Goths or Vandals had ever done.

History of the Papal See. 249

Their cruelty and rapine rendered it impossible for the pope to remain in the capital, from which they had led away a thousand slaves. There is no record that Gregory sought to restrain the violence or lust of the conquerors, or mitigate the lot of the captives, or express a word of compassion for the afflicted city which had so long sustained his cause. If ever a prince deserved to die in exile for indifference to the. sufferings he had brought upon his people, it was Gregory VII. He left with the Normans, never again to look upon his wasted capital. With them he remained almost a year. None of the powers he had treated so haughtily, and none of the vassal States of the Papal See, came to his relief. A broken and defeated man, but with pride and will still unbowed, he died, May 25, 1085, at Anagni, leaving his claims to his successors, and exclaiming, “I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile.” Gregory VII was as little scrupulous as any secular money-maker in gaining and using money to attain his ends, and while convinced of the righteousness and beneficence of his aims, he was as indifferent to the means used as any statesman. His nearest parallel in character and action is the greatest ruler among his contemporaries, William the Conqueror. Both had a natural sense of justice and of the necessity of strong rule, both were equally ambitious and equally unscrupulous, and both equally succeeded in persuading themselves that their cause was the cause of righteousness. Both made their cause prevail at the cost of infinite blood and tears. Both were great men and great rulers; they largely influenced the course of history and the growth of civilization; but through them

250 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

and those like them the kingdom of God will never be established on the earth.

The great monument to the memory of Gregory VII is the decree which gave the election of the popes to the College of Cardinals. It was the work of a statesman, the necessary foundation of the papal power, and it still endures after a trial of eight centuries. His efforts against simony and clerical marriage raised the tone of the life of the clergy, for the time at least.

His success against the married clergy was his crowning failure. It may have strengthened the papal power, but it permanently weakened Christianity and deteriorated Christian morals. But as to his great plans, he failed, and his failure was necessary and just. He did not dethrone Henry IV. He did not make Philip I of France submit as he planned to do. He did not make England a vassal of the Papal See. William the Conqueror replied to his demands: “Fealty I have never promised; my ancestors have never paid it, and I will never give it.” He did not make the Church supreme over the State; he did not even secure the independent life and government of the Church. His greatest praise is that his indirect influence prepared the way for that independence of the Church which is indispensable to its separation from the State and the accomplishment of its mission among men.

Chapter VII.

THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT.

The controversies of this period are six: The end of the Image Controversy; the Photian Controversy, with the separation of the Greek from the Latin Church as its result; the Controversy of Gottschalk over Predestination; and that of Berengar over the Lord’s Supper; the contest over the divorce of the emperor Lothair; and that with Hincmar of Rheims over the rights of the metropolitans.

THE CLOSE OF THE IMAGE CONTROVERSY.

The decisions of the second Council of Nicsea, 787, prevailed until the reign of Leo the Armenian, 813-820. The army was strongly iconoclastic. Leo was a military emperor, and sought to strengthen the State like the Isaurian emperors a century before. His chief adviser was Theodotus Cassireta, a brother-in-law of Emperor Constantine V. The leader of the opposition was the able and learned Theodorus Stu-dita, abbot of the celebrated monastery of Studion, who defended image-worship and the independence of the Church. His successor, Michael II, 820-829, was more moderate. He pronounced against placing the images so low that they could be embraced and idolatrously adored by the weak and uneducated; but would have them retained for the instruction of the unlearned. Theophilus, his son, renewed the war

251

252 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

with great zeal against the images, and those especially favoring them, the monks. He caused his wife to swear that after his death she would keep their prohibition in force. No sooner was she regent and guardian of her minor children than she broke her oath. Two women, Irene and Theodora, restored the images in the Eastern Church. However praised for their services to the Church, and personally able and pure, their record as mothers can hardly be commended. The blinded Constantine and the drunken Michael will not rise up to call them blessed. The restoration of the images is commemorated in the Greek Church by the annual Feast of Orthodoxy. As a result of the contest, there was a general prevalence of immorality, which invaded all ranks of society under Michael the Drunkard, largely owing to the cant and hypocrisy of using religious principles for political ends. A permanent result was, that while "holy pictures” are everywhere present in the worship of the Greek Church, no images are tolerated, not even a crucifix, though the cross is highly honored. The picture is supposed more perfectly to refer to or recall the person, while not so much exciting and centering in itself the aesthetic feelings. Gradually this change took place.

THE PHOTIAN CONTROVERSY. 857-1054.

A controversy of even more far reaching effect in the Greek Church was that over the election of Pho-tius as patriarch of Constantinople. Ignatius, a monk and a son of the emperor Michael I, was made patriarch of Constantinople by Empress Theodora in 847. He was a man of the highest personal character, and

Theological Thought.

253

renowned for his ascetic life, learning, and eloquence. He administered his high office with credit until 857, when, on Advent Sunday, he publicly refused to administer the communion to the brother of the empress, Caesar Bardas, an able but dissolute man, on account of his scandalous life. Ignatius was at once deposed, and banished to the Isle of Princes, in the Propontus, November 23, 857.

The imperial secretary, Photius, was chosen to succeed him. He always averred that the choice was against his will. Doubtless he could not have declined without losing his standing at court, and not without personal risk. Perhaps a consciousness of the possession of qualities and acquirements suited to the position induced him to accept the office. He used all his influence to procure Ignatius’s resignation, but in vain, and was finally consecrated patriarch, December 25, 857, having in five days passed through all the ecclesiastical grades and ordinations to patriarch.

Photius was now about thirty-five years of age. He was the grandnephew of Trarsios, who, from imperial secretary, had been made patriarch in the preceding century. His mother’s brother married Irene, sister of the empress Theodora; but these advantages of birth and station were outweighed by his personal qualities. He was the most learned man and the best theologian of his age, the ablest and most eloquent man of his time. He was ambitious, unscrupulous, and not always truthful; but he had the understanding, the grasp, and power of accomplishment of a statesman. In spite of two palace revolutions, which he could neither foresee nor prevent, and which twice

254 Formation of Medueval Church.

hurled him from power, he is the founder of the independence of the Greek Catholic Church from the pretended universal supremacy of Rome. Photius had gained reputation as a civil administrator, and doubtless might have reached the highest offices in civil life.

Having failed to secure the resignation of Ignatius, Photius sent an ambassy to Nicholas I, in 859, to obtain the recognition of Rome. It was the last time a Greek patriarch sought the judgment of the Roman See upon his claims to office. Nicholas called a Council to consider the case, September 25, 860. It pronounced its sentence, that Photius could be treated and considered only as a layman. In May, 861, Photius convened a Synod at Constantinople of three hundred and eighteen bishops, who confirmed the elevation of Photius, and decided against those who refused to acknowledge him. The pope’s legates were present, and joined in the sentence of the Synod. Ignatius had been allowed to return to the capital and dwell in the house he had inherited from his mother. Hearing that he was to be forced to give his resignation, he fled. An earthquake caused permission to be issued for his return three months later, and he lived undisturbed in his cloister. Nicholas sent his letter deciding against Photius to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, as well as to all the faithful, March 18, 863. The following month he held a Synod at Rome in St. Peter’s, and there finally repudiated the action of his legates and deposed and excommunicated Photius. The emperor Michael and Photius replied, the former in a violent communication. Pope Nicholas answered in 865: “In respect to Ignatius and Photius, v/e ordain that both shall be

Theological Thought.

brought to Rome; that here their cause may be investigated anew. For the Roman See judges over the whole Church. ... If Photius does not do this, the pope will call the bishops of all the provinces of the West to a Synod, in which the anathema will be pronounced over all the authors of this crime; the letter in question will be fastened to a stake and publicly burned.” He wrote a kind of encyclical to the leading men at Constantinople, asking them to take no part against Ignatius, to hold no communion with Photius, and to assist the papal legate whom he should send. In 867, at a Synod in Constantinople, Photius excommunicated Nicholas, as four years before the pope had excommunicated him. In September, 867, Basil the Macedonian slew the emperor Michael, and was crowned the next day. The day after, the murderer, desiring to conciliate the Ignatian party, deposed Photius. Ignatius was reinstated, November 23, 867; ten days previous, Pope Nicholas had died.

Ignatius assembled a Council, October 5, 869, consisting of the papal legates, five archbishops, seven bishops, and twelve senators. The last session was held February 28, 870. The attendance had increased sixty-six, so that there were altogether one hundred and two different bishops present at its sessions. This is called the eighth Ecumenical Council by the Latin Church, but is rejected by the Greeks. Hadrian, in his letter to the Council, took pains to reaffirm the position of Nicholas, that the pope of Rome had supreme judicial power over all Churches, but could himself be judged by no one. At the opening session, the Roman legates declared concerning Photius: “Rome has spoken; the cause is decided. It is not

256 Formation of Medieval Church.

competent for the Council to give a new sentence, but only to acknowledge and publish as universal the Roman decision.” The Council bow^red to this demand, and decided that all conciliar decisions of the pope should be exactly observed. All ordinations by Photius and his clergy were declared void. Few Councils have left behind more bitter feeling with all parties. The arrogance of the papal legates, and the nullifying of the ordinations of ten years, wounded the Greek Church and nation incurably. From the adjournment of the Council the cause of Rome and of Ignatius was lost in the Eastern Church. The Roman court was bitterly disappointed, and deeply offended that the Bulgarians turned from the Roman to the Greek Church, and that the jurisdiction of the latter was permanently established among them. Ignatius was sorely grieved and hurt that, after all his humiliation for the See of Rome, the pope would listen neither to his nor the emperor’s prayer to release from his ban a few of the Photian clergy, whom they wished to promote. The position was intolerable. All these years Photius was in exile, and never showed himself more able or more eloquent. His letters awakened sympathy, inspired his friends, and made inevitable his return. The emperor recalled him to Constantinople. Photius was in friendly relations with the aged and dying Ignatius. Three days after his decease, October 26, 877, after ten years of exile, Photius was restored to his see.

Photius called a General Council, which met November 17, 879, and continued in session until March

13, 880. Pope John VIII had already acknowledged Photius, and absolved him and all his party. At the

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Council, besides the papal legates, there were three hundred and eighty-three bishops in attendance. The Greeks call this the eighth Ecumenical Council, but it is rejected by the Latins; it certainly has a more valid claim to the title than the Council of Ignatius, which they acknowledge. At the second session of the Council, the cardinal legate declared: “Pope John restores Photius, and acknowledges him as a brother.” In the third session, the Council protested against the supremacy of the Roman See, and its competence to pronounce judgment in the cause of Ignatius and Photius without the co-operation of the Greek Council. The successor of Pope John was Marinus, who had been papal representative at Constantinople, and was a bitter enemy of Photius. Pie renewed against him the former condemnation of the Roman Church. Its only effect was to make Photius more aggressive in his opposition to the Church of Rome. He wrote a circular letter against her practice of using leavened bread in the sacrament, of fasting on Saturday, and especially of adding Filioquc to the Creed—that is, saying that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, instead of from the Father. In 883 and 885, Photius wrote against the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son. Basil I died in March, 886, and was succeeded by his son, Leo VI. In order to raise his brother Stephen, a lad eighteen years of age, to the see of Constantinople, Leo deposed and banished Photius in 886. Photius lived yet nearly five years in exile, probably happier than when in the patriarchal seat at Constantinople; and, after having been excommunicated and cursed by nine popes, he died February 6, 891. Communion was resumed with Rome,

17

2,s8 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

but the breach was never healed. In 995, Sisinnius, patriarch of Constantinople, renewed the charges of Photius against the Latin Church. Sergius, patriarch, 1009, a descendant of the Photian family, renewed the accusations, and struck the names of the popes from the diptychs. Emperor Basil II and his patriarch Eustathius, sought to make an arrangement with John XIX, that “the Church of Constantinople in her patriarchate, as the Roman Church in the whole of Christendom, should be called Ecumenical.” This failed, through the opposition of the Western prelates, led by Abbot William of Dijon. Michael Cerularius, as a layman, was banished for conspiracy against Michael IV, and compelled to become a monk in 1040. Though not yet ordained priest, the emperor Constantine IX made him patriarch of Constantinople in 1043. He closed all the churches of the Latin rite in Constantinople, and drove the Latin monks from their monasteries, while Greek monks were tolerated and protected at Rome. In a letter to John, bishop of Trani, 1053, he renewed all the old charges against the Latin Church, and added new ones, in regard to eating things strangled, and the omission of Hallelujah in the service during Lent. Leo IX, answering the letter, asserted: “Christ made Peter the primate; Constantine gave him a worldly dominion, because he held it for unworthy that the pope, whom God placed at the head of the heavenly kingdom, should be subject to an earthly ruler. . . . The Church of Christ has only one head, and he who does not honor this, counts himself in vain among her members. The emperor knows and acknowledges who this head is; namely, the Roman Church, to which

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also Constantine, the founder of Constantinople, belonged.” These palpable, though venerable, historic fictions did not commend his letter to the Greeks, though the Greek emperor was most anxious for an accommodation. In January, 1054, Cardinal Humbert was sent to Constantinople, where he arrived in June. He was sharp, haughty, and aggressive, especially attacking the married clergy as unworthy to administer the sacraments. July 16, 1054, he took occasion, during the service, to lay on the high altar of St. Sophia a written excommunication of the patriarch of Constantinople. He then left the city. The emperor called him back, and tried in vain to arrange a peace; the people were on the side of the patriarch. July 24, 1054, the patriarch burned the bull of excommunication. The Churches have remained separate since. Repeated efforts towards a renewal of communion have invariably failed. We have seen the child of the Roman Catholic prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria rebaptized, in order to enter the Greek Church.

THE GOTTSCHAIvK CONTROVERSY. 847-869.

Gottschalk—that is, God’s servant—was the son of a Saxon count, Berno. He was brought as a child to the monastery of Fulda, and educated there. In 829 he sought to be absolved from his vows, on the ground that they were taken in his childhood, and hence were not voluntary. The Synod of Mainz granted this request, but it was refused by Abbot Ra-banus Maurus, who only consented that he should be transferred to the monastery of Orbais, in the diocese of Soissons and province of Rheims. Here he studied

260 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

Augustine and Fulgentius, becoming zealous for the doctrine of predestination. He was ordained priest, and later, in 847-848, he went to Rome. On his return he stopped with Count Bernard of Friaul, son-in-law of Emperor Louis the Pious, and won him to his opinions. At the Synod ot Mainz in 848, Gottsclialk accused his old abbot, Rabanus Maurus, of Semi-pelagianism. The Synod sent him to his metropolitan, Hincmar of Rheims, who gave him into the charge of Rothard, bishop of Soissons. He was tried before the provincial Synod of Quiercy in 849. Having abused his accusers like one possessed, he was condemned, deprived of his priestly dignity, and terribly scourged. Gottschalk was then shut up in prison for more than twenty years as an obstinate heretic; he died, unreconciled, in 869. In his last years he seems to have been insane through his sufferings. Pope Nicholas reproached Hincmar for his cruel treatment of him. At no time did Gottschalk’s doctrine sweeten his spirit, or teach him to love his enemies. He prophesied that Hincmar would die in two years and a half, and when he did not, he wrote to a friend: “It has pleased God to call later this thief and robber.” His independent German spirit, which scorned a vow taken before years of responsibility, helped him to stand by his convictions to the end of a life of humiliation and suffering. Though Gottschalk did not make friends who could help him, some of the ablest men of the time came to the defense of his opinions. Such were Prudentius, bishop of Troyes; Remigius, bishop of Lyons; Ratramanus,abbot of Corvey; Servatus Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres. Hincmar led the battle against him, and Rabanus Maurus and John Scotus wrote in

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opposition to his teachings. The Synod of \ alence, 855, pronounced strongly against Hincmar of and for the doctrine of predestination. Hincmar’s first book, “De Predestinatione,” was published in 855* ^and the second in 860. The Synod of Tousi, in October, 860, settled the controversy in accepting a paper drawn up by Hincmar, which sought agreement rather than the sharpening of opposition. It may interest us to see the ground held by these disputants, as Calvin, seven hundred years later, expressed himself more clearly than Gottschalk, and both only carried the doctrine of Augustine to logical consequences from which its author shrank.

Gottschalk held:    Hincmar held:

The Divine predestination 1. There is but one predes-causes that the predestined to tination—that to life, life can not fall into death, and 2. The freedom of the human those predestined to death will is preserved through can not attain to life. All those grace.

sinners whom the goodness of 3. God wills all men to be God has predestined to life, saved.

for their redemption the Son 4. Christ died for all men. of God has shed His blood.

For all other sinners, God’s Son did not become man and was not crucified. He is only the Savior of the elect.

Like Augustine,he held that in respect to the Divine action to foreknow, to will and to do are the same. If he now from eternity foreknew that a sinner, as Caius, would be punished with eternal death, so he has also from all eternity willed and done this; i. e., predestined him to death.

262 Formation of Medieval Church.

Synod of Valence,855,held: Synod of Tousi,860,held:

1.    God foreknew eternally 1. God would have all men the good and the bad and their to be saved.

fate; but this foreknowledge 2. Man’s will was free after did not compel men. Men the fall.

perish, not because they are 3. But we must be healed unable to be good, but be- and freed through God’s grace, cause they are unwilling.    4. Divine predestination is

2.    God predestinates the unto life, and Christ died for good and bad; the elect, un- all men.

deserved in his mercy, and the bad in his justice.

3.    Christ died for many (the elect), not for all.

4.    All receive the beginning of grace and the forgiveness of sins in baptism, and are so far regenerated, but all do not persevere.

5.    Grace and free-will coexist, but how, we do not presume to determine.

THE BERENGARIAN CONTROVERSY. 1048-1079.

Berengar was born at Tours, being a canon and scholasticus in the Church of St. Martin in that city, and from 1040 archdeacon at Angers. He was an able, but conceited man. He taught that in the Lord’s Supper there was a real presence of our Lord in the sacrament; but that presence must be spiritually conceived. His doctrine was specially directed against transubstantiation, first taught by Paschius Rad-bertus and opposed by Ratramanus. In the following year, Berengar attacked Lanfranc, abbot of Bee, afterward archbishop ot Canterbury. On the ground of this letter, the Synod ot Rome, at which Lanfranc was present, 1050, under Leo IX, condemned Beren-

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gar unheard. The Synod of Vercelli, in his absence, renewed the condemnation; but he was able to satisfy the papal legate, Hildebrand, by declaring, without further definition, that the bread and wine were by consecration the body and blood of Christ. Trusting in Hildebrand, Berengar came to Rome in 1059, where Cardinal Humbert and his party forced him to sign a confession, in which it was asserted that the bread and wine, after consecration, became the true body and true blood of Christ, and are sensuously handled by the priest, broken and chewed by the teeth of believers. After his return, Berengar said he signed the confession only through fear of death. Lanfranc held that the elements are transformed in an inconceivable and miraculous way into the essence of the body and blood of Christ. At the Synod of Poitiers, Berengar was in danger of his life. Gregory VII summoned him to Rome in 1078, and was, as formerly, content with his statement without further theological definitions; but the pressure was too strong for the pope, and he was compelled, the next year, to require Berengar to confess to a substantial transformation in the sacrament. Gregory sent him back to France, and threatened all who should molest him. He remained near Tours until his death in 1088.

THE DIVORCE OE LOTHAIR.

Lothair II, in 856, married Theutberga, the daughter of Boso, a count Of Burgundy. He had children by his mistress, Waldrada, before his marriage; but he had none by Theutberga. Two or three years after his marriage, he accused his wife of unfaithfulness. In her stead, her servant underwent successfully the

264 Formation of Medieval Church.

ordeal of hot water, and Lothair took her back. At the Synod of Aachen, 860, the archbishops of Cologne and Treves declared that, as Theutberga had confessed to sin before her marriage, therefore the marriage was dissolved. Another Synod, at the same place two years later, decreed that Lothair was free to marry again. Lothair had promised to marry the niece of the archbishop of Cologne; but as soon as he was free, he sent her back, and, on December 25, 862, publicly married Waldrada. Hincmar came out strongly against this scandalous divorce, tainted with perjury and extorted confessions, showing its illegal character in his treatise “Concerning the Divorce of King Lothair,” sent out in 863. Nevertheless, Lothair won over the papal legates, so that, at the Synod of Metz, in 863, they joined with the bishops in condemning Theutberga, and upholding Lothair. Lothair sent the archbishops of Cologne and Treves to Pope Nicholas to secure his confirmation of the sentence. Nicholas called a Synod at Rome, in October, 863, to decide upon the case. His righteous indignation flamed forth in the sentence, declaring Lothair guilty of bigamy, and deposing the archbishops, pronouncing them incapable of priestly functions or episcopal authority. He also deposed and excommunicated his legates at the Synod of Metz. Lothair submitted to the papal sentence, and, August 3, 865, received back Theutberga. Waldrada was given over to the charge of the Roman legates, but escaped from them, and went to Provence. Nicholas excommunicated her, February 2, 866. The same year, on account of ill treatment, Theutberga fled to her husband’s uncle, Charles the Bald, king of France, and desired a dissolution of her

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marriage. Lothair and Charles both united in this request; but in January, 867, Nicholas positively refused it. Hadrian II, in December, succeeded Nicholas. Lothair swore falsely that he had no communication with Waldrada, so Hadrian freed her from excommunication, in 868. Lothair was admitted to communion, at Rome, in July, 869, and died a few weeks later. Theutberga and Waldrada, sinned against and sinning, spent the remainder of their lives in convents.

HINCMAR OF RHEIMS AND NICHOLAS I.

Hincmar of Rheims was the ablest prelate of Western Christendom in the ninth century. In learning, and perhaps eloquence, Photius surpassed him, but in force and character the archbishop of Rheims was Photius’s superior. Both were ambitious, and both were unscrupulous in the use of means to carry their ends. Hincmar has been called the most influential French prelate, a judgment in which one would hesitate to concur, yet in great abilities and in varied activity he stands unsurpassed among them. He was born about 806, of a noble West-Frankish family. He was brought up in the abbey of St. Denis, and under the abbot Hildwin. When, for political reasons, the abbot was banished, in 830, Hincmar accompanied him, and came back with him when he was recalled. He lived at the court of St. Denis, and at the court of Charles the Bald, from 831 until after 840. Ebo, the influential and splendid archbishop of Rheims, had been instrumental in procuring the forced abdication of Louis the Pious, in 803. When the emperor was restored, he had to flee from his see;

266 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

again restored, a little more than a year later, he was driven out by the people. It had been vacant some time, when the Synod of Beauvais declared it must be filled, and elected Hincmar as the metropolitan. Leo sent him the pallium, February 4, 846. Ebo was made bishop of Hildesheim, and died there in 851. Rothard had been bishop of Soissons for almost forty years, when he was excluded from the fellowship of the other bishops by Hincmar, in 861, at the Synod of Soissons. He applied to the Synod of Pistes, held in June the next year. This Synod tried and deposed him, when he applied to Rome. Afterward he resigned, but withdrew his resignation. We are not informed as to the charges against him, but they seem to relate to matters of personal difference between him and his metropolitan. Hincmar, like some strong and vigorous administrators, would seem to have carried with him the suffragans and clergy, so thoroughly and unitedly, as to make it uncomfortable for the man who opposed him. Nicholas, in 863, expressed his discontent with Hincmar for his proceeding against Rothard. Two years later, Nicholas restored Rothard to his see. He appealed to the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals to defend his action. Hincmar protested, but was forced to submit.

Hincmar w^ras involved in another controversy, which must have been very painful to him, but in which he seems to have been in the right. The archbishop of Rheims had a nephew, a son of his sister, who bore his own name. The young man won great favor at the court of Charles the Bald. Before 855 he had received the see of Laon, with an abbey and an office at court. His rapid promotion did not make

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him humble; on the contrary, he proved so stubborn and refractory that a civil tribunal took from him his abbey and office at court, in 868; but the same year, through his uncle’s influence, he was reconciled to the king. At the Synod of Verberie, April, 869, he stirred up trouble again, so that, at the command of the king, he was arrested and imprisoned. His uncle strove to win Hincmar of Laon to a better course, and wrote him five letters while in prison. Obtaining his liberty, in June, 870, he gave a written profession of obedience to the king and to his uncle as his metropolitan. The next month he sought his uncle’s aid against the king, and forged a letter purporting to be a reply; he then fled. After the treaty of Mersen, in 870, many of the nobility were displeased at the division of the kingdom of Lorraine. Hincmar of Laon took part with the rebels, in 870-871. The Synod of Douci, in the latter year, petitioned the pope against him. Hincmar of Rheims invited him to attend the Provincial Synod held that year; but the nephew returned only abuse. The Synod filed charges against Hincmar of Laon, drawn up by his uncle, to which he refused to make any answer. He was charged with squandering Church property upon his relatives; the king, against the wish and prayer of his uncle, caused his arrest. The Synod of Douci, 871, deposed him from his office of bishop and priest. Charles the Bald imprisoned and blinded him on charge of conspiracy. Upon the visit of Pope John VIII, in 876, he accused his uncle, and sought to be restored; but in vain. His condition was improved, and he was allowed to recite mass; nevertheless, he died before his uncle. Hincmar of Laon, with great opportunities and a splendid

268 Formation of Medieval Church.

position, brought ruin upon himself, and grief and shame upon his uncle and benefactor. The rebuke Hincmar administered to Pope Hadrian II for his interference in regard to the treaty of Mersen has already been related. He protested against the interference of the papal legate at the Synod of Ponthion, in 876, but in vain, as the king confirmed it. This stern warrior soul, like Augustine, passed from earth in the midst of conflict. The Normans attacked and pillaged Rheims, his archiepiscopal seat, when, overburdened with years, he died in the retreat, in 882.

THE PSEUDO-ISIDOREAN DECRETALS.

None of these controversies had a greater effect upon the development of the Latin Church than the publication of the Pseudo-Isidorean collection of Decretals, which were written near the beginning of this period, in the times of disorder through the strife of Louis the Pious and his sons.

A body of ecclesiastical law, exceeding any other in completeness, and soon also in authority, appeared in the province of Rheims, in the West-Frankish kingdom of Charles the Bald, between 847 and 854, probably in 851, or the following year. This claimed to be a collection made by Isidore of Hisalpis, a Spanish bishop, who died in 636, and left a name for classical and patristic learning. He had written a collection of important canons, which are not found in the book most in use, compiled by Dionysius Exiguus. It was now pretended that this set of decretals was written by him, and had been recently discovered.

The undertaking was no small one. The work is in three parts. The first part contains the fifty so-called

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apostolic canons, the genuine patristic writings of Clement of Rome, and fifty-nine alleged but spurious letters of the Roman bishops, from Clement to Mel-chiades, 314, in chronological order. This part covers 250 large pages in the Berlin edition of Hinchius. The second part consists of 186 double-column, fine-print pages, being a collection of the canons of the Church, from that of Nicsea to the second Council of Hisalpis, 658. These are given without falsification, but the Donation of Constantine and a few other pieces are added. Part III gives the decretal letters of the Roman bishops, from Sylvester, f 323, to Gregory II, f 731, of which thirty-five are spurious. These fill 425 pages, counting the fine-print, double-column pages as two. Here we see a manuscript containing more than 1,200 pages of print, and aiming to be the standard treatise and collection of ecclesiastical law for the Latin Church. Such they became, and were appealed to as final authority by popes, bishops, and Councils after 864 to the end of the Middle Ages. They passed in time into the canon law. Their falsity was first proved by the Protestant Church historians, in the “Magdeburg Centuries,” in the latter part of the sixteenth century. 'It was this mixture of the genuine with the false which gave them currency, and the age was too ignorant to be critical. Hincmar of Rheims and Pope Nicholas, who first used these false Decretals, must have known that they were not genuine; but for most of the others the pretended authority of Isidore refuted every objection.

The object of these additions was first to secure the clergy from the jurisdiction of the secular courts and civil authority, in an age of violence, when only

270 Formation of Medieval Church.

the terrors of the Church could protect an unarmed man. The clergy must be tried only in ecclesiastical courts, and no layman could accuse a clergyman, but every sufferer from violence could appeal to such courts for redress. The second and main object was to protect the bishops against the secular power, and against their metropolitans, as being used bv the king to oppress them. No bishops could be proceeded against by the metropolitan, but only by a Synod; and by a Synod summoned by the pope. No layman and none of the lower clergy could accuse a bishop, and seventy-two legitimate witnesses were then required. No bishop could be condemned without papal consent. The accused bishop could, at any time, appeal from the judgment of the Synod to the pope. It was the duty of the pope to protect the bishops against the tyranny of the State, and the oppression of their own metropolitans. It is incidentally that the episcopate became bound directly to Rome, the independence of both the Churches and the episcopate was broken down, and the primacy and jurisdiction of the Roman See became directly effective throughout Christendom.

The authorship of these forgeries is not determined, but they probably began under the instigation of Otgar, archbishop of Mainz,-|-847, and Ebo, former archbishop of Rheims, and were completed in the province of Rheims, where they were first used.

The influence of these Decretals is fairly and well stated by Moeller: “The Pseudo-Isidore did not make the mediaeval papacy; but, as a strong expression of tendencies which were present and favored by the development of history, it strengthened its advance,

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collccted for the first time the claims which had been earlier made separately, combined with them really new claims, such as in part subsequent times did not realize, and clothed the whole with the authority of ecclesiastical tradition, and thus not unessentially contributed to the development and confirmation of papal absolutism/’

The sin and evil of this forgery was in ascribing to men, whose position in the early Church gave authority to their name, opinions and decisions, which never entered into their thought, or that of the men of their time. This ascription of beliefs, principles, or acts to men who were ignorant of them, or would have indignantly repudiated them, is the basest of crimes against historic truth. The perversion and corruption which it causes is pervading, and in a Church claiming infallibility for its supreme human authority, almost irremediable. The present pope does not quote the Donation of Constantine, or the forged Decretals, but the policy they initiated is his, and makes his political influence the greatest danger to United Italy, and a menace to the peace of Europe, whose chiefest safeguard is in his lack, not of will but of power.    .

Note.—A powerful theological thinker of this period was John Scotus Erigena, an Irishman, the president of the School of the Palace, under Charles the Bald. Familiar with Greek, he developed the Platonic teaching of the Pseudo Dionysius, the Greek fathers, and especially Maximus the Confessor in an original and masterly mauuer, but with a fundamental pantheistic tendency.

Two reforming bishops of the ninth century were Agobard of Lyons,

816-840, and Claudius of Turin, 820-. Agobard opposed ordeals and

the worship of images; Claudius images, pilgrimages, relics, and the intercession of the saints. Both sought and preached a spiritual religion and direct personal relation to God, against the external and sensuous worship of the age. But though brave and true, they were, alas ! before their time.

Chapter VIII.

THE CHURCH LIFE.

The three characteristics of the life of the clergy during this period are—the wealth, power, and dissoluteness of the clergy; the prevalence of simony, and the efforts made to exterminate it; and the war against Condition ^c^^eri^ca^ marriage. The history of the popes of the assures us that we need not look to Rome ^c,ergy* for purity and holiness among the clergy. Some facts from contemporary documents will give a better idea than pages of disquisition, of the prevalent lawlessness and vice of the time. Nicholas is well styled the great pope of his century; but this is the state of things his second successor, a few years after his death, describes, and in which his nephew, by marriage, appears. John VIII, in 876, charged that Gregory the Nomenclator had many times violated his oath, and soiled his office for eight years through avarice and robbery. He had invited the Saracens to plunder the city, having left open the gates of Rome and robbed the treasures of the Church. His brother, Stephen, had been his companion in crime, and had increased the accustomed taxes. Another companion, George, had seduced the concubine of his brother and killed him; a third had allied himself with the daughter of the Nomenclator, while his wife, a niece of the dead pope, Benedict, who had enriched him, was living, and then murdered his wife. A 272

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fourth, the general, Sergius, who had married the niece of Pope Nicholas, had embezzled the property of that pope, which was destined for the poor, and then left his wife and promised to marry a Frankish concubine, Walwisindula.

The successor of Nicholas was Hadrian II, 867872. In the family of the pope occurred this tragic event. A young daughter of his, who was betrothed, was seized and carricd off by Eleutherius, son of Bishop Arsenius, in 868. When Hadrian pushed a prosecution against Eleutherius he killed the daughter, and also Stephania, the wife of the pope.

After the plundering by the Saracens of the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, in 847, the resources of the Roman Church made good _{WeaIth of} their loss. Some estimate of its wealth the Roman may be made from the ornaments given, in ^urc * 847, to the despoiled churches by Leo IV. Among them was a golden table, weighing 216 pounds; a crucifix of silver, gilded and ornamented with hyacinths and diamonds, weighing seventy pounds. The canopy over the altar, with silver pillars, ornamented with gilded lilies, weighed 1,600 pounds. A cross of massive gold, glittering with pearls, smaragds and other jewels, weighed a thousand pounds. With these were innumerable vases, lamps, chains, vessels for incense, censers, cups, tables, candle-sticks, etc., of gold and silver.

The vast wealth which could supply such costly ornaments for the service of the Roman Church was greatly diminished during this period. The revenues fiom the papal domains in Southern Italy and Sicily were cut off through the image controversy, and in

18

274 Formation of Mediaeval Church.

the Saracen conquest of Sicily wholly lost. The rich possessions in Central Italy, dating from the time of Pepin and Charlemagne, and those of older, origin about the city, became in large part alienated or un-Papai productive. The Roman aristocracy, many Revenues. ₀f them relatives of the popes, seized the church lands. There was limitless confusion in the papal administration. The Lateran palace was more than once robbed and wasted, and its archives plundered. The tenant farmers paid no more rent to Rome, and the aristocratic possessors repudiated their dues. Great domains were lavished upon the relatives and partisans of the popes; whole districts were given as fiefs to bishops or barons. Bishops and abbots, in jurisdiction and rights of sovereignty, became temporal princes. These often gave large estates to the secular nobility for the protection of their property against the Saracens and Hungarians. Thus arose in the tenth century the many castles and towers in the Campagna about Rome. The feudal system and feudal nobilty entirely changed and greatly diminished the revenues of the “patrimony of Peter/’ which had been the care of the popes to increase and make more productive since the days of Constantine.

What the popes lost seems to be gained by the Italian bishops. They lived in luxurious apartments Luxury resplendent with gold, purple, and velvet, of Italian They ate like princes from golden plates, Prelates. ₍j_ran]_{<: w};_ne from costly beakers. Music and dancing-girls were at their feasts. They lived with their concubines; they gambled and followed the chase.- They read mass with spurs on their heels and costly daggers at their sides.

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In Germany, the policy of the emperors since Otto I had been to enrich and increase the power of the bishops and archbishops of the Church. _The German They were generally appointed from the Prelates, chaplains of the court, and were usually able and honest men, but, of course, quite as devoted to the emperor, from whom they received their appointment, as to the Church they served. These offices came mainly to clergy of aristocratic, or even royal descent. A few instances will show this. Otto’s son, Wilhelm, became archbishop of Mainz. The cousin of Otto III was Pope Gregory V; of Conrad II, Pope Leo IX. The bishop of Augsburg was the brother of Henry II; the archbishop of Ravenna was his illegitimate brother; while the bishop of Metz was the brother of his empress. The bishop of Regensburg was the uncle of Henry III, and the archbishop of Bremen was his cousin. The incumbents paid a fee upon entering their offices as would any temporal lord who received an estate from royal favor. The revenues of the court were largely derived from the bishops. In a weak or avaricious administration, the transaction degenerated into a sale of Church offices, as was the case especially in Italy.' The same practice prevailed in greater or less degree in France and England. Moved by the influence of Clugny, the Councils began to take action against simony.

The Roman Synod, 1047, under Leo IX, decreed that whosoever consecrates a church, receives a clerical ordination, a clerical benefice, a Church office, confers an abbey or a canonicate, for money, shall be under anathema; and whosoever receives ordination without his own simony from a simonical bishop,

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knowing that he is a simonist, must do penance forty days, but may remain in office. The Synod of Mainz, two years later, took action against simony. The Synod of Rome, 1059, ordained: “No one shall be simonistically consecrated or assisted to a Church office.”

We need to consider the fact that the Roman Catholic clergy of this period were generally married, Clerical before w'e consider the legislation in regard Marriage, to clerical marriage and its effects. The German historian Giesebrecht says: “At this time in Italy a married bishop was no rare appearance; almost all the lower clergy lived in marriage. Sons of priests received almost daily, not only their inheritance from their fathers, but from the goods of the Church. In Germany and France the great part of the country clergy lived in marriage. Married priests appeared as angels of light, compared with the stricken sinners who lived in abominable lusts.” In Danish England clerical marriage appears to have been generally recognized. The English clergy were mostly married. Lan-franc, at the Synod of Winchester, 1076, forbade marriage only to the collegiate—i. e., canonical—clergy, and married men were not henceforth to be ordained, which shows what had been the practice. Bishop Stubbs says: “Before 1100 many of the English bishops were, if not married, at least the fathers of semilegitimate families.” Norman bishops lived openly with their families. The whole clergy of the kingdom of Naples lived in marriage.

Against this prevalent custom, in harmony with the New Testament and the practice of our Lord, who chose, as the spokesman of the apostles, Peter, a mar

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ried man, but against the papal and conciliar canons after the fourth century—against this custom the monks of Clugny and Hildebrand determined to wage unrelenting war. The Roman Synod of 1049, of which Hildebrand was the leading spirit, decreed: “All priests, deacons, and subdeacons are forbidden intercourse with their wives, and the concubines of the Roman clergy shall be forfeited to the Lateran palace as maid servants.” The Synod of Mainz the same year fulminated against clerical marriage, but without effect.

The Roman Synod of 1059 took a decided step in advance, when it declared: “No one shall hear the mass of a priest of whom he knows, without doubt, that he has a concubine, or a mulier subintroducta, a woman not a near relative, living with him. But we forbid, in the name of God and the apostles Peter and Paul, the priest, deacon, or subdeacon, who, after the appearance of the ordinance of our predecessor, Le6, has taken openly a concubine—or having earlier taken one, has not dismissed her—to sing mass or to read the Gospel or the Epistle. He shall have no place in the presbytery, and receive no part of the income of the Church; until sentence over it issues from us ” Thus was put into effect a measure effectually to subdue the married clergy, but it was more than two hundred years in accomplishing it. At the same time, contrary to the teaching of the Church, it made the sacrament depend for its validity upon the estimate of the communicant of the life and character of the priest. No more dangerous weapon could be put into the hands of heretics, and it did not cease to be used until the great Reformation. It would be

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hard to convince many that if it were a sin to hear mass from a married priest, it was a matter of indifference if the priest were notoriously licentious and corrupt. Every effort was made to disgrace the children of priests. Their sons and daughters were declared the property of the Church, and should never be free. No one could marry the daughter or widow of a priest. No priest’s son could be legally ordained. Nevertheless, priest’s children continued to be a special class and recognized in civil legislation until the Reformation restored the purity and legitimacy of clerical marriage.

The canonical life was prescribed by the Councils from that of Aachen, 817, to that of Rome, 1059. It reached its greatest extent during this period, though it flourished and began its decline in the next.

The custom of prelates bearing arms had something in its favor during the period of the invasions. Historians and artists never forget that Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg led the charge in the decisive battle of the Lechfeld against the Hungarians. In the years between 886 and 908 ten German bishops fell on the field of battle; but with settled times there came a demand for better customs. The Synod of Tours, 860, decreed that a cleric who should thereafter bear weapons in war should lose his benefice and the fellowship of the clergy.

The way the hierarchy strove to protect itself from inconvenient accusations is shown by the twelfth canon of the Synod of Mainz, 888: “No clergyman can accuse one who is of higher rank than himself. A bishop shall not be sentenced unless there are seventy-two witnesses against him; the higher bishops

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(metropolitans or archbishops) not at all, because the disciple is not above his lord.” Here we see an extension of the doctrine that the pope can be judged by no man. A cardinal priest must have forty-three witnesses against him; a cardinal deacon of the Roman Church, twenty-six; a subdeacon or one in minor orders, seven,—and these must be of good reputation.

Monasticism during this period is strongly marked by degeneration, devastation, and reform. The vigor and crudity of these contrasts are charac- The teristic of the Middle Ages, where nothing Mystic Life, was moderate or restrained. Charlemagne did not found many monasteries. During the forty-six years of his rule, but twenty new ones were established in the German part of his dominions; but _Weaith both he and his descendants were munifi- of the cent benefactors of those then existing. ^Monasteries* The great monasteries became principalities. The abbey of St. Germain de Pres, at Paris, owned 500,000 acres, and had 10,000 serfs. The abbey of St. Martin, at Tours, had an equal number of serfs. St. Wand-ville, in France, in 788, owned 4,000 farms. In thirty years the monastery' of Hersfeld received 2,000 pieces of real estate, located in 195 different places, whose income was enjoyed by 150 monks. Fulda and St. Gall were even more richly endowed. A small monastery like Staffelsee had 740 acres in pasture and 610 in hay-meadows, beside 44 estates, which it rented or tilled with serfs. Equally wealthy and more luxurious, were the Italian monasteries. Some of these monasteries, great establishments, as Fulda, Corvev, Reichenau, and St. Gall, became renowned at this

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time for their schools and libraries, their care for ancient manuscripts, and the copies made from them in the Scriptoriums. Greek was taught at Reichenau and St. Gall.

But these possessions and riches, which made the abbots temporal princes, made their positions coveted for their wealth and power by the rude and unscrupu-Resuit ^^{ous n}°bility. This was especially true of of the Italian monasteries in the age when tl.2 tins Veuith. j_mp_erj_ai p_0wer fell into decay, and the

bishops lived like the turbulent nobility by whom they were surrounded. The imperial abbey of Farfa was destroyed by the Saracens in 890. It was rebuilt in 936, but was filled with riot for the next fifty years. These immense possessions loaded the abbots and monks with political and financial obligations, often to the exclusion of more than the mere form of the religious life. Lambert of Hersfeld, 1050-1080, was more deeply interested in the tithes due to his monastery than in any religious work which it carried on. To this secularization, which was increased when the abbot was a temporal lord holding the monastery solely for its revenue, as was the case with many of the wealthier monasteries until far into the ninth century, with its riches, idleness, and self-indulgence, came moral corruption. The great reform Synod of Aachen, 836, said that many of the convents had become almost brothels.

To these destructive influences from within must be added the immense destruction of monastic houses, libraries, objects of art and wealth, through the raids and invasions of the Northmen, Saracens, Wends, and Hungarians. This amounted, in some cases, to the

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utter extinction of monastic institutions for centuries. Everywhere, after the first slaughter was over, the lingering misery remained. The moral con- _Destruction sequences were equally deporable. The of Synod of Tours, 860, said, because of faith- ^Monasterles-less Christians and cruel Normans, so many consecrated places were laid waste, and so many lascivious clergy and monks rioted about in worldly clothes.

This state of things called loudly for reform. Monastic institutions need everywhere frequent reforms to keep them from utter decay and moral Benedict corruption. The first of these reformers in ^{of Anjane}* this era was Witzia, or as he called himself, Benedict of Aniane. The son of a Gothic count of Sep.timania, he was trained at the Frankish court under the father of Charlemagne, and he entered the service of the king. In 773 he became a monk, and after spending six years in a Burgundian cloister, he began to live in the greatest poverty in a little cell, insisting on using only wooden vessels for the communion-service. Through this strict asceticism he gained great renown, and became the most celebrated abbot in Southwestern France. He made it his life-work to enforce upon the cloisters of the empire the Benedictine rule. Louis the Pious made him his especial friend, and founded for him the monastery of Corneliusmunster, near Aachen, which accommodated only thirty monks, but was to be a pattern cloister for the empire; twelve abbeys were placed under his immediate guidance, and he had the oversight of all such foundations in the Frankish dominions. Benedict died February

14, 821. In his work he laid stress upon asceticism, but left no place for learning and culture. Yet it was

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of great value to his generation. His spirit and conception of piety may be discerned from his comforting himself on his dying bed that in forty-eight years he had not eaten a morsel of bread without shedding tears before God for his sins.

The next great reform was far more important, and of wider and more permanent influence, for it had Reform positive as well as negative aim. In 910, of ciugny. William, duke of Aquitaine, gave his estate of Ciugny to Abbot Berno, a count trained at the monastery of Dijon, to found a reformed cloister. Berno made his foundation a success in his administration from 910 to 927. The second abbot, Odo, 927-941, established different congregations, of which Ciugny was the mother cloister. By the close of the century there were hundreds of Clugniac cloisters, and some in Rome itself. Soon, more than a thousand electors chose the grand abbot, who appointed the priors, or heads of the other houses, and possessed almost unlimited power.

The motor force of the reform was the position and power of the abbot of Ciugny. As the head of the whole order, to him was due the strictest and most unquestioning obedience. While all were so subject to him that the whole force of the order acted as one man, he himself was subject only and directly to the pope. Here were found power, independence, and a firm organization before unknown in monasticism. Naturally, the order exalted the power and prerogatives of the pope. It sought to make the Church independent of the State, and to free it from the close-clinging curse of simony. Its founders saw that the way to do this was to restore the supremacy of Rome,

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and center in the papacy the moral supremacy of the world. To this end, and in support of the ascetic ideal and the canons of the Church, the Clugniacs waged a bitter warfare against clerical marriage. The principles of the reform, as seen in the life of the monastery, were: (1) Unconditional obedience to the will of the abbot; (2) Silence; (3) Labor; (4) Diligent prayer; (5) Unwearied beneficence; and (6) Connec-tional spirit. While the order was monarchical in constitution, it was aristocratic in character; it drew its recruits from the nobility. The people looked upon the Clugniac monks as lords. Indeed, it has been said that chivalry was born of Clugny. The efforts of the order were directed, not so much toward elevating the moral and spiritual life of the people, as towards kings’ courts and influencing the rulers and nobility of Europe. Here they developed an activity only paralleled by that of the Jesuits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The influence of Clugny upon the moral and religious life of the Church and the fortunes of the papacy was immense. It was not only the decisive factor in the first era of the struggle between the papacy and the empire; it brought in and established higher ideals and purer manners in the religious life of Europe, and from its impulse to a better life sprang the enthusiasm of the Crusades.

Romuald, born at Ravenna, was the representative of the tendency which sought refuge from the evils of a dark and troubled time in a strict _{gt RomuaId} asceticism. Wherever he settled, there were found associations of hermits. From one of these, on the Campus Maldoli, a lofty place in the Apennines, near Arezzo, sprang, in 1018, the Camol-

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dolites, as a class of the perfect out of the ordinary Benedictine congregations. Its most noted name in this period was the friend and co-worker of Hildebrand, Peter Damiani.

St. Nilus, a Greek hermit of Calabria, 910-1005, was of a generous spirit and attractive type of piety. Amid the necessity for and multiplicity of organizations, there will, in every age, be place and influence for such characters. He exercised an immense personal influence, which he used to deepen the moral and religious life of his time.

John Gualbert, lord of Pistoja, formed, in 1038, an order, not of hermits, but of Cenobites, as the Order of Valombrosa, named from the place of their monastery near Florence.

The great steps in advance for the religious life of the people was the division of the land into parishes.

It was through the labor of the parson Religious Life or parish priest that the Church influenced of the thg people. The salvation and weal of

People.    , , 1    .

each member of the community was a care to him. It was his duty to see that no child died without receiving baptism, and that children were confirmed at the proper age; so for this purpose he gave them the requisite instruction. This was the explanation of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, which they committed to memory. If any one of these fell from the right way, the priest of the parish must seek him and try to restore him. Friends and the poor turned to him, and he must be prepared to feed them. Especially he cared for the sick; he prayed with them, received their confession, and gave them the last anointing. The priest gave the communion to the

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dying candidate, commended his soul to God, and saw that his body had Christian burial. The church also was under his care—the repairs of the edifice, its furniture and adornments; and he also looked after the Church property. It was considered a reproach if a priest became rich.

It was his peculiar duty to receive the confession of sins, and to appoint the penance. The priests were placed as mediators to intercede for the penitents. According to the original conception, this confession was voluntary; the questions of the priests were only to assist the penitent.

Thus religious conceptions, ideas, and duties were wrought into the thought and life of the people, and the Church molded their habits and customs, their very food and amusements. Besides the regular Friday fast of each week, the Synod of Seligenstadt, 1022, ordained that all the faithful must fast and refrain from meat and blood for fourteen days before the day of St. John the Baptist, June 24th, and Christmas; the vigils of Epiphany, January 6th; the Apostles’ days; the ascension of the Virgin, August 15th; and the vigils of St. Lorenz and All Saints, November 1st, except that any one is sick, or that those vigils fall on a feast day. In these vigils one meal is allowed, unless any one, through special vows, is pledged to stricter abstinence. From the beginning of Advent (middle of November) to the octave of Epiphany, and from Septuagesima until the octave of Easter, shall no one marry, nor on the fourteen days before St. John the Baptist’s day, and not on the vigils. The feasts of the Church were equal to the fasts, and kept on increasing with the recognition of every new saint.

286 Formation of Medieval Church.

This multiplicity of saints’ days, more than any other cause, is responsible for the Continental Sabbath. Men who must celebrate one or two saints’ days each week will hardly refrain from labor, and keep holy the Lord’s-day. But through these saints’ days and festivals the Church controlled the recreations and amusements of the people.

A Norman Synod, of 950, declared the eight mortal sins were—pride which springs from vainglory, envy, wrath, bitterness, avarice, gluttony, and luxury. Against these the Church sought to fortify the soul with prayer. The church bells, and there was no more important adjunct to the edifice for worship, struck the seven canonical hours calling to prayer; there was private prayer morning and evening, at the crossing of roads, at the beginning of labor, and at meals. This prevalence of religious ideas showed itself in the benedictions implored upon the interests and concerns of daily life. The benedictions of the priests fell upon the bride and bridegroom, and mothers at Church after the birth of children. The houses in which men lived were blessed, the wells out of which they drew water, and the bread and salt they ate. The blessing of the Church protected the grain-field and the orchard, and consecrated the sword and banner of the warrior. On Ascension-day growing corn and grain were brought to the church for blessing; so on St. James’-dav, fruit; on St. Sextus’-day, grapes; and on Easter, fat, bread, cheese, and eggs were placed upon the altar for blessing.

In the public worship of the Church the Gregorian chant prevailed, after the custom of Rome; yet hymns and sequences or refrains were added. There was a

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general prevalence of private masses and masses of the dead.

Through this possession of the secular life by religious conceptions and duties, “men did not deny the natural—they forgot it.” The whole life and its surroundings seemed supernatural, and thus was afforded good ground for the preservation of the old heathen superstitions and the growth of witchcraft.

Yet, with all that we regret in the life and conceptions of that time, there were gains which were not afterward lost to Christendom. A sense of the Divine presence and of human accountability was impressed upon men which often degenerated to fatalism. There came a universal consciousness of moral responsibility, and to the minds and life of men a fullness of religious and moral notions. These were the first essentials for moral culture and religious development, and with them a deep feeling of human imperfection. The capital fact, however, of which we must never lose sight in our conception of the religious life of the Middle Ages was that, “through economic and political oppression, all independent participation of the people in the life of the Church became impossible.”    '

With this pressing forward of Christian ideas and Church authority into the life of the time came the increase of the old abuses of pilgrimages

...    _P .. .    . Pilgrimages.

and relics. The following representation is derived mainly from Gregorovius. Pilgrimages continued to increase in the general repute and in the numbers crowding to them. Since the conversion of the Northern nations, the pilgrimages to Rome became more and more general. They were the great means

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of intercommunication, much more frequented than trade routes, and often more important than the political missions, by which they were accompanied. All classes joined in the crowds which crossed the Alps and thronged to the tombs of the apostles; the prince and the bishop, the nun, widow, or beggar, toiled over difficult roads, and hostile bands, nerved by the spirit of adventure and love of the strange and marvelous, as well as by religious motives. In a world of rude and cruel barbarism, men sought Rome as a place of peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness. Two of the noblest of English kings, the great Alfred and Canute, were drawn to Rome, as were multitudes of their nobility and their countrymen. The dangers of the journey were not only peril by water, by unknown ways, and by robbers who beset the travelers of those times, but the association with the vicious and the corrupt on the route, and the attractions and seductions of the cities of the South, were moral dangers far more perilous than these; for a large per cent of the pilgrims were criminals, and often of the worst kind. These were furnished with letters at once of commendation and of condemnation, which specified their crime and ^secured them free entertainment on the road. Here among them would be seen men with an iron band on the neck or arm—these were the murderers of parents, or brothers, or sisters, or of their children; with these were assassins, poisoners, robbers, seducers, of every dye. Doubtless some of these were sincerely penitent, and their sorrow equaled the perils of the pilgrimage; but many others were deceivers, waxing worse and worse, and not a few cheats with iron-bands or forged letters of commendation,

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that they might follow a life of change and adventure without labor. The evil consequences were so pronounced that the reform Synod of Seligenstadt, 1022, decreed that those who would not accept the penance imposed for capital offense, but would go to Rome in the hope that the pope would forgive them all their sins, must first fulfill the penance imposed; and then, if they wished, they might travel to Rome with a writing from their bishop. A penitent must fulfill his fast in his place of residence, so the priest might give him a testimonial. No one might travel to Rome without the consent of his bishop or his vicar. This is weighty testimony to the temptation of the abuse of pilgrimage and to its general prevalence.

The worship of relics in all its ghoulish uncleanness, its deceit, and its wanton idolatry, ran riot in this time. It was the citizens of a Spanish

Indies#

city who proposed to kill St. Romuald of Ravenna during his stay with them, so that their city could have possession of his venerated and wonderworking relics. Theft and violence were allowed only so the coveted remains of some supposititious saint could come into the possession of a city, an abbey, or a prince. The translation, as the bringing of these relics to the place destined for them was called, was the greatest of festivals. So the supposed remains of St. Mark were brought from Alexandria to Venice, in 828; those of Bartholomew to Beneventum, after having been borne in a marble coffin by the waters from India to Lapari Islands in the Mediterranean Sea!

The chief relics were placed under the high altar in the church, and in the large churches relics

19

290 Formation of Medijeval Church.

were placed under the side altars, while the chief altar was dedicated to the patron saint of the Church. An oath over relics was the most sacred imaginable. The presence of Almighty God, as a just judge and an avenger of perjury, was as nothing compared with the reputed relics of some supposed saint. At this time began the practice of canonization of holy men and women by the pope. The worship of the Virgin Mary greatly increased in these centuries. It is doubtful if, in the Middle Ages, there was any other source so productive of deceit, fraud, lying wonders, and general untruthfulness as the veneration or worship of relics. One can well see the wisdom of no man’s knowing the sepulcher of Moses until this day, if the Israelites were to be a monotheistic people.

If the worship of relics gauged the deceit and fraud of the time, the practice of ordeals measured its super-

_    stition and its contradiction of all ideas of

Ordeals.    • , • •

social justice, sacred or profane. This old German custom received in this time ecclesiastical confirmation. Such an ordeal is thus described: The priest, clothed in holy linen vestments, and bearing in his hands the book of the Gospels and the holy Eucharist, came before the door of the church, where the people, with the accused, awaited him. He began by adjuring the accused by the triune God, the Last Judgment, the mystery of baptism, and all the saints, if he were conscious of guilt, not to enter the church, but to confess his sins. After this, the place destined for the ordeal was sprinkled with holy water. Then all entered the church, and mass was read; at this the accused must commune. The priest gave him the biead and wine, with the words, “The body and blood

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of the Lord Jesus Christ for thy testing.” After the mass, all present joined in solemn procession to the place of judgment—the cross, the Gospels, and relics being borne at its head. There the litany and penitential psalms were sung. Then followed the prayer that God, the Just Judge, would ward off all sorcery and reveal his just judgment. The exorcism of the water or means used for judgment then took place, that it might not serve the cunning of the devil, but disclose guilt or innocence, succeeded by a prayer that unrighteousness might not triumph over righteousness. The vessel containing hot water was then censed with myrrh, and a final exorcism spoken. The accused now plunged his hand into the boiling water, and the hand was immediately bound up in wool, sealing the bandage. The third day the hand and arm were unbound, and then was decided the guilt or innocence of the accused.

The crowning sin of these centuries, and the inevitable accompaniment of unrestrained feudalism through the Middle Ages, was private war. _T^ _{Qf God} Any one who had arms, retainers, and a fortified place or castle, deemed himself at liberty to. plunder his inferiors, and to make war upon his equals. This war, which was little better than legalized murder, besides the bloodshed and robbery, made the rule of force the only right, and rendered impossible industry and civilization. This form of misrule ran riot in Aquitaine, or Southwestern France. In the earlier part of the eleventh century, from 1031 to 1034, there were three years of rain, and such famine as is scarcely equaled in history. Thousands died of hunger; corpses were delicacies, and men murdered their fel-

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lows to eat them. It was believed this visitation was a punishment for the blood shed in private war. The Synod of the clergy met at Limoges, 1031. Men thought a desperate case demanded desperate remedies, so they resolved to adopt the interdict to enforce peace and order. This is the first instance on record of its application. The Synod decreed: “We ban all the nobility in the diocese of Limoges who do not observe the exhortations of their bishops to peace. They and their abettors shall be accursed, and accursed shall be their weapons and horses. As now the lights are extinguished, so will also their joy be destroyed in the presence of the angels if they do not before death amend and make satisfaction.” It was decreed that if the nobility of Limoges rejected longer the bishop’s message of peace, the whole territory should be laid under interdict, so that no one except the clergy, beggars, strangers, and children under two years of age could be buried, and divine worship could only be held in silence. About nine o’clock in the morning a sign should be given in the churches, so that all should throw themselves on the ground and offer prayers of penitence. Penitence and the Lord’s Supper could only be accorded to those in mortal illness. The altars of all churches should be left bare, as on Good Friday. The cross and all ornaments must be removed in token of sorrow. Only during mass, which the priest must read with closed doors, were the altars covered. During the interdict no one could marry or eat flesh, but only such food as is permitted in Lent. No clergyman or layman could cut his hair or beard until the nobles subjected themselves to the Council. He who submitted should be free from

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the interdict. Men took oath against bearing arms, to observe the rights of asylum, that criminals should be punished by law, and that the clergy, the monks, and nuns should be under the special protection of the peace. The enthusiasm was so great that the bishops raised their staffs to heaven, and the people stretched out their hands to God, crying, with one voice, three times, “Peace! peace! peace!” as a sign of the eternal covenant which had been concluded. Something stronger than enthusiasm was needed to enforce such stringent measures against age-long custom. The effort was too great. Avmo, archbishop of Bruges, 1038, bound his bishops, assembled in Synod, to put down those who disturbed the peace by force of arms if necessary. In endeavoring to carry out this decision, Aymo’s entire force was almost annihilated, and seven hundred clergymen were left among the slain on the battle-field. The “Truce of God” was then instituted, which conceded three days to war and bloodshed, but rescued the remainder of the week to the pursuits of peace. It forbade all private war from Wednesday evening until sunrise Monday morning. This Truce of God was first adopted in Aquitaine, in 1040; in Provence, under the archbishop and the abbot of Clugny, in 1041; in Northern France, both by William of Normandy and by Synodal decrees, 1042. In Spain, the Truce of God was shortened to from three o’clock on Saturday afternoon till six o’clock Monday morning, in 1045. The Truce of God was accepted in Burgundy, and was not without influence in Germany.

The Church Councils strove to protect the weak against the extortions of the strong and powerful. Thus

294 Formation of Medijeval Church.

the Synod of Paris, June, 829, declared: “The spiritual and temporal lords have two kinds of measures and

weights—a greater if anything is to be reExtortion. .    . ^fc>₁ . _p . . "    . ,    ,

ceived, and a less if it is to be paid out—and injure their tenants, so that these, from harvest and vintage, have nothing left for their familes.” In some of the Western provinces, the bishops, counts, and other lords, commanded their subjects to take what they wished for a bushel of grain and a flagon of wine, and in this wav they gave only a third part of what the produce and wine would cost elsewhere. Clergy and laymen drove fearful usury, so that many people were impoverished and must go into exile (that is, emigrate). Against these things, which show how low was the grade of commercial honesty, the Council pronounced its sentence. It also decreed that a widow should not be forced immediately, as hitherto, on the death of her husband to choose between remarriage and a convent ; but she should have thirty days to make up her mind, showing that social order ranked as low as commercial morality. The Councils also pronounced against forced labor on Sunday.

The founding of hospitals was the most characteristic form of Christian charity during this period. The . Council of Aachen, 817, provided that * every bishop should establish a hospital for the poor and strangers, providing also for its necessary expenses. Every clergyman was to pay for this purpose one-tenth of all he received. An honorable canon must be appointed to take charge of the hospital. That was the theory. The famous monastery of Clugnv showed the practice. It had a hospice for the care of those of the upper classes, while

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the great mass of the needy and poor fell to the care of the clccmosynarius, who had six servants to assist him. Every one who came received a loaf of bread of a pound in weight, and in the morning, half a loaf and half a portion of wine for his journey. All the bread and wine left over from the meals of the monks and their portions for fast days were given to him for distribution to the poor; so the rations of a deceased brother for thirty days, and also offerings in remembrance of any especial benefactor. He gave meat to every needy traveler and one denar in money, on condition that he came but once a year. There were daily baked in the cloister twelve three-pound white loaves for widows, orphans, the lame, blind, and old people, for whom the accustomed bread was too coarse. Provision was also made for eighteen permanent inmates. Every week the steward or almoner, accompanied by his servants, went about the village seeking the poor and the sick, bearing baskets of bread, meat, and portions of wine. In a year they fed 17,000 poor. Far more important than these were the canonical hospitals in the cities, which formed the beginning of the city hospital system. The great hospital of the Hotel Dieu at Paris sprang from the hospital of the canons of the Church of Notre Dame. Thus arose the city hospitals in Cologne, Augsburg, Hildesheim, Constance, Treves, Coblentz, Mainz, and Rheims.

The religious aspirations, ideas, and Church authority, which were obtaining such supremacy in the life of the Middle Ages, were beginning to find expression in the edifices of religious worship. One of the earliest of these is the small St. Michael’s Church

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at Fulda, the crypt and octagon of which reach back to 822, making it, next to Charlemagne’s cathedral , ,. at Aachen, the oldest church in Germany.

Architecture. .    ^J

This was of brick, plastered. Most of the church-buildings were of wood, until the Ottos began to build the churches at Ouedlingburg, Merseburg, and Magdeburg, and Gernrode. 960. Especially noteworthy is the fine Romanesque church of St. Michael at Hildesheim, built by Bishop Bernward, and under whose crypt rest his remains, consecrated in 1033. Conrad II founded the cathedral of Spires in 1030, while that of Mainz was begun in 976. These churches, having the form of a basilica, are built in the Romanesque style. The apse is enlarged into the spacious choir for the numerous clergy, while it is often raised above the floor of the nave several steps, because of the crypt beneath it. Some churches where there were a numerous clergy, as in connection with monastic institutions, or as an honorable place of sepulcher for the founder, added a second or western choir, and so, in some cases, a second transept, both of which were a departure from the regular crossshaped form of the Basilica. The oldest example is the monastic church of St. Reguier in Normandy, built in the last years of the eighth century; the plan of St. Gall already shows a double choir. Edward’s church of Westminster, and William’s at Rouen and Caen, date back to this period.

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Chapter I.

THE CRUSADES.

The Crusades were the third of the great series of invasions of the Teutonic and Scandinavian races in the Christian centuries. The first had, in two hundred years, overthrown the Roman Empire, and in the West well nigh extinguished its civilization. The second, for two centuries, had wasted the new Christendom and civilization which had begun with Clovis and Gregory, with Charlemagne and Boniface. These were invasions of heathen; the Scandinavians had taken special delight in plundering and burning Christian places of worship and religious houses, murdering or carrying off their inmates; but both of these series of invasions had ended in the conversion of the conquerors, and so the conquest of Europe by the Christian faith had been accomplished. The third great wave of invasion was fundamentally different. The same races supplied its leaders and filled its ranks; the same love of fighting and adventure, with the hope of conquest, moved many who took part in it; and it was of equal duration. But the others had been invasions of Christian lands by the heathen, and had resulted in the wide extension of the faith. This was an invasion directly in the interests of the Christian faith against its most puissant enemies, the Mohammedan powers. It failed; but its result was to break

the Mohammedan power in Spain, and that of the

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Saracens in the Mediterranean—to check the Moslem invasions of Christendom for four centuries; and yet, by the folly and greed of the Latin conquest of Constantinople, to overthrow the strongest defense against the Turk, to build up the Italian maritime cities of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa; to found the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, which endured nearly a century; and to form the strongest bulwark against Mohammedan power in the Mediterranean, through the defense of Cyprus, Rhodes, and Malta, by the Knights of the Temple and the Hospital of St. John at Jerusalem. The Crusades carried the defense of Christendom into the lands of the Moslem, and crippled all their power of expansion. If wisely directed, they might not only have restored Syria and Egypt to Christian civilization, but have forever destroyed the power of the Turks, and prevented the turning of the saddest and most shameful page of the history of Christian nations, the Turkish conquest and the dominion of Southwestern Europe. That they were not successful was owing to the fundamental defects of the feudal system of war and government, which were never more conspicuously displayed, to the selfish policy of the popes, and to the degeneracy of the Empire of the East.

The romantic aspects of the Crusades and their disastrous issue should not blind us to the immense and lasting influence of this greatest of the invasions, in which three millions of Christians laid down their lives, and when began the great Eastern Question, which European politics have left unfinished to our day. The fact that the Christian faith and the early Christian teaching furnish no ground for the relig

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ious inspiration of the movement so far as it centered in the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidel, and that the pride, cruelty, and corruption of the Crusaders disgraced the Christian name; that their purpose to kill, not to teach and win the unbelievers, is in most flagrant contradiction to the law of Christ,—must not cause us to forget that the Crusades were justified by the religious conceptions and practices of the time, and in harmony with its profoundest spiritual convictions and moral ideas. In order to judge, we must understand great movements as well as men. A religion which had become so external and realistic that the worship of saints and relics, and the resort to places of pilgrimage, were the great features of the common religious life, and had crowded into the background the worship of God and even that of the Virgin, as in the case of Thomas a Becket in England; and whose followers thronged to the tombs of the apostles at Rome by the hundreds of thousands,—would certainly move them to the rescue of that land which is the holiest of all, and that city where died the Redeemer of mankind. That the inspiration was not the highest nor truest may be allowed; that it was the highest and truest in the range of their thought and experience may not be questioned. The self-sacrifice and self-devotion were real. The Crusader, under arms against the enemies of his faith for the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher, and under vows to accomplish his part in the great common task of Christendom, is certainly a larger man with a nobler object in life than the same baron or knight whose highest aim is to kill or plunder his neighbors, and so enlarge his lands and his power.

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Urban II, at the Council of Clermont, 1095, struck a chord that throbbed responsively throughout Christendom. The Mohammedans, when Jerusalem was taken by Omar in 637, granted toleration to the Christians which was humiliating, but not cruel. They were to build no new churches, and Mohammedans might enter their places of worship at any time, day or night. No cross was to be placed upon them, or to be carried in the streets; church-bells could only be tolled. Christians were never to use saddles nor arms; they were to wear a distinct garb, and to rise in the presence of Mohammedans. With these conditions they were to remain unharmed in person and property, and to be granted the exercise of their religion. The hardships of the Christians were increased by Hakem the Fatimite, sultan of Egypt, in 1010, and made much more grievous by the extortion, robbery, and maltreatment of the pilgrims after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks in 1076. When Pope Urban, in the great assembly at Clermont, took up the theme, the way had been prepared by the fiery eloquence of Peter the Hermit, who detailed the sufferings of the Christians which he had seen. Urban told them of Christian pilgrims who were scourged until their entrails were laid bare. He incited them to profoundest sympathy by portraying the devotion and innocence of these sufferers, bound to them by the ties of a common faith, and appealed to the strongest instincts of brave and generous hearts. He contrasted the pilgrims’ sufferings with their ease, their helplessness with the power of an armed knighthood. He made duty plain, and then promised the most magnificent rewards; living, they should possess a

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better patrimony in the Holy Land; and dying, they should enter the mansions of heaven. Religion, valor, generosity, and compassion, as well as the hope of reward and the pardon of a sinful life, moved the vast crowd, as with one great cry it responded to the pope’s appeal: “It is the will of God! it is the will of God!” Then said he: “Wear on your hearts as on your shoulders the blood-red sign of Him who died for the salvation of your souls. Wear it as a pledge of a vow which can never be recalled."

The main army of the Crusaders set out in 1096. This march had been preceded by tumultuous, unprovisioned, and disorderly bands. Fifteeen thousand soldiers are said to have followed Walter the Penniless, forty thousand Peter the Hermit, and twenty thousand Enrico, count of Leningen. These were followed by a rabble of men, women, and children, estimated at two hundred thousand. In Germany they plundered and killed the Jews; in Hungary and the Greek Empire they robbed and ill-used the Christians. Alexius aided them to cross into Asia Minor. Their number had decreased to less than thirty thousand, who were attacked and cut to pieces by the Turks near Nicsea, when only three thousand escapcd.

The army of the crusading knights, under Godfrey of Bouillon, consisting of eighty thousand infantry and a hundred thousand horse, found Hungary closed to their march by the excesses of the pilgrims who had preceded them. After three weeks of negotiation, they were given free passage and a free market. Godfrey maintained military discipline, and at Christmas was before the walls of Constantinople. Hugh of Vermandois, brother of Philip, king of France, had ar

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rived before Godfrey, and was held as a prisoner by the Greek emperor. Robert, duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, and Stephen, count of Chartres, Troyes, and Blois, who married the Conqueror’s daughter Adela, and Robert, count of Flanders, had marched through Italy and crossed to Durazzo, where they also were arrested. Alexius remembered that ten years before he had fought for four years to drive away from Durazzo an army of Norman adventurers, led by Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond, who had imperiled the existence of his empire. He can hardly be blamed for using caution, and seeking to have the leaders swear fealty to him. Godfrey demanded and secured Hugh’s release. After Godfrey arrived, Bohemond, prince of Tarentum, and his cousin Tancred reached Adrian-ople. The army of Raymond, count of Toulouse, who had marched across Lombardy and then through Dalmatia and Sclavonia, having suffered severe losses, yet counted a hundred thousand men. The leaders, except Raymond, swore fealty to the Greek emperor while they were upon his lands, and to restore to him the dominions recently wrested from the empire. Alexius promised to supply them with food, to aid them on the march, and to protect all pilgrims. It was March, 1097, before these negotiations were completed. There was then marshaled on the eastern side of the Hellespont an army larger than that of Xerxes, led by one hundred thousand mailed knights. Their first exploit was the taking of Nicaea, which was surrendered in June. The hard-fought battle of Dory-leum ended in the defeat of the Turks. In the burning summer heat they marched through Iconium and

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Antioch of Pisidia to Tarsus. Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, won the principality of Edessa. The crusading army arrived before Antioch in October, 1097. They besieged the city until June 3, 1093, when Bohemond found means, by treachery, to secure possession of the city. The second day after Antioch was won, and while the citadel was yet unconquered, the victors were shut in by the army of Kerboga, sultan of Mosul. Before the city’s fall, Stephen, count of Chartres, had deserted the Crusaders, and so discouraged Alexius that he retreated to Constantinople with his army. The Crusaders suffered from pestilence and hunger, and there seemed no hope for them, when Peter Bar-thelemy, a chaplain of Raymond of Toulouse, declared that St. Andrew had revealed to him that in the Church of St. Peter in Antioch was buried the steel head of the spear which pierced the Redeemer’s side. After two days of special devotion search was made, and the precious relic was discovered wrapped in a veil of silk and gold. A fierce enthusiasm was enkindled, and on the 28th of June the beleaguered Christians attacked the army of Kerboga with irresistible fury. The sultan was playing chess in his splendid tent, like a palace, with room for two thousand men, when the storm burst upon him. His army was not only defeated, but utterly routed, and he did not stop this side of the Euphrates. The garrison of the citadel surrendered, and Bohemond took possession of the city. Raymond of Toulouse had traded on the vision of his chaplain; nine or ten months later, Arnold, chaplain of Bohemond, challenged the genuineness of the holy lance. Peter Barthelemy appealed to the ordeal of fire; he endured the test and seemed

20

306 Culmination of Medieval Church.

unhurt, but twelve days later died, when Raymond’s reputation was greatly injured. The army of the Crusaders remained ten months at Antioch. Hugh of Vermandois went to Constantinople to reproach Alexius for his breach of faith. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, the papal legate, and thousands of soldiers, died of the plague, which arose from the disordered lives and lack of sanitary precaution of the Crusaders. In May, they marched from the Orontes by the seashore, and came in sight of Jerusalem on the 7th of June, 1099. “And then the Crusaders fell on their knees to kiss the sacred earth, and came, in pilgrim’s garb, in bare feet, toward the city of the Savior’s agony and passion.” The siege endured until the 15th of July, the Crusaders suffering from heat and intolerable thirst. The besieged ridiculed their devotions, and threw dirt at the crucifixes as they passed; but the walls were carried by assault. The slaughter was cruel and unremitting; the blood of the slain ran down the steps of the Mosque of Omar. The Jews were burned to death in their synagogues, and forty thousand Saracens lost their lives, neither age nor sex being spared. This was not a worse fate than befell many a city taken by storm; not worse than that of the French city of Beziers, more than a century later, in the Albigensian Crusade; and it was very difficult indeed for any leader in that motley array to be merciful in the least, as Raymond of Toulouse and even Tancred found. The maxim that everything was permitted in war against the unbelievers, covered violence of every kind. No Christian but turns with abhorrence from the shameful contrast between the Prince of peace, weeping over Jerusalem, and those who pro

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fessed to be his followers, and their deeds of blood that awful day. To take Christ’s name upon us is to measure life and action by a lofty standard; that the Crusaders did not realize this, is their shame and disgrace. But “bareheaded and barefooted, clad in a robe of pure white linen, in an ecstasy of joy and thankfulness mingled with profound contrition, Godfrey entered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and knelt at the tomb of his Lord. With groans and tears his followers came, each in his turn to offer his praises for the Divine mercy which had vouchsafed this triumph to the arms of Christendom.” Peter the Hermit was there, but appears no more among the Crusaders; he died in a French monastery eighteen years later.

When they came to choose a king for the conquered city and land, the choice could only fall on Godfrey of Bouillon. His father was Eu- Godfrey stace, count of Boulogne, and his mother, ^of Bouillon. Ida, was the sister of Godfrey, duke of Lorraine. Through her, he was descended from Charlemagne, and he was the heir of his uncle Godfrey. He was born about 1058, and early left an orphan. He grew up a strong and peerless knight, and fought with Henry IV. In the battle of the Elster, 1080, he is said to have injured the counter king, Rudolph, so that he died. Later, he accompanied Henry in his campaign against Gregory VII, and was the first to mount the walls of Rome. In 1084 he became duke of Lorraine. Soon after, in a dispute about some lands, his adversary appealed to the wager of battle. Godfrey accepted it unwillingly, recognizing its unfitness as a means to a just decision. The contest was fought out; at the beginning, Godfrey’s sword was

3o8 Culmination of Medieval Church.

broken on the shield of his antagonist. The princes called for the duel to cease, but Godfrey would have no ambiguous sentence; so he carried on the fight, and, striking his adversary on the temple, won the suit.

To his reputation as a valiant warrior, Godfrey added new laurels during the Crusade. Throughout all its complications, hazards, and misfortunes, Godfrey had shown himself wise, magnanimous, and devoted. No alloy of selfishness or faintheartedness tainted his leadership. He can never be acquitted of his share in the massacre at the taking of Jerusalem— that is to say, he could not rise above his age. He refused to wear a crown where his Master had worn a wreath of thorns, or to accept the title of king, but styled himself Baron and Defender of the Holy Sepulcher. A few days after the election, he defeated the Egyptian army at Ascalon. As the Crusaders left the scene of their sufferings and hardships, he retained for his defense but three hundred knights under Tan-cred, and two hundred horse. He collected, as best he could, a code of laws for the new kingdom. It had all the defects and the few virtues of the feudal organic zation. Nevertheless, the judicial system of Godfrey showed his equity and justice. What he might have accomplished if a long reign had been granted to him, none can know, for it endured but a year. Godfrey was seized with a fever at Jaffa and taken to Jerusalem, where, in the fullness of his strength and the vigor of his manhood, he passed away. None can fail to see in him the true Crusader, as humble as he was brave, wise as he was devoted, and in his self-command equal to his unselfishness. Godfrey died July II, 1100.

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When the Crusaders reached Constantinople, Alexius had been almost twenty years on the throne. He had shown ability and skill in repelling Byzantine the invasion of Robert Guiscard, 1081- Empire. 1085, and in dealing with the invasions of Alexius, the Patzinaks, who ravaged Thrace from 1087 until they were completely defeated in 1091. But Alexius was never equal to a great occasion such as the Crusades. His character and his policy were both mean, vain, and presumptuous, intriguing and deceitful. He never had broad views, nor pursued a settled line of policy. He had, it is true, much with which to contend. Experience like his with Robert Guiscard made him naturally suspicious, especially of his son Bohe-mond. The disorder and rapine of the early Crusaders rendered it difficult to protect his subjects, and the insolence of their chiefs to make his authority respected. His conduct is deficient in candor and prudence, and his administration marked by rapacity and bad faith. Instead of turning his arms and those of the throngs of the Crusaders against the Turks, in 1103 he made war upon Bohemond, whose success in Epirus twenty years earlier he never forgave. This brought him neither gain nor glory, though it ended in the humiliation of Bohemond. The character of Alexius is strikingly illustrated by the scene at his death-bed. The empress and her daughter Anna Comnena sought to have her son John, who had already been declared heir to the empire, set aside in favor of Nicephorus, the husband of Anna. Alexius listened to their representations, but adhered to his son. While he lay dying, and they for the moment were out of the room, John came to his father, and,

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with his full assent, took his signet-ring from his finger, and secured the palace and the guards. The empress rushed into the presence of the dying emperor, and accused John of treason, and urged Alexius to appoint another as his successor. The emperor raised his hands and eyes to heaven to indicate that he was done with earth. The deceived empress turned upon him, and exclaimed, “You die as you have lived, a hypocrite.”

Hugh of Vermandois and Stephen of Chartres, who had deserted the first Crusade, believed only a crusade of ^new undertaking could free them from Hugh of ver- reproach and ridicule. They assembled ^fstephen* three armies—the first in Italy, under An-of Chartres, selm, archbishop of Milan; another in France, under Hugh and Stephen; and a third in Germany, under Thiemo, archbishop of Salzburg and Welf V of Bavaria, the young husband of the Countess Matilda. Women and children accompanied them, among whom was Ida, mother of Leopold. margrave of Austria. They marched in three divisions, numbering at least 150,000, without order or discipline. They pressed on through Asia Minor, expecting to take Bagdad, and listening to no advice of those sent to guide them. Near the Halys, the inhabitants of a city came out to meet them peaceably, with their Christian priests at their head. The Crusaders burnt the city and killed most of the inhabitants. Finally, near Amasia, in Pontus, they were set upon by the Turks and destroyed. The miserable remnant went back to Constantinople, and took ship from there to Syria. The archbishop of Milan died at Constantinople; Hugh, in Tarsus; Welf, in Cyprus;

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Stephen, a year later, at Ramlah, where he was taken in battle and then slain. Less fortunate were Thiemo, who was taken and martyred, and the margravine Ida, who, with thousands of Christian women, went from the slave-market to the harems of the East.

The fate of the conquests of the Crusaders depended largely upon the ability and character of their leaders, the kings of Jerusalem, and the _The Kingdom emperors of Constantinople. These can of Jerusalem, only be sketched. Baldwin, prince of Baldwin i. Edessa, was chosen the successor of his ^I,00‘^,,,8‘ brother Godfrey. He gave Edessa to a relative of the same name, and reigned eighteen years successfully over the Latin Kingdom, and increased its strength. He died in a campaign against Egypt. The leaders of the first Crusade were all dead. Raymond of Toulouse died in his principality of Tortosa in

1105. Bohemond of Antioch, after a war of five years against Alexius, concluded a humiliating peace, and died the next year, 1109. Tancred, his peerless cousin, yet young, died at Antioch in 1112.

Baldwin was succeeded by his kinsman, Baldwin of Edessa. Sidon was taken in 1115, and Tyre in 1124. In this reign were established the two mili- Baldwin 11. iary orders of the Temple and the Hospital "«8-n3»-of St. John at Jerusalem. The merchants of Amalfi had, in the tenth century, established a monk’s cloister near the Church of the Resurrection; later, a nun’s cloister, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, was founded. The abbot and monks founded a hospital before the taking of Jerusalem. It took the name of St. John, being endowed by Godfrey, who made it independent of Amalfi. Under its leader, Gerhard,

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they took the ordinances and clothing of regular Augustine canons, their distinctive mark being an eight-pointed white cross on the left side of a black cloak. With strict discipline and beneficial activity they won wealth and respect. Pope Paschal confirmed their organization in 1113, and on the death of Gerhard, the new prior, Raymond de Puy, gave them their completed organization in 1118. To the three monastic vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, they added modesty and moderation, and the faithful fulfillment of the duties of love and kindness toward their servants, and especially all Christians needing care.

At the same time that Raymond de Puy gave statutes to the Hospitallers, Hugh de Payen and Godfrey of St. Omer, and seven other noblemen, formed the Order of the Temple at Jerusalem. To the three monastic vows they added a fourth—the defense of pilgrims and war against the infidel. Their statutes were confirmed by Pope Honorius II, at Troyes, 1128. They wore a white cloak with a simple red cross. Their white and black banner bore their motto: “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name be the glory.” These orders brought re-enforcements of men and money in constant flow to Palestine; but their jealousy and strife not seldom imperiled the Christian cause, and aided in the overthrow of the Latin Kingdom.

The successor of Baldwin II was Fulk of Anjou, son of Baldwin’s daughter Melisinda, and father of

Fuik. Geoffrey of Anjou, who married the em-1131-1143. p_ress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, and hence grandfather of the English Henry II. His reign was, in the main, peaceful, and

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lie died of a fall from his horse, November, 1143. He left his kingdom to his son, Baldwin III, who was but thirteen years old. Under the boy- Baldwin 111. king came the first great loss to the Latin >'43-«i62. Kingdom. Edessa fell in December, 1145, and its

46,000 Christian inhabitants were slaughtered or made fugitives, the city being left a heap of ruins.

Alexius was followed upon the throne of Constan-. tinople by his son and grandson. John was small in stature, but one of the best of the Byzantine _Byzantine emperors. He was an able general and a Empire, brave soldier; pure in his private life, frank John 11. and generous, economical and pious. Yet ^,,,8"^M43* this wise prince wasted his resources in wars against Christian princes, the Hungarians, and Armenians, and left the Turkish power unbroken. Indeed, only his premature death, from a poisoned arrow thrust into his hand by the charge of a wild boar in the chase, prevented his hurling all the forces of the empire against the Christian principality of Antioch. It seems as if the simplest dictates of prudence would have demanded that the Crusaders should have been used so as to recover Asia Minor to the empire, and securely to guard its eastern frontiers. The First Crusade had contributed powerfully to this end by removing the Turkish capital from Nicsea to Iconium; the maritime provinces were recovered to the empire, and the Turkish attack postponed 350 years. How much the other Crusades might have wrought if their nobility had been encouraged to stretch their principalities from Edessa to the Black Sea, and so form an invincible bulwark to the empire! Instead, the error o! Alexius in attacking Antioch was imitated by John

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and by Manuel. The fact is, the Byzantine rulers were incapable of a change of policy adapted to new conditions. They thought only of applying to the Manuei. Crusaders the policy which had succeeded 1143-1180. _wj_th ^e wild tribes that for centuries had settled in the Balkan peninsula. With these the supremacy of the empire was the main point to be achieved. But now no dangers in Syria could be so threatening as those in Asia Minor, nor could the feudal princes be as formidable as the Turkish Mohammedan power. Manuel was tall, handsome, brave, skilled in all knightly exercises, and renowned in arms and the chase. He was unusually strong; in tournaments his shield and spear were heavier than those of any Latin knight; he could tear a stirrup in twain with his hands. The court was extravagant, and his fiscal administration was unjust. Toward the Crusaders and their conquests he pursued the traditional policy, and wasted the resources of the empire in wars against Christian States: Sicily, Servia, and Hungary, in the West; and Armenia, Cilicia, and Antioch, in the East. His disastrous defeat by the Turks at Myrokephelaion, 1176, near the end of his reign, may well have shown him the necessarily fatal issue of his policy; but it was too late. The policy of distrust, deceit, and injustice brought, as a natural consequence, first, the fall of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and then the Latin conquest of Constantinople.

The fall of Edessa was the occasion of the Second Crusade. Its real author was Bernard of Clairvaux, the incarnation of the spiritual side of the Crusades. Bernard was born at Fontanes, near Dijon, in 1091,

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the third son of a knightly family. His mother, Aleth, cared for his religious training, but she died in his early youth. At the age of twenty-two he ap- _St. Bernard, peared before Stephen Harding, the second ^I09i-'«S3. abbot of Citeaux, noted for his stern monastic discipline, with thirty of his relatives and friends,and desired admission. Two years later, in what had been called the Valley of Wormwood, he founded the monastery of Clairvaux—that is, clara vallis, or beautiful valley. Here he practiced sternest and strictest asceticism, especially in food and sleep. We do not know how it affected the monks under his care, but we do know that it permanently injured the health of their zealous abbot. Into this circle he drew his father and mother, his sister and brothers, most of whom were induced to separate from their wives, and sometimes sorely against their will. Nothing stood before the vehemence of his spirit. Bernard specially devoted himself to the study and exposition of the Bible. In the solitude of the fields and woods, in prayer and contemplation, he sought communion with God. In the studies and dialectics of the schools he had no training. “The oaks and the bushes/’ he said, “were his only teachers.” The chief subject of his contemplations was the being and perfections of God; and in dwelling upon these his spirit rose to ecstasy, and his heart was filled with love. Such persistent self-examination and self-mastery, with such waiting as in the Divine presence, gave him a rich religious experience and a knowledge of the human heart which fitted him to guide others in the religious life. While he laid bare the faults and needs of men, he knew how to comfort, encourage, and help them. Moved by

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his love, he began preaching to the people. The impetuosity of his spirit and the ardor of his love bore all before him.

Once, when he was preaching before William, count of Aquitaine, he took the host in his hands, and with flaming eyes demanded, in the name of the present Christ, that he should be reconciled with the bishop of Poitiers, with whom he was at strife. The count fell as if struck with lightning, and gave up all resistance. In 1130, in the disputed election between Innocent II and Anacletus II, the influence of Bernard brought to Innocent the support of France, England, and the empire. In the cause of Innocent he was active in Italy and Germany, as well as in his own country, until the death of Anacletus, in 1138, gave him undisputed possession. In 1136 he was at the Synod of Bamberg, and reconciled the recalcitrant nobility with the emperor Lothair.

Bernard and Abelard, celebrated as the lover ol Heloise, could only come into conflict. Bernard was a reformer of the inner spiritual life. Abelard, critical and rationalistic, sought to reform the intellectual life and thought of Christendom. Abelard shattered the supposed unity of tradition. Bernard could see only danger in his teachings. When, in 1140, Abelard was sentenced at the Synod of Sens, Bernard worked secretly and successfully to render fruitless Abelard’s appeal to the pope. Bernard, conscious of purity of life, looked upon Abelard’s confessed moral failure as but in accord with his doctrines. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Clugny, brought about a reconciliation between them before Abelard’s death, in 1142. At the meeting of the Synod of Vezelay, at Easter, 1146,

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Louis VII of France was present with his court. Bernard was now fifty-five years old, at the height of his fame as a preacher and a saint, and altogether the most remarkable man of his time. He was a little above medium stature, with blonde complexion, and eyes of pure blue. The chief characteristics of his preaching were ardor and intensity; of his style, the use of allegory and antithesis.

At the Council of Vezelay, Louis VII, whose conscience troubled him because in a private war he had set fire to a church and burned to death 1,500 people who had taken refuge in it, with his wife and the chief of his nobility, took the cross and _Bernardasa vow of a Crusader. Bernard preached the Preacher of Crusade throughout France. At Christ- ^{the Crusade}* mas, 1146, Bernard preached the Crusade in the cathedral at Spires before the emperor Conrad and his court. Conrad was not inclined to become a Crusader, and had promised to give Bernard his answer the next day. Bernard preached on the Last Judgment, when all kindreds and nations should be gathered before the judgment-seat of the Son of man. He turned to the emperor, and implored him to think of the account which he would have to give, of the infinite shame and endless agony which would be his portion, if he should be convicted of unjust stewardship. Conrad cried out: “I acknowledge the will and the grace of God; he shall not find me ungrateful.” The Crusade was the effect of his individual eloquence. Conrad took the cross, as did his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, the great dukes of Bavaria, Lorraine, and Bohemia, five bishops, and a vast number of the nobility. In the spring of 1147 ^they ^{set out}> marching

318 Culmination of Medieval Church.

down the Danube and through Hungary. At the borders of the Greek Empire they met the ambassadors

^ ^ , of Manuel, and agreed to their conditions

The Second    ^

Crusade, for free routes and open markets. All went

1147-1148. _wejj _untjj _t^_ey _reached the fruitful plain about Philippopolis. The Crusaders, who thought the prices too high, or who had no money, began to help themselves. Thus, with little discipline and much robbery, they came to Adrianople. A relative of the emperor was left behind, at a monastery, sick. Some Greeks plundered his property, and burned him, with the building in which he lay. Frederick Barbarossa went back and took vengeance, demanding pay from the inhabitants for the stolen property, and burning to the ground every building belonging to the monastery. On the 8th of September they were encamped by a river near its entrance to the sea, when a sudden storm flooded the camp, causing great loss. After prolonged negotiations the army was transferred to Asia. Here arose even greater embarrassment in obtaining provisions. The Greeks supplied them with difficulty, and mixed chalk with the water, which increased the prevailing sickness. Here they were without provisions or guides, ignorant of the language,, and surrounded by enemies. In a few days the attacks of the Turks reduced them from 70,000 to 7,000 men who escaped, while the remainder, with the women and children, were either killed or left in the hands of the Turks. Conrad, with this pitiful remnant of a mighty army, went back to Constantinople.

On Whitsuntide, 1147, Louis VII began his march from Metz. He crossed the Rhine at Worms, and

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went clown the Danube, following in the wake of the army of Conrad. His forces were better provisioned and disciplined than the host which pre- The Army of ceded him. Louis came to an agreement ^{Louis vn}-with the emperor Manuel, who treated him with great distinction. After arriving in Asia, he heard of the disaster which had befallen Conrad’s Crusade. He advised him to take the route by the seacoast to Antioch. He found the difficulties in regard to provisions scarcely less than those of the German army. Indeed, to the Eastern Christians the Crusade seemed only an intolerable calamity. Louis had 60^000 soldiers, besides camp followers. What must have been the misery entailed by such an army living off the country through which they passed! At the crossing of the Meander they were attacked bv the Turks, and came to Laodicea. Through carelessness in the march south, the divisions of the army became separated. The Turks saw their opportunity; they attacked them in detail, and broke up the army as a military force. The mournful remains of the crusading host reached Attaleia. There, King Louis and his nobles took ship for Antioch. The deserted common people, two thousand in number, died of plague and famine, or became Mussulmans; for the Turks had more compassion on them than the Greeks. Louis hurried on to Jerusalem to worship at the Holy Sepulcher. At last, Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, Louis of France, and Conrad of Germany, joined in an expedition against Damascus. When the siege was begun, and the city could have been easily taken, a quarrel in regard to its possession rendered futile all their efforts, and the Second Crusade, whose certain and

320 Culmination of Medieval Church.

great success Bernard had prophesied, and whose coming had awakened such expectations in the East, ended in the loss of 200,000 lives, and in ignominious failure. Not a little of the responsibility for this result lies at the door of Pope Eugenius III, who, jealous of one man’s power with such a host, sent two legates, whose quarrels from the start weakened the expedition. Yet history affords hardly a parallel of a campaign planned in more utter ignorance, or carried on with less care or foresight.

The reputation of Bernard of Clairvaux suffered from the failure of the Crusade. So vast was the loss that men said the castles and cities were empty, and scarcely one man was left to seven women. Bernard at first was shaken by the magnitude of the disaster, and required all his faith to feel that the mysterious St. Bernard. ^way^s Providence were just; but he Last Days rallied from the shock, and laid the and Character. kj_{ame upon} ^aste and lack of foresight of the princes, and the evil life of the Crusaders. In 1150, with King Louis, he sought in vain to call to life another Crusade; but on August 20, 1153, at the age of sixty-two, was ended the career of the great preacher, mystic, and saint of the Middle Ages. Bernard was a strict Churchman: he would carry fire and sword against heretics, and show as little pity as an inquisitor. Yet, though he had so wrought for the papacy, he wished for its reformation. He wrote: “Who will give me, before I die, to see the Church as it was in the ancient days, when the apostles cast their nets to catch souls, not silver and gold?” In his book, “De Consideratione,” he warned the popes of the dangers of their position and policy, as

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they became the successors, not of the apostles, but of Constantine. The book influenced after ages. Wyclif highly esteemed it. Bernard’s devout spirit and his power to express the profoundest emotions of the inward life of Christians, appear most clearly in his hymns, and voice the loftiest aspirations of the human spirit. They are found translated in all standard collections. Such are, “O sacred Head, now wounded;” “Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts;” “Jesus, King most wonderful;” and “Jesus, the very thought of thee.” Bernard made his cloister a refuge for serfs, whom he received as conversi, or singing brothers. He fed 2,000 poor, and cared for all who came. No occupation could be so engrossing that he would not leave it to minister to human need. A knightly soul, a true saint, an earnest student of God’s Word, with a religious experience of great depth and sweetness, his life has help and inspiration in it for all times. To many he seems the greatest character between Augustine and Luther.

Things were not going well in the Latin Kingdom. The Hospitallers and Templars were at strife. The head of the Latin Church was a source of .

^    Kingdom

weakness, rather than strength to the of Jerusalem, kingdom. The native inhabitants and de- ^,|4⁶-ⁱⁱ⁸7* scendants of the Crusaders, or Pullans as they were called, had none of the crusading zeal, and would rather have lived in peace with the Saracens, not seldom hindering rather than helping the enterprise against them; their deceit and immorality made them no support for the new rule. Nor could the feudal organization of government lead to any stable dominion. The Christian barons quarreled and fought

21

322 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

among themselves, as they had been accustomed, and had little care for the common good, except when pressed by the enemy. Two courses of policy only, effectively pursued, could have secured the permanence of the Latin Kingdom. The first was a strict alliance with the Byzantine Empire, and the extension of the Christian power to the Northeast. The second, perhaps less difficult if earnestly undertaken, was the conquest of Egypt, and the opening of a lucrative trade with the East. When too late, this was sought. The city of Ascalon fell into the hands of the Saracens in 1153. At the age of thirty-three, Baldwin III died, childless, in 1162, having won the love of his subjects and the esteem of his enemies. His brother Almeric was chosen in his stead.

Almeric showed only his avarice and his meanness, and though given an excellent opportunity to conquer Almeric. Egypt, even entering Cairo, he betrayed 1162-1173. hig G_reek allies for gold and the only chance for the salvation of his kingdom. He left his dominions to his son Baldwin IV, who was a leper. Baldwin iv. He made the young son of his sister 1173-1186. Sibylla his heir, as Baldwin V, but he died ^BaI|^di86? ^V’ soon after his uncle. The last Latin king Guy. to reign in Jerusalem was Guy of Lusig-1186-1187. _nan^ _tj_ie h_usb_and of Sibylla, and sister of Baldwin IV. Guy was still a young man, but had already acquired an evil reputation. For the murder of Patrick, earl of Salisbury, Henry II of England had banished him from his dominions. Geoffrey, his brother, said: “Had they known me, the men who made my brother king would have made me a god.” July 4 and 5, 1187, ^was fought the battle of Tiberias,

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where the lack of generalship was disgraceful, even for Crusaders. Saladin captured Guy and the true cross which he carried with him to battle. Tiberias, Berytus, Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffa fell. Jerusalem was besieged the 20th of September, and on October 3, 1187, eighty-eight years after the entry of Godfrey of Bouillon, Saladin took possession of the Holy City. Instead of the slaughter of the Christian conquest, the men were allowed to depart with their goods on paying ten gold pieces each for themselves, five for the women, and one for the children; also 30,000 bvzants for the 7,000 poor. Intolerance, faithlessness, greed, and immorality, rather than the sword of Saladin, destroyed the kingdom of Jerusalem. Tyre and Antioch alone were left.

The fall of the Holy City, the shame of Christendom, awakened once more the kings and peoples of Europe to another Crusade. Frederick _{The Thlrd} Barbarossa, Richard I of England, and crusade. Philip Augustus of France, took part in    ’

this Crusade. Frederick, though sixty-seven years old, took the cross for the second time at Mainz, in Lent, 1188. Frederick, taught by the misfortunes of the Second Crusade, made treaties in advance, providing for transit and provisions, with the king of Hungary, the Greek emperor, and the sultan of Iconium. In May, 1189, Frederick set out with 20,000 knights, besides footmen. He sent back 1,500 camp-followers, thieves, and women of evil repute, maintaining the strictest discipline. They took the usual route down the Danube to Belgrade, then to Constantinople. The great difficulties caused by the weakness and deceit of the Greeks were overcome by the prudence and un

324 Culmination of Medieval Church.

selfishness of Frederick; so, at last, on the 29th of March, 1190, he found himself on the shore of Asia with 82,000 men. They suffered in their march through the high plateau of Asia Minor, and had hard but victorious battles with the Turks in May, and took Iconium, but happily overcame their difficulties and had reached the river Cydnus, when, on June 10, 1190, through a chill from its waters, their great leader died. With him expired the fairest hope of conquest from a well-led and disciplined army of Crusaders. Frederick’s position, experience, and reputation enabled him really to command his army. His son, Frederick of Swabia, led the remnant that persevered in the campaign, but one-tenth of the original number, to Antioch. There he founded the order of Teutonic Knights, but died of sickness, January 20, 1191.

Richard Cceur de Lion of England and Philip Augustus set out together for the Holy Land by sea, Richard I ^an^ ^so stopped at Sicily. They led 100,000 and Philip men. There they spent the winter of Augustus,    Richard succeeded in quarrel

ing with Philip and with Henry VI, emperor of Germany. In the spring, Richard sailed to Cyprus, which he conquered, and where he married his wife, Beren-garia of Navarre. Philip and Richard met under the walls of Acre, which had been besieged by the Christians for nearly two years. After an apparent reconciliation they combined their forces, and Acre surrendered, July 12, 1191. Philip now returned home to his life-work of consolidating the French monarchy. Richard, after the failure of Saladin to redeem them according to agreement, massacred 2,700 Moslem

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hostages in sight of the Saracen camp. Richard gained a battle at Azotus, and quarreled with Leopold of Austria. He marched in sight of Jerusalem, relieved Jaffa, and gave the island of Cyprus to Guy of Lusignan and his house, thus ending the Third Crusade. The example of Frederick Barbarossa showed what leadership might accomplish with an army of Crusaders; but they never found such another leader.

Henry VI, after the conquest of Sicily, planned and prepared for a Crusade. However, he died before it began, 1196. His barons and their followers sailed to the Holy Land, taking Jaffa, Sidon, and Berytus, but lost all through their failure at the siege of Thoron and the capture of Jaffa by the Saracens.

Very different were the fortunes of the Fourth Crusade. The Crusaders had ever advanced the power of the popes. Innocent III now exerted himself to arm a great expedition for the re- _{The Fourth} covery of the Holy Land. Fulk of Neuilly Crusade, quickened the warlike enthusiasm of the ^,203“^,2°⁴-French nobility as Peter the Hermit had done. The leaders of the movement in France were Theobald, count of Champagne, then but twenty years of age; Louis, count of Blois and Chartres; Simon de Mont-fort, later the leader of the Albigensian Crusade; and Geoffrey of Villehardouin, marshal of Champagne and historian of this Crusade. Later came Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Boniface, marquis of Monteferrat. They determined to go by sea, rather than by land, to Egypt, and so engaged the services of the Venetians to transport their army. The transportation of 33,5°° men and horses for 4,500 knights required the payment of 85,000 marks, or $275,000; they would also

326 Culmination of Medieval Church.

join the expedition with fifty galleys of their ow^rn, which were reasonable terms. The Crusaders lacked

34,000 marks of the required sum, and the Venetians required them to pay or to attack Zara, which belonged to the king of Hungary. Some of the Crusaders drew back, among them Boniface of Monte-ferrat and Simon de Montfort. Innocent sent a legate to forbid the attack, but did nothing to furnish the money, as he could easily have done. The main body attacked the Christian citv of Zara, which fell to the Venetians, November 15, 1202.

The Venetian doge, Enrico Dandolo, now ninety-four years of age, declared the season too late to sail for the Holy Land, and turned all his efforts to persuade the Crusaders to attack Constantinople, instead of the Mohammedans. Dandolo was filled with hate against the Greek Empire, and its history since the death of Manuel had only given encouragement to its enemies. Manuel had, without warning and in defiance of all treaties and right, in 1171, arrested all the Venetians in the empire, and sequestered their property. This was followed by a war with the republic, which was concluded by a peace in 1174, in which Manuel returned to the Venetians their privileges, and promised repayment for the losses her citizens had sustained. These claims were never fully met. The sense of injustice and injury, and the interests of commercial rivalry made the ruling party in Venice eager for the downfall of the Byzantine Empire.

Manuel left the empire to his son Alexius, now thirteen years of age. Manuel’s cousin, Andronicus, is one of the historic villains of the world’s stage. He

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was cunning, able, daring, and utterly corrupt. He misled the ladies of the imperial family, and plotted against the life of the emperor. Having Alexius 11. spent more than ten years in prison, he had "⁸°-"⁸4-more hairbreadth escapes than Othello ever knew. He had lived as an exile among the Russians, and as a slave-dealer among the Saracens. A consummate hypocrite, utterly without honor, he knew how to gain the love of women, and, at last, to disarm the just and long-standing resentment of Manuel, and at his death he was at Constantinople. People believed in his ability, and hoped that age had purged him of his vices. Never was there a greater mistake. The government had not gone smoothly under the regency of Empress Maria. Andronicus contrived to have himself chosen emperor, and in one short year threw into the shade all the crimes of his predecessors. The young emperor Alexius was strangled Andronicus. with a bowstring; the same fate befell his ^,,84-"⁸5. mother, the empress Maria, while he poisoned the princess Maria, sister of Alexius, and her husband, and blinded the best general of the empire. He raged and killed on every side. Alexius Comnenus, grandnephew of the emperor Manuel, fled to Sicily. Norman troops accompanied him on his return, and took Thessa-lonica in August, 1185.

In September, the nobility and people took Isaac Angelos, an incapable coward, and crowned him in St. Sophia. Andronicus, fleeing, was cap- _{Isaac n} tured and brought back to Constantinople,

He was an old man, but he was cruelly ⁵ beaten and tortured by the relatives of those he had murdered. Then he was brought out again the next

328 Culmination of Medieval Church.

day, and his torments renewed, until, finally, he was hung up by the feet in the hippodrome, and thrust through with a sword. Cruelty and cowardice go together, and as were the rulers, so were the people. “Immorality,” says Findlay, “had spread through every rank of society.” Isaac was weak and insolent, mean and rapacious. No emperor had paid less attention to business; he used his position to satisfy his passion for luxury and display. It was with this worthless prince that Frederick Barbarossa treated.

Finally, his elder brother, Alexius Angelos, most ungratefully rebelled against him. Isaac, not yet forty years old, was taken, imprisoned, and afterward blinded. Alexius was tall, with an attractive person and manners, with more talent and better education and a better temper than his brother. On the throne Alexius hi. he showed himself careless of public busi-1195-1203. ness, lavish, cowardly, and incapable. Alexius, the son of Isaac Angelos, fled to the West, where he gained support from his uncle, Philip of Swabia. Finally, the Crusaders entered into a treaty, by which they were to restore Alexius and his blinded father to the throne. Innocent III did all that words could do to prevent this diversion of the Crusade. The fleet arrived before Constantinople in June, 1203. The usurper, Alexius, fled from the capital, July 18, 1203, the city being already in the hands of the Cru-Aiexius iv. saders. Isaac was taken from the prison,

!2°3. _an(j _SQn Alexius was crowned as his colleague. The terms of the Crusaders were too oppressive and the government too weak for peace to be maintained. January 25th, a noble, Alexius Murztu-philus, was crowned as Alexius V.

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The new emperor caused the youthful Alexius IV to be strangled. The Crusaders besieged Constantinople the second time, and took it by _{Alexlus v} storm. They committed every infamyJanuary-Aprii, which an army can wreak upon a captured ^,2°⁴’ city. Their brutality and vandalism exceeded any sack by the Saracens. The art and treasures of fifteen hundred years of civilization perished in the shameless license of those days of lust and plunder. Pope Innocent III well asked: “How shall the Greek Church return to apostolic unity and respect for the apostolic see, when they have seen in the Latins only examples of wickedness and works of darkness, for which they might justly loathe them worse than dogs.” Alexius V was captured, and from the top of a tall column dashed to pieces on the pavement. Alexius III was taken, and ended his days in a monastery, justly despised for his cowardice and utter meanness. May 9, 1204, Baldwin of Flanders was elected emperor. Thus fell the Roman Empire of the East, having upheld the Christian religion and civilization for almost nine centuries, since its founding by Constantine the Great. It fell through those who should have protected it. Thus was broken down the chief bulwark against the Turks, and the way prepared by Christian arms for the Turkish conquest two hundred and fifty years later; for, from the wanton wreck and ruin of the Frankish Crusaders the empire never recovered. It dragged out a miserable existence without power and without glory, as does the Turkish Empire in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Constantinople sank to a fraction of its former extent and population. It was surpassed

330 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

in size, wealth, and pow er bv Venice and Genoa, which rose upon the ruins of its greatness. There can be no excuse for this wanton and faithless crime. For it the fairest portion of Europe has suffered four and a half centuries of bondage. How different would have been the history of the Eastern Empire if the Crusaders had left to Constantinople the prestige of her invincibility and her wealth, and had instead conquered and founded a dynasty in Cairo! No great historic change is the result of the action of a single force. The Greeks had prepared the way for their overthrow by their judicial corruption, fiscal oppression, the vices of the court, and the crimes of the recent emperors, and that invincible conservatism which looked always to the past, and could no longer adjust itself to new conditions.

The history of the Latin Empire of Constantinople is a tragic picture of weakness and shame, unrelieved _e by a trace of heroism or good fortune.

Empire of The Latin Empire advanced no interest Constantinople₀f civilization or humanity. It attempted to

J204 12 i.    _Up_{Qn t}j_{ie ru}j_ns of the Greek Empire

the rule of an alien race, language, institutions, laws, and even Church. Conceived in perjury, born of violence, within a year after the coronation of Baldwin, its first emperor, he was a captive in the hands of the Bulgarians, among whom he died. This gloomy beginning was attended by every circumstance which confirmed its evil auguries. The allies divided the prey. One-fourth part of the empire fell to Venice, which became the heir of the commerce, the arts, the wealth, and even the marbles and public ornaments of the Byzantine capital. The kingdom of Thessalonica was given

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to Boniface of Monteferrat, and feudal principalities to the other nobles. The weakness of feudalism was displayed on the site of the most ancient European civilization. The opposition and oppression of the Greek by the Latin clergy developed an inextinguishable hatred between the Churches, while there arose the hostile Greek empires of Nicsea, Trebizond, and Durazzo.

Theodore Lascaris, 1204-1222, the founder of the Empire of Nicsea. was no ordinary man. Prudent, brave, and persevering in difficult circumstances, he saved the Greek Empire from total destruction and submission to the Latins. Small in stature, active and courageous, he raised up the power which was to put an end to the Latin rule in Constantinople.

To Baldwin I succeeded his brother Henry, 12051207, as Latin emperor of Constantinople. On his death, after a reign of two years, the crown came to Peter of Courtenay, count of Auxerre, 1207-1218, husband of Henry’s sister, Yolande. On his way to Constantinople from France he besieged Durazzo, and was taken captive, where lie pined in a dungeon until his death in 1218. Robert, his second son, reached Constantinople through Germany and Hungary, and was crowned in 1219. Divisions, weakness, shame, and vice filled his reign. Meanwhile, John III, Ducas Vataces, the son-in-law of Theodore Lascaris, began his reign of more than thirty years at Nicaea. “John had a noble simplicity and candor not often found united with great talents among the Greeks. He was attentive to every branch of public adminstration.” He gave especial care to agriculture, and while liberal was also economical. Unfortunately, like his prede

332 Culmination of Medieval Church.

cessor, in spite of the virtues of his wife, the empress Irene, his family life was no help to his people, who needed all the inspiration that imperial example could give.' If he did not live to see it, he prepared the way for his successors to regain Constantinople, and make it again the capital of the Greek Empire.

On the death of Robert, in 1228, the Latin emperor, Baldwin II, the son of Peter of Courtenay, inherited the title, but as he was only eleven years old, John of Brienne, 1229-1237, titular king of Jerusalem, a brave knight, but now eighty years of age, was chosen emperor. He did not reach Constantinople until two years after his election. The Greeks, who attacked Constantinople, were repulsed by him. John was succeeded by Baldwin II, 1237-1261, at the age of twenty, who began an inglorious reign, which ended with the final overthrow of the Latin Empire of the East. Most of the twenty-five years of his rule were spent as a beggar for aid at the European courts.

John III of Nicsea was succeeded by his son, Theodore II, 1254-1258, an able and estimable prince, but whose health was ruined and whose reign was weakened by chronic epilepsy. His son, John IV, was eight years old at his father’s death. Michael Palae-ologus secured his election as joint emperor, 12591282. Findlay says: “He was a type of the empire he re-established and transmitted to his descendants. He was selfish, hypocritical, able, and accomplished, an inborn liar, vain, meddling, ambitious, cruel, and rapacious. He ought to be execrated as the corrupter of the Greek race.” The lack of every quality of government, the wasting of the resources of the empire worse than any foreign mercenaries, and accident as

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well, made Michael VIII again Greek emperor of Constantinople, July, 1261, where his house continued to rule until the Turkish conquest, two centuries later. The sole result of the Fourth Crusade and the empire it founded, besides breaking down the bulwark of Christian and European civilization against the Turks, was the bitter hatred of Greek toward Latin Christendom, which has remained as the inheritance of all succeeding centuries.

Innocent III had determined to make the resources of Christendom subservient to the recovery of the Holy Sepulcher. This was one great object of the fourth Lateran Council. The young emperor, Frederick, had already taken the Crusader’s vow, and Innocent looked for assembling the greatest crusading army the world had seen, when death cut short his plans in 1216. Two years later, some German Crusaders, with the Templars and Teutonic _{The Fifth} Knights, attacked Egypt and captured Crusade. Damietta. They could have recovered ^,2,8•^,228• Jerusalem and all Palestine, except the castles of Ka-rac and Montreuil, for the protection of Meccan pilgrims, but for the rejection of the terms at the advice of the papal legate. Damietta was taken November

5, 1219. Of 70,000 inhabitants, the plague had left but 3,000 alive. The Christians allowed the winter to pass away, and in the spring of 1220 marched against Cairo. The same terms were again offered to them, but they were again rejected. The Nile rose, they were driven back, and Damietta was taken by Ka-meel, the Egyptian sultan, in 1221. All the gain was lost. After threefold delays, while he was consolidating his strength and dominion, Frederick II, emperor

334 Culmination of Medijeval Church.

of Germany, set out on the long-promised Crusade, September, 1227. The plague had raged among his troops. Being taken ill, the emperor landed at Otranto, where his companion, Louis of Thuringia, husband of St. Elizabeth, died; but the emperor recovered, and the Crusade was postponed. Gregory IX, true to his passionate nature and his desire to humiliate the strongest political adversary of the papacy, excommunicated the emperor. The next year, paying no attention to the excommunication, Frederick sailed to fulfill his vow. The pope was in a passion of rage. No Saracen enemy could have done more to make the Crusade a failure than the head of Christendom. Frederick landed at Ptolemais in September, 1228. None of the clergy would have anything to do with him, the Templars especially doing all they could to thwart him. In February, 1229, however, he procured, by treaty, Jerusalem, except the Mosque of Omar, Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. Frederick crowned himself king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, none of the clergy daring to disobey the pope’s mandate. Thus was won again Jerusalem, but the gain was pronounced by the pope and his adherents the shame of Christendom. The pope attacked Frederick’s dominions, and he hastened home to defend them. Two years later, the pope and the emperor made up their quarrel, when, without any humiliation, Frederick was relieved from his excommunication; but the day for the success of the Crusades was forever past. Nothing could again convince Europe that the pope cared as much for the possession of Jerusalem by the followers of Christ as he did for the extension of his

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power and the increase of his wealth. Sultan Kameel having siezed Jerusalem, Richard of Cornwall and his Crusaders, in 1240, marched from Acre to Jaffa, and by treaty again recovered all Palestine. It remained in the hands of the Christians until 1242, when the Korasmians, driven before the hordes of Genghis Khan, took Jerusalem with awful slaughter. In resisting these invaders, the grand masters of the Templars and Hospitallers were slain, and of all the brethern there remained but thirty-three Templars, sixteen Hospitallers, and three Teutonic Knights.

The Sixth and Seventh Crusades are connected with the name of Louis IX, king of France. He is not only their leader, but by his character, his sense of justice and humanity, he, not the popes, is at this time the moral head of Christendom. The last of the Crusaders was a worthy representative of the noblest aspirations of the Christian spirit which _{st Loujg} had inspired them. Louis IX, son of of France, Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, was born April 25, 1215. Eleven years later, at the death of his father, began his reign. The first ten years were under the regency of his mother, Blanche of Castile. This woman, remarkable through her ability and character, educated her son under her care, and chose as his instructors men in whose character and rectitude she could trust, and inspired him with a zeal for the glory of God. She said to him: “My son, I would rather see you dead than defiled with a mortal sin.” His purity of life honored his mother’s teachings. April 25, 1236, he was declared of age, and began his rule. Two years later he showed his devotion, in the spirit of his time, by paying the Vene

336 Culmination of Medieval Church.

tians 10,000 silver marks for the true crown of thorns and building Sainte Chapelle for its reception. His administration was just, economical, and peaceful. In 1241 he defeated the count of March, though supported by the English, in two battles, and upon his submission pardoned him, though he knew the countess had tried to poison him. Such generosity and valor won the proudest of his vassals. He then made an honorable truce with England. In 1244 he was grievously ill, and even supposed to be beyond mortal recall. When he recovered, he vowed to take the cross as a Crusader. In vain his mother, his wife, and the archbishop of Paris tried to dissuade him. The 12th of August, 1248, he sailed on the Sixth Crusade, taking with him his wife and the chief nobility, and leaving the government in the hands of Queen Blanche as regent. He spent the winter in Cyprus, The sixth ^w^^iere Emperor Frederick II cared for his crusade, troops. In the spring of 1249 he sailed to 1248-1254.    landing 50,000 soldiers and tak

ing the place. In November the'army marched to Cairo. They came to Mansurah, and the army might have achieved a signal success but for the presumptuous rashness and disobedience of the count of Artois, the king’s brother. After the utmost valor on the part of the king to restore the battle, the effort failed, and Louis was a prisoner. Ten thousand of his men were taken with him, only those being allowed to live who embraced Mohammedanism. In the meantime, the queen gave birth to a son at Damietta, whom she called Tristan, “child of sorrow.” In his captivity, Louis showed his true greatness of soul. Neither threats nor insults could move him. At last he agreed

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to give up Damietta, to pay 1,000,000 byzants for his own ransom, and 500,000 francs for his barons. He objected to the sum for himself, but agreed at once to that for the nobles. “The king of France,” he said, “must not haggle about the freedom of his subjects.” The sultan then struck off 200,000 byzants from his ransom. After enduring sufferings which Joinville says would have made the Saracens renounce Mohammed, Louis at last was free. He remained three and a half years in the Holy Land, doing all he could to stir up the sovereigns of Europe to give victorv to the Christian, cause. At last the news of his mother’s death made him return home. As the news came to him, he said: “O my God, it is true that I have loved my mother more than all other creatures; but may thy will be done and thy name be blessed!” In 1259 he concluded a treaty of peace with England, in which he gave back some of England’s former possessions. When some question was raised, he said: “I know that the king of England has lost his rights through conquest, but I have given this land in order to promote love between his children and mine.” His justice and equity were administered without respect of persons, against his own brother, Charles of Anjou, or against the proudest of his nobles. He made peace with Germany, Aragon, and England. When blamed for giving so much time to devotion, he said: “They would say nothing if I gave this time to the chase, to gaming, to tourneys, or to the stage.” He still bore the cross, and wished to renew the Crusade. Before his departure, he issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which gave to the abbeys and cathedrals the right to elect their bishops and abbots, re-

22

338 Culmination of Medieval Church.

pressed the attempts of the clergy to encroach on the civil power, and the right arrogated by the popes to tax the clergy and churches of France. The same year he issued the Establishments of St. Louis. Palestine had been invaded in 1263 by the Mameluke sultan, Bibars. He seized Nazareth and Acre, torturing to death those who had not fallen in battle. Ninety Hospitallers were slain at Azotus, and six hundred Templars surrendered at Saphouri, on promise of their lives. Once in his power, the sultan gave them a few hours to choose between apostasy and death. Not a man shrank from the test, and the prior and two Franciscan monks were flayed alive. Antioch fell in 1268, having been in the hands of the Crusaders for one hundred and seventy years. Edward I promised to assist Louis in this Crusade. In 1270 the French king set sail with 60,000 men and 1,800 vessels. At the wish of his brother, Charles of Anjou, he landed at Tunis. After the siege was set, sickness The seventh broke out in the camp. Louis felt that his Crusade, hour had come; his thought was for others, not for himself. As when captured in Egypt he had said of his followers, “I have come with them, and I wish to be saved or to die with them,” so now he prayed for them: “Have pity upon the people who have followed me to this shore; bring them back to their country; forbid that they should fall into the hands of their enemies, or that they should, through fear, deny Thy name.” Then, laid on a couch of ashes, he exclaimed: “Lord, I will enter into thy house, I will worship in thy holy temple,” and his soul passed from wars and defeats of earth to the victor’s song and peace of heaven, August 25, 1270.

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Louis IX had the prejudices with the spirit of feudalism and mediaeval Christianity. He wore a shirt of the coarsest hair-cloth next to his skin. “Fruit he tasted only once a year. On Fridays he never changed his dress, and never laughed. The iron-chain scourges which he carried at his waist in an ivory case drew blood from his shoulders once every week during Lent. He would walk for miles to distant churches, wearing shoes without soles. He heard two, three, and even four masses a day.” Still he could write to Pope Gregory IX, on his second excommunication of Emperor Frederick II, a stern rebuke: “Whence is this pride and daring of the pope, who thus disinherits a king who has no superior, nor even an equal, among Christians,—a king not convicted of the crimes laid to his charge? Even if those crimes were proved, no power could depose him but that of a General Council. On his transgressions the judgment of his enemies is of no weight, and his deadliest enemy is the pope. To us he has not only thus far appeared guiltless; he has been a good neighbor: we see no cause of suspicion, either of his worldly loyalty or of his Catholic faith. This we know, that he has fought valiantly for our Lord Jesus Christ, both by sea and by land. So much religion have we not found in the pope, who endeavored to confound and wickedly supplant him in his absence, while he was engaged in the cause of God.” He knew nothing of toleration. “No one,” he said, “however learned or perfect a theologian he may be, ought to dispute with the Jews. The layman, whenever he hears the Christian faith impugned, should defend it with a sharp-edged sword, which he should drive up to the hilt into the bodies of the un

340 Culmination of Medijeval Church.

believers.” Yet with these defects, what an example of valor, justice, purity, unselfishness, compassion, and serene self-possession in the greatest trials, in a word, of true nobility of soul, does the life of this greatest of French kings and Crusaders present! St. Louis had eleven children, of whom four sons and four daughters survived him. Philip succeeded him. Jean Tristan, count of Navarre, died in Africa, while from Robert, count of Clermont, descended the house of Bourbon, which came to the throne with Henry IV.

The Children’s Crusade was born not only of religious enthusiasm, but of universal ignorance. In earlier Crusades, father, mother, and children, loaded into the paternal cart, started for Palestine, without the slightest idea of the way, its perils, its length, or even its direction. The universal hospitality of the monasteries made the beginnings of such a journey easier, Children’s but could not hinder its inevitable conclu-Crusade. _sj_{on 0}f disappointment, return, or destruction. In 1212 the boy Stephen assembled 30,000 children, who encamped about Vendome, and then began their march toward the Holy Land. Ten thousand strayed from them on their march before reaching Marseilles; of the remainder, 5,000 sailed from that port to end their journey in the slave-markets of Alexandria and Algiers. Under Nicholas, a boy of Cologne, 20,000 German children set out for the land of the Crusaders’ hopes. Five thousand of these reached Genoa; some of the others marched to Brindisi, sailed for Palestine, and were never heard of again. Those arriving at Geneva were invited to settle there by the senate; many became wealthy, and not a few founded some of the noblest families of the State.

The Crusades.

34i

After the failure of the Second Crusade, some of the Crusaders assisted Henry the Lion in his work of overcoming heathenism in Northern Ger- crusading many. The monk Bruno became bishop of Missions. Mecklenburg, and transferred its seat to Schwerin in 1158. At the same time, that of Oldenburg was installed at Liibeck. Henry used the Cistercian monks to colonize the Wendish lands, which submitted to his authority. Their cloisters were planted thickly among them. They owned much of the land, so the Wends became their tenants, as they controlled whole villages. And thus they received both civilization and Christianity. From this time Christianity spread in the East of Europe almost altogether by arms and colonization. To kill a heathen was reckoned quite as meritorious as to kill a Saracen. Little effort was made to convert either except by force. A sketch of the conversion of what are now the Baltic provinces of the Rusian Empire will make this plain.

In seeking to evangelize Finland, Bishop Henrv of Upsala, Sweden, was martyred in 1150. A French missionary sent by the Swedish primate, _Misslons named Fulk, a monk from St. Moutier, »n Livonia

,-p    ,1 r , • •    • and Esthonia.

near Troyes, was the.first missionary in Esthonia, who labored there from 1169 to 1171. Meinhard was a gray-haired priest of the Augustinian canons at Segeberg. He went to Livonia and preached to the natives, and built the first Christian church in the land, near the mouth of the Duna. The next year he erected a stone house, which was both parsonage and fortress, and carried on his work of preaching. In 1168 he was consecrated, at Bremen, bishop of Livonia, which appointment the pope con-

342 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

firmed two years later. Meinhard labored in this missionary diocese for ten years, until his strength was broken by the burden of age. He earned for himself the title of the Apostle of Livonia.

Meinhard’s efforts had not been unaided by carnal weapons, and his successor, Berthold, abbot of Loc-cum, after spending a few months in that country, came back to Germany in the latter part of 1197, and spent the winter in raising a crusading band. He sailed at the head of this company the next summer for the mouth of the Duna. He arrived where now Riga stands, and fought there a battle on June 24th. His arms were victorious, but he himself was slain.

Albert, a canon of Bremen, was his successor. He took up the work with wisdom and energy, which he carried on with skill and success for the next thirty years. Albert first visited the courts of Canute of Denmark, Waldemar of Schleswig, and the archbishop of Lund in Sweden, and finally that of Emperor Philip of Swabia, at Magdeburg, December 25, 1199. He interested Innocent III, who called to his help the Germans of Saxony and Westphalia. In the spring of 1200 he sailed for the Duna with twenty-three ships of Crusaders. The natives submitted. He took hostages of their chief men, and sailed back in the fall. He then preached the Crusade in the streets of the villages and cities of Germany. He brought thirteen such expeditions of Crusaders and colonists to Livonia. Riga was founded as his capital in 1202, and he began the same year a cathedral there, and a Cistercian cloister at the river’s mouth. At the same time he formed and established the military order of the “Brothers of the Knighthood of Christ” in

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Livonia, or the “Brothers of the Sword,” who were subject to the bishop. By the end of 1206 all of Livonia had submitted, and its people were baptized. The Letts accepted the new government and the new faith the next year. Albert received Livonia as an imperial fief in 1207. The order of the Sword Brothers united with the Teutonic Knights in 1237. Riga was made an archbishop in 1255.

Gottfried of Lukina, in Poland, accompanied by two monks, Christian and Philip, preached in Prussia in 1207. Christian went to Rome, and

11-1    r    •    Prussia.

was made bishop of Prussia two years later. In 1214-1215 the Prussians killed Philip and the other Christians. The new bishop now raised a crusading host. The great body of the Teutonic Knights came in 1230. Then followed a war of fifty years before the stubborn resistance of the heathen Prussians was broken. Colonization went hand in hand with the conquest. Konigsberg was founded in 1256, and Marienberg twenty years later. In 1243 the four bishoprics of Kulm, Pomerania, Ermland, and Somland were erected under Riga as the metropolitan. The rule of the order in Prussia and Livonia was that of a selfish military caste. The sword and not the gospel had conquered those regions, but from the conquests of these Crusaders arose the Prussian monarchy, which acquired the territories of the order in the seventeenth century.

The Crusades failed, but were not without result. They drew off the fighting population of Europe to the East, and gave room for the arts of peace. They broke the power and divided the possession of the feudal nobility through the expenses they incurred and

344 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

the immense loss of life. As a consequence, they strengthened the power of the king and the influence Results of of the city. Hence there was an increas-the Crusades. ]_ng supremacy of law as against force and violence. The increased intercourse of the peoples with each other, and the creation of new wants, gave a great impetus to industry and commerce. Finally, they opened a new and wider intellectual horizon to the West. No governing class could ever again be as ignorant as the first Crusaders. They brought in a new era in the life and society of Europe. A movement which attracted and developed such men as Godfrey of Bouillon, the crusading knight; Bernard of Clairvaux, the priest of the Crusaders; and St. Louis of France, the crusading king,—possessed elements which command not only our sympathy, but our respect and admiration. The best defense of the Crusades is the condition of the European lands and races under the dominion of the Turk.

Chapter II.

THE STATES OF MODERN EUROPE.

England in the century from the death of William the Conqueror to that of Henry II, the first Plan-tagenet, passed through the first stage of the Norman feudal regime. The government was despotic, but better than the feudal license of the anarchy under Stephen. The weight of oppression was heavy; but gradually law and order and a regular systematic administration, civil and judicial, came to prevail for the whole kingdom. The condition of England at the end of this period was very different from that at the beginning. William the Conqueror had subdued Britain, and planted his Norman followers in castles raised upon the forfeited estates of Englishmen; giving to them the offices of the crown, the civil and judicial administration, and the bishoprics and other positions in the Church. He had sternly repressed rebellion, but he had also put down disorder. He did not hesitate to imprison his own brother, Odo of Bayeux, as an oppressor and disturber of the peace. The degeneration of his later years was felt more in Normandy than in England. William’s burial is one of the most striking scenes of the Middle Ages. The great conqueror, legislator, and warrior died at the convent of St. Gervais, near Rouen. He was scarcely dead before his sons, his relatives, and servants left his corpse. A gentleman of the country was stirred to

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346 Culmination of Medieval Church.

pity by such a scene of shameful neglect, when every one benefited by the late king sought his own advantage regardless of the claims of decency, and cared for the remains. They were brought for burial to the Church of St. Stephen, which he had reared. When they were about to be interred, a man in the throng raised his voice and forbade the burial. Stepping into the midst of the crowd, he said that the land on which the church stood had been taken without recompense from his house, and the king could never rest on stolen ground. The services were interrupted; it was found that the man spoke the truth, and he was paid the price before the oppressor could be buried.

William II, 1089-1100, inherited a rich and well-ordered kingdom. His elder brother Robert misgoverned Normandy, but finally joined the first Crusade. While the duchy was divided between his two brothers, William was the worst of the Norman kings, fearing neither God nor man in the indulgence of his passions and his vices, but had the instincts of a strong and avaricious ruler, with a nature which made the new chivalry his only religion. His most attractive trait was the love and reverence which he bore for his father’s memory, whose policy he strove to carry out in holding a strict rein over the feudal nobility, but his rule was harsh and oppressive. On William’s death, in New Forest, from an accident while hunting, his youngest brother came to the throne.

Henry I, 1100-1135, was now thirty-two years of age. Having received a good education, his father left him £5,000, which came to him through his mother, and predicted he would have more than both his brothers. From William he received the western

The States of Modern Europe. 347

half of Normandy in 1096. He was of middle height, broad-chested, and stoutly built; cheerful and temperate, he blamed excess in others. He was active, industrious, and orderly, but avaricious, crafty, cruel, and exceedingly licentious. He was crowned at London, August 2, 1100, and the next day issued a charter which showed his political ability, and was the basis of the Magna Charta of 1215. In it he promised to do away with the abuses of the last reign:

1.    The Church was to be free in its offices, which should be neither sold nor farmed, and no vacancies should be prolonged that the crown might enjoy the Church revenues.

2.    The feudal incidents of relief, wardship, and marriage were to be no longer abused to bring money to the king.

3.    As he did by his tenants in chief, so were they to do by their tenants.

4.    The coinage was to be reformed.

5.    Subjects were permitted to bequeath their personal property by will.

6.    Men who incurred forfeiture were no longer to be at the king’s mercy.

7.    Knights who held their lands by knight’s service were to hold them free of tax, but to be ready to serve the king with horses and arms.

8.    Good peace was to be kept throughout the kingdom, and the law of King Edward the Confessor, with the amendments of the king’s father, restored.

9.    The forests, with the consent of the barons, were to remain as in the days of William I.

Henry’s rule was a despotism strong and stern,

348 Culmination of Medieval Church.

but he put down private wars, and punished robbery and plunder, so that the people called him the Lion of Justice. Trade and industry flourished. November

II, noo, he married Edith, or Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, king of Scotland, and great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. By the battle of Tenchebrai,

1106, he gained all Normandy, and took his brother Robert prisoner, which he remained until his death, 1134—a fate he richly deserved. Henry’s wars in Normandy tended to unite his Saxon subjects to the crown. The loss of the White Ship, November 25, 1120, with his only legitimate son, William, and three hundred of his train, weakened his plans and saddened his life. His heir was his daughter Matilda, the childless widow of Henry V, emperor of Germany. He caused his barons to swear fealty to her in 1126, and again in 1131. In the meantime, she married, in 1128, Geoffrey of Anjou, who was but fifteen years of age. Though she had been three years a widow and ten years married, she was but twenty-five. Five years later, their eldest son, Henry II, was born, and two years after, her father, King Henry, died. Henry’s chief service to England had been his preservation of the peace and organization of the finances and judiciary through the Court of the Exchequer and the King’s Court, and the sending of the justices on circuit to administer the law.

Notwithstanding the oath of the baronage, which Stephen had taken with the others, they and the citi-stephen ^zens London ^id ^not think a woman could rule the realm, and so chose the king’s nephew, Stephen of Boulogne, a brave, generous, careless Crusader, to be England’s king, 1135-

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1154. Then followed twenty years’ of civil war and worse aristocratic anarchy, which inflicted such misery on England as she never saw a second time. Finally, by the treaty of Wallingford, November, 1153, the kingdom was assured to Stephen for his life, and the succession to Henry, son of Matilda, and Geoffrey of Anjou. A few months’ later, in October, 1154, Stephen, the courteous gentleman and pious Christian, but weak king, died.

Henry II, first of the Plantagenets, was tw^renty-one years of age, and, like his grandfather, square-built, thick-set, with sturdy limbs, a bullet-shaped head, close-cropped tawny hair, a lion-like face, with freckled skin and prominent eyes of soft gray color. He was well educated, and spoke French and Latin. He found the kingdom thoroughly disorganized, but from the first he ruled as ^He"^ry well as governed, and began his work with an insight, understanding, and industry which would have done credit to a veteran counselor.

Fortune had favored him as few sovereigns had ever been. From his mother he inherited England and Normandy; from-his father, Anjou, Maine, and Poitou; from Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom he married in 1152, Aquitaine and Gascony; on his brother Geoffrey’s death, Nantes, in 1158; and he conquered Ireland, while Brittany was his vassal. He was lord of England and Ireland, and of more than half of France. Henry’s fame and service, despite his foreign dominions and wars, are as founder of the English law and administration. He abolished feudalism as a system of government, and brought in that use and reverence for law which has made England strong and re

350 Culmination of Medieval Church.

nowned. In 1159 he changed the right to call out the knights to military service to an annual tax on each knight’s fee, called scutage. This was a step toward making the feudal nobility a part of the nation, which was not taken in France and Germany for seven hundred years.

The first of these efforts at judicial and administrative reforms was the Constitutions of Clarendon, 1164. They were sixteen in number, and purported to be a report of the usages of Henry I on disputed points. They concern questions of ecclesiastical appointment in the churches in the king’s gift, the trial of the clergy, the trial of laymen for spiritual offenses, the excommunication of tenants in chief, the license of the clergy to go abroad, ecclesiastical appeals which are not to go farther than to the archbishop without the consent of the king, questions of title to ecclesiastical estates, the baronial duties of the prelates, the election to bishoprics and abbeys, the right of the king to the goods of felons deposited under the protection of the Church, and the ordination of villeins.

These Constitutions contradicted the claims of the Gregorian papacy, especially in regard to spiritual Thomas jurisdiction and appeals to Rome. Thomas h Becket. ^ Becket, born in London, 1118, had been a great friend of Henry. The king appointed him chancellor in 1155, and he zealously performed the duties of his office. In 1162, Henry, against his warning, appointed his favorite minister archbishop of Canterbury. Becket was one of those natures who are nothing if not partisan. One idea possessed him to the exclusion of all else. As he had been a parti

The States of Modern Europe. 351

san of Henry, so now he became one of the papal claims, and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction against the king. At first, on January 30, 1164, he assented to the Constitutions, and even wrote to the pope requesting their confirmation. But he changed his mind and his plans. On March 1st he put himself under penance for having violated the privileges of the Church, and wrote to the pope for absolution, which was granted a month later. In October he met with the king’s council at Northampton, and agreed to them, with the proviso, which took back all that was granted, “saving the rights of my order.” The king was angered, and demanded assent without conditions. Becket fled in October, and spent the next six years in exile. Henry acted toward him and his relatives with great harshness, while the archbishop showed no Christian virtues of meekness and gentleness, but in bitter invective and fiery, party zeal far surpassed the exiled pope, Alexander III, who protected him. The sympathies of the Saxon population were with the archbishop, while those of the Norman barons and higher clergy were with the king. Henry, in 1166, published the Assize of Clarendon, which is the foundation of the English judicial syste'm, giving a uniform judiciary to the whole country, and every man a share in the administration of justice and police; so that there were no private judicatures, as in the French system until 1789. By his assize of Novel Disseisin, he cast his protection over all landed property, so that any man disseized of his freehold without legal sentence could claim, within a given period, reinstatement by a writ from a king—a most important check upon feudalism, and what has been called, perhaps, the

352 Culmination of Medieval Church.

greatest event in the history of English law. In 1170, June 14, Henry committed the greatest blunder of his reign. In the absence of Becket in France, he had his son Henry crowned king by the archbishop of York. The pope and archbishop were outraged at this violation of the rights of the see of Canterbury; the king of France, because his daughter, the wife of young Henry, had not been crowned with her husband; and the nobility and people had no sympathy with an innovation so contrary to English history and precedent. Henry patched up a peace with Becket, at Freitville, in 1170. He promised to assume Becket’s debts and pay the expenses of his journey, meeting him as he embarked. The king did none of these things; the archbishop landed in England, determined to carry on the fight and perish, if need be, for the cause. He immediately excommunicated the archbishop of York and the bishop of Salisbury for officiating at the coronation of the king’s son. These acts of Becket were reported to the king, and greatly enraged him. He said: “Are there none of those who eat my bread who will rid me of this priest?” Four men set out to fulfill the desire expressed by the king’s words. Henry heard of it, and sought to intercept them; but it was too late. They entered the cathedral of Canterbury, December 29, 1170, when the archbishop met them without flinching, and they dashed out his brains upon the pavement. It was a dastardly act of vengeance without warrant of law, by a king who was the lawgiver of his century. On the other hand, while Becket has been honored as a martyr, his act of excommunication after his recall was one of open rebellion, making it inevitable that either he or

The States of Modern Europe. 353

the king must fall. Henry at once set out on the conquest of Ireland, which he had reduced by 1172. The same year he gave up the Constitutions of Clarendon, and was absolved by the pope. The next year, Henry’s son, aided by his brother and their mother, rebelled against him. The king’s selfish, licentious life and disordered household prevented the formation of strong family ties. He put down the rebellion of his sons, and imprisoned Queen Eleanor for the next sixteen years, until his death, except one brief interval of freedom. That she was a woman of force and ability she showed during Richard’s captivity. Having lived to be eighty years of age, she died in the reign of John. Her daughters—Matilda, Eleanor, and Johanna—married respectively Henry the Lion, the king of Castile, and William king of Sicily. Henry, July 7, 1174, made a pilgrimage to Canterbury to the grave of Thomas a Becket, allowing himself to be scourged by the monks as penance for the share he had in his death.

In 1176, Henry issued the Assize of Northhampton, which was a re-enactment of the Assize of Clarendon, w^rith important modifications and several new clauses. The same year, the papal legate gave a partial assent to the Constitutions of Clarendon, which brought the clergy under the royal jurisdiction in cases of forest laws and rebellion. In 1176 he organized the court of the king’s bench—that is, an inner tribunal of selected royal counselors for judicial purposes. The judges’ circuits, as they have since prevailed in England, were organized by him, 1176-1180. In 1181 his Assize of Arms, providing for the military service of the English people, completed his legisla-

23

354 Culmination of Medijeval Church.

tion. Two years later, his ungrateful and rebellious son Henry died; his brother Geoffrey, his partner in rebellion, followed him to the grave in 1186, leaving only one son, Arthur of Brittany, born the year after his death. Richard was now the king’s heir. He demanded some share in the government and the marriage with Alice, sister of the French king, who had been kept from her childhood at Henry’s court for that purpose; but this the king refused. Richard, thinking Henry designed the kingdom to go to his youngest son, John, rebelled against his father, and sought the aid of Philip Augustus. Their arms prevailed. Burning with fever, he shut himself up in the Castle of Chinon. Henry was forced to yield; in grief and rage, he cried: “Shame, shame upon a conquered king!” They showed him a list of those in arms against him. When he saw among them the name of his favorite son, John, he said now he cared for nothing more in the world; let it go as it will. Only his illegitimate son, Godfrey, archbishop of York, was with him when he came to reason and penitence; and he died peacefully, July 6, 1189.

Richard’s father died while he was in rebellion against him. He returned to England, and was England crowned September 3, 1189, three months under after which he left England on his Cru-Richard i. _sacj_e> pj_{e S}p_ent the winter in Sicily, and reached Cyprus, April 10, 1191. In May he married Berengaria, daughter of the king of Navarre. He conquered Cyprus and reached Acre, June 8th. The city surrendered to the Crusaders in July. He came in sight of Jerusalem at Christmas of the same year, but could only see the city. Again, in June, he came

The States of Modern Europe. 355

in sight of Jerusalem, and in August he took Jaffa. The next month he made peace with Saladin, and sailed for home. With all his martial prowess, he had done little for the Crusaders, while his insolence had made deadly enemies of Philip Augustus of France, and of Leopold, margrave of Austria. He dared not go through France, and while traveling in disguise he was arested near Vienna, December 21, 1192. The next March, Leopold surrendered him to the emperor, Henry VI, who held a king and Crusader in the spirit of a trader, seeking to extort the highest possible ransom. Both Philip Augustus and John, king of England, desired his continual imprisonment, but the queen-mother exerted herself to raise the enormous ransom, 150,000 marks. Richard did homage to the emperor, and was released. He landed in England, March 13, 1194, which he left two months later to war against his deadly enemy, the king of France. For the next five years he warred in France more like a feudal baron than an English king. Wounded in a petty siege, he died, April 6, 1199, at fifty-two years of age, having reigned as English king for nearly ten years, but having spent less than six months on her soil. This ideal knight and Crusader was tall, muscular, of ruddy complexion, with light brown hair; he was lavish, generous, and fearless; more religious than his brothers, but equally vicious; a bad husband, a bad son, and a bad king.

Richard was succeeded by his brother John, 11971216, the meanest of English kings, and the only coward among the Norman and Plantagenet rulers. At his coronation he was thirty-two years of age. He killed his sixteen-year-old nephew, Arthur of

356 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

Brittany, with his own hand, 1203. Philip Augustus summoned him for trial before the peers of France,

. . among whom both Arthur and John were

John.    , 1 t • -1    •    <

reckoned. Joiin paid no attention to the

summons. Philip pronounced sentence against him, and in sixteen months he had lost all lands held by the English king north of the Loire. He quarreled with Innocent III, and his kingdom was under interdict from 1208 to 1214, when John made a complete and humiliating surrender, making England a fief of the Papal See, and himself a vassal of the pope. Magna Charta was granted by John to the barons who rose in the defense of the rights of Englishmen at Runny-mede, July, 1215. The Magna Charta has sixty-three sections, and fills ten pages of fine print in the edition of Stubbs. Of course, it is concerned chiefly with the matters in dispute between the king and the baronage, and the incidents of the feudal organization; but it also laid down great principles that have made it the corner-stone of the civil liberties of the English race. The first article guarantees the freedom and rights of the English Church. The king promises that neither the service nor the goods of any free man shall be taken by any of the king’s officers, and that he will appoint officers who shall know and observe the laws. But further, that no scutage or tax shall be laid in his kingdom without the consent of the common council of the kingdom, and that to this council, archbishops, bishops, abbots, counts, and greater barons shall be summoned by the king’s writ, and besides, by general summons, the viscounts, bailiffs, and all tenants-in-chief. The commons were not summoned by representatives before the latter part

The States of Modern Europe. 357

of the century. The council was to be held in a fixed place, and thus was established the beginning of Parliament, and that no tax could be laid without its consent. And finally, sections 39 and 40 provide: “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner distressed; neither shall we come upon him or send for him, without the legal judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. We will not sell or deny, or defer to any one, right or justice.” This protection by the law was the gain won by the English people, which came to other European nations only after the French Revolution.

John died in October, 1216. Louis VIII left England, May 30, 1217. A child of nine years was England’s king.

Henry III, son of John and Isabella of Angou-leme, received a good education and was piously brought up, living a moral and religious life. But if John was vicious and cowardly, Henry was weak, possessing the vices of shiftlessness and falsity which weakness brings. The early ministers of _{Henry m} his minority were William Marshall, earl of Pembroke, and Hubert de Burgh, who ruled wisely and well. He marrie'd, July 14, 1226, Eleanor, daughter of Raymond Berengar, count of Provence, whose sister Margaret was the wife of St. Louis, king of France. She was an able woman and a good wife. One sister of Henry was the third wife of the emperor Frederick II, while another, Eleanor, married Simon, the great earl of Leicester, a marriage of more consequence in English history than most royal connections. Henry was lavish, extravagant, and thoroughly incapable. The great offices of England were

358 Culmination of Medieval Church.

conferred upon foreigners, the relatives of his wife or his half-brother by his mother’s second husband, Count de la Marche. The misgovernment reached such a height that the royal power was put in commission by the Parliament of Oxford, June, 1258. This Commission was called the Oxford Provisors. Papal legates and agents drained the resources of England, as Henry was a devoted servant of the pope, especially in 1245, 1246, and 1247, when Innocent IV used the money of Frederick’s brother-in-law to destroy him. The provisors ruled for seven years. The baronage rallied around Simon Montfort, as once around Stephen Langton. Henry returned to England from France in 1264, and was defeated at Lewes on May 14th. From that time Earl Simon ruled England. Henry was compelled to banish the aliens in July, 1265. On August 14th the earl was defeated and killed at Evesham by the army of Prince Edward, afterward Edward I. At the Parliament of Marlborough, 1267, Henry conceded nearly all that had been asked at Oxford in 1258. He had confirmed the charters in 1253, and summoned two knights from each shire to Parliament in 1254; while the same writ was issued to knights and burgesses by Earl Simon in 1265. Obstinate and unstable, no one could trust the word of the king. Henry had given to his successor what no heir to the throne had had since the death of the Conqueror—a pure and chaste home—and Edward loved his father sincerely and honored his mother. The weakness of Henry’s reign and of his father’s, in the presence of a strong baronage willing to unite with the commons for the interests of the nation for a period of seventy years, made English constitutional liberty possible.

The States of Modern Europe. 359

When England again had strong kings, the people were too powerful to lose their liberties Thus England gave to modern times the noblest contribution to the art of government, the priceless gift of civil liberty secured by law.

Edward I, 1272-1307, left England to assist St. Louis on his last Crusade, August 11, 1270. He was then thirty-one years of age, and took with him his wife, Eleanor of Castile, whom he had married when but fifteen. When he arrived at Tunis he found that St. Louis was already dead, and his brother had concluded peace with the Saracens. Edward sailed to Cyprus and Palestine, and fighting a battle at Nazareth he made a truce with the Turks for ten years. Edward spent the next winter in Sicily, where, in November, he heard at the same time of the death of his father, his uncle Richard, titular emperor of Germany, and his first-born son, John. The new king did not hasten home. He allowed the people to forget the party leader he had been in his father’s reign, and to desire him as king. He landed at Dover, August 2, 1274, and on the 18th he and his queen, Eleanor, were crowned at Westminster. Edward was tall, well-made, broad-chested, with the long arms of a swordsman, and long thighs that griped the saddle firmly. His forehead was ample, and his face shapely. He inherited from his father a peculiar droop of the left eye-lid. In youth his hair was so light that it had only a shade of yellow; in manhood, it was dark; and in age, of snowy whiteness. He excelled in all the arts of chivalry. He was brave, prudent, and faithful to his word, being able to learn from adversity. He had the instincts of a lawgiver, and carried on the

360 Culmination of Medieval Church.

work of Henry II; he developed its character and organized its methods, everywhere freeing the State from the action of feudal principles, and almost creating national political life. The parliamentary system was founded by him. Parliament was no longer a feudal assembly, but a definite body of hereditary peers summoned by writs, and the clergy and commons being represented by deputies.

The great statutes of Edward’s reign were the first of Westminster, 1275, which was almost a code of English law; De Rcligiosis, 1279, which forbade the accumulation of land by the clergy or by others so that it came into mortmain—that is, so it paid no taxes or dues to the State; the second of Westminster, 1285, was a code of English law of real estate; that of Winchester in the same year dealt with the local administration. That of Quia Emptores forbade subinfeudation, and that of Acton Brunnel provided for the collection of mercantile obligations. The writ, Circumspccte Agafis, clearly defined ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The first full Parliament met in 1295, while in 1297 the statute De Tallagio non Concedendo was the effective and final confirmation of the Great Charter. Queen Eleanor died in 1290. Nine years later, the king married Margaret, sister of Philip the Fair, with whom he lived until he died, in 1307.

This century, which witnessed the growth and consolidation of the English kingdom, saw the beginning

Philip 1 of the rise of the French monarchy, of France. Philip I, unwieldy in body and inert in mind, had a long reign, from 1060 to 1108. At his death the French king was lord only of the countships of Paris and of Melun, of Orleans and Sens, and these

The States of Modern Europe. 361

territories were separated by foreign jurisdictions, besides which he held two small fiefs south of the Loire. The lands of the great vassals were vaster than his own in power and wealth. Such were those of the count of Flanders on the north, the duke of Normandy and Brittany in the west, in the southwest the duke of Anjou, in the southeast the duke of Burgundy, in the east the count of Champagne, while south of the Loire lay the possessions of the duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and the counts of Toulouse and Barcelona. The great work of the French kings for the next two centuries was out of these conflicting jurisdictions to form the kingdom of France.

Louis VI, 1108-1137, called the Fat, succeeded Philip I, and took up his work. He had already for seven years been associated with his father in his work of government. He began by making peace and repressing the violence of the feudal nobility; to this end he allied himself with the clergy. Under his rule the communes came into prominence. Louis confirmed eight charters of communes upon the lands of his barons, thus allying himself with the people against the feudal oppressions of their lords. He warred with Henry I, generally unsuccessfully, but made peace between contending nobles in Clermont and Bourbon, which increased his power. He found himself unable to reduce Flanders on the murder of its duke, Charles the Good, at Bruges, in 1127. From this time dates the beginning of Flemish independence. He died two years after his old competitor, Henry I of England, leaving larger domains and increased authority to his son.

Louis VII, 1137-1180, the Young, was a weak

362 Culmination of Medijeval Church.

prince, belter fitted to be a monk than a king. He continued his father’s policy of alliances with the

clergv against the feudal nobility, and

Louis VII.    S. &

granted twenty-five communai charters to cities. His reign was made successful through the efforts of his father’s counselor, Suger, abbot of St. Denis, who virtually ruled France for thirty years, beginning 1121. He is one of the four great ministers of the French monarchy, the only one of the Middle Ages ranking with Sully, Richelieu, and Colbert. Louis married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137, who brought with her that country as her dower, and bore him a daughter, Alix. Moved by the eloquence of St. Bernard, Louis took part in the unfortunate Second Crusade. He lost his army in Asia Minor, and made a pilgrimage to the Holv Sepulcher, but returned without striking a blow. His queen accompanied him. Finding him too much a monk, she quarreled with him; so, soon after his return, he sought a divorce. To Louis’s surprise she acceded, and before the decree could be pronounced she married Henry II, soon to be king of England, though he was but nineteen and she thirty-two. Thus, southwest France passed from the French to the English crown for three hundred years. Suger taught the duties of royalty and the need of order. He built the abbey church of St. Denis, which was dedicated in 1140, while Louis VII began Notre Dame de Paris in 1163. At his death, in 1180, the French monarchy had gained in importance, wealth, and prestige, though it had not greatly extended its territories, which were overshadowed by his mighty vassal, the English king. The reversal of these relations

The States of Modern Europe. 363

in France and the establishment of the monarchy firmly on French soil were the work of the next reign.

Philip Augustus, 1180-1223, was fifteen years of age when he came to the throne. In the difficulties of the first two years of his reign he was phiiip protected by the mediation of Henry II; Augustus, but he soon showed that he w'as abundantly able to care for himself. Before he had been five years on the throne he gained the countship of Amiens, Ver-mandois, and Valois by war for the French crown, and the next year, Artois fell to him through his wife. Pie joined the Crusade of 1190, and was in Palestine at the taking of Acre; but his quarrel with Richard I soon disgusted him with service in Eastern lands. So he hastened home to France, to make the most of Richard’s absence, and later of his imprisonment. John’s murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, gave him occasion to attack and win all Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Poitou—all the English possessions in France north of the Loire. This conquest broke the continental power of the Norman kings, and made Philip lord in his own land. It was “the most brilliant and beneficial conquest ever made by a French king.” Later, John of England and Otto IV of Germany met, with superior forces, Philip at Bouvines, July 27, 1214. Before the battle the allies had parted France anew between them. They were completely defeated, and Philip remained in peaceable possesssion of his conquests.

The Church began a persecution of the Albigen-sian Cathari, a kind of Manichseans. Innocent published a Crusade against them, November 16, 1207. The Crusaders assembled at Lyons, June 24, 1209.

364 Culmination of Medijeval Church.

Beziers was taken by assault, when followed “a massacre almost without parallel in European history. The Aibigen- From infancy in arms to tottering age, sian Crusade. _noj- _{one was} spared—seven thousand, it is said, were slaughtered in the Church of Mary Magdalene, to which they had fled for asylum—and the total number of slain is set down by the papal legate at nearly 20,000.” When the legate, Armand, was asked whether the Catholics should be spared, he replied, “Kill them all, for God knows his own.” Carcassonne surrendered in August, the entire population being banished from the city and driven out half-naked. Simon de Montfort, younger son of the count of Ev-reux, a descendant of Rolf, founder of Normandy, and through his mother of the earl of Leicester in England, a Crusader in 1201, chaste, devout, and bigoted, as well as brave, accepted the lordship of the territories conquered by the Crusaders in 1209. He gained a splendid victory at the battle of Muret over Pedro II of Aragon, who lost his life, September, 1213. But Simon spent his life in war with varying success, until he was killed by a stone thrown from the wall of Toulouse, which he was besieging, in June, 1218. His son, Amaury, found the task of defending these dominions taken by violence too great for him, and offered them, but in vain, to Philip Augustus, in 1222.

The Lateran Council confirmed Simon in his possessions against Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Raymond, once wealthy and powerful, with a splendid court, died in August, 1222. His son, Raymond VII, carried on the struggle. Philip Augustus died on the 14th of July, 1223, leaving Amaury 30,000 livres to continue the war. Philip was able, sagacious, crafty,

The States of Modern Europe. 365

and unscrupulous, but he founded modern France, doubled its domains, and gave the crown territories and power which made it supreme in the land. He built Notre Dame, began the Louvre, and founded the university.

Louis VIII, 1223-1226, had responded to the call of the English barons aginst John, in May, 1216; but the death of the king changed the face of

rr •    t •    1    1 1 r t-    ^{LoU,S Vl11}'

affairs. Louis made peace, and left England in September, 1217. At the head of an armv of ruthless Crusaders, he had penetrated in vain as far as Toulouse the succeeding year. In February, 1224, he accepted the offer, which his father had refused, of the claims of Amaurv de Montfort upon Languedoc. Another Crusade was organized, and Louis put himself at its head. Avignon was besieged from June

10 till September 10, 1226, when it surrendered. Louis turned away from Toulouse, which had suc-cesssfully resisted so many sieges, and died on his way home. He had won for France the rest of Poitou, including Rochelle and Limoges.

St. Louis IX, 1226-1270, was born in 1215. His mother, Blanche of Castile, was an able administrator. After Blanche established herself against

^    Louis IX.

the vassals, who hoped to profit by the minority of the king, the peace of Paris, April 12, 1229, ended the war in the south. This involved the complete submission of Count Raymond. The inquisition was established in his territories, and he proceeded to give it his assistance and support. He surrendered two-thirds of the former territories of his house, and contracted his daughter and heiress, Jeanne, in marriage with Alphonse, the king’s brother,

366 Culmination of Medieval Church.

though both were but in their ninth year. In 1237 they were married, and twelve years later succeeded to Raymond’s possessions on his death. Both died without issue, so their territories fell to the crown of France in 1271. Thus Languedoc, the wealthiest, most civilized, and prosperous part of the kingdom, ended its separate existence, and became identified with the kingdom of France. But the Crusaders and the inquisition had done their work. Blood and fire, the massacre, the dungeon, and the stake had dissipated the resources, extinguished culture, and broken the spirit of the people. These wasted regions never regained their former prosperity. In 1245 the king’s brother, Charles of Anjou, married Beatrice, heiress of Provence. In 1259, Louis, to render justice to the English claims, confirmed to them Guienne, including Bordeaux and Gascony. During his reign the lands of the counts of Chartres, Blois, Macon, Perche, Arles, and Foix became the possession of the crown of France. He carried on the work of his grandfather, Philip Augustus, but in a very different spirit; his acknowledged justice, fairness, and noble character made his mediation respected and valued, and his work as a peacemaker effective. He gave an example of the best-governed country of his time. His code, the Establishments of St. Louis, was the best summary of French mediaeval law. He forbade private war and the wager of battle; made the lords responsible for the police of their roads. He did not favor the establishment of communes, but wished the citizen to become the bourgeois of the king, and thus was formed the third estate. At the same time the study of Roman law brought a class of lawyers to

The States of Modern Europe. 307

influence and power, particularly in civil administration. Serfs largely became free, especially in the royal domains. He made the same royal coins pass current throughout France. Learning was favored at the monasteries of Paris, Anges, Orleans, Toulouse, and Montpellier. By a royal ordinance, in 1234, he limited the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Though a devout son of the Church, he resisted the papal claims upon the French clergy and people, and published the so-called Pragmatic Sanction in 1269. Louis IX was not only a hero and a saint, but a great king.

His son Philip III, the Bold, 1270-1285, was unlearned and weak, and his reign unimportant. On his death the French crown descended to his son Philip IV, surnamed the Fair, 1285-1314. Philip’s marriage brought to him Navarre and _phT Champagne. Through escheat, Franche Marche and Angoumois fell to the crown, and his second son married the heiress of Franche Comte. At the end of this period the powerful vassals of the crown were the duke of Brittany, the count of Flanders, and the king of England as count of Guienne. Flanders was united with France in 1300, but the king and nobility met' with a terrible overthrow by the Flemish burghers at the battle of Coutrai in 1302, after which Philip made peace with Flanders. Philip had strengthened himself by the marriage of his sister with Edward I of England, and with a united clergy and people he carried on his successful conflict with Boniface VIII. We have now traced the formation of the French monarchy until it has become the most powerful State in Europe, the leader of its civilization and the lord of the papacy.

368 Culmination of Medieval Church.

Scarcely less eventful was the historic development in Spain. The re-enforcements from Africa and the increase of the resources of the Christian States brought the contest to an issue in the thirteenth century. Henry, son of the duke of Burgundy, assisted by Raymond, count of Toulouse, conquered the land from the Saracens, and founded the kingdom of Portugal in 1094. He married the daughter of Alphonse VI, king of Castile. In the famous battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, July 12, 1212, the Christians broke forever the Mussulman power in Spain. The weakness and anarchy of the warring Christian States was ended by the marriage of Ferdinand III of Leon with Berengaria of Castile. They became tributary to Castile in 1246. In 1248, Ferdinand’s father had made the province of Estramadura a part of the kingdom of Leon. In 1236 the first great capital of the Moors, Cordova, was taken by Ferdinand. The next year, the Saracen power broke up into small States, the largest of which, Granada, became tributary to Castile in 1246. In 1248, Ferdinand received the submission of Seville, and a few years later, Xerez, Medina, Sidonia, and Cadiz became part of his domains.

Peter II of Aragon had become, to the disgust of his people, a vassal of Innocent III. He fell under the blows of the Crusaders of Simon Mont-fort, at Muret, in 1213. His son James I, the Conqueror, 1213-1276, ably assisted Ferdinand of Castile in wresting Spain from the Saracen domination. He took their stronghold, the Balearic Isles, after a four-years’ siege, in 1233. He captured Valencia in 1238, and the province of Murcia in 1266.

The States of Modern Europe, 369

Only Granada was left of the Arab dominions in Spain, and it remained face to face and surrounded by the lands of Castile for the next two hundred years. The Cortes of Aragon, from a Council of feudal barons, became a National Assembly, with deputies from the chief towns, in 1162. It was the oldest national assembly in Europe. The clergy, nobles, and citizens deliberated on the affairs of the kingdom sometimes as different bodies and sometimes together. There was no connecting link between the great nobles and the burgesses, such as the Knights of the Shire formed in England, and the great nobles preserved their feudal powers.

Alphonso X, the Wise, 1252-1284, succeeded Ferdinand III. His reign is noted for his legislation and his code known as the Siete Partidas. The reign of his successor, Sancho IX, 1284-1295, was ruled by the feudal nobility. While his son Ferdinand VI, 1295-1312, was an infant at his father’s death, a contest for the succession ensued, which was decided for Ferdinand in 1305.

The kingdom of Aragon, in 1276, consisted of three separate States, Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia. The crown ha'd less authority and

. r* .. Aragon.

the nobles more power than in Castile.

Pedro III, 1276-1285, married Constance, daughter of Manfred, king of Sicily, and claimed her inheritance in that island after the Sicilian Vespers. The same year that the Sicilian war began, he granted the Great Privilege of Aragon, 1283, its Magna Charta, and quite as important as that instrument. On the death of Pedro, two years later, his son Alphonso III, 1285-1291, became king of Aragon, while his brother

24

370 Culmination of Medieval Church.

James became king of Sicily. On the death of Al-phonso, James II, 1291-1327, took the crown of Aragon, while his younger brother Frederick became king of Sicily, and the real founder of its independence.

The three Scandinavian kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark participated in the march of Sweden European progress during this period. In Sweden, under Inge the Elder, 1080-1112, Christianity triumphed over heathenism. Under his successor, Swerker, 1135-1155, the ordinances of the Roman Catholic Church were accepted. In the reign of Eric Edwardson, 1155-1160, Upsala was made the see of the primate of Sweden. The king also sought the conversion of the Finns to Christianity. For nearly a century there was a war of succession to the throne of Sweden, the Goths holding to the line of Swerkerson, and the Swedes to that of Edwardson. In 1250 the feud was reconciled by the choice of Waldemar, 1250-1279, and the Swedes became a united people. Magnus, 1279-1290, succeeded his brother, and had a brilliant reign and a splendid court. He favored the clergy, and endowed a large number of Churches. He strengthened the power of the nobles, as it afterwards appeared, at the expense of the crown, and cared for the common freemen. His son Birger, 1290-1319, was only nine years old when he came to the throne. His guardian and minister was a statesman, Thorkel Canuteson, 1290-1306. Through his influence a code of laws was adopted by the Great Thing, or National Assembly, in 1295.

The son of Harold Hardrada, killed at Stamford Bridge, was Olaf Kyrre, 1066-1093, under whom the

The States of Modern Europe. 371

country prospered. His successor, Magnus Barefoot, 1093-1103, was warlike as his grandfather, and fell in an expedition against Ireland. His son

Norway.

Sigurd, 1103-1130, was renowned as a warrior, visited Jerusalem and Constantinople, and was the last of the race of Harold Fairhair. Then, as in Sweden at the same period, ensued an era of anarchy, 1130-1240. Hakon, 1217-1263, acquired Iceland, and his son Magnus, 1263-1280, surrendered the Hebrides to Scotland in 1268, but his fame rests upon his efforts as a reformer of law for Norway. His successor, Eric, reigned from 1280 to 1299. His only child, the Maid of Norway, died at sea on her way to Scotland. His brother Hakon succeeded, to the throne, 1299-1319, and through his daughter the crown was united with that of Sweden.

These centuries in Denmark, under the influence of the feudal system, filled her history mainly with struggles between the king and nobility. One king, Waldemar II, 1202-1241, had a remarkable career. In 1217 he conquered Holstein and Pomerania—that is, all German lands northeast of the Elbe. In 1219 he carried his arms to the east of the Baltic, and conquered Esthonia. He was treacherously captured by the duke of Schwerin in 1223, and imprisoned several years in the dungeons of Mecklenberg, but he escaped and reigned until his death. Meanwhile, a flourishing trade sprang up with Liibeck and Dantzig.

Kieff was taken by George Dolgourki, and ceased to be a capital. Novgorod and some other principalities maintained a troubled and warlike existence until the invasion of the Tartars, which left its lasting trace upon Russian character and institutions. They

372 Culmination of Medimval Church.

first attacked Russia in 1224, and conquered the greater part of it, 1238-1240. Moscow is first men. tioned in 1147, and was burned by the Tartars in 1237. They took and plundered Kieff in 1240. Novgorod submitted to them in 1260. Alexander Nevskoi, revered as the Russian national saint, defeated the Swedes in 1240, and the German Knights of the Sword. His son Daniel, 1260-1303, is the true founder of the duchy of Moscow.

We see in this period the modern States of Europe taking form and shape. The power of the empire is _it ended in Italy. England, France, and Spain are becoming great nations; France, indeed, has succeeded to more than the former power of the empire, a strongly centralized kingdom with greater power, wealth, and influence, especially in the East and over the papacy. The Northern nations, recently won from heathenism, have entered into the European fellowship, and partake in the trade of the Hanseatic League, just beginning its career. The glory of a century is the fact that this new society is taking on the fixed forms of a civilization guaranteed by established laws which protect the humblest members of society. Everywhere, in England and France, in Castile, Aragon, and Sicily, in Sweden and Norway, national charters and codes of law take their place as the foundation of political life and government. The Saracens were driven from the greater part of Spain, but the Tartars took possession of Russia. It was a period of great economic progress. The forests were cleared. Trade and industry made an immense advance. Slavery died out, and serfdom was largely abolished or ameliorated. It is probable

The States of Modern Europe. 373

that the period of the greatest average prosperity in the Middle Ages was the last half of the thirteenth century. The great historic feature of the period was the rise of the cities, and the formation, besides the clergy and the nobles, of the third estate, or commons,—the recognition of the political existence of the people.

Some cities of Southern France preserve traces of their old municipal organization and government, and never became wholly subject to feudal rule. Ri_{se 0}f These were among the first to extend their ^{the Cltles}‘ authority and claim independent administration when the Crusades had weakened the power of the feudal lords, and increased their own wealth and importance. Venice had first resisted, and then made peace with Charlemagne. The Venetians claim that their first doge was elected in 819. Ravenna and Verona elected consuls before the year 1000. Amalfi very early began a profitable trade with the East. Upon the repulse of the Saracen conquest in the Mediterranean, Genoa and Pisa followed in her footsteps with greater zeal and success. Genoa conquered Corsica from the Saracens in 1015, and Pisa, Sardinia, in 1025. The inland cities of Italy-owed their independence to the weakening of the imperial power south of the Alps in the century between the death of Henry III and the accession of Barbarossa. The cities gradually freed themselves from the episcopal authority and control, and that of the empire became a mere name. So much the more were they indignant over the resumption of imperial rights proclaimed on the Roncaglian field in 1158. The dreadful fate of Milan, the largest Italian city, which it is claimed in the eleventh century had

374 Culmination of Medimval Church.

a population of 300,000 souls, and which Frederick utterly destroyed, did not deter the Italian cities from striving for the preservation of their independence. The Lombard League humbled the pride and power of Frederick T, and conquered the peace of Venice and afterward of Constance, which confirmed their independence and civic liberties. Florence dates its prosperity from 1125, and in 1200 was the most important city in central Italy. The usual civic organization was a magistracy composed of from three to six consuls, with a greater and lesser Council. Later the podcsia took the place of the consuls.

The wars of the German emperors with the popes aided the same process in Germany. In 1076, Worms German aided Henry IV in the sad days before Cities. Canossa, and the adherence of the cities was rewarded by the emperors. Spires was early favored with imperial privileges. Liibeck became a free city of the empire in 1226, and soon became the head of the Hanseatic League. Mainz, in 1254, was the head of the confederation of the cities of the Rhine, which included a hundred towns from Basel to the sea. Cologne, the largest, wealthiest, and most beautiful city of the empire at this time, shook off the yoke of her archbishop in 1288. Nuremberg was practically a free city from 1200; Augsburg from 1268; Hamburg from 1189; and Bremen from 1200.

The movement was earlier in France. The first mention of a commune—that is, an independent city French ’ organization—in France is at Le Mans, ^c,ties* which was broken down the next year; but Cambrai organized itself as a commune in 1076. The consulate, which was an executive commission

The States of Modern Europe. 375

for the government of the city, appeared first in Milan in 1093, and in Genoa in 1100. It included the nobility, artisans, and burgesses, and though the classes were unequal in their privileges, all had their rights secured. This organization prevailed in the French cities.

Municipal rights and civic charters began to be granted in England in the reigns of William II, Henry I, and Stephen, but more generally English in the reign of John. The English town ^Cities* was a municipal body of burghers, who identified the right to pursue a trading or industrial occupation with the right of citizenship, and imposed restrictions upon the acquisition of citizenship with the object of protecting those already possessing it. They acted together by market regulation and intermunicipal negotiations to secure every advantage over rival boroughs. -

The rights secured by the cities were, first, the freedom from all taxes, tolls, and burdens, upon the payment of a fixed amount to the prelate, temporal lord, king, or emperor; second, the election of their own magistrates; third, the exercise of criminal jurisdiction, so that no citizen should be tried beyond the city but judged according to its laws; fourth, the control of trade regulations and the police administration. The citizens secured also freedom of marriage and inheritance, and a serf remaining a year and a day in a city became free.

This movement for the rule of law and its shelter for industry and trade began earliest in Italy and France, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries spread throughout Germany and England, but found

376 Culmination of Medieval Church.

its richest development in the Flemish cities, especially Ghent, Bruges, Brussels, Antwerp, Ypres, Louvain, and Liege. Their constitution was at the first aristocratic, the magistrates being chosen from the nobles or the patrician families; but with the admission of the representatives from the guilds in the fourteenth century the administration, as in Italy, Germany, and England, became much more democratic.

Chapter III.

THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE.

After the death of Gregory VII a year passed before the election of another pope. No cardinal was desirous of the office, but finally Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino, was chosen as Victor III, 1085-1087. He was rich and powerful, but mild in tern- _{From the} perament and moderate in policy. Many Death of of the measures of Gregory were freely ^are_to°th_e^VI1 condemned by him, and he was inclined to Concordat seek some way to reconcile opposing inter- ^{of Worms}• ests. Victor endeavored to have some one else take the place to which he had been elected, and so delayed his consecration until March 21, 1087. In September he was dead. There had been a practical vacancy of the Papal See for two years, and the next pope was not chosen until March 12, 1088, when Otto, bishop of Ostia, a strong adherent of Gregory VII, was chosen as Urban II, 1088-1099. These facts speak impressively concerning the difficulties of the situation. The prohibition of lay investiture under penalty of excommunication for the bishop-elect to take the insignia of office from the hands of the emperor, or ruling prince, raised questions very difficult of solution, and that could not be settled by the mere assertion that lay investiture was simony, and hence mortal sin. For the prohibition it was justly contended that it was a contradiction of the principles

377

378 Culmination of Medieval Church.

of right or justice for the bishop to be chosen by the king and the royal council, so that those who were to guide and control the Church were imposed upon her without her voice or consent. In this way the highest spiritual offices flowed from the royal favor, and often were conferred for personal and political reasons upon unworthy or unspiritual persons. Only the character of the prince could guard against the suspicion of simony. This was no fictitious danger. The bishops of the empire since the time of Otto the Great had been much more men of business and statesmen than shepherds of the flock. They seldom or never preached, and they lived in state as the secular nobility, whom they surpassed in power, influence, and wealth. The higher prelates were chosen from the clergy of the royal chapel, and were generally related to the imperial house, or were of aristocratic descent. The emperors looked upon them as the chief support of their thrones. Conrad II, his successor, openly took money for ecclesiastical promotions, and has been said to be the true author of the Investiture Controversy. Henry III was free from this sin, against which he used all the influence of the court. During the minority of Henry IV and his earlier reign, ecclesiastical dignities were conferred upon men who had brought a price in their hands.

Against the prohibition it was objected, and with truth, that no king could allow the territories, the wealth, the income, and the influence of the great bishoprics to be administered without his authority or consent. To allow the most considerable part of his dominions and his wealth to be given to men who were indifferent or hostile to the interests of the em

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pire, or its head, would be its economical and political ruin. We can understand why Henry I of England told Pope Paschal II that he would sooner lose half his kingdom than renounce his rights in the election of bishops. It must be added that the German bishops from Otto I to Henry IV were, as a rule, men of high character, able administrators, and, if secular, still intelligent, patriotic, and devoted to the interests of their calling. There were fewer scandals in their personal life and adminstration than later, when papal ideas became predominant. The strife between the opposing principles, the freedom of the Church, and the supremacy of the royal power fills this period.

The strife now resumed the character of personal hostility between Henry IV and the successor of Victor III. Urban II was a Frenchman and former prior of Clugny. He proclaimed his adherence to Gregory’s principles, but was moderate and prudent in his policy and gradually won friends for his cause. In his use of means against his adversary, he was as little scrupulous as any statesman of his time. He gave Henry the first stroke in 1089, when he brought about the formal marriage, for its was only a form, between the young Welf of Bavaria and the Countess Matilda. Welf was eighteen years of age, and Matilda twenty-four years older. Not a single feature in this transaction is to the credit of the parties concerned. The W'elfs sought the marriage, expecting that the great wealth of the countess would fall to their house, ignorant of the fact, of which the pope was well aware, that she made a will bequeathing all her property to the Papal See in the year of Canossa. The pope not only deluded the Welfs, father and son, but put

380 Culmination of Medieval Church.

upon the faithful and devoted countess the hardest service she ever rendered to the Roman Church. It secured the wished-for result in strengthening the adversaries of Henry in Italy, as, victorious in Germany, he again crossed the Alps in 1090. In 1093, Henry suffered the sorest stroke of his life. His son Conrad, much like his mother Bertha in disposition, and who as a babe had accompanied them in that fearful winter’s journey to Canossa, was prevailed upon by Henry’s priestly enemies to break his oath, to rise in rebellion against his father, and to be crowned king of Italy. Henry at first was inclined to be utterly discouraged, and to throw away his sword. It is creditable to humanity that Conrad, the tool and victim of this wretched plot, would allow no one to speak evil of his father in his presence, and wearied and sickened with the unnatural conflict, found a welcome relief in the early death which came to him seven years later.

At the same time, Henry’s second wife, a Russian princess whom he had married two years after the death of Bertha, in 1089, fled to his enemies, and took refuge with the Countess Matilda. There and at great Church Councils she told a tale to injure Henry that shamed the lips that uttered it, and the prelates who instigated and listened to it. Whatever Henry was, none have respect for this woman and those who guided her. Urban gained ground so that he held a great Council at Piacenza, and at Clermont in France, November 18, 1095.

Henry had clearly the upper-hand in Germany. Young Welf separated from his wife in this year, and the whole influence of his powerful house was thrown

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38i

upon the side of the emperor; yet all ecclesiastical relations were in complete confusion through rival bishops in the same see and rival priests in the same parish. The people were thoroughly wearied of the fruitless and wasting strife waged for almost twenty years, as the vast majority believed Urban to be the rightful pope and Henry to be the rightful emperor. Possibly a compromise might have been compelled, but for the result of the Council of Clermont. There began the First Crusade, and this alone gave moral superiority and popular support to the papal cause and the papal claims. Henceforth, Henry’s struggles were vain, the pope’s were too strong; they would never loose the bans nine times pronounced upon the German emperor. Henry was strong in the support of the cities, but the nobility and people were wearied of the strife. Henry had crowned his second son king and his successor under the most solemn oaths of obedience during the life of his father, 1098. He was very different in character from his elder brother Conrad, but the ecclesiastical opponents of Henry played the same game with him. Breaking the most solemn oaths, and being absolved from them by the pope, he rose in rebellion against his father. He took him prisoner, treated him with incredible harshness, and forced from him his abdication at Ingelheim, 1105. When again free, his friends rallied around the old warrior, Cologne pronounced in his favor; he was at Liege, his army confronting the army of his son, with prospects in his favor, when he died, in 1106.

Whatever be the faults of Henry IV, and he was often despotic in his government and sensual in his life, we can not refuse him our pity. Few princes

382 Culmination of Medieval Church.

from early youth have been more sinned against, and that by those who, by their office and the obligations of their religion, should have protected and befriended him. Few rulers of the German Empire bound more closely to them large sections of the nobility and people. Few can refuse admiration for the high courage and varied talents shown in the almost unbroken contests with the most unscrupulous foes during his reign of fifty years. The invasion of the rights of the home by the papacy in this contest goes far to counterbalance its service in the cause of righteousness in the case of the divorce of Lothair and of Philip I of France. No transgression of secular princes could so injure the institution of marriage as the criminal folly of those bound to shield its sanctity, but who made it the sport of their selfish interests, as in the case of Welf and the Countess Matilda. The ease with which the Papal See absolved the sons of Henry from their sacred oaths and from the holiest obligations, and incited them to rebellion against their father, will always be an object-lesson against the interference of the priestly power with the family life. Cursed while living, the pope forced the friends of Henry to dig up his remains from consecrated ground. They were watched by those who loved him until his son brought them to the Church he loved, the burial-place of his fathers at Spires. There they rested in a chapel outside of the cathedral until Henry V compelled the pope to dissolve the ban, and after five years they found rest in the ancestral vaults of the cathedral.

The son soon showed to the pope that he was quite as dangerous an antagonist as his father had been. Quite as stubbornly did he hold to the royal

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right of investiture. Henry V was cool, calculating, hard, and unscrupulous. Paschal II, 1099-1118, though long familiar with the business of the Papal See, was a monk, with all of a ^{Henry v}* monk’s narrowness and rigor. He was convinced that lay investiture was a sin. He unceasingly commanded its rejection, and yet the greatest princes in Christendom—Henry V in Germany and Italy, and his wife’s father, Henry I of England and Normandy—persisted in its exercise. Finally, in mi, Henry with an army drew near to Rome, to receive the imperial crown. All was to be carefully arranged beforehand by treaty. Paschal would on no account allow of lay investiture. He proposed that the bishops and abbots should give over all their possessions to the king, and then receive investiture from the Church alone. To this the king at length agreed. Paschal must have been wofully ignorant of the German episcopate if he supposed they would consent to this, and live only from the tithes and offerings of the people. It was solemnly contracted that the pope should publish his renunciation, the German prelates assent to it; then Henry was to renounce all lay investiture, after which the coronation was to take place. Hfcnry came in procession to St. Peter’s; he took an oath guaranteeing the safety of the pope, then the two documents were presented. The renunciation of the estates of the prelates was read; Henry retired a little to consult with the German clergy, who unanimously rejected it. The pope then wished the renunciation of the lay investiture to be signed first, but Henry refused. They delayed until nightfall. Henry then carried off, as prisoners, the pope and cardinals. The Romans attacked him,

384 Culmination of Medieval Church.

but he drove them off and retired to Soracte. He kept the pope and cardinals in strict confinement for two months, and used toward them the same threats and harshness as earlier towards his father. Finally the pope gave way, and promised that the king should invest those bishops and abbots freely chosen without simony and with his consent; the consecration should take place after the investiture, and the archbishops and bishops should no longer be forbidden, as hitherto, to consecrate those whom the king had invested. The coronation followed, April 13, mi. Henry had broken his solemn oath to the pope and none can acquit him of perjury; but his perjury does not seem of so much deeper dye when directed against the pope than when directed against his father at this same pope’s instigation. Henry was only too apt a scholar, and carried his teaching to an unforeseen application.

Violence never settles a conflict of principles. Ca-nossa did not settle the question of lay investiture, nor did Henry’s stroke of state at Rome. Paschal was compelled by the cardinals to break the treaty concluded with Henry, formally condemning it in 1116. He allowed his legates, on every hand, to curse and excommunicate the emperor, but had enough respect for the rest of his oath to refrain from the sentence himself. The ecclesiastical situation was becoming more and more strained in Germany, when Paschal died in January, 1118. His successor w^ras John of Gaeta, a Benedictine monk of noble family, who took the title of Gelasius II, 1118-1119. He excommunicated Henry, who retaliated by raising up a counterpope, Burdinus, archbishop of Portugal, as Gregory VIII. Gelasius died within a year, and his sue-

The Papacy and the Empire. 385

cessor was Guido, archbishop of Vienne, a near relative of both the king of France and the emperor of Germany, who chose the name of Calixtus II, 11191124. Calixtus, to the manners and bearing of a diplomat, added the insight of a practical statesman, and after a vain attempt, on account of his suspicion of the intentions of Henry V in 1119, he succeeded in carrying through the treaty, or Concordat of concordat Worms, September 23, 1123, which settled, ^{of Worms}-by a compromise, the conflict of fifty disastrous years. The emperor renounced all investiture with ring and staff, which were the insignia of spiritual power. The emperor conferred the investiture of the temporal possessions of the vacant bishopric or abbey, or regalia, with his scepter in Germany before the consecration could take place, and in Italy and Burgundy within six months from that act. The election of bishops in Germany was authorized to take place in the emperor s presence, and in cases of a contested election he could decide.

This treaty was a victory for neither party. Com-oared with the position at the outbreak of the strife it was an immense gain for the papacy, and this result greatly increased its power. Compared with the papal claims, it was an immense defeat. Practically the emperor had as much influence as ever in the election of bishops in Germany, though less in Italy. No emperor was ever more faithfully served by the German episcopate than Frederick I, 1156-119°- Both parties showed their good sense in accepting a compromise, which recognized and limited the rights of each of them. Calixtus II deserved well of the Church and the empire.

25

386 Culmination of Medieval Church.

FROM THE CONCORDAT OF WORMS TO INNOCENT III.

The chief parties to the Concordat of Worms did not long survive the conclusion of the peace. Pope Calixtus II died December 13, 1124, and Henry V in the following May. The successor of Calixtus was Lambert, bishop of Ostia, who was chosen through the influence of the noble Roman family of the Fran-gipani, December 24th; he was consecrated as Hono-rius II, 1124-1130. He was of humble birth, but had achieved distinction as the leading negotiator of the Concordat of Worms. On the death of Henry V the interests of the empire demanded that the law of hereditary succession, which had been followed with hardly an interruption in the choice of Henry II and Conrad II as successors of childless kings, should now prevail. This would have made Frederick of Hohen-staufen, duke of Swabia, nephew of Henry V, emperor, a position for which he was every way qualified. Adalbert, archbishop of Mainz, thought it would increase the power of the Church and the nobility to have Germany become an elective empire. The Church party and the secular nobles feared the empire with Frederick at its head would become too strong. Therefore, it brought about the election of Lothair, duke of Saxony, who repaid their support by concessions to the clergy. Conrad, brother of Frederick, contested this choice, and did not finally submit until ten years later. Lothair was crowned at Aachen, September 13, 1125.

William, duke of Apulia, died childless in 1127. His relative, Roger, king of Sicily, took possession of his dominions. Pope Honorius thought it for his interest to prevent the increase in strength of his

The Papacy and the Empire. 387

Southern neighbor. He marched at the head of an army against Roger, but was defeated and compelled to confirm his adversary’s title to Naples and Sicily, on condition that he became a vassal to the pope, August, 1128. A little more than a year after this inglorious campaign, in February, 1130, Honorius died.

On the death of Honorius a double election took place. The day of his burial five cardinals secretly chose Cardinal Gregory pope, who took the title of Innocent II, 1130-1143. A few hours later, a majority of the cardinals, the clergy, senators, and people, in canonical form, chose Peter Pierlione pope, and he took the title of Anacletus II, 1130-1138. Anacletus was from a family of Jewish descent, who had become wealthy, but were adversaries of the Frangi-pani. He was educated at Paris and Clugny, and was of good morals and culture. Innocent was compelled to leave Rome, and in May, 1130, fled to France. There, St. Bernard espoused his cause as personally the worthiest, chosen by the better party, and more orderly consecrated. He won for Innocent the acknowledgment of Louis VI of France and Lothair of Germany. Innocent II was an able man, but paid a heavy price for the irregular proceedings of his election. Anacletus was supported by Roger, king of Sicily, and for the eight years of his pontificate remained in possession of Rome, except when the emperor came over the Alps with an army for Innocent’s help. This occurred in 1133, and Innocent was able to live in Rome from April to August of that year. He crowned Lothair and his wife, April 30, 1133. Four years later, Lothair, at the request of

388 Culmination of Medijeval Church.

Innocent, made a campaign against King Roger. Lothair died on his return, December 3, 1137, leaving his efforts in Italy without enduring result. Lothair had expected his son-in-law, Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria and Saxony and margrave of Tuscany, to succeed him. Again the Church party, this time under the lead of Adalbert, archbishop of Treves, thought best to choose the weaker party. The choice fell upon Conrad III, 1138-1152, of Hohenstaufen, who made further concessions to the clergy. Though an able warrior, and skilled in business, his years of rebellion against Lothair, and his concessions to the party which secured his election, prevented his being a good ruler of the German Empire. His reign was weakened first by domestic feuds, and afterward by the unfortunate Second Crusade.

Innocent was acknowledged pope in Rome at Pentecost, 1139. In the same year he marched against Roger, king of Sicily, and was taken prisoner. He was obliged to follow his predecessor’s example, by confirming his captor’s title to his kingdom, July 25, 1139. This was, of course, an injury to the rights of the empire, and rendered wholly vain Lothair’s campaign undertaken in behalf of the pope. In the same year assembled the tenth General Council of the Latin Church, being opened April 4th. There were present a thousand prelates, bishops, abbots, etc. The main action of the Council was the condemnation of Arnold of Brescia. Innocent died September 24, 1139.

Celestine II, 1143-1144, who succeeded him, had been a scholar of Abelard, but occupied the Roman See only five months. Lucius II, 1144-1145, was from Bologna, and had been chancellor of Innocent II.

The Papacy and the Empire. 3S9

In storming the capital, which was in possession of the Roman commune, he was struck by a stone, and died soon after. Bernard of Pisa, a scholar of St. Bernard at Clairvaux, was now chosen pope, as Eugenius III, 1145-1153. Eugenius was a monk with no genius for rule. Upon him rests much of the blame for the failure of the Second Crusade. The municipal constitution of Rome he confirmed in 1145, but in 1147 fled to France, from whence he returned in the last of 1149, to be driven out again in June, 1150. A few months only he spent in the Eternal City before his death, at Tivoli, July 8, 1153. Anastasius IV, 1153, was an old man and a Roman, who lived quietly in the city which had been so unfriendly to his predecessors, from July until his death in December. A very different man was his successor, Nicholas Break-spear, the only Englishman among the popes of Rome. He was the son of a poor priest, and in his youth begged at the monastery door for his support. Later, he studied at Paris. He was distinguished for his fine bearing, his learning, and eloquence, but most of all for his pride and unbending will. He took the name of Hadrian IV, 1153-1157.

Conrad III died February 15, 1152. He was the first of the house of Hohenstaufen to be chosen German king, but he never received the imperial crown, and alone of his race was too complaisant to the encroachments of the clergy upon the temporal power. His nephew was unanimously chosen emperor, as Frederick I, 1152-1190.

Frederick, in the qualities of a ruler if not in fortune, is the greatest figure among the German emperors. His father was Frederick of Swabia, who was

390 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

rejected in favor of Lothair in 1125; his mother was Judith, daughter of Henry the Black, and sister of Frederick Henry the Proud, dukes of Bavaria of the Barbarossa. house of Welf. The bfood of ancestral enemies was united in his veins. Frederick was now about thirty years of age. Like all the Hohenstaufens, he was of medium height, well-built, with blonde hair cut short and curling on his forehead. His skin was white, his cheeks red, his beard of a reddish tinge, from which the Italians called him Barbarossa. He had beautiful teeth, thin lips, blue eyes, and a cheerful but penetrating glance. His step was firm, his voice clear, his bearing manly and dignified. Few of us can sympathize with the absolutist ideas and despotic measures of the Hohenstaufens. These were a sad legacy which they received with their title. The new study of Roman law, the disorders of the nobility, and the hatred of rival Italian cities made a strong and even a despotic government seem to many, as later to Dante and Machiavelli, not only necessary but desirable. Men of the English race know that they were wrong; but not every nation has a Runnymede, or a king like Edward I, who called to his councils his trusty commons. Frederick was cruel in his punishments; no one can excuse the destruction of Milan, but he was not cruel by nature, and but followed the customs of his time in requiting transgressions. He did no more to Milan than she had done to Lodi. Frederick’s ruling principle was to preserve unimpaired the rights and increase the power of the empire. He was essentially conservative. When he handed over Arnold of Brescia to the pope to be burned, and fought against the freedom of the Lombard cities, he thought

The Papacy and the Empire. 391

he was clearly within his rights and but executing the laws. He stands upon a lower plane than Charlemagne, who was progressive, being able to see present conditions, and to accommodate himself to and rule a new era. Nor did he accomplish for Germany what Philip Augustus did for France.

Frederick, however, had the qualities of a great ruler. His steadfast mind and quiet courage in good, or evil fortune remind one of General Grant. His knowledge of men and the freedom with which he carried out his plans, and their unshaken faithfulness to him in a reign of nearly forty changeful years, remind one of Charlemagne, and are in strong contrast with the reign of Henry IV. He was slow to anger, and kept himself in perfect control; but when once determined on a policy, unbending, as in the case of Henry the Lion. On the other hand, he never seemed greater than when he found he must renounce the great struggle of his life, and make peace with the Lombard cities and the pope. His good sense and good faith under these new conditions show him to have been no ordinary man or ruler. His personal character and upright life show the value of moral personality in government, and will keep green his fame.

Frederick was crowned at Rome, June 18, 1155. He had made a treaty at Constance, in 1153, with Eugenius, prescribing the obligation of the emperor and the pope preparatory to the coronation. Hadrian confirmed it. The pope had put down the party of municipal freedom under Arnold of Brescia with a strong hand. He placed Rome under an interdict. No other pope had dared to deal so with the oft-rebell-

392 Culmination of Medieval Church.

ious city. The Romans drove out Arnold of Brescia. Hadrian caused Frederick to deliver him to his legates, when he was strangled and burned, in June, 1155.

Frederick was at Sutri on June 9, 1155, where the pope and cardinals came to meet him; the king did not lead the pope’s horse, or assist him to dismount. The cardinals, fearing the fate of those who fell into the hands of Henry V, at once fled in terror. When the pope dismounted, Frederick prostrated himself and kissed his foot. Hadrian raised him up, but gave him no kiss of peace, and upbraided him for withholding the honors customary for the emperor to render to the pope. Frederick promised to do what was according to ancient right and custom. This was discussed the next day in the imperial council, and decided in the pope’s favor. The pope had another meeting with the emperor, when the proudest of the Hohenstaufens led the horse, held the stirrup, and kissed the foot of the son of an English priest. Then Hadrian raised him up, and gave him the kiss of peace.

Frederick was crowned at St. Peter’s. A year later, Hadrian marched against William, king of Sicily; the old play was repeated. Hadrian was, of course, defeated, and confirmed the possessions of William on receiving an oath of fealty. Frederick, with reason, looked upon this act as breaking the conditions of the treaty of Constance. The breach between the emperor and the pope became an open one. At the Synod of Synod of Besangon, October, 1157, the Besanfon. p_ap_al legates were present. The letter of the pope was read by his trusted counselor, Cardinal Roland, later Alexander III. The letter was in Latin. The imperial chancellor, Rainald of Dassel, translated

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as Roland read. The pope spoke of conferring the imperial crown upon Frederick, and of the greater bcneficia which, if it were possible, he should receive at his hands. Rainald translated the word by “lehn,” or fief—that is, Frederick’s kingdom and empire were conferred upon him by the pope, on conditions which made him the pope’s vassal. When the sentence was translated, Pfalzgrave Otto of Wittelsbach, the ancestor of the present reigning house of Bavaria, drew his sword, and would have split open Cardinal Roland’s head if the emperor had not interferred. Roland replied: “Of whom then does the emperor have his empire, if not of the pope?” The emperor replied: “If we were not in a church, you would feel how sharp are German swords.” He sent the legates back at once by the shortest route to Rome, without allowing them to see bishop or abbot. That Rainald of Dassel had given the correct translation, the Germans believed, for there was hanging on the walls of the pope’s palace of the Lateran at Rome a picture of the pope crowning the emperor with the inscription that thus the emperor became the vassal of the pope. The next June, Hadrian wrote a letter to Frederick, seeking to renew their relations. He declared the meaning of the word was benefits, and these, and not fiefs, were conferred by the pope. Without being uncharitable, we may well believe that if offense had not been taken at the first interpretation the pope would never have thought of suggesting the other.

Frederick crossed the Alps in 1158, and, after a siege, Milan submitted to the emperor. At the Assembly of the estates of the empire on the Roncaglian fields, in November, 1158, there were declared the

394 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

celebrated resolutions, in which he resumed the regalia, or the imperial rights of taxation and government in the Italian cities. There is no question but these formerly and legitimately belonged to the emperor, and during the decline of the imperial power had fallen into abeyance. Frederick was strictly within the letter of the law in seeking their renewal. On the other hand, these cities had become the most flourish-"mg centers of trade, industry, and commerce in Italy; the recurrence to the conditions and rights of the preceding century was simply impossible. As well might we claim that great railway companies should be governed as were stage-routes, or that trusts need to be controlled only as private corporations. Frederick, conservative and always looking backward, could not see this, and wasted the strength of his reign, which should have gone to the formation of an enduring and prosperous State in Germany, in the vain attempt to set back civilization and progress a hundred years. Hadrian left Rome in May, and died in open war with the emperor, at Anagni, September I, II59*

The election which followed resulted in the consecration of two popes. The majority of the cardinals were in favor of Cardinal Roland, the legate of Be-san<;on. This, of course, was not pleasing to the imperial party. While Roland’s adherents strove to clothe him with the red cloak appropriate to the papal office, Cardinal Octavian stripped it from him. It was taken out of Octavian’s hands, but another was immediately produced, and he was proclaimed by his party of the cardinals, the clergy of St. Peter’s, the senators, and people as Victor IV, 1159-1164.

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Roland Bandinelli of Sienna was proclaimed the same day, September 7th, as Pope Alexander III, 1159-1181. Alexander was an able man, one of the most remarkable of the popes. During a long pontificate of twenty-two years, in eighteen of which he had to contend with anti-popes supported by the whole power of the empire under the ablest ruler of the century, he carried his ideas of Church freedom and government to a complete triumph. No pope has a prouder tribute to his memory than the city of Alessandria in Lombardy, founded and given his name for his unceasing efforts and successful endeavors in behalf of municipal independence in Italy.

Frederick called a Synod at Pavia, February 11, 1160, which pronounced in favor of Victor IV, and the emperor confirmed their decision. On the 2d of March following, Alexander excommunicated the emperor. Frederick’s power increased. After a siege from August, 1161, to March, 1162, Milan, the largest city in Northern Italy, was taken and destroyed. In January, Alexander left Rome, and betook himself to that refuge of fugitive popes, France. In the fall of 1160, it was of great importance to secure the acknowledgment of Alexander by the kings of France and England, who were present at the Synod of Toulouse, as a counterpoise against Frederick. Alexander’s legates therefore brought about the betrothal of Henry’s seven-year-old son with a French princess, three years of age. According to the custom of the time, she should be at once taken to her father-in-law’s house. It was agreed that when they were really married, the towns and fortresses which were contested between England and France should be her dowry.

396 Culmination of Medieval Church.

Henry caused the legates to agree that the marriage should immediately take place, and he himself be at once put in possession of the coveted territory. It was done; the legates hastened to the frontier at the quickest possible pace to escape the wrath of the French sovereign, and war broke out between the two kings; but both had acknowledged Alexander.

Rainald of Dassel had been made archbishop of Cologne. After the death of Victor IV he procured the election of Cardinal Guido of Cremona as Paschal III, 1164-1168, against the emperor’s will, as he inclined to a compromise with Alexander. In April, 1165, Henry

II of England, on account of his quarrel with Thomas a Becket, renounced his obedience to Alexander. Frederick, now at the height of his power, planned, in August, to meet Louis VII of France on the bridge over the Saone at St. John Saone. Alexander, using every endeavor, broke off the meeting. It was the crisis of his fate, for if France had joined with England and the empire in acknowledging Paschal, the cause of Alexander would have been ruined. At the Reichstag at Wurzburg, in May, all present took a solemn oath never to recognize Alexander III as the lawful pope. In 1167, Frederick took Rome; Alexander fled to Beneventum. Pope Paschal crowned the empress Beatrix, August 1st. On the next day broke out a great plague of malarial dysentery. Thousands died; accounts vary from two thousand to twenty-five thousand. Among these were some of the highest and chiefest nobility of the empire, like Rainald of Dassel and Frederick of Swabia, son of Emperor Conrad. The emperor, with the wreck of his army, withdrew to the North.

The Papacy and the Empire.

The League of the Lombard cities was formed in March, 1167. Its first members were Cremona, Brescia, Bergamo, and Mantua. The re- Lombard * building of Milan was begun in April. League. Within a year all the Lombard cities were within the League. Alessandria was founded in 1168. The emperor besieged it in vain from October, 1174, till Easter the next year. Frederick was completely surprised and defeated at the battle of Legnano, May 29, 1176. From this time the emperor was anxious for peace, as he saw the impossibility of subduing the League. Abbot John of Strum was chosen antipope, as Calixtus III, 1168-1178. Frederick and Alexander had both grown older and wiser than when the latter first banned the emperor and the former swore the oath at Wurzburg. Both were sincerely desirous of peace. The Lombard cities were the main obstacle in every approach of the pope to the emperor; they feared they were to be betrayed into his power. Frederick’s ambassadors met the pope at Anagni, and settled in outline the points of difference between them. Venice offered to provide a place of meet- p_eaCe ing for them, honorable, safe, and con- of Venice, venient. Finally, the'pope and the emperor, so long hostile, met on the steps of San Marco. Frederick fell before the pope and kissed his foot. Alexander raised him up and gave him the kiss of peace and his blessing. Peace was made between the emperor and the pope, a truce of fifteen years between the emperor and Sicily, and five years between the emperor and the Lombard League. The Peace of Constance, between Frederick and the League, June 25, 1183, preserved their municipal rights and civic freedom.

398 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

Alexander never forgot the ingratitude of the rebellious Romans, and during the remainder of his pontificate he was in the city only a short time in 1178, and again the next year. Calixtus submitted to him in August, 1178, and received the rectorate of Beneventum. In March, 1179, Alexander assembled the eleventh Latin General Council; there were present about 300 bishops and 1,000 prelates. The chief work of the Council was the provision against double elections; that two-thirds of the votes of the cardinals present should be necessary to a choice. Meanwhile, Frederick dealt with his cousin, Henry the Lion, who had refused his aid when in his struggle with the Lombard cities. Henry, in territories and wealth, was surpassed by but few monarchs in Europe; they equaled in extent the present kingdom of Prussia. After citing him in vain to trial, Frederick arrested him in 1180. The dukedom of Bavaria, the ancestral possession of his house, and where he had founded Munich, was taken from him; Saxony was left to him, but he w^ras banished from the empire. Thus the house of Welf, or Guelph, was transferred from Bavaria to Brunswick, and from it descended England's reigning house. The next year, August 30th, Alexander died at Civita Castellana.

The election which followed resulted in the choice of Ubaldo of Lucca, bishop of Ostia, as Lucius III, 1181-1185. He pursued the same policy as Alexander, but with less energy. The Romans drove him from the city in April, 1184. He fled to Verona to the emperor for protection, where he died in November, 1187. His successor was Humbert Crevelli of Milan, who took the name of Urban III, 1185-1187.

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He was a determined enemy of Frederick, but his reign was short. Yet during this time the papal policy suffered its greatest political defeat, and Frederick realized the aim of the imperial arms and policy since the coronation of Otto I. Henry VI, the emperor’s son and successor, married Constance, the heiress of the two Sicilies, at Milan, January 27, 1186. This was a master stroke of politics, and restored to Frederick and his house more than all he had lost by the treaties of Venice and Constance. Eight years later, their son, the emperor Frederick II, was born. This was the overthrow of all the plans of Hildebrand, and of the pontifical policy since his time; it could only be expiated when the blood of the last Hohen-staufen was shed upon the scaffold.

Alberto di Mora of Beneventum, an old man of mild disposition, who wished for peace with the empire, followed the hostile Urban. He took the title of Gregory VIII, 1187, but ruled only three months. Paolo Scolari, a Roman by birth, and bishop of Palestrina, was chosen at Pisa, and took the name of Clement III, 1187-1191. He knew the Romans, returned to their city, recognized their civic constitution, and died peacefully among them.

The year after the marriage of the heir of the empire with Constance of Sicily, Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Saracens, after a Christian dominion of less than ninety years, through the conquest of Saladin, October 2, 1187. All Christendom felt the weight of this awful blow; great preparations were made for the Crusade which should avenge it. Frederick I put himself at the head of the movement, but Richard I of England and Philip Augustus of France

400 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

commanded armies in the Crusade. Frederick led his troops with the prudence of an able statesman and general, and with the benefit of his experience in the Second Crusade forty years before. He had bright prospects of bringing the Crusade to a fortunate issue when the ice-cold water of the river Cydnus ended his reign, his life, and the success of the Crusade in one fatal day, June 10, 1190. In his long years of rule and warfare, Frederick never showed greater ability or nobler traits of character than in his last disastrous campaign. No wonder that to his people he is the ideal ruler of the Middle Ages.

Cardinal Hyacinth, of the Roman family of the Orsini, was the next occupant of the Papal See. He was eightv-five years old, yet reigned seven years as Celestine III, 1191-1198. He crowned Henry VI emperor, with his wife Constance, April 15, 1191. Henry conquered Sicilv in 1194, and with great cruelty enforced submission to his authority. While preparing for a Crusade he died, September 2, 1197, at the age of thirty-three, having reigned seven years. He left a reputation for selfishness, cruelty, and despotism unapproached among German emperors. Constance was two years his senior, and died the following year, leaving her son Frederick, a child four years of age, to the guardianship of the greatest of the popes, Innocent III.

THE PONTIFICATE OF INNOCENT III.

The mightiest of the popes, Lothair Conti, son of Thrasmund, count of Segni, was chosen pope January 8, 1198, and took the title of Innocent III. Innocent was of a rich as well as of a noble family. He

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studied theology at Paris, and civil and canon law at Bologna. He had been for some years cardinal, having been appointed by Clement III, and was now thirty-seven years of age. Innocent was a man of high moral character, great abilities, liberal culture, indefatigable industry, and with a strong sense of justice lie combined great gifts as an administrator. lie assumed it as his task to realize the ideas of Gre<r-ory VII as to the supremacy of the Papal See, and the necessary vassalage of the States and monarchs of Christendom. The time was favorable, and no man more fitted for this purpose ever wore the triple crown. That the attempt ended in failure is the great lesson of the history of the Middle Ages. That failure was inevitable and necessary. What shall be said of the ignorance or deceit of those who ignore it, or pretend that it was a success, and that the safety of religion and moral and social order is to be found in the resumption of the task which failed in the hands of Innocent and his successors?

Innocent succeeded to the Roman See when the heir of the empire was little more than an infant; the opportunity of Hildebrand came to his great successor. Philip, duke of Swabia, uncle of the infant Frederick II, assumed the duties of guardian and protector of the empire. The German nobility did not think it possible for a child to rule them. Richard I of England, angered at his imprisonment, his extorted and enormous ransom, and so embittered against the Hohenstaufens, by the free use of his money procured the election of his nephew Otto, son of Henrv the Lion, to the German Empire, and he was crowned Otto IV, 1198-1218, July 12, at Co-

26

402 Culmination of Medieval Church.

lognc. But the majority and the greatest of the nobles rallied around Philip, who was crowned at Mainz, September 8, 1198, and civil war, which had been almost unknown in Germany for a century, raged again. At this juncture, Innocent, taking advantage of the divisions and weakness of the empire, won again for the Church all central Italy, as the States of the Church, which had been granted out as fiefs by Henry VI. After years of conflict he was even more successful in Rome, where, in 1205, he won the rule of Rome for a single senator, who was appointed under his influence. Innocent was safe in Rome, as were few popes of that or the preceding century.

In 1204, the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, against his wish and command, had turned their arms against their fellow Christians, and instead of conquering Alexandria or Jerusalem, had taken Constantinople, and thus broken down the great barrier between Islam and Europe. This apparent reunion of the East with Rome enhanced the power and respect of Innocent, and greatly rejoiced his heart. Constance in dying made Innocent guardian of her young son, Frederick II, but before he would assume the task she was obliged to renounce all claims for herself and her son independently to rule Sicily. It became again a vassal of the Roman See. This accomplished, and Innocent, now lord of Italy, gave to his young ward an excellent education, and fitted him for the duties which belong to his station, and preserved to him his rights against barons and usurpers.

The opportunity so eagerly desired by Gregory VII came to Innocent. The rival parties in Germany made him arbiter in the contest for the imperial crown. Otto

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had pressed for an immediate decision in his favor. At first, Innocent appeared impartial, but in March, 1201, he came out decisively for Otto, passing over the claims of his imperial ward, and of his uncle, Philip of Swabia. He did not profess to do this on any grounds of legal right, but simply because, in his judgment, Otto was better fitted for the throne. On his side, Otto, at Neuss, June 8, 1201, swore to renounce in great part the imperial power in Italy; to acknowledge and confirm the new States of the Church as formed by Innocent, and the subjugation of Sicily to the pope of Rome. After three years’ delay and civil war, the sentence was pronounced to which Innocent inclined from the first, but for which he awaited a favorable turn of affairs. Unfortunately for the pope and for Otto, from this time Philip grew stronger. In 1206, Cologne fell into his hands, after which event Innocent withdrew his support from Otto, and went over to the side of Philip. This was done decisively by the spring of 1208. Unfortunate for Innocent, and most disastrous for his country, was the assassination of Philip, at Bamberg, by Otto of Wittelsbach, for some unknown cause, June 21, 1208. Otto was chosen emperor at Frankfort, in November, and the next March renewed at Spires the promises he had made at Neuss. In August of the same year, Otto came to Italy, and Innocent crowned him at St. Peter’s, October 4, 1209. Otto never forgot the tergiversation of the pope in regard to his claim, nor the deep humiliation he had caused him.

In the beginning of the next year came an open breach with the pope. Otto resumed the rights of the empire in the States of the Church, and finally

404 Culmination of Medieval Church.

attacked the pope’s vassal State of Sicily. On the 18th of November, 1210, a little over a year after he had crowned him, Innocent pronounced his ban against the emperor. Otto claimed that if he had broken his oath to the pope, it was only to keep that which he had taken at his coronation, to preserve the rights of the empire. No Hohenstaufen could have more bitterly deceived the hopes of his papal patron. The shame and humiliation could not well have been greater. The man whom Innocent had chosen in preference to his ward, to all claims of hereditary right and the wishes of the German people, for whom civil war had been carried on for ten years, had turned out to be the bitter enemy of the pope. Only one thing remained for Innocent to do. He pronounced Otto deposed, and raised up in his stead, Frederick II, the heir of the Hohenstaufens, and the bitterest and ablest enemy the papacy ever had. Frederick was compelled to renounce Sicily to his oldest son, then a babe in the cradle. He was chosen emperor at Frankfort, December 2, 1212. At Eger, the next July, Frederick renewed to the pope the promises which had been made by Otto. At the battle of Bouvines, July 25,

1215, Otto was completely defeated; henceforth his power was broken, and three years later, contrite and penitent, he died. Frederick’s claim was confirmed by the Council of the Lateran, and henceforth he was the sole ruler as well as heir of the inheritance of the Hohenstaufen line in its widest extent. Innocent had raised up and furnished the greatest resources for the most powerful adversary of the Roman See. This was the result of eighteen years of labor and interference in the politics of Germany. The greatest of

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the popes made the most ignominious of failures as the arbiter of the political disputes of a Christian nation.

The relations of Innocent with England were not more creditable to the Roman See as the arbiter of Christendom. Hubert, archbishop of Can- Innocent III terbury, died in 1205. The monks of and England. Christ’s Church, who had the right of election, met hastily and secretly and elected Reginald, their subprior, as his successor. They sent him with an am-bassy to Innocent to secure lift confirmation. He was to keep secret his election until it had been ratified; but when in Flanders his vanity led him to assume the title and state of an archbishop. Meanwhile, the calmer members of the chapter, in conjunction with the bishops of the province, who claimed concurrent rights of election, chose John de Gray, bishop of Norwich, a martial prelate of the king’s council and agreeable to him, as Hubert’s successor. Innocent heard both parties, and finally, in the spring of 1206, called the twelve monks of Christ’s Church present at Rome before him, and had them choose to the vacant primacy, Stephen Langton, an Englishman then in Rome, known to the pope, eminent for his character, his talents, his learning, and, as the pope was to find, also for courage. This choice was a plain usurpation of the rights of the English Church and the English king, but through an overruling Providence, it gave to England the best archbishop and the most successful defender of the rights of Englishmen against the king and the pope known to her history.

John was in a transport of rage. He forbade Stephen Langton to set foot on English soil. Innocent

4o6 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

was unyielding, and March 24, 1208, he laid all England under the terrors of the interdict. Four years later he pronounced John deposed. John held out England ^0ver ^^ve y^ears> but ^at Dover, May 15, under the 1213, he made a complete and abject sub-lnterdict. _mi_ssio_n. He not only acknowledged Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, and agreed to recompense the clergy for his persecutions and confiscations during the interdict, but he made England a fief of the Papal See, and took oath to the pope as his vassal.    •

In his deed to the pope, John recites: “Be it known to all men, that having in many points offended God England ^anc^ Holy Mother, the Church, as satis-as vassal faction for our sins, and duly to humble o« the Pope. _ourse]_{ves a}fter the example of Him who for our sakes humbled himself to death, by the grace of the Holy Ghost, with our own free will and the common consent of our barons, we bestow and yield up to God, to his holy apostles Peter and Paul, to our lord the pope Innocent and his successors, all of our kingdom of England and all our kingdom of Ireland, to be held as a fief of the Holy See, with the payment of a thousand marks and the customary Peter’s pence. We reserve to ourselves and to our heirs the royal rights in the administration of justice. And we declare this deed inviolable; and if any of our successors shall attempt to annul our act, we declare him hereby to have forfeited his crown.” England will never forget this high-handed usurpation. The annual tribute of one thousand marks was not paid under Edward I, and formally refused by Edward III; but England’s final answer was not given until the act

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ol supremacy of Henry VIII in 1536, and of settlement under William III, 1700—acts which denied the papal supremacy, and forbade a Roman Catholic ever to wear the English crown.

John’s cowardly submission to the pope went hand in hand with intolerable tyranny over his people. The barons of England, with Stephen Langton i_nnocent as their moving spirit, rose against him, and the and compelled him to sign the first great^{Magna Charta}-charter of English liberty, the great guarantee of the civil rights of Englishmen, the Magna Charta, which has been of such unspeakable value in making the English race the successful leader in the great battle for constitutional liberty throughout Christendom. The first signature on the side of the nobility to the great charter is that of Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, and the hand that wrote the name prepared the charter. Innocent, in great wrath, condemned the charter. He declared: “We can no longer pass over in silence such audacious wickedness, committed in contempt of the Apostolic See, in infringement of the rights of the king, to the disgrace of the kingdom of England, and to the great peril of the Crusade. We, therefore, with the advice of our brethren, altogether reprove and condemn the charter, prohibiting the king, under pain of anathema, from observing it, the barons from exacting its observation; we declare the said charter, with all its obligations and guarantees, absolutely null and void.” When Stephen Langton came to the great Lateran Council the next November, Innocent suspended him from his office, and placed him in virtual arrest. The archbishop did not return to England until after the death of

408 Culmination of Medieval Church.

John. Innocent III strove to use the papal supremacy to stifle English constitutional liberty at its birth, happily in vain.

Innocent III succeeded in making Aragon a vassal State of the Roman See, and gained some ill-defined innocent rights °f supremacy over the Latin Empire and Philip of Constantinople. Even more decisive Augustus. _was kj_s yjctory over Philip Augustus of France, though it did not lead to any national humiliation. Philip married for his second wife, Ingeburga, sister of the king of Denmark, in 1193, but on his wedding-day conceived an invincible repugnance to her. Within three months the archbishop of Rheims pronounced her divorced on the ground of too near relationship with Philip’s deceased wife. Ingeburga appealed to Rome; she dwelt in a cloister as a virtual prisoner, even suffering want. Pope Celestine sent his legates to Paris to investigate the case in 1196, but they took no action in the matter, and in June, Philip married Agnes, daughter of the count of Meran, or Tyrol. In September, 1198, the new pope, Innocent, after renewed expostulations, threatened Philip with the interdict. The threat was fulfilled, and the French kingdom was laid under interdict, January 14, 1200. Philip agreed to submit to the sentence of the coming Synod, to be held at Soissons, and the interdict was raised September 7th of the same year. In March, 1201, the Synod affirmed his marriage with Ingeburga. Philip appeared to yield, and received Ingeburga until the Synod adjourned; then, though she was given a palace in which to reside, she was treated worse than before, in order to compel her to become a nun. In the same year, Agnes of Meran

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died, and Innocent declared her two children legitimate, because the marriage was contracted in good faith after the divorce pronounced by the archbishop of Rheims. For the next twelve years, Philip was unceasing in his efforts to secure a divorce, first on the ground of sorcery, and then that his wife had promised to enter a convent. In all these years, Innocent was her steadfast friend, and her lot was improved; finally, Philip sent an ambassy to make a last appeal in his behalf to Innocent himself. When this failed, Philip submitted and received Ingeburga, 1213, living happily with her, after this twenty years’ quarrel, until his death in 1223. Innocent’s courage and persistence in enforcing righteousness among the great has been everywhere commended. The baneful influence of papal politics upon morals is shown in the different treatment this same pope gave to the trangression of King John.

John had been married ten years to Avisa, the daughter of the earl of Gloucester, an equal connection for the young prince; but now on |_nnocent the throne, John sought a higher alliance, and the Mar-The archbishop of Bordeaux dissolved the ^{naffe of John}* marriage on the ground of remote affinity, and negotiations were concluded for marriage with the daughter of the king of Portugal, when John suddenly became infatuated with Isabella, the betrothed wife of Count de la Marche. She fled with John, and married him. This flagrant outrage of the laws of the land and of the Church, to which there is added adultery and the repudiation of his lawful wife, elicited from Pope Innocent no interdict or censure against either the guilty king or the archbishop of Bordeaux. The

4io Culmination of Medieval Church.

case was much more flagrant than that of Philip Augustus; why the difference in treatment? Mainly because John was the ally and supporter of Otto of Brunswick, the papal candidate at this time for the German crown.

Innocent invited the episcopate of Christendom to a General Council at the Lateran in 1213. It was Fourth Lat- °P^ene(l November 1, 1215, when was col-eran Council, lected the most illustrious assembly

^,2,5‘ gathered at a Church Council in the Middle Ages. Four hundred and twelve bishops, with eight hundred abbots and priors, were present. The Council did not initiate any great world-historic movement like the Crusades, but it was the representation of the mediaeval Church at the height of its power, and under the presidency of the greatest of its popes. It defined the doctrine of the Trinity, sanctioning the realistic conception against that of nominalism. It brought into the Creed and defined the doctrine of transubstantiation, under the Aristotelic categories of species and substance. “This made the beginning of the confusion between dogma and theology.” It made annual auricular confession to the parish priest compulsory, “an overstepping of Church authority, because, according to Church teaching, those only could be urged to confession who had committed a crime demanding Church penance.” But on these two canons, with the exposition of Thomas Aquinas, is built the whole frame-work of mediaeval and Roman Catholic theology, as distinguished from that of the ancient Church. The Council also enacted most stringent laws against heretics, on which was based the later inquisition; it forbade the taxation of the

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clergy and the goods of the Church; it ameliorated the restrictions of relationship in marriage, removing them from the seventh to the fourth degree. In its more than sixty other canons it re-enacted the rules in regard to the discipline of the clergy and the election of prelates. It required physicians to give timely notice to the priest of the condition of their patients. The Council deposed Raymond of Toulouse, and gave his lands to Simon de Montfort, against Innocent’s sense of justice, but he confirmed the decree. Innocent took stern measures for the repression of heresy, and authorized the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The pope hoped the Council would lead to the greatest and most successful of the Crusades. He began preparations for it, but in a few months his pontificate was ended; he died July 16,

1216.

Thus ended the work of the ablest and the most powerful of the popes of Rome. Its failure was not apparent to that generation; not until the Innocent’s following century was it evident to all the Failure, world. No plainer lesson is written in human history, and the teacher who ignores it is guilty of criminal folly. The failure was not in the man, but inherent in the nature of the case. The Church of our Lord Jesus Christ was never founded for temporal supremacy. Its office-bearers, its shepherds of the flock, were never intended to wield the scepter as temporal sovereigns. Their rule was to be one of moral influence and spiritual authority, and its inspiring motive must be a love like that which brought the Savior to die for men. The papal dominion was a natural outgrowth of the ideas of the Middle Ages and the claims

412 Culmination of Medieval Church.

of ambitious prelates who held the See of Rome, but in such flagrant contradiction to the principles of the New Testament and the weal of civil society that it could not prevail. Its weakness is nowhere more evident than in the results of its activity when at the height of its power.

Against Innocent III was brought only the charge of unduly favoring the men of his house, and thus Character beginning that nepotism which became the of innocent. _scanc{_ai f_or ages of the papal court. He was not only an able but a high-minded man, with a sincere desire to do justly, honor God, and bless men in his rule of the Church. The tergiversations of his politics, his dealings with John of England and Raymond of Toulouse, show how ill fare moral and spiritual interests and principles when they have to accommodate themselves to preponderant political considerations, and how important it is that those who represent the former to the world keep clear from the complications which beset supreme political authority. Not only was Innocent a great pope, but his might and influence were very real. No other pope dared to lay two of the greatest kingdoms of Christendom under interdict until their sovereigns bowed in submission to him, or for fifteen years through three different princes determine the succession to the imperial throne. Under him was organized the Fourth Crusade, and preparations for the fifth. From him the mediaeval Church took its final shape, the dogmatic decrees of the Lateran Council separating it from the Church of the first six centuries; and to Innocent was due those two fateful institutions which most distinguished it—the mendicant orders and the inquisition.

The Papacy and the Empire.

FROM INNOCENT III TO BONIFACE VIII.

The successor to the primacy and fame of Innocent III, to the greatest political power as well as highest spiritual authority in Christendom, was Cen-cius Savelli, who had been vice-chancellor and chamberlain to the Papal See, and took the title of Ilono-rius III, 1216-1227. Honorius was a man of high character, blameless life, and mild disposition. Frederick now gained the great end of his policy when his son Henry was elected German king at Frankfort, in April, 1220, thus providing that his power and dominion should be secured to his house in the event of his death, and preventing the raising up of a rival king in Germany while he was pursuing his plans in Italy. At St. Peter’s in Rome, November 22, 1220, Honorius crowned Frederick II emperor. Frederick was now twenty-six years of age, and to him had fallen all that power and ability could give. He was king of Sicily from his cradle, elected emperor when but sixteen, and crowned eight years later, while the kingdom of Jerusalem became his by marriage in 1229. Fortune, that had frowned upon his cradle, smiled upon his splendid manhood. In natural gifts, in learning and opportunities, he is surpassed by no prince in the Middle Ages. He filled the world as no other man since Charlemagne. His contemporaries called him “stupor mundi,” the wonder of the world.

Frederick is the most attractive personality among the German emperors. He was of medium height, but well proportioned: of great personal

,    1    •    r    1 Frederick 11.

beauty and attractiveness of manner; he excelled in knightly exercises, in poetry, music, and the life of the court; he was distinguished as a diplo

414 Culmination of Medieval Church.

matist and statesman. Under happier circumstances he might have achieved a success equal to his fortunes; he might have left a name as renowned as Charlemagne. But he was under the influence of the despotic traditions associated with the empire; he was brought up in Sicily an orphan prince in association with the Saracens, and he had to fight for his empire and his existence with the papacy at the height of its power. His fundamental defects were lack of religious conviction and moral principle. He was licentious; he was utterly without national sympathies or support; he became godless and cruel; cut off from religious and moral sympathies, his great fame and abilities could not prevent his fall. He failed for lack of moral restraint and the inspiration of a moral and spiritual aim. This is evident from a comparison of his career with that of his grandfather, Frederick Bar-barossa. In the life of Frederick I, high character, moral influence, and religious faith kept his friends steadily faithful to him, gave him dignity in defeat, and enabled him to rally after the greatest of misfortunes. It may well be said that Frederick II had little to incite him to love for the Church and religion in the policy of his papal guardian, who robbed him of his inheritance, and only brought him forth as a candidate for the German crown of his ancestors when all other plans had hopelessly failed, and under conditions which should as much as possible diminish its luster; and the royal orphan, in the atmosphere of the Sicilian court and in the association with the Saracens, would hardly learn restraint.

Frederick II, more of a diplomatist than his father or grandfather, sought to win without open violence.

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He founded in Sicily the first of modern States in its financial and administrative constitution. He cut loose from feudalism by founding a cen- Frederick’s tralized State paying taxes to the king, and Policy, admininstered by officers of royal appointment, not by the feudal nobility. This gave him the largest and most certain revenue of his time, while by the employment of bands of Saracen mercenaries he became independent of the feudal military service of the nobility. The sole aim of the policy of Frederick was to increase the power and resources of his dominions. To this he gave as great personal devotion as Innocent III to the aggrandizement of the papacy. Most unfortunately for him, he could see its success only in such bartering away of the rights of the imperial crown to the territorial nobility as destroyed all national union in Germany, and in the destruction of free municipal life in Italy. The great desire and aim of Honorius was to carry out Innocent’s plan for a Crusade. Frederick took the cross at his coronation. It was a point of papal policy to hurry Frederick off as soon as possible on a Crusade, which had been fatal to so many princes of bis house, before he should consolidate his immense dominions and unrivaled power. It was a capital point of Frederick’s policy to delay this expedition as long as possible, until these ends had been secured. He had promised to set out in 1221, and Honorius, trusting to his engagement, forbade an advantageous peace, with the result that the Crusaders lost Damietta. Like engagements were made for 1225 and 1227. Before the last could be fulfilled, Frederick’s friend, the mild Honorius, had ceased to reign; he died at the Lateran, March 18, 1227. His

4i6 Culmination of Medieval Church.

successor was Hugolino Conti, a relative of Innocent III, who was chosen the next day, and took the name of Gregory IX, 1227-1241. A stronger contrast could scarcely be imagined than that between Hono-rius and his successor. Gregory IX was already an old man, but age had brought neither restraint nor peace. He was proud, passionate, and self-willed. Finally, Frederick sailed from Brindisi, in September, 1227, on the Crusade. A sickness had already broken out among the troops; it prevailed on board ship. Frederick, mindful of the fate of his father, his father’s brother, and his grandfather, after a day’s sail and being ill, put into port at Otranto, bidding the rest of the expedition to sail on. Thus he escaped the plague. Gregory was furious at what he assumed was the intentional evasion of Frederick’s vow, and even accused him for being responsible for the sickness among his troops. In the same month he solemnly banned the emperor. Frederick replied in a strong and temperate appeal to the public opinion of Europe, in which he clearly set forth the injustice of the pope’s charges and the limits of the pope’s interference in political affairs; he proclaimed his intention of fulfilling his vow at the earliest possible moment. He sailed on his Crusade in June, 1228. The pope was in a passion of rage that the emperor should dare to sail before humbling himself and being released from the excommunication which he had pronounced the March previous. He did all in his power to make Frederick’s expedition a failure, in spite of which Frederick recovered more for the Christians than any other Crusader since Godfrey of Bouillon. If the pope had aided Frederick as heartily as he cursed him, the king-

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aom of Jerusalem might have been restored. On the contrary, the army of the pope advanced to seize Frederick’s dominions in Naples. The emperor hurried home to protect his lands, which should have been safe, as under the Crusader’s vow, from all attack-above all, from the attack of the head of Christendom— while their lord was seeking to win, and had w^ron, the Holy Sepulcher. Frederick showed himself so strong that, though the pope had absolved his subjects from their allegiance in August, 1228, he found it advisable to conclude peace at San Germano, July 23, 1230. The pope had played his little game of Italian politics and lost, but the cause of the Crusaders was irrecoverably lost also. From this time it never again commanded the public opinion of Europe, and, in Germany at least, none believed in the sincerity of the popes when they pretended to desire or promote a Crusade; it was understood as a well-worn expedient for financial or political ends.

Louis of Wettelsbach, duke of Bavaria, was the guardian of the young Henry, son of Frederick II, and had been faithful to his trust. When the pope released the emperor’s subjects from their allegiance in 1228, he sent legates to Germany to stir up rebellion, who incited Duke Louis, the most prominent of the German princes, to seek the crown, and to ally himself with the Lombard cities and German nobility to that end. The attempt failed, and Louis submitted to Frederick’s authority, August 27, 1229. Yet he was not reconciled to the emperor. He saw the necessity of it, as he had been guilty of treason, and the emperor had cited him to judgment as a traitor. He sent an ambassador with a letter seeking forgiveness, who

27

4i8 Culmination of Medieval Church.

was seized by one of the duke’s enemies, and the letter taken from him. Meanwhile, the pope, the author of all this evil, made peace with the emperor. A year later, September 16, 1231, as the duke with his train was at Kuhlheim, he was stabbed and killed by a Saracen assassin, most probably authorized by Frederick. In Frederick’s eyes the duke had forfeited his life by his treason, but it was difficult to try and punish him, and he was too powerful that his crime could be overlooked. Yet what a strange light does this cowardly murder throw upon the policy and lack of principle of the able, versatile, and accomplished emperor!

Frederick went on with his plans to consolidate his power; these were interrupted by the rebellion, not without the connivance of the Church, of his eldest son Henry, in Germany, in 1235. Frederick was too quick and too strong. Henry was taken captive, and remained a prisoner until his death, in Calabria, 1242. It is said his father sent for him to be reconciled to him, but Henry, misunderstanding the message, rode his horse over an abyss, and was dashed to pieces.

Frederick’s power reached its height at his victory over Milan and her allies at Cortenuova, November 27, 1237. Had Frederick resolved now to pursue a policy of conciliation toward the cities he might have founded a stable dominion; unfortunately, he chose to revive the policy which had failed so disastrously under Frederick Barbarossa. It was a fatal mistake.

Gregory entered into alliance with the Lombard cities, and again banned Frederick, March 24, 1239. The emperor marched against Rome in the following spring, but was unable to take the city. Gregory resorted to this last resource, and called a General Coun

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cil, whose purpose was to add its authority to his in cursing the emperor, to meet at Easter, 1241. The Pisans captured the Genoese fleet, conveying the cardinals and prelates to the Council, near the island of Monte Cristo, May 3d, the same year. The prisoners were delivered to Frederick, who kept them in strict confinement. Gregory’s last plan had failed. In his struggle with the emperor he had been defeated. Public opinion condemned his violence. Bitterly disappointed, he died at the Lateran, August 21, 1241.

Frederick now made the second great political mistake of his career. Had he shown greatness of mind on the death of Gregory, and liber- Election of ated the prelates, thus gaining for himself ^lnn°cent iv. a party in the Council and the Conclave, his position would have been different. On the contrary, he kept the prelates in prison, except the cardinals, whom he released on parole, and strove to make the most of the vacancy of the Papal See, which lasted from August, 1241, till June, 1243, with the exception of the brief reign of seventeen days of Godfrey of Milan, who took the title of Celestine IV, 1241. This course made the cardinals and prelates irreconcilable enemies of the emperor. Th'ey chose, at length, a cardinal who had been a friend of Frederick, but proved his bitterest and most unrelenting enemy—Sinnabald Fieschi, of Genoa, the most learned jurist of his time, who took the name of Innocent IV, 1243-1254.

Innocent was elected at Anagni, and for a little while there was amity. In March, 1244, Frederick most unwisely withdrew from negotiations for peace, through desire to render the Lombard cities unconditionally subject to him. The pope, on his part, had

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no desire for peace. He fled to France in June, 1244. Frederick’s last chance was gone. He had more Last Conflicts powerful enemies than Innocent. The of Frederick. _mendicant orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, in the first flush of their enthusiasm and success, had wrought a genuine religious revival, not only in Italy, but throughout Western Christendom. They made the religious convictions, the moral sentiment, and the public opinion of Europe support the authority of the Church against the emperor. Innocent sought only his destruction, and would listen to no compromise. The princes of Europe, though agreeing with his view of the limits of the political power of the pope, would render him no effective support. Seldom in history have two men hated each other as did Innocent and Frederick. The pope called a General Council at Lyons, which met January 28, 1245. There were present no bishops from Germany, and few from Italy. Frederick’s cause was most ably defended by Theodore, bishop of Sinuessa, but it was prejudged. The Council excommunicated him with all formalities, July 17, 1245. The papal party in Germany raised up a pretender to his throne in Henry Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, brother-in-law of St. Elizabeth, but he died at the Wartburg, February 17,

1247.    Parma fell into the hands of the papal party in the same year. Frederick immediately besieged it. During his absence his camp before the city was taken and plundered, and the siege raised, February 28,

1248.    The next year, in March, Frederick’s favorite illegitimate son, Enzio, king of Sardinia, was captured by the Bolognese; neither his father’s entreaties nor threats could release him. He languished in prison

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for more than twenty years, until his death, March 14, 1272. Yet from him descended the ruling house in Bologna for centuries to come, the Bentivoglio. Frederick spent his strength in these little wars of Italian cities, where nothing decisive was to be gained, and where only loss was certain. Like those about him, he grew hard and cruel. He died at Ferentum, near Luceria, December 13, 1250. He lies buried in a sarcophagus of porphyry at Palermo in the Sicily he loved.

The death of Frederick not only removed the greatest actor from the historic scene, but opened a new era in the history of Europe. His house was destroyed, the empire was in ruins, but the papacy, as a political power, fell with it; and the first place in Europe, held by Germany since the coronation of Otto I in 963, fell to France. For Germany began the sad and shameful six hundred years of disunion, weakness, and humiliation, which ended only in the founding of the new Protestant Empire in 1870. France not only took the lead among the nations, but brought the papacy to a more shameful submission, in the succeeding century, than it had ever known under the empire.

Innocent IV expressed unmeasured joy at the death of the emperor. He hoped for the immediate destruction of the house of Hohenstaufen, but did not live to see it. Conrad IV, son of Iolanthe of Jerusalem, the emperor’s second wife, who died at his birth, was now twenty-two years of age, and Frederick’s heir. Conrad descended into Italy to assert his ancestral right; he was ably seconded by Manfred, son of Frederick and Beatrix Lancia, daughter

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of Amadeus of Savoy. They were successful in winning all Southern Italy, when Conrad died, May 20, 1254. Meanwhile, Innocent returned to Italy. He arrived at Perugia in 1251, and was again in Rome, after an absence of nine years, in October, 1253. His successor was Reginald Conti, bishop of Ostia, a nephew of Gregory IX, but a perfect contrast in disposition and temperament with his two powerful and embittered predecessors. He took the name of Alexander IV, 1254-1261. He was peaceful, good, and pious, but avaricious and weak. After the death of William, count of Holland, 1247-1256, the weak, venal electors put the empire up at auction, and realized the most for themselves and the greatest injury to the empire through the farce of a double election of Richard of Cornwall, the wealthiest man in Europe, 12571272, and Alphonso of Castile, 1257-1273.

Meanwhile, Frederick’s son, Manfred, took possession of the crown of Naples and Sicily—or, as it Charles ^{ls ca}^^e(^> the Two Sicilies—August 11, of Anjou and 1258. He ruled ably and successfully for Naples. _ejgj_lt y_ears. After the death of Alexander, May 25, 1261, the divided cardinals chose a man wholly unknown to them personally, Jacob Panteleon, patriarch of Jerusalem. He was a Frenchman, the son of a shoemaker, born near Troyes. He took the name of Urban IV, 1261-1264. From his brief pontificate began that predominant French influence which was to dominate the papacy for the next one hundred and fifty years. The papacy had destroyed the empire, only to become a vassal to the kings of France. This change came gradually. There were but seventeen cardinals, of whom Urban saw that

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seven were Frenchmen, while three of these were French statesmen. Urban’s most important role was that of earnest supporter of the claims, or rather the usurpation, of Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France, to the throne held by Manfred, and hence the destruction of the last remains of the Hohen-staufen house. This, Urban was not destined to see, but it was brought about through the advocacy of his successor. Guido le Gros Fulcodi, of St. Gillies in Languedoc, was a lawyer, married and the father of a family of children, and royal chancellor of Louis IX of France. After the death of his wife, he became a Carthusian monk, subjecting himself to the strictest austerities. There fell to him in succession, the bishopric of Puy and archbishopric of Nar-bonne. He was elected pope as Clement IV, 12651268. The French court he knew thoroughly. He was a subject of Charles of Anjou, devoted to his interests, and strained every nerve to make successful his expedition against Sicily. The calling of the French into Italy seems to have no justification in the conditions at the time, or in the results of the Angevine rule. Charles of Anjou appears as dark, selfish, and cruel a tyrant as the Middle Ages produced, and yet he was the brother of St. Louis. Claiming to be a devoted son of the Church, the popes found the rod of his rule no lighter than did his own subjects.

Clement crowned Charles at Rome, January 6, 1266. The new king met and defeated the brave and generous Manfred at Beneventum the 26th of the next month, Manfred himself being among the slain. His two young sons and little daughter languished in

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life-long captivity in the dungeons of the French conqueror. But the sons of an older daughter, Constance, End of the ^aveng^ed the misfortunes and restored the House of glories of the house of Manfred. They Hohenstaufen. _a|_one Hohenstaufen blood retained

thrones in Europe. The death of Manfred left Con-radin, son of Conrad IV and a princess of Bavaria, the heir to the claims of the Hohenstaufens. At the age of sixteen he descended into Italy by the road trodden by his ancestors for so many generations. He arrived at Rome in July, 1268. Delivered by the basest treachery to Charles of Anjou, he ended his life, as the last male descendant of the Hohenstaufen line, on the scaffold, at Naples, October 29, 1268. None can fail to be touched by the fate of this bright and brave boy, the news of whose unexpected and unjust sentence of death was brought to him when he was playing chess with his young companion, Frederick of Austria, who was to die with him. He confessed his sins, and went at once to his death as gallantly as any of his imperial house had faced their enemies in the field. The pope, who more than any one else was responsible for this result, died just a month later.

After the death of Clement, for fifty-three months the cardinals could agree on no candidate for the End of the ^vacant chair of St. Peter. Finally, Sep-German tember 1, 1271, Theobald Visconti, nephew interregnum.    _Gf Milan, but only arch

deacon of Liege, was elected pope, as Gregory X, 1271-1276. Without being learned, he was an honorable and able man, proving to be one of the best popes of the century. In Germany the electors delayed the

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choice to the vacant throne. The pope sought to reunite the princes and people, and to check the power of Charles of Anjou. When the French king pressed his candidacy for the crown, supported by Charles, the pope commanded the electors to make their choice within a fixed time, under the penalties of the Church. At last, after two and a half years, the bargains were completed, and Rudolph of Hapsburg was chosen emperor, 1273-1291. No Tammany ring or French Directory could show itself more unscrupulously selfish or venal than these aristocratic electors of the holy Roman Empire. One can but think that the nobility of either France 01* England would have made short work of them, but in Germany the nobility never learned to subordinate their selfish aim or personal policy to a great cause of either politics or religion. Gregory X held the General Council of Lyons, 1274, and issued very strict regulations in regard to future conclaves, so if possible to avoid such vacancies as had preceded his own election. Gregory did not long survive the Council, as he died January 10, 1276. Within a year and a half three popes succeeded him: Peter of Tarantaise, archbishop of Lyons, a Frenchman, who was the first Dominican to become pope, and took the title of Innocent V; then Ottoboni di Fieschi, nephew of Innocent IV, as Hadrian V; the third was Pedro Juliani, archbishop of Braga in Portugal, as John XXI, 1276-1277, a man of learning and science, but no friend of the monks. These were probably sickly old men. The cardinals, November 25, 1277, elected as pope, John Gaetani Orsini, son of the famous senator Orsini, who had defended the popes against Frederick II, who assumed

426 Culmination of Medieval Church.

the name of Nicholas III, 1277-1280. Nicholas was a well-educated man, and experienced in business; he was a protector of the Franciscan order, the acknowledged chief of the college of cardinals, and the first Roman since Honorius to wear the triple crown. Like any Italian noble, he was given to nepotism. He opposed Charles of Anjou, and in 1279 compelled him to give up the office of senator of Rome, which he had held for more than ten years. In August of the next year, Nicholas died. The French party gained the upper hand in the next Conclave, and elected Cardinal Simon de Brie, former keeper of the seal for the French king, as Pope Martin IV, 1281-1284. While personally without ambition, Martin was under the influence of Charles of Anjou, and opposed to Rudolph of Hapsburg. Charles again became senator of Rome, but the tyranny and license of the French were avenged by the Sicilian Vespers, March 31, 1282, when the French throughout Sicily were massacred, and the island was lost to the house of Anjou. Manfred’s daughter Constance had married Pedro III, king of Aragon, and her son Peter became king of Sicily. On his death, 1285, he was succeeded by his brother James. The party of Charles was overcome in Rome in 1284, but the pope named six new French cardinals. Charles of Anjou died the next year, in January, and Pope Martin two months later.

Jacob Savelli, a man of ability, but a martyr to the gout, became pope, as Honorius IV, 1285-1287. His pontificate is unimportant, though he strove unsuccessfully to aid in the restoration of the Angevine rule in Sicily. After a six-months’ vacancy, the cardinal bishop of Praeneste was elected, as Nicholas IV,

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1288-1292. Hieronymus of Ascoli was of humble birth, and had entered the Franciscan order. lie had been its general, and was the first of the followers of St. Francis to ascend the papal throne. Nicholas was an unselfish, pious monk, who sought peace in order to promote a Crusade and the uprooting- of heresy. But in his pontificate the Christians lost their last hold in Palestine, when Acre was taken, May 18, 1291. From the death of Nicholas, April 4, 1292, there was a vacancy until July 5, 1294, when Peter Morone, a monk and a hermit, was chosen pope, as Celestine V. No stranger sight was ever seen upon the papal throne. Wholly unfitted for business, he fell entirely under the influence of Charles II of Naples. He nominated seven French and five Italian cardinals. The sacred college was aghast at the consequences of their choice. At last, Benedict Gaetani, nephew of Alexander IV, persuaded him, after a pontificate of five months, to resign. The reader will remember that Dante saw him in hell for making this “great refusal.” The cardinals elected in his place, Benedict, who had persuaded him to this act, and none of them feared he would prove too spiritually minded.

Boniface VIII, 1294-1303, for this was his title, was of beautiful personal appearance at seventy-seven years of age. He was eloquent, a learned _{Boniface V|}„ jurist, and an able diplomatist, but arrogant and prone to unmeasured wrath. Celestine, finding himself watched in his solitude, strove to escape to Dalmatia, but was thrown back by shipwreck and brought to Rome. There he was sternly rebuked by Boniface and placed in prison, from which he was

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released by death, May 19, 1296. The coronation of Boniface VIII was the most splendid ever seen of a pope in Rome. Instead of a mule, Boniface rode a splendid white charger. He determined to advance the claims of the papacy to world-wide supremacy to a realization beyond all that had been accomplished by Innocent III and his successors. Boniface found much to encourage him in the attempt. As papal legate, he had visited the principal European courts, and knew personally the sovereigns with whom he had to deal. Naples and Sicily, Aragon, Portugal, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Scotland, and England he considered as vassal States of the Papal See. The empire was but the shadow of its former power, and France had been the faithful champion of the papal claims. Boniface could not conceive that the son of St. Louis, whom he canonized, would prove an obstacle to his plans. Besides, the clergy in every land possessed a vast portion of its wealth, and in some kingdoms more than half of the real estate; so that the control of the taxation of the clergy was the control, in great part, of the national finances. Added to this the monks, and especially the mendicant orders, were an immense standing army, distributed throughout Latin Christendom, and garrisoning the most important positions for the papacy in Europe.

Frederick, the third son of Pedro and Constance of Aragon, now assumed the crown of Sicily, March _giciiy 2, 1296. In spite of the efforts of Boniface during his whole pontificate in favor of the house of Anjou, Frederick was finally successful; peace was signed concerning his title in 1302, and he was acknowledged by the pope shortly before his death.

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To prevent this result, Boniface called in Charles of Valois, in 1301, as governor of Tuscany, who put down the enemies of Boniface and drove Dante from Florence into perpetual exile, which he repaid by the eternal torments to which he consigned Boniface in the Divina Commcdia, but which did not help the French cause in Sicily.

Boniface turned his attention toward making submissive to him his immediate surroundings in the Papal States. In December, 1297, he excommunicated the whole house of Colonna. When threatened, they had retorted that the pope’s election, like Celes-tine’s resignation, was illegal. They were the strongest family among the Roman nobility and in the College of Cardinals, but the pope declared their goods confiscated, and ordered preached against them a Crusade with Holy Land indulgences. What a degradation of the great movement begun at Clermont, with the pope at its head as the representative of all Europe, to a political contest over the possession of a little Italian city, with a Roman noble family not too well affected toward the pope! This city of Palestrina was surrendered upon papal promises, and then razed to the ground. The Colonnas were driven into exile, while the pope’s nephew, Peter Gaetano, from their property and at an additional expense of $7,500,000, founded a baronial kingdom extending from Ceprano to Subiaco.

On the death of Rudolph of Hapsburg, the electors thought it for their advantage to choose Adolph of Nassau, 1292-1298, who had no merit except courage and readiness to grant everything they asked to the electors. His government was so weak and worth

430 Culmination of Medimval Church.

less that the nobility gathered to depose him, June 23, 1298. The movement was led by Albert I of Aus-Bonsface and tria, 1298-1307, son of Rudolph of Haps-Germany. b_urg_# Adolph was killed in battle, July 2, 1298. Boniface banned Albert for murder and treason, and laid his heavy hand on the German Empire and the imperial house. He was reconciled to the pope after the deepest humiliation, July 17, 1303. Boniface placed Denmark under interdict in 1296, and King Eric submitted under modified conditions, 1302. He interfered in behalf of Scotland, July 27, 1299, but was sternly repelled by the English king and people.

Boniface issued his famous bull, Clcricis Laicos, February 24, 1296, prohibiting the taxation of Church Bull, cierieis property. “On no title or plea, under 110 Zaicos. name, can any tax be levied on any property of the Church, without the distinct permission of the pope. Every layman of whatever rank—emperor, king, prince, duke, or their officers who receives such money, is at once and absolutely under excommunication, and can only be absolved, under competent authority, at the hour of death. Every ecclesiastic who submits to such taxation is at once deposed, and incapable of holding any benefice. The universities who so offend are under interdict/’ This bull awoke at once the most decided opposition. The English clergy refused to pay the tax; Edward at once declared them and their property without the protection of the law. If they would not obey the law, they should not share its protection. The clergy yielded, and paid a tax of one-fourth of their income. Philip IV of France answered by forbidding the ex

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portation of coin or articles of current value without written permission from the crown. This cut off the supplies of Boniface from France. In two other bulls the pope sought to explain away the force of this objectionable document, and an agreement was reached between him and the two kings. St. Louis was canonized August 11, 1297. Both kings wished for peace, and consented to the arbitration of Boniface between them as a private individual. The pope undertook the mediation, but published the result as his official act, June 27, 1298. This gave deep offense, especially in France, where the teachings of the civil lawyers as to the supremacy of the State were coming to prevail.

Boniface proclaimed a centenary jubilee for the year 1300, conferring great and especial indulgences upon those who should visit the tombs of p_aPai Jubilee, the apostles in Rome. Vast multitudes '-J⁰⁰-came from all Western Europe, and their gifts greatly augmented the wealth of the Roman Church. The success of this movement led the pope to think that the kings and peoples of Christendom would bow to the commands of the Papal See. Within the next three years he sough't to determine the succession to the thrones of Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland, but the event proved in each case without success.

Boniface now pushed to a conclusion his quarrel with Philip IV of France. On the 5th of December, 1301, he issued, in offensive terms, a bull contest with of admonition and exhortation to the king, ^{Phi,kp IV}* termed Ausciilta fili. The king burned the bull at Paris, January 26, 1302. At length, the pope determined to proclaim the papal claims in their widest extent,

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and, after due consideration in a Council in which there were forty-five French bishops present, he is-Buii, Unam sued, November 18, 1302, the famous bull, Sanctam. Unam Sanctam. This declares: “Therefore, if the Greeks or others say it is not necessary to acknowledge that they are subject to Peter and to his successors, they are not of the sheep of Christ, the Lord saying in John, There is one fold and one shepherd/ Concerning this and its power, we are taught in the words of the gospel there are two swords, the spiritual, and, of course, the temporal. For in the apostolic words, ‘Behold, here are two swords,’ unquestionably in the Church, when the apostles inquired, the Lord did not answer, There are too many, but, There are enough. Certainly those who deny the temporal sword to be in the power of Peter, ill understand the word of the Lord, saying, Tut up thy sword in thy sheath/ Therefore, both are in the power of the Church, the spiritual sword of course, and the material. This is exercised for the Church, that indeed by the Church; that by the hand of the priest, this by the hand of the king and soldiers, but at the call of and in submission to the priest. Moreover, one sword ought to be under the other, and the temporal under the spiritual authority. For as the apostle says, There is no power but of God, and the powers that be are ordained of God.’ So, moreover, they are not ordained unless one sword is under the other, just as an inferior is put in his place by another who is above him. . . . Thus is verified concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power the prophecy of Jeremiah the prophet, ‘See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the king

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doms/ and the rest which follows. (Jeremiah i, 10.) Therefore, if the temporal power errs, it shall be judged by the spiritual; but if the lesser spiritual power errs, by its superior. But the supreme spiritual power can be judged by God alone, and not by man; the apostle witnessing, The spiritual man judgeth all things, but is judged by no man.’ Moreover, this authority, even if given to men and exercised by men, is not human, but rather Divine, by the Divine mouth being given to Peter, and to him and his successors in him, who was acknowledged as the solid rock, the Lord himself saving to Peter, ‘Whomsoever thou shalt bind/ etc. Whoever therefore resists this power thus ordained by God resists the ordinance of God, unless like the Manicheans he makes two principles; which we judge false and heretical, Moses saying, not in principiis (in the beginnings), but in principio (in the beginning), God created the heavens and the earth. Hence we declare, say, define, and pronounce it to be universally necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff.”

It would be difficult in human language to express more clearly the claim of the papacy to absolute political sovereignty, hot only over nations, but each individual—a sovereignty as absolute and irresponsible as that of the sultan or the czar, and not even tempered by assassination when intolerable as with the latter powers, as resistance is rebellion against God. It is true that these demands are but the official expression of the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. But the teachings of the schoolmen assume another shape when formulated as the demands of Boniface VIII. Then their monstrous nature becomes apparent. It

28

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is to be remarked that in the nearly six hundred years which have elapsed since the teaching of the bull Unam Sanctam, it has never been renounced by the Roman Catholic Church. It was, however, the greatest mistake ever made by a Roman pontiff. The nobility, the people, the clergy even, stood with their rulers in the rejection of these preposterous claims.

But Boniface did not see the gathering storm. He solemnly declared that Philip of France should Taking ^e finally excommunicated, and his sub-of Anagni. jects released from their allegiance, if the Death king did not submit to him by September of Bomface. 1303. Philip sent William Nogaret, an advocate and royal counselor from Toulouse, to Italy, with whom went Sciarra Colonna, burning to revenge the injury of his house, and the Italian banker of the king. They used money freely, and gathered a band of troops. They assembled at Anagni, September 7th, the day before the excommunication was to be pronounced. The gates were opened to them, and they plundered the palace of the pope’s nephew, Peter Gaetano, and took him and his children prisoners. The papal palace was then attacked, and Boniface sought and obtained a truce until three o’clock in the afternoon. He sought to have the Anagnese release him, but they were with the besiegers. He turned to Sciarra Colonna, who gave him three conditions: Restore the Colonnas, resign the papacy, remain in Sciarra’s power for their fulfillment. The pope exclaiming, “This is a hard saying,” refused the conditions. When the attack was renewed, all the cardinals but one fled or concealed themselves. William Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna pressed into

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the pope’s chamber; they did not find him in his pontifical robes and seated on a throne as generally represented, but lying on his bed, holding a cross in his hands. Colonna asked him if he would resign. He replied he would sooner lose his head. Colonna would have killed him, but Nogaret arrested his arm. The pope suffered no bodily harm, not even the fabled box on the ear from Colonna’s iron glove. Boniface was in arrest for three days, while his palace, his treasures, and his great wealth were plundered. Then the citizens of Anagni, thinking they would be the scorn of Christendom for the ill-usage of the pope among them, rallied, attacked the palace, and rescued the pope. He absolved those who had fought against him, and soon took the road to Rome, where he arrived the 18th of September. The plans of a lifetime, the work of his pontificate, were undone. No pope from so lofty an assertion of sovereignty had fallen so low. Boniface, eighty-six years of age, and all but crazed with grief and shame, died October n, 1303. With him fell the papacy of the Middle Ages. Weakened in everything but its claims, its history at Avignon, during the Schism and the Councils, is one of steady decline in the public esteem of Europe, which was not regained by the popes of the Renaissance. The political power of the empire and of the papacy as ruling Christendom was dead, and the new nations took their place and prepared for the opening of modern times.

Chapter IV.

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT.

Scholasticism was the effort of the men of the Middle Ages to learn how to think. It was in no sense an original movement, for it took what it could learn from the great Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, as its basis, and sought on these to rear its structure. Plato they knew through Augustine and the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, as but a part of one of Plato’s dialogues, the Timaeus, was known in the West. Aristotle’s “Categories” and “De Interpreta-tione” were known, but scholars depended mostly on the reproduction of his teaching in Boethius. Not until 1250 did they use his logical writings, and by 1300 his metaphysics, physics, psychology, and ethics. These students gave themselves first to definition, analysis, and argument. The method of proof was by the syllogism, and of argument by propositions, questions, and theses, with first an affirmative, then a negative and conclusion. In this connection came the metaphysical question of the reality of general conceptions, such as man or horse apart from individual men or horses. The realists held that these terms denoted real existences, the nominalists that they were but the names of the individuals composing the class. Plato held the realistic doctrine in an extreme, Aristotle in a modified form. The Stoics were nominalists. On this question were divided on 436

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one side or the other all the teachers of the Middle

f

Ages. This method discovered nothing, revealed nothing new. It was the effort to come into possession of the legacy of the thinking of the ancient world^ so far as they knew it, and to develop its meaning, its application, and its relations. It made men acute, and made them think they knew real things when they were dealing only with abstractions or names.

It caused men to split hairs in distinctions where there was no difference, and definitions where there was nothing to define. It could never enlarge the sum of human knowledge; it was barren and did not know its utter emptiness. It had a form of knowledge, but not the power. However, it taught men to distinguish, to define, to classify, and to think and express themselves with exactness, and these are necessary steps to real knowledge of all kinds and in all ages.

Scholastic theology was the application of this scholastic method to theology—a dialectic and systematic reproduction and proof of the scholastic Church teaching. Its material was the Theology. Scriptures and the writings of the Church fathers, but mainly the later ones, Augustine and Gregory the Great, and decisions of Church Councils. Its textbook was Peter Lombard’s “Book of Sentences.” Church authority and tradition were upheld; the effort was rationally to found and syllogistically defend a system of dogma^) All theologians wrought with the same material, but each had his particular system. They were all system builders. It was entirely an intellectual movement. The scholastic principle was to seek to understand what we believe, not to deter-

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mine what or why. This movement was confined to the Latin Churches. Anselm was its founder. Three periods are distinguished in its history: (a) 1050-1200, j[b) 1200-1300, (c) 1300-1500. We can best trace its course through an acquaintance with its most eminent representatives.

Anselm was born of a noble Lombard family at Aosta, in Piedmont, in 1033. His mother, Erem-5t. Anselm. burga, was pious and a skillful housewife.

1033-1109. sh_e influenced his religious life, and employed his watching, dreamy spirit. In his boyhood he desired to enter a monastery, and prayed God to send him a severe illness, so that his father and the abbot would give their consent. As a young man he seemed to pursue a life in which both piety and learning were forgotten. There came a sad reverse. Discontented with himself, and in dissension with his father, he left behind him his ancestral home and possessions, and came to the cloister of Bee, in Normandy. Under its abbot, Lanfranc, he pursued his scholastic studies. Seized with a desire to go to another cloister to teach, where he would not be overshadowed by Lanfranc, he saw his vanity, and at once resolved to become a monk at Bee, and so humiliate his spirit to a complete obedience to Lanfranc. Thus he learned to know and control himself. Though naturally of a quick disposition, in later years he was seldom betrayed into anger. He was fitted for the monastic life, which he loved and commended to others as a way of peace with God. In his bearing he was quiet, self-possessed, and friendly with all. Love ruled him, and he never allowed himself to be embittered. He was chosen prior of Bee in

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1063. The monks recognized his learning, his piety, and his kindly bearing. He showed himself admirably adapted to the cure of souls. His letters, tracts, sermons, and meditations show his earnestness and love, his knowledge of men, and pure Christian spirit. When he comforted the dying, he sought to have them realize that the satisfaction for sins was in Christ alone. Anselm was of a contemplative and speculative disposition. As abbot, from 1078, he left the external business as much as possible to others. In 1093 he was made archbishop of Canterbury.

As he would not submit to the tyrannical exactions of William II, and could do nothing towards amending the wickedness of his private life, or improve his administration, Anselm left England in October, 1097. He found a most gracious reception at Rome, but also that the king’s gold and influence prevailed there. Hence he returned to Lyons with his eSrly friend, its bishop. There he heard of the king’s death, and returned to England, September 23, 1100. Anselm was reinstated, but under a truce as to investitures. At the wish of Henry I, Anselm went to Rome to secure, if possible, concessions from Pope Paschal as to the contested investitures. The pope granted release from excommunication to those who had received investitures and given homage to the king. After a severe sickness, Anselm returned in September, 1106. The settlement in regard to the vexed question was made at London, August 1, 1107. According to its terms, which anticipated those of the Concordat of Worms, no bishop was to receive ring or staff from the king, or a layman, but he must do homage to the sovereign for the lands and goods

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of his see. Worn with age and broken by illness, Anselm died April 21, 1109. Pure, unselfish, able, learned, and wise, firm but kind, no saintlier character has adorned the annals of the English Church.

Anselm consecrated his studies to reconciliation of faith with the natural understanding. His motto was, “Believe in order to know/’ He wrote upon the Trinity, original sin, and free-will, but his most celebrated writings are the “Monologues” and “Pros-logium,” on the demonstration of the being of God, and “Cur Deus Homo ,” or, “Why did God Become Man,” in which he sets forth the doctrine that Christ’s sufferings were an exact equivalent for all the sins of men.

Rosellinus, 1050-1100, was a nominalist, and applied his system of philosophy in such a way to the conception of the Trinity as to fall into Tritheism. He was refuted by Anselm, and retracted his teachings at the Synod of Soissons in 1092. Henceforth nominalism seemed heretical, and all the Church theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were realists. Rosellinus was a man of profound learning and deep piety blended in an inner harmony. He is one of the noblest figures in the history of the Middle Ages.

Peter Abelard was born at Palais, not far from Nantes, in Brittany, 1079. Berengar, his father, was Abelard, a knight and lord of the place. Rosellinus 1079-1142. the nominalist, was his first teacher at Vannes, in Brittany. His second teacher was the realist, William of Champeaux, at Paris. Later he studied theology with Anselm, canon of Laon. He taught at Melun, then at St. Genevieve at Paris, and

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finally obtained the coveted position of teacher in the cathedral school at Paris, in 1113. Here he became acquainted with Heloise, the natural daughter of a canon of Paris, brought up by her uncle, the canon Fulbert, born in 1101. Heloise was a woman of quick and bright intellect, now eighteen years old. Fulbert employed the celebrated Abelard to be her teacher, and he lived in his house. Abelard betrayed his trust, and sent Heloise to his sister in Brittany, where she bore a son, called Astralabius. Abelard married her. She insisted the marriage should be secret, so as not to prevent his promotion in the Church. Fulbert did not keep his promise of secrecy. Abelard brought her to the convent of Argenteuil, where she had been educated. There he denied the marriage. Fulbert, thinking he had brought Heloise to the convent to abandon her, and force her to take the veil, avenged her by hiring men to fall upon Abelard and mutilate him. Abelard took refuge from his shame in the abbey of St. Denis. Heloise, only twenty, now took the veil at Argenteuil. Abelard’s book on the Trinity was condemned, and he made his retraction at the Synod of Soissons in 1121. Soon after, he founded the monastery of the Paraclete near Nogent, in Champagne. Crowds thronged to hear his lectures. He established Heloise as abbess of a convent of nuns near the Paraclete. Here he visited her twenty years after their separation, and their correspondence then began. At that time he wrote his “History of My Calamities.” Abelard spent ten years as abbot of the monastery of St. Gildas, in Lower Brittany, where he was shut out from the world, and the monks tried to murder him. He returned to lecture in Paris in

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1136. In 1140, at the accusation of Bernard, he was condemned as guilty of heresy. Abelard, when the charges were read, appealed to the pope, and left the Council. He was here condemned, and the sentence ratified by the pope. Abelard retired to Clugny under the care of Peter the Venerable, and died April 21, 1142, at the age of sixty-three.

Abelard was distinguished in figure and manners, and from 1108 was the greatest teacher of his time. He was an acute, but not a profound thinker; an excellent writer, clear and attractive in his exposition, with a critical spirit. He is the only scholastic teacher who possessed historic sense. He preferred Scripture to tradition, and the earlier tradition to the later. Reason must test the doctrine to be believed; it must penetrate into it; then it can defend it. He begins with doubt. He held, contrary to the accepted theory, that Christ did not become incarnate simply to free men from the power of the devil. The punishment, but not the guilt of Adam’s sin has come upon all; the intent determines, if not the moral quality, the moral value of the act. His writings are dialectic, theological, exegetic, and homiletic poems and letters. He was a remarkable teacher, a writer of genius, but vain, ambitious, and ungrateful.

Some of the remarkable teachers of the time were Hugh of St. Victor at Paris, the founder of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament, which was afterwards developed by Thomas Aquinas. He has been called the deepest thinker of the Middle Ages, 1047-1141. His scholar, Richard, a native of Scotland, followed in his path of mystic and yet logical thinking, and was prior of St. Victor, 1162-1173.

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Peter Lombard, compiler of the “Book of Sentences/’ the theological text-book of the Middle Ages, died as bishop of Paris, 1160.

Joachim, abbot of Floris, 1145-1202, was a student of the apocalyptical prophecy, and the “Eternal Gospel” had great influence on the development of the Franciscan order.

John of Salisbury, secretary of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and afterward of Thomas a Becket, and bishop of Chartres from 1156 to his death in 1180, is noted for his style as a Latin author.

The influence of Aristotle now came to dominate in the schools. The four great scholars of the century belonged to the mendicant orders, two of them, Alexander of Hales, and Bonaventura, were Franciscans; two others, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, were Dominicans.

Alexander was educated at Hales, in Gloucestershire, England, then studied at Paris, where he afterward taught in the university, being the first Franciscan to occupy a university chair. He entered the order in 1222. He was a strenuous defender of the privileges of the mendicant orders, and their rights to teach and to the care of souls. He defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, and advanced that of the treasure of the supererogatory merits of the saints. He died in 1425.

Bonaventura, 1221-1274, born near Florence, became a Franciscan, 1243, and was a student of Alexander. He studied Aristotle and commented on Lombard. He was logical and mystic in his piety. Later, he became general of the Franciscan order and a cardinal.

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Albert the Great, 1193-1280, was the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. He was born of a noble Bavarian family, in the diocese of Augsburg. Studying at Pavia, he entered the Dominican order in 1223. He labored at Hildes-heim, Freiburg, Regensburg, and Strassburg, but Albert mainly at Cologne. There, Thomas Aqui-the Great. _{nas was} his p_Upjl. I_n 1245 he went to Paris, where he studied theology three years, taking his Master’s degree in 1248. From his return until his death, Cologne was his home. In 1254 he was chosen general of the German Dominicans, which office he held for six years, and visited the German monasteries of his order from Brabant and Holstein to Austria. In 1256 he visited the papal court. Albert studied medicine and the natural sciences. In extent and depth of knowledge, he was surpassed by no scholar of the Middle Ages.

The scholastic theology reached its height in Thomas Aquinas. Thomas was born in 1225 or 1227, Thomas at his father’s castle of Rocco Sicca, in the Aquinas. _cj_ty ₀f Aquino, in Naples. His father, Count Landolph, was a relative of the Hohenstaufen house. His mother, Theodora, was a grandchild of the Norman duke, Tancred. Two older brothers served in the army under Frederick II. Pope Hono-rius III was his godfather. When five years of age he was sent to the cloister of Monte Cassino, where his uncle was abbot. Five years later he came to Naples, where he carried on his studies. When fifteen years old, against the wishes of his mother and his brothers, he entered the Dominican order, through Pope Innocent IV the resistance of his fam

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ily being overcome. He refused the office of abbot of Monte Cassino, and took full vows as a monk in 1244. He was sent to Germany the next year, where he studied with Albert the Great. His large eyes and silence made his fellow students call him the dumb Sicilian ox. Albert rightly estimated him when he said: “He will bellow so in doctrine that it will sound through the whole world.” Thomas went with Albert to Paris and remained three years, taking his degree of Bachelor of Theology, and returning with Albert he taught at Cologne for the next four years. He received priests’ orders in 1251. Again he studied in Paris, 1252-1253, and received his Doctor’s degree in 1257. He pleaded and won the cause of the mendicant orders against the attack of William of St. Armour, in 1256, before Alexander IV. Thomas taught at Paris, 1257-1261, and preached during Lent. He refused all Church preferment, but taught in Rome, Bologna, Pisa, Viterbo, and Orvieto during the next three years. He wrote his Sitmma Theologies partly at Rome and partly at Bologna, 12641269; then was two years in Paris, but returned by 1271. From this time he lived at Naples, finishing his Summa and leading a contemplative life, in which ecstasy and visions did not fail. On his journey to the Council of Lyons, Thomas died at the cloister of Fossa Nuova, near Terracina, March 7, 1274. Perhaps the overstudy of years brought on his early death at forty-nine.

The piety of Thomas Aquinas was deep and sincere; he always prepared himself by prayer for his lectures, disputations, and writings. With all his study, he sought enlightenment from God. He had a clear

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understanding in worldly affairs. The sermons and exegetical writings of Thomas are of little value, except his Catena Anrca in Evangelia, or Collection of Comments on the Gospels, from eighty patristic authors. Of more value are his philosophic and apologetic writings, but his fame rests mainly upon dogmatic and ethical works, which he brought into the most clear and comprehensive, elaborate, and complete system of theological thought produced by the mediaeval Church. In its completeness even in detail, its harmonious connection and subordination to leading ideas, and also its artificiality, it has the external effect of a Gothic cathedral. Only a closer examination detects the lack of inner harmony. This finds its final, clear, and methodical statement in his Summa Thcologicu. It is divided into three parts: I. God and Creation; II. Man the Image of God; III. Christ and the Means of Grace.

Thomas’s system is based upon the Pseudo-Dionysius, Aristotle, and Augustine. From the two latter comes his strict determinism. In his system there is no place for the freedom of the will—neither God nor man is free. Human freedom is simply the recognition of the preponderating force by which the man is moved. In redemption, Thomas accentuates Anselm’s doctrine of satisfaction. Grace is distinguished as actual and habitual, as operative and cooperative, as prevenient and subsequent. It has a five-fold efficacy—it saves the soul; it makes men will what is good; the good which is willed, it makes to work effectively; it causes perseverance in goodness; it brings to glory. The general working of grace is justification, which is further distinguished as grace

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infused which leads to the movement of the free will toward God; infusion of faith and holy charity, which leads to the motion of the free will against sin, and finally to the remission of sins. In justification, Thomas binds the working of the operative grace immediately with the doctrine of human freedom as the effect of co-operative grace. Thomas’s strict pre-destinarian views naturally shut out all human merit, but he let it in through a distinction. He says men can have no merit of condignity—that is, a merit which has in justice a claim to reward—but men can have a merit of congruity—that is, it is congruous (fitting) that when a man acts according to his virtue, God should reward him according to the excellence of his virtue. This distinction is purely illusory, but upon it hangs the teaching of Thomas on justification.

Thomas’s chief work was in the elaboration of the doctrine of the sacraments. In this he seeks to justify and explain the teaching of the mediaeval Church. The sacraments he teaches have no absolute necessity, but only a necessity for a proposed end, so far as they are ordained from the goodness of God for the salvation of men. The necessity of the sacrament rests upon the Divine appointment through Christ. All were not announced by Christ. Some were reserved for apostolic and ecclesiastical promulgation. In this way room was made for seven instead of two sacraments. The material of the sacrament is the element used, as water in baptism; the form is the words of consecration employed. The efficacy of the sacrament rests upon an efficacious and instrumental virtue partly as a means of salva

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tion again offered for sins, and partly through a positive working in the soul of the recipient. Baptism, confirmation, and ordination have an indelible character. The other sacraments are penance, Lord’s Supper, marriage, and extreme unction.

In the Lord’s Supper the elements are transformed in a manner which does not involve their destruction The Lord's or dissolution. The substance is changed supper. j_nto another substance, while the accidents remain. A pure miracle is wrought through the operation of the infinite power of God, which is the first cause of both substance and accidents, and can keep the accidents as well without as within the substance. Here the whole conception rests upon a metaphysical distinction of Aristotle, which has no existence in fact, and is emptied of all meaning by the use made of it. Thomas justifies communion in one kind and the use of private masses.

Penance consists of three parts: Contrition, confession, and satisfaction. The sufferings of Christ „    only become efficacious and available

Penance.    ^J

through the sacraments. Thus confession to the priest becomes necessary, because only through the officiating priest is the body of Christ communicated to believers, through which alone the grace of Christ their Head flows to his members. But the priest can not apply the fitting means to sins which . .. he does not know. Absolution rests on

Absolution.    .    .

the priests power of binding and loosing; and, following confession, it works not merely the remission of eternal guilt and punishment, but mitigates purgatorial punishment so far for the penitent, through the merit of deeds of satisfaction wrought in

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his life, that the confessor may assure him that it opens to him the gates of heaven, and guarantees the hope of eternal life. Thus is opened the way for the imposition of penances and the trust in the merit of good works, instead of in the grace of Christ.

Thomas recognizes and with great detail works out the doctrine of indulgences. He develops the teaching of Alexander of Hales. Indulgences are efficacious, not only in regard to ecclesiastical sentences, but before God; not merely for the living, but also for the dead. They extend not only over the punishments of the Church, but also of purgatory. They do not reach to hell; no forgiveness enters there. They rest upon the accumulated treasure of the merits of Christ and the saints. As intercessions and good works of the living, and especially masses, avail for the dead, so also the saints in heaven, like the priests on earth, mediate salvation. Through the Divine goodness its effect is diffused, so that through the last means they go back to God, their source.

In his treatment of ethics the unity of the Christian moral life is dissolved by an ethical dualism through the distinction between theolosr-

. . . ....    « . «    Ethics.

ical and cardinal virtues, which contradicts the simplest ethical principles of Christianity. And as in all Roman Catholic treatment of morality, the conceptions are purely empiric, quantitative, and atomistic. The unity and stability of morality are passed over, and considered external. Like all legal morality, they rest upon the individual acts or states, which are innumerable and sharply distinguished, rather than on the qualitative being and the newinward

2Q

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and moral life of the Spirit, taught by the New Testament. Yet many of his distinctions are valuable as guides, and his application of Christian principles to commercial life in regard to usury and a fair price are fruitful of suggestion toward the restoration of moral unity in modern society.

Thomas’s main ethical principle is, that the ultimate aim of humanity is beatitude, or blessedness.

Supremacy Hence, princes are so to direct and rule

of the Pope. _{that men not Qnly liye wen mater}l_au_y> b_ut

live according to virtue. As the highest aim of human life is the life of blessedness, the leading to this end must be under Divine order, and so it is given to the priests of God. Hence it follows that he to whom the ultimate care belongs ought to direct the rule. But as the pope is the head of the mystic body of all the faithful which belong to Christ, and from the head is all the motion of the body, thus follows the subjection of worldly things under the pope as the vicar of Christ. Subjection to the Roman pontiff is necessary to salvation. The best comment on this claim is the result of the attempt of Boniface VIII to give it practical application. Seldom has illogical analogy wrought so disastrously. We can not but suspect that if Thomas had found polygamy among the doctrines of the mediaeval Church, he would have found some means to present it clearly and authoritatively as part of the faith delivered to the saints, and necessary to salvation.

Compare these subtle, logical, and metaphysical distinctions, which clear and strong thinkers find unfounded and which are simply confusing to the multitude, with the simple but tremendous truths of the

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gospel, or with the expositions of St. Paul, who was more than the equal of Thomas as a thinker, and one can see at once the difference in the foundation for the faith and in the religious life of the mediaeval Church and that of the missionary and evangelistic Church of modern Christendom. The man who comes to God through his Word may know the truth, and the truth will make him free. The theology of the mediaeval and Roman Catholic Church could not be understood by the people; it was read in Latin by the clergy. This is what was desired. The judgment upon all theological questions and the direction of the moral life fell entirely to the priest. Every good Christian must have a director of his conscience and his religious life, and this director must be a duly ordained Roman Catholic priest. Where is there a hint of such a monstrous claim in the words of Christ or his apostles? This is not development, but degeneration of Christian doctrine.

Let it also be recalled that Thomas Aquinas, saint and scholar as he was, and summing up in himself more than any other man the scholastic learning of his time, would pass^ as unlearned among Protestant clergymen. He never read the Holy Scriptures in their original tongues, as he was ignorant of Greek and Hebrew. Indeed, the older scholars in our Sunday-schools know immensely more of the world, of man, and of the ways of God than Thomas ever dreamed of. We can not solve the problem with all these new factors placed as unknown quantities. If Thomas were with us now he would do as he did then, receive all the knowledge of his time to justify the ways of God to men, and would preach the

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broader, freer, yea, simpler gospel of Christ and his apostles. To those who would direct us backward to his teachings, we reply, with Luther: “You followers of Thomas are to be censured, who dare to obtrude the opinions and often false meditations of this holy man upon us as articles of faith. Therefore, within my right and Christian liberty, I reject and deny both him and you.” To those who represent his writings as the true treasure of the Church, we reply, with the same great defender of Christian liberty, in placing over against them, “The most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God.”

While the schoolmen were working away at their abstractions, distinctions, and systems, an English-Roger Bacon, man, Roger Bacon, had faced reality, and 1214-1294. ₀p_ene(j his eyes and his mind to study and consider the world around him. He may well be called the first of modern thinkers. Bacon was born near Ilchester, in Somerset, of a well-to-do family, in 1214. He began his studies at Oxford, where Robert Grosteste, the great bishop of Lincoln, was his friend. He was ordained priest in 1233. About a year later he went to France, and studied at the university of Paris. He did not esteem the teaching that reigned there, saying Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas were boys who would be teachers before they had learned themselves, because they knew no Greek. He himself read Greek, and had a good knowledge of mathematics. He studied the philosophers, and highly esteemed the Mohammedan Averroes. He searched natural science to make it useful for human life, and despised the emptiness of the so-called knowledge of the schoolmen. Hav

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ing taken his Doctor’s degree, he returned to Oxford in 1250, and about the same time made the great mistake of his life in entering the Franciscan order. While the learned world had little sympathy with his work, the ignorant and bigoted monks had still less. He lectured at Oxford for seven years with increasing success and reputation, when the general of the Franciscan order, the celebrated Bonaventura, called him to Paris. Here he was kept for ten years under constant supervision, suffering many hardships, and “was forbidden to write anything which might be published.”

Pope Clement V then ordered him to write out and send him a treatise on the sciences, such as he had requested of him when legate to England, notwithstanding any prohibition of his monastic superiors. Roger complied, and in eighteen months completed three large treatises—the Opus Magnum, Opus Minas and Opus Tertinm. In 1268 he returned to Oxford, and taught there ten years. Then the Franciscan general, Hieronymus de Ascoli, later Pope Nicholas IV, condemned his book, and Bacon languished fourteen years in prison, 1278-1292. After two years of freedofn, he died in 1294. Thus was treated that pioneer in the path of knowledge of nature by observation and practical experiment, which was finally opened up for all by his English namesake four centuries later, Francis Bacon, viscount of St. Albans.

Roger Bacon studied and sought to explain the light of the stars, the ebb and flow of the tide, the motion of the balance, the laws of mirrors—reflection and refraction and perspective; also the construc

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tion of lenses. His treatise on geography was good, and was read by Columbus. But his principles were far more important than these results. He declared that all the sciences rest upon mathematics, and that physical action is by transmission in lines. He opposed experiment to argument. Mere argument is never sufficient; the mind can find satisfaction or certainty only in immediate inspection or intuition. This is what experience gives. His definition of experience is philosophical and satisfactory to an evangelical Christian. He says it is of two kinds: External, by physical experiment; and internal—that is, illuminated by Divine truth. Experimental science has three great advantages: It verifies the conclusion by direct experiment; it discovers truth which speculative science could never reach; it investigates the secrets of nature, and opens to us a knowledge of the past and future. The method is illustrated by his investigation of the nature and cause of the rainbow, which “is a fine specimen of inductive research.” Roger Bacon was not above his age. He believed in astrology and the philosopher’s stone and the squaring of the circle. The great points by which he is best known are his reputed knowledge of gunpowder, and of the telescope. With regard to the former, it is not clear that what we call gunpowder is intended, though some detonating mixture, of which saltpeter is an ingredient, is spoken of by him. There are, however, passages in one of his works in which he mentions sulphur, charcoal, and nitre as ingredients. With regard to the telescope, it must be admitted that Bacon had conceived the instrument, though there is no proof that he carried his conception into effect, or that

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he invented it. But twenty-four years in prison was a poor requital for services as great as his.

If Roger Bacon anticipated modern times in his method of scientific research, Raymond de Lully did the same in attempting to persuade, instead of killing unbelievers. The life of Ray- 1235-1315. mond was as changeful as his accomplishments were varied. He was a Spanish nobleman, poet and author, philosopher and theologian, missionary and martyr. His father, a nobleman of Barcelona, had fought with King Pedro III in the conquest of the Balearic Isles, and been granted an estate there, where his son was born at Palma in 1235. Until his thirtieth year he lived at court, where he became grand senechal, and was skilled in all knightly exercises, in songs, proverbs, and courtly poems. In this life he married, had children and property, and was a thoroughly worldly man. Suddenly, as lightning from heaven, he felt the nothingness and emptiness of all earthly things in 1265. Raymond resolved to become another man, to renounce the world and enter the service of Christ. As a hermit, he began a contemplative life upon his native island, 1265-1271. In the latter j year, through a vision in sickness, he resolved to become a missionary to the Saracens and heathen. To this end he sought to discover a universal knowledge, through which he might convince the heathen of the truths of Christianity. This was a complicated system of statements, arguments, and proofs, indicated by letters and circles, often profound and always ingenious, and though confounding material fact with abstract sign, still worthy of attention to-day. This, Raymond called his art. He sought henceforth the

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perfection and spread of his art, the composition of works, and the holding of disputations in defense of the truth of Christianity. He learned Arabic from a Moorish slave, and founded, in 1276, on his native island, a Franciscan college to teach Arabic and Chaldee, the first in Western Christendom. He sought henceforth to found schools for the preparation of missionaries. In 1286 he traveled to Rome to procure the sanction of Pope Honorius IV to the founding of such establishments in all the lands of Christendom. He sought also, in repeated journeys, the aid to this end of the kings of France, Aragon, and Sicily, and different popes, succeeding finally, at the Council of Vienne, 1311, in obtaining the provisions for the teaching of Oriental languages at Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, and Avignon. About 1276 he entered the third order of St. Francis. He taught his method in Paris, and then, in 1292, sailed on his first missionary journey to North Africa. At Bugia, in Tunis, he began his work. A disputation was held with learned Saracens, and he made an evident impression, but was arrested, sentenced to death, and banished from the land. Returning to Italy, he taught two years in Genoa, and then in Rome. In 1295 he preached in Syria and Armenia. From 1295 to 1309 he taught and wrote in Paris; Majorca, his native isle; Genoa, Montpellier, Lyons, and Pisa. In the latter year he made his second journey to Africa, visiting Bona, Algiers, Tunis, and Bugia, where he was six months imprisoned. On his return he was shipwrecked near Pisa, where he lost all he had, including his books, and escaped only with his life. In 1314, at the age of seventy-nine, he made his last missionary journey.

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Landing at Bugia again, he preached against Islam, was seized by the people, taken to the sea-coast, and, being stoned, was carried half-dead on board a Christian ship, where he died the next day, near the island of Caborra, June 30, 1315. He was a volumi- </ nous writer. Three hundred and twenty-one of his writings in Latin, Spanish, and Arabic remain, forty of which have been published in eight volumes. All this activity was ruled by his thought of Christian j missions. A more ardent zeal for God, love for men, and persistent labor and self-denial, united to great talents, has seldom been seen in the Christian Church.

One issue of the scholastic movement was the founding of universities. It is true there had been a school of medicine at Salerno from the ninth century, which became celebrated all over Europe under Constantine Africanus, who died in 1187, and that lectures on canon and civil law were given at Bologna * from 1133; but Paris is the first university in Europe in the modern sense, and its rise and in- The fluence were owing to the reputation and ^Un,versities. influence of the great scholastic doctors. Here taught or studied Abelard, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Raymond de Lully, the whole circle from William of Champeaux to Duns Scotus and Occam. The university sprang from the teachers of the cathedral school, the license to teach being bestowed by the chancellor of Notre Dame. Its work began some time between 1150 and 1170, when Peter Lombard was bishop of Paris. Its statutes were compiled in 1208, and Pope Innocent III recognized it as a legal corporation in 1211. The popes favored it as against

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the bishops and cathedral chapter, Gregory IX granting, in 1231, what is considered as its Magna Charta. It taught theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts. The papal favor continued until 1378. Paris remained the only school of theology until 1343 which was able to confer the degree of Doctor of Theology. Oxford was the second great university of the Middle Ages. Robert Pullen, from Paris, began to lecture there on theology in 1133, and a few years later, Vacarius gave lectures on civil law. In 1257 it counted three thousand students. Cambridge began its work in the twelfth century, but became an organized body in 1233. Bologna became the most celebrated school of learning in Italy. In 1200, medicine and philosophy were added to its faculty of law, and later the Dominicans taught theology there. In 1200, ten thousand students were in attendance. A migration from the university of Bologna founded the university of Vicenza in 1204, and in 1222 a like course founded the school of more extended and enduring reputation, the university of Padua. In 1224, Frederick II founded the university of Naples, with the four faculties of theology, law, medicine, and the arts, but the medical faculty was united with that of Salerno seven years later. In the thirteenth century, universities were founded at Vercelli, Arezzo, and Sienna.

Montpellier was recognized as a medical school in the twelfth century; law was added before 1200, and the arts in 1289. The university of Toulouse was founded in 1229, to combat the Albigenses, and the faculty of arts added in 1233. Orleans, with its faculties of law and arts, dates from 1250.

A university was established in Palencia in 1214,

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but it never attracted foreign students. Those of Salamanca, 1243, ^and Seville, 1254, had a more extended repute, and taught also the Semitic languages.

Thus we see in the thirteenth century, fully established, those great schools of Paris, Bologna, and Oxford, which, through their teaching of philosophy and civil law, as well as theology and canon law, were so deeply to influence, not only the thought, but the politics of the last two centuries of the Middle Ages. Through the teaching of the universities, learning ceased to be confined to the clergy, and the laity began to take their proper place in political and social life. The two countries in Christendom most noted for the influence of their universities upon the national life possessed no such institutions as those of Germany and Scotland. There are last that shall be first.

Chapter V.

THE CHURCH LIFE.

The life of the Church in this period was as vigorous and manifold in its development as that of the new nations or the papal hierarchy. The pride and luxury of the prelates, the ignorance and negligence of the lower clergy, made room for a surprising growth of a form of Manicheism known as Catharism, and for the efforts of an apostolic life of the Wal-denses. These were accompanied by the pantheistic speculations of Amalric of Bena and of David of Dinant, both in the time of Innocent III and of the Brethren of the Free Spirit. These heretical teachings led to the founding of the mendicant orders, and to the establishment of the inquisition. At the same time the devotion and religious aspirations of the age found realization in the splendid churches and cathedrals of the new Gothic architecture, which, with its works of charity in its countless hospitals and charitable orders, are the glory of that age of Latin Christendom. Our attention is first called to the Waldenses.

Peter Waldo was a rich merchant of Lyons. On beginning a religious life, he caused translations to

The be made from the New Testament and ex-Waidenses. tracts from the fathers into the Romance languages of the people. Moved by the legend of St. Alexius, who on his wedding-night left his bride and parents, and by the words of Jesus to the rich 460

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young man, he resolved to give up all his property. He gave his wife her choice between his real and his personal estates. She chose the latter. He portioned his two daughters and placed them in the abbey of Fontevraud, and gave the rest to the poor, then suffering from famine. He devoted himself to preaching the gospel in the streets and by the wayside, about 1177 or 1178. Others, both men and women, joined him. They preached in the streets and squares and even churches of Lyons. They went two and two without money, and begging food and shelter, and Wearing wooden sandals instead of shoes; they were called the Poor Men of Lyons. Waldo sought the approbation of Pope Alexander III, at the third Lateran Council, 1179. The pope praised Waldo, approving his vow of poverty, and authorized him to preach when permitted by the priests. The bishop of Lyons expelled them from his diocese, 1181, and Lucius III excommunicated them in 1184. They held a public colloquy at Narbonne in 1190. The points of difference were six: 1. They refused obedience to the authority of the pope and prelate; 2. That all, even laymen, can preach; 3. That, according to the apostles, God is to be obeyed rather than man; 4. Women may preach; 5. Masses, prayers, and alms for the dead are of no avail—some even denied the existence of purgatory; 6. Prayer in bed chambers or stables is as efficacious as in Church. Those in Lombardy also held that good priests and prelates have priestly power; the acts of others are invalid.

They were poor people, zealous in missionary effort; had a good command of the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, which many of them could

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repeat by heart. They attacked the whole of the vices of the clergy, but regarded themselves as members of the Papal Church. They spread rapidly in Southern France and in Northern Italy, and soon fell into the hands of the inquisition. Thousands of them suffered its penalties of the prison and the stake. The ignorance and evil living of the clergy, and the general neglect of preaching, led to the success of the Cathari, the Waldenses, and later, the mendicant orders.

Monasticism found development in the orders of Grammont, Carthusians, and Cistercians. Stephen order of of Tigerno, the son of a count of Au-Grammont. _Vergne, came to Italy as a boy with his father on a pilgrimage. There began the aspirations for a devout life. In 1076 he gathered about him a number of strict ascetics at his home at Muret, near Limoges, who after his death established themselves at Grammont, near by, from which the order took its name. The only rule was that of the gospel— poverty, humility, and endurance without dispute. The monasteries were to possess no lands or churches, keep no cattle, and take no money for masses. In case of want, support was to be asked from the bishop. In extreme necessity, but only after fasting for several days, members were allowed to beg. The order spread quickly in Western and Northern France. Alexander III, Urban III, Gregory IX, and Innocent IV made changes in the order.

Bruno of Cologne, scholasticus of the cathedral chapter at Rheims and chancellor of the archbishop, Manasses I, became so roused by the unspiritual life of that prelate that he retired into a wild cavern in

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the mountains near Grenoble, some time before 1080. Monks gathered around him, living in single cells. iThey accepted no landed property besides the bit of ground near their cells. The ^Carthus,an3* monks dwelt two by two in cells in unbroken silence, except on Saturday, when they assembled, conversed, and confessed to the prior. Their fare, like their clothing, was scanty, and their life strict. They employed themselves in manual labor, copying books, and devotion. By 1258 there were complaints of their worldliness, and they erected splendid monasteries and churches, and gave special attention to agriculture; yet in spite of their wealth they maintained a high reputation for strictness of life and great charity.

Robert Arbissel, a priest of Brittany, founded, about 1100, at Fontevraud, near Saumur, a strict Order of Penance, which received no parish order of Churches nor tithes. Robert was a man of Fontevraud. great devotion and compassionate love. In connection with monasteries and convents, he added a hospital and an asylum for Magdalens. His order was confirmed in 1106, and attained great prosperity in France.

The Cistercian orde'r was founded by Robert of Molesme, at Citeaux, near Dijon, in 1098; but came to its wide renown through St. Bernard of „

_T    ^ 1 t 1 Cistercians.

Clairvaux. In 1151 it had five hundred abbeys, and a century later one thousand eight hundred. The abbot of Citeaux was the head of the order, but his power was limited by association with him of four abbots of the highest rank, and a general chapter of abbots and priors of the order. They were noted for their strict poverty, their plain buildings, their obedi

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ence to the bishop of the diocese, and abstention from all interference with the duties of the secular clergy. They wore a white dress and cowl, as distinguished from the black one of the Benedictines and Order of Clugny. It did a great work in establishing Christian civilization among the Sclavs of Northwestern Germany, and soon became wealthy and powerful.

Besides these, the mendicant orders of Carmelites were founded in 1219, of Augustinian Hermits in 1250, and of Servites in 1253.

The order of Teutonic Knights was founded in Palestine in 1197, confirmed by Innocent in 1199, and transferred to Prussia, 1230. All these were overshadowed by the Franciscan order and that rival which imitated it, the order of St. Dominic.

Francis of Assisi, the apostle of poverty, the father of the democratic movement in the mediaeval Church, st. Francis, and the founder of the Franciscan order, 1182-1226. _was born at Assisi in 1182. In him more than any other man of the Middle Ages were united simplicity, self-sacrifice, and inexhaustible sympathy. His aim was the following of his Lord, and his life a living comment on the tenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. The career of St. Francis shows how immense may be the influence of a fully consecrated life unaided by learning or great talents. To all ages it will remain a striking example of love overcoming the world. Francis’s father, Pietro Bernadone, was a wealthy cloth merchant; his mother, Pica, was of noble descent. Francis owed little to the schools; he wrote with great awkwardness and usually signed with a cross, but he spoke French and Latin. As he grew up he was the leader of the gay society of the

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place, and remarkable for his rich and fantastic dress. When told of her son’s wild ways, Pica, with true mother’s heart, and, as it proved, prophetic instinct, said: “What are you thinking about? I am very sure that, if it pleases God, he will become a good Christian.” Francis had good business capacity, but spent his time with bad company; still he was always refined and considerate, and abstained from everything base and indecent. And he always had sympathy with the poor. One day, when busy with some customers in his father’s shop, a man asked alms in the name of God. With impatience, Francis turned him sharply away, but recovering himself, he said: “What would I not have done if this man had asked me something in the name of a count or a baron? What ought I not to have done when he came in the name of God? I am no better than a clown;” and leaving his customers he ran after the beggar. In the war between Assisi and Perugia, Francis espoused the democratic side, and was taken prisoner in 1202. He remained a year in captivity. Peace was made, and Francis returned home and plunged again into dissipation. Soon he fell ill; he recovered slowly, and going out into the country for the first time after his sickness, was seized with a sense of the miserable emptiness of life. Shortly after, a knight of Assisi with whom he had been in captivity at Perugia, raised a troop to go to Southern Italy to fight under Walter of Brienne for Pope Innocent III. Francis was overjoyed to join the company, and made extravagant preparations for his outfit, in which he surpassed his chief. Great expectations and splendid dreams filled his soul. He said to all: “I know I shall become a great prince.”

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When once on the journey, very probably, the young nobles made the gay and prodigal son of a shopkeeper feel his social inferiority. At Spoleto he fell sick, left the train, and returned to Assisi. He never referred to what had so cruelly wounded him, a proof of how deep the wound had been. This failure was a cruel mortification to his parents; but Francis redoubled his charities to the poor, and sought to keep aloof from all society. Now began his bitter inward struggle. The grotto is shown where he spent many hours in meditation. One day he invited all his old friends to a sumptuous banquet. They thought he was to be as formerly to them, so they made him king of the revels. The feast was held far into the night, and at its close the guests rushed out into the streets, which they filled with song and uproar. Suddenly they found Franics was not with them. They turned to seek him, whom they found still holding in his hand the scepter of the king of Misrule, but in a profound revery. “What is the matter with you?” they cried, as if to awaken him. “Do n’t you see he is thinking of taking a wife?” said one. “Yes,” said Francis, arousing and answering with a smile, “I am thinking of taking a wife, more beautiful, more rich, more pure than any you could ever imagine.” From this time he was a changed man. Francis now sought solitude, gave treasures of sympathy to the poor, and by degrees became calm. About this time he made a pilgrimage to Rome; upon the tomb of the apostles he emptied his purse. Afterward he borrowed the rags of a beggar, and stood a whole day fasting and begging alms in the square before St. Peter’s; thus proving by experience the lot of the poor. Returning to

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Assisi, he was more kind than ever toward those with whom he now felt akin. After two years of this life, when riding one day he met a leper. He could not control his repulsion, and turned his horse’s head in another direction. Francis saw his defeat. Retracing his steps and springing from his horse, he gave the sufferer all the money he had, and then kissed his hand. This victory marked an era in his spiritual life. A few days later, of choice, he sought and visited a leper hospital. About this time, going to the little chapel in the suburbs of Assisi, called St. Damian’s, he prayed before the Byzantine crucifix: “Great and glorious God, and thou, Lord Jesus, I pray you shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. . . . Be found of me, Lord, so that in all things I may act only in accordance with thy holy will.” It seemed as if the form before him took on life, and a voice stole softly into the depths of his heart and spoke to his soul; his offering was accepted. This vision was the final step in his conversion.

Vinet said: “To believe is to look; it is a serious, attentive, and prolonged look; a look more simple than that of observation; a look which looks, and nothing more; artless, childlike, it has all the soul in it; it is the look of the soul and not of the mind, a look which does not seek to analyze its object, but which receives it as a whole through the eyes.” This was the religious temperament of Francis. Peace he had found. He decided to leave his father’s house, where neither his parents nor even the bishop understood him, and undertake the work at his hand, the restoration of the little chapel of St. Damian. His house and all his personal property he sold, and gave

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the proceeds to St. Damian’s priest. When, after weeks of seclusion, he appeared in the streets of his native town, pale and with tattered clothing, the children greeted him as a madman. Pietro, his father, seized him, and dragged him to his home and bound him. A few days later, in his father’s absence, his mother set him free. Francis returned to St. Damian’s. Pietro sought him, and reproached him with the money he had cost him. Francis showed him the money he had brought to St. Damian’s lying where he had left it, and which the priest refused to take. Greedily, Pietro took it. Then he sought to have the city magistrates banish his son, as he could not endure, through him, to become an object of ridicule. The magistrates turned the matter over to the episcopal authorities, and before them, Francis renounced his inheritance. He left Assisi, wearing only a shirt and a tunic given him by the bishop’s gardener. As he went, singing on the way for joy of heart, he was set upon by robbers, who stripped him of his tunic and threw him into a ditch in the snow. Stiff and cold he struggled out, and resumed his singing till he at last came to a monastery near by. Entering the place, he offered his services. The monks were suspicious, allowing him to work in the kitchen, but giving him no clothing. Thence he went to Gubbio, where a friend provided for his needs. Again he visited the leper hospital, and tenderly cared for the sick. Once he returned to St. Damian’s. Not wishing to be chargeable to the priest of the little chapel, Francis began to beg from door to door for his bread, and oil for the lamps of the chapel. The anger of his father and brothers at this time was grievous and hard to bear. By the

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spring of 1208 he had finished the restoration of St. Damian’s.

He next undertook the restoration of the chapel of St. Maria of the Portiuncula, which became the birthplace of the Franciscan order. ‘There have been dreamed some of the noblest dreams which have soothed the pains of humanity.” The repairs were finished, and Francis intended to become a hermit, when, in February, 1209, he seemed to see the crucified Lord, who gave him the command, given to the first apostles, to preach the gospel. The next morning he went to Assisi, and began to preach. Three friends joined him in April of that year. For his rule he took the directions given to the apostles: Matt, xix, 21; Luke ix, 1-6; and Matt, xvi, 24-26. Francis’s life was the comment on his rule. One of the three companions was a rich man, Bernardo, who had formerly entertained him. He sold all he had, and distributed it to the poor. While thus engaged, a priest named Sylvester, who had sold some stones for the repairs to St. Damian’s, seeing so much given away, drew near and said to Francis: “Brother, you did not pay me very well for those stones you bought of me.’ Francis, moved with indignation that a priest should show such greed, said: “Here,” taking a double-handful of coins from Bernardo’s robe, “here; are you sufficiently paid now?” “Quite so,” replied Sylvester, somewhat abashed by the murmurs of the crowd.

Francis and his companions now made cabins of boughs, and going barefooted, clad themselves with the brown tunics such as the peasants and shepherds wore. They lived simply, as did the poor people about them. They went up and down the country as itin

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erant preachers. Singing everywhere as witnessing God’s great redemption, the people called them the Joyous Penitents, and they styled themselves, God’s Jongleurs. They often aided the peasants in their field-work. God gave them trials, but also success. One day the bishop of Assisi said to Francis: “Your way of living without owning anything seems to me very harsh and difficult.” “My lord,” replied Francis, “if we possessed property we should have to use arms for its defense, for it is the source of quarrels and lawsuits, and the love of God and of one’s neighbor usually finds many obstacles therein. This is why we do not desire temporal goods.” In 1210, Francis sought an audience with Innocent III, who granted them permission to preach, but required them to have a master and receive the tonsure; they chose Francis. The next two years they made their headquarters at Rivo Torto, and preached throughout Umbria. The sermons were plain and simple explanations and applications of Christian truths, and understood by the people. They were preached in the open air and in the common language. They were incisive, clear, and practical, while through all ran the note of profound-est sympathy with human need. The poor not only understood him, they felt they had found a friend, a brother, a champion. Francis’s spouse was poverty; but poverty was not for him a limitation, but a gain. He renounced everything, that he might better possess everything. With him the simplicity of the gospel reappeared; the life at Portiuncula was marked by youth, simplicity, and love. It was Francis’s intention that the brothers should gain a living by the work of their hands. He dismissed a brother who refused to

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work. Brother Egido’s example was the carrying out of his thought. On arriving at Brindisi on his way to the Holy Land, he borrowed a water-jug, and spent part of every day carrying water like other carriers. On his return to Ancona he made willow baskets, which he sold for food, but not for money. One day he was in the Piazza di Roma, where they hire men to work. A man could find no one to thresh his walnut-tree; it was so high none dared to take the risk. “If you will give me part of the nuts, I will do it,” said Egido. He gathered his share in his tunic, and distributed them to the poor he met. No wonder such men kept in touch with the lowly, and were listened to and trusted by them. The years from 1212 to 1222 were the heroic years of the order. The year before, 1211, Francis had brought peace to Assisi when torn by civil faction. In 1212, Clara Scifi, born of a noble family in 1194, joined the order. Francis gave to her, and the sisters who gathered round her, St. Damian’s. She was a rare spirit, and soul-mate in the work which Francis had begun.

The movement thus far reminds us, in its hatred of war and striving for peace, of that begun by George Fox; in its boundless'charity, of the labors of John Howard, Sebastian Frank, and the founder of the Kaiserwerth deaconesses; but, most of all, of Wesley’s lay preachers. Francis called his order the “Brothers Minor,” and would have them remain a lay brotherhood among the people. Their poverty, their sacrifice, and, above all, their joyful spirit and their joyous message, were most akin to that movement which awoke to life English Christianity in the eighteenth century. Francis, while like the leaders of

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the Wesleyan movement respecting Church authority and wishing to work in harmony with it, was as free from the legal spirit and legal observance as Wesley himself. The secret of his power was the union of his soul with God in prayer. He knew the joys of soul communion with God, and the ecstasy and liberty of mystic union with him.

Francis preached in Sclavonia in 1212 and 1213, and in Spain, 1214 and 1215. His order was confirmed by the pope in 1216, and the next year divided into provinces. Brother Elias of Cortona preached with success in Syria. The order was established in France in 1218. Honorius issued his bull of confirmation June 11, 1219, and immediately Francis set out for the Holy Land. He was with the Crusaders in their camp before Damietta, and foretold their defeat for their profligacy and vice, yet so won them that a knight wrote home: “He is so lovable that he is venerated by every one.” Visiting Syria, he arrived at Venice on his return in July, 1220. Hugolino Conti, afterward Gregory IX, had been chosen as the patron of the order. He was unceasing in his endeavors to secure a relaxation of the rule in regard to poverty. At the chapter held in September, 1220, Francis felt himself compelled to assent to changes in that direction, but resigned the generalship of the order, which, after a short occupancy by Parenti, who soon died, fell into the hands of Elias Cartona. The order was established in England in 1220, and in South Germany the next year. Though no Franciscan churches were erected until 1222, Francis was discontented with the new rule adopted in 1221, and worn with labors and sickness, he made his will of

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binding force, and solemnly re-enacted the strictness of the rule. On October 3, 1226, his gentle, loving spirit passed from labors and pain to rest with his Lord. Clara survived him twenty-seven years. When, in 1228, Gregory IX came to Assisi to canonize Francis, he strove to persuade her to give up the rule, and offered to absolve her from any obligations she might think she had assumed. She nobly replied: “Holy Father, absolve me from my sins, but I have no desire to be dispensed from following Christ.” The reception of the Franciscan friars, or brothers, was as joyful in other lands as in their own. The monastic movements of the mediaeval _TheFrancls. Church had hitherto been decidedly aris- can Order tocratic in character. The best of these, ^untll,3°°-the Cluniacs and Cistercians, had founded their monasteries far from the noise and business of the outer world, in some spot famed for its natural beauty, and there built their magnificent churches and cloisters. They received vast estates, and in Germany occupied the position of feudal lords to the surrounding peasantry. If common people were received among them, it was only as serving brothers. Their abbots and priors vied in rank and state with the feudal nobility, in which most of them were born. They were no nearer the people than the aristocratic organization of the secular clergy. By this time also the canonical life had fallen into desuetude and perversion. The canons lived in separate houses, had rich incomes from endowments for their separate use, and a canon in a city church was established for life in one of the most coveted clerical positions—positions secured by the nobility for their sons, or often sold by the popes

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from the time of John XXII to eager purchasers. To the people, everything in the Church was for their superiors, except that they paid fees and taxes and attended the services. The secularization and vicious living of the parish clergy lessened their respect and influence. In consequence of this—the avarice and arrogance of the higher clergy, the ignorance especially of the Scriptures, and evil life of the lower ranks— heresy spread throughout Italy and Southern France. About this time arose Peter Waldo and the Poor Men of Lyons, seeking a return to the simplicity and purity of the early Church. But far more influential and dangerous than these was that form of Manichae-ism known as Catharism, which spread from Asia Minor to Bosnia and Sclavonia, and from there to Italy and France, dominating Lombardy and the country of the Albigensians. This was a dark and hopeless form of dualistic pessimism, clothed in the

garb of Christian organization and wor-

Catharism. °    °    „ .

ship, appealing to the Christian bcriptures, of which the laity were wholly and the clergy wofully ignorant. They founded their conduct on the ethical principles of the Gospels, and won their success from the corruption of the clergy and evil life of the people. How widespread and pervasive was that apostasy from Christian truth in the practical life may be judged by the success of such heartless and cruel teaching as that of the Cathari. That their influence was checked and their teaching driven out was not due altogether to the inquisition. No merely repressive measures conquer in the end. Much more was it due to the mendicant friars, who brought Christian truth and life to the people, and made it real among them.

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While in the lands of the North there were no heresies to overcome as in the South, the greeting was equally warm, and the welcome equally cordial. The friars lived and dressed like the poor. They were not afraid of them, and gave them their confidence. They preached to the poor in their mother tongue. It seemed as if indeed the kingdom of God had come among them. The friars established themselves in the heart of cities and towns, where they were accessible to all kinds of human need. They not only preached, but of their poverty fed the poor and cared for the sick in their houses or the hospitals, which soon rose beside them. More than that, men and women who had families and could not leave the world, but wished to lead a godly life, could enter the third order of St. Francis, and have the assistance and influence of this pious and powerful religious order and its special ministrations in their battle for a better life. Their message came to all; the poorest could enter the order, and its life was a social revolution in its recognition of equality and fraternity. No wonder that the order grew, and in forty years from the death of the founder, counted 200,000 members with 8,000 monasteries, divided into tw^renty-three provinces.

The mistake of Francis was in making a condition, which was helpful for him and for his work, a binding rule of necessity and perfection of the order. This crystallization of human effort, after the plan of one man’s thought, however successful that may for the time have been, is not of God, but of man, and is disastrous to the simplicity and progress of the Christian life. Francis and his rule were exalted to a place beside our Lord and his gospel, and its prescriptions

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equally irrepealable. We ^an imagine the consequence if the lightest prescription of Wesley had been held as irrepealable and unalterable for centuries; and Wesley was a wiser man than Francis of Assisi. Cant and contention, division and worldliness, with all uncharitableness, would have taken the place of all larger development of spiritual life and religious work. This took place early in the Franciscan order. The great stumbling-block was the prohibition of the possession of property of any kind, either individual or in common. Yet in a few years, Franciscan churches, Franciscan monasteries and hospitals, arose in every land. The glaring contradiction had an unfavorable effect upon the morals and religious life of the order. Mathew Paris tells us of the effect in England: “They have quickly fallen from their simplicity. They have erected splendid buildings and enlarge them daily, collect immense treasures, and seek legacies from the great and rich, and have immense influence among the people. They allow themselves to become counselors, chamberlains, treasurers, bridesmen, and marriage ambassadors for kings and the nobility; they further the extortions of the popes, gather to themselves a multitude of privileges, preach either flatteringly or dryly and offensively, despite the old orders, preach everywhere and everywhere hear confessions, make the pastors despised, and commend themselves to the nobility and their wives as father confessors.”

Against all this the stricter party strove with renewed zeal, and the contentions of the conventuals with the spirituals, or those of the strict observance of the rule, fill the next two centuries. The strife began early. Elias of Cortona was one of the early

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founders of the order, and had gone to Palestine on a mission before Francis, and returned with him in 1220. Elias was worldly and ambitious, being called the ablest man of affairs in Italy. He was general of the order from 1221 to 1227, and retained control of it until 1230. He was in full sympathy with the efforts of Gregory IX to relax the rule. Through his effort was built the magnificent Franciscan church at Assisi, which was dedicated in 1230. The feeling of the stricter brethren can be discerned from the words of St. Gilio, the third companion of St. Francis. When he was carried to view the great church, and shown its splendor and asked to admire it, he said: “Brethren, there is nothing lacking—except your wives.” They rallied, and within two years secured the rule of Giovanni Parenti of Florence; but Elias regained his authority at the General Chapter of 1232, and held it for seven years. In 1231, Gregory IX decided that the will of Francis was not binding upon his successors, and that they could handle and use money through a third party. Elias ruled in the spirit of this decree, soliciting money everywhere for the Church at Assisi. For seven years he held no general chapter, and his absolute government was both arbitrary and cruel. Csesarius of Spires, the founder of the Franciscan Order in Germany, was thrown into prison in chains for two years, and finally, in 1239, killed by his jailer, who falsely suspected him of attempting to escape. The same year the pope deprived Elias of the office he had so misused. The deprived general took lefuge with Emperor Frederick II, and was excommunicated. The spirituals were in control from 1239 to 1244, through Albert of Pisa and Haymo

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of Feversham. The next four years, Crescenzio Grizzi de Jesi, who had been a physician and a jurist, ruled in the sense of the conventuals. In 1245, Innocent IV, to make the practice of the order more consistent with its rule, at least in appearance, decreed that the ownership of the Franciscan houses and lands was to be regarded as vested in the Holy See. Thus the evasion of the rule w^ras sanctioned by the pope. If consistency had been gained, honesty was sacrificed. From 1248 to 1257 the order was governed by John of Parma, a thorough spiritual, who left behind him the reputation of a saint. In 1254, at Paris, appeared a book called the “Everlasting Gospel.” It consisted of three apocalyptic writings of Joachim, abbot of Flore, who died in 1202, with an introduction and exposition. It taught that the reign of Christ was to begin in 1260, and expressed the views of the strict Franciscans. Its author was Gerhard, a man “learned, pure-minded, temperate, modest, and amiable; a most admirable and lovable character.” The Franciscans disseminated and preached this gospel, which was countenanced by John of Parma. The book was condemned, the order discredited and divided. Gerhard was imprisoned in chains and fed on bread and water until his death, eighteen years later. John of Parma retired to a convent, where he lived until his death in 1289. Bonaventura, but thirty-four years of age, now became general, 1257-1270. Bonaventura was a mystic, and believed that the soul was “brought face to face with God, and seeks God through its own efforts.” Though ruling wisely, he inclined to the spirituals. In 1265, Alexander IV decided that Franciscans could inherit by bequest, or sell or use the

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property. Ten years later, Gregory X decided in favor of the strict observance. In 1279, Nicholas declared the rule to be holy, and to be strictly observed, but the Holy See should hold all property, and all money should be received and handled through a third person. They could inherit only the use of property. Raymond Gandfridi, general from 1289 ^{to I2}95> liberated spiritual Franciscans imprisoned since 1274. Under Boniface VIII the conventuals came into power in 1295. About 1300, Angelo Clareno formed a company of spiritual Franciscans, known as the Clareni, who thus escaped from the tyranny of the conventuals. The most celebrated leader of this party, and a voluminous author, was Pierre Jean Olivi, 1247-1298. He entered the order at twelve years of age, and, while belonging to a monastery at Beziers, taught in the Franciscan schools of Florence and Montpellier. His personality and his writings gave him great influence. “His grave demeanor, lively wit, irreproachable morals, fervid eloquence, learning, piety, gentleness, humility, and zeal for poverty, made him greatly beloved.” His “Postil on the Apocalypse/' which was an echo of the “Everlasting Gospel,” was condemned in 1326.'

THE INQUISITION.

The papal inquisition arose in Southern France under the conditions of the Albigensian Crusade. The legal foundation of this institution is found in the decrees of the Lateran Council of 1215. Upon these were based the decree issued by Frederick II, 12201239, which in all their infamous character became the law of the empire, and the model for the procedure of

480 Culmination of Medieval Church.

the Church until the issue of the bull Ad Extirpanda in 1254.

The edicts of Frederick declared that those who were merely suspected of heresy should purge themselves at the command of the Church, under penalty

of being deprived of civil rights and placed

The Law.    °

under the imperial ban; while if they remained in this condition for a year they were to be condemned as heretics. Heretics of all sects were outlawed; and when condemned as such by the Church they were to be delivered to the secular arm to be burned. If, through fear of death, they recanted, they were to be thrust into prison for life, there to perform penance. If they relapsed into error, thus showing that their conversion had been fictitious, they were to be put to death. All the property of the heretics was confiscated, and their heirs disinherited. Their children to the second generation were declared ineligible to any position of emolument or dignity, unless they should win mercy by betraying their father or some other heretic. All “credentes,” fautors, defenders, receivers, or advocates of heretics, were banished forever, their property confiscated, and their descendants subjected to the same disabilities as those of heretics. Those who defended the errors of heretics were to be treated as heretics, unless on admonition they mended their ways. The houses of heretics and their receivers were to be destroyed, never to be rebuilt. Although the evidence of a heretic was not receivable in court, yet an exception was made in favor of the faith, and it was to be held good against another heretic. All rulers and magistrates, present or future, were required to swear to exterminate with their utmost

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ability all whom the Church might designate as heretics, under pain of forfeiture of office. The lands of any temporal lord who neglected for a year, after summons by the Church, to clear them of heresy, were exposed to the occupancy of any Catholics who, after extirpating the heretics, were to possess them in peace without prejudice to the rights of the suzerain, provided he had offered no opposition.

If Frederick himself did not press the execution of these infamous decrees, he placed all the power of the State at the command of the papal inquisitors when they first began their work in 1232. These decrees passed into the feudal customs and the civil code, and were inscribed in local statute books. States, cities, and magistrates were soon sworn to observe them. They were incorporated in the latest edition of the Corpus Juris as a part of the canon law, and may be regarded as in force to the present day.

The bull Ad Extirpanda, was issued by Innocent IV, May 15, 1252; revised, 1254, 1255, 1256, 1257, 1259, 1265. By this bull the inquisition Bull Ad was organized in every diocese throughout Extirpanda. Italy, and the whole power of the State was placed unreservedly at its command. Every individual was bound to lend his aid when called upon; any slackness of zeal exposed him to excommunication as a follower of heresy, and after twelve months, if neglected, to conviction as a heretic with all its penalties. The bull was repeated by Urban IV, and made universally applicable, and carried into the canon law as the expression of the undoubted rights of the Church. This rendered the inquisition virtually supreme in all lands, and it became an accepted maxim of law that all stat-

31

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utes interfering with the free action of the inquisition were void, and those who enacted them were to be punished. Where such laws existed the inquisitor was instructed to have them submitted to him, and if he found them objectionable the authorities were obliged to repeal or modify them.” Inquisitors were responsible only to the Holy See, and in 1261 they were authorized to absolve each other from excommunication for any cause which, as each inquisitor usually had a subordinate associate ready to perform this office for him, rendered them virtually invulnerable. They were amenable to no authority, civil or ecclesiastical, except the pope. “Under the canon law any one, from the meanest to the highest, who opposed or impeded, in any way, the functions of an inquisitor, or gave aid or counsel to those who did so, became at once from that fact excommunicate. After the lapse of a year in this condition he was legally a heretic, to be handed, without ceremony, to the secular arm for burning, without trial and without forgiveness.”

The trial usually took place in the convent of a mendicant order. The prison was at first the episcopal, or public, prison. Later a special building was used, with cells around the walls, while the trial took

The place in a large room in the center. The Procedure, trials were usually conducted by a single The Court, inquisitor, who was both prosecutor and judge, with all the safeguards of judicial proceedings deliberately cast away, and with no restraint from publicity. The inquisitor had assistants who prepared the cases and took the preliminary examinations; he had a right to call for as many as he deemed neces

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sary. A counselor was later associated with the inquisitor, who was a graduate in law. It becamc the universal rule that the testimony of the accused and of the witnesses should be taken down before two impartial men sworn to silence, who were not connected with the inquisition. Any cne might be summoned for this purpose, but clerics and Dominicans were usually preferred. These, with the notary, signed the written report. The notary took down every question and answer, and read the whole over to the witness at the close. Before the final sentences were given, they were submitted to a committee of experts. The inquisitor summoned for this purpose as many as and whom he would. The appearance of deliberation was a farce; they were expected to confirm the sentence. After signing it, the accused were ready for the sentence and the stake. There was present no counsel for the defense, no civil officer to see that ordinary justice is done, no friend or relation or spectator to carry away to the world outside what here was said and done. Besides these officers of the court, there were the familiars of the holy office, the apparitors, messengers, spies, and bravos of the inquisition. “Freed from all responsibility, these could practice any amount of extortion on a defenseless population, with virtual impunity, by merely threatening arrest or accusation before the inquisition.”

A man would be reported to the inquisitor as of ill-repute for heresy, or his name would occur in the confessions of the prisoners; secret inqui- _{The Cit&tion} sition would be made, and all accessible evidence against him would be collected. He would be then secretly cited to appear at a given time, and

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bail taken to secure his obedience; or, if he were suspected of flight, he would be suddenly arrested and confined until the tribunal was ready to give him a hearing. Legally, there required to be three citations, but this was eluded by making the summons “one for three.” When the prosecution was based upon common report the witnesses were called apparently at random, making a sort of drag-net, and when the mass of surmises and gossip, exaggerated and distorted by the natural fear of the witnesses eager to save themselves from the suspicion of favoring heretics, grew sufficient for action, the blow would fall.

The rules as to testimony led to “the development of the worst body of jurisprudence invented by man,

and to the habitual preparation of the

Witnesses.    .

foulest injustice.” Wives, children, and servants were not admitted to give evidence in favor of the accused, but their testimony, if adverse, was welcomed and considered peculiarly strong. All knowledge of the names of witnesses was withheld from the accused. Relieved from all supervision, and practically not subject to appeals, there were no rules which the inquisitor might not suspend or abrogate at pleasure, when the exigencies of Jhe faith seemed to require it. But a false witness was shown as little mercy as a heretic. The suspected heretic was prejudged. The effort of the inquisitor was not to avoid injustice, but to force him to admit his guilt, and seek reconciliation with the Church. To accomplish this effectually, the facilities for the defense were systematically reduced to a minimum. Advocates or lawyers who excused or defended heretics were held to be guilty of favoring heresy. Inquisitors adopted

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the rule that advocates were not to be allowed in their trials. The accused was not allowed to call witnesses in his favor, except to prove the enmity of his accusers, if he could find who they might be.

The accused was assumed to be guilty, or he would not have been put upon trial, and virtually his only mode of escape was by confessing the charges made against him, abjuring heresy, and accept- _Confegglon ing whatever punishment might be imposed upon him in the shape of penance. Persistent denial of guilt and assertion of orthodoxy, when there was evidence against him, rendered him an impenitent, obstinate heretic, to be abandoned to the secular arm and consigned to the stake. The inquisitor used every endeavor to obtain confession from the accused, for in this way alone could it be certain that the heretical opinions were entertained. The obtaining of confession became the center of the inquisitorial process. Every resource of guile and fraud was used on wretches purposely starved, to render them incapable of self-defense. To these was added force. The heretic, if only suspected, had no rights. His body was at the mercy of the Church, and it employed any means to save his soul and advance the faith. Months lengthened into years, and years into decades, to break his resolution. Three, five, ten, years are common enough interval between the first audience of the prisoner and his final conviction. Chains and starvation were not spared when a shorter process was desired.

Then the torture which had been consistently opposed by the Church, so that Gratian, 1150, declared it an accepted rule of the canon law that no confession was to be extorted by torment, was now author

486 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

ized by the bull Ad Extirpanda, for the discovery of heresy. At first it was to be administered by the secular authorities, but four years later that impediment was removed. Later, by one of the most shocking abuses of the system, the torture of witnesses was left to the sole discretion of the inquisitor, and this became the accepted rule. After having been convicted, or having confessed himself, the accused could be tortured as a witness to betray his friends. As to the amount of torture, the discretion of the presiding inquisitor was the only rule. Torture could be applied but once, according to rule; but this was evaded by ordering not a repetition, but a continuance of the torture, and so prolonged indefinitely. Or a pretext would be found that additional evidence had been discovered which required additional torture to purge away. The confession in the torture chamber required confirmation after removal from it, but retraction was dangerous, as the view taken was, that retraction proved the accused to be an impenitent heretic who had relapsed after confession, and asking for penance, and there was nothing left but to hand him over to the secular arm for punishment.

The inquisitorial process was sure of its victim. No one whom a judge wished to condemn could escape. The great English judge, Sir John Fortescue, who observed its workings on the Continent in the fifteenth century, declared it placed every man’s life and limb at the mercy of any enemy who could suborn two unknown witnesses to swear against him.

The inquisitor never pronounced a man innocent, only the charges not proved; so the case could be taken up again if further testimony appeared. It was

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this secrecy and this suspension over the heads of every one of the sudden summons which was the true terror of the inquisition. The preservation of an immense mass of evidence involving the relatives, property, and honor of so many families for generations was a source of its power. No man could know what secret testimony was stored away in its archives, or suspicion or evidence against himself or an ancestor of his, which at any time might blast his prospects and those of his family forever, to say nothing of the temptation, always strong, to falsify these secret records.

According to its theory, the inquisition never condemned to death, but merely withdrew the protection of the Church from the hardened and impenitent sinner who offered no hope of    * conversion, or from him who showed by relapse that there was no trust to be placed in his pretended repentance. Except in Italy, it never confiscated the heretic’s property; it merely declared the existence of a crime which, under the secular law, rendered the condemned incapable of possession. The penances imposed were comparatively few in number—the recitation of prayers, frequenting churches, scourging, fasting, pilgrimages, fines nominally for pious uses, wearing yellow crosses, and imprisonment.

Stripped as much as decency and the weather would permit, the penitent presented himself every Sunday, between the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel, with a rod in his hand, " to the priest engaged in celebrating mass, who soundly scourged him in the presence of the congregation. On the first Sunday of every month, after

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mass, he was to visit every house where he had seen heretics, and receive the same infliction. Pilgrimages

pilgrimages ^{were merc}^^ul ^only ^m comparison. Per* formed on foot, the number commonly enjoined might well consume several years of a man’s life, during which his family might perish. The four longer pilgrimages were to Rome, Compostella, Canterbury, and Cologne. In Languedoc there were nineteen shorter ones, from local shrines to Paris or Boulogne. Yellow crosses were sewed on the gar-Yeiiow ments, and were never to be laid aside, inCrosses. doors or out. They led to ridicule and refusal of all social and business intercourse. These badges of humiliation and degradation were imposed for many years, or even a lifetime. Penances might Fines ^commute<^ ^^or money, the death penalty never. More effective for evil than imprisonment and the stake, and more widely exasperating, was the sleepless watchfulness which was ever on the alert to plunder the rich and to wrench from the poor the hard-earned gains on which a family depended imprison- for support. Imprisonment was only for ment. those who confessed, and forsook their heresy. It had different degrees of rigor, all cruel enough; but the dungeons remaining in the tower of the inquisition at Carcassonne are described as horrible places, consisting of small cells, deprived of all light and ventilation, where, through long years, the miserable victim endured a living death far worse than the short agony of the stake. Here he was completely at the mercy of the jailers and their servants. Confiscation was one of the most serious penalties of the inquisitional process. This affected the dead, who

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were afterward proved to have been heretics. The

utmost concession which even St. Louis would make

to the rigors of the confiscation of Lan,    , Cl 1.    , ,11    . 1 Confiscation.

guedoc was, that creditors should be paid for debts contracted by the culprits before they became heretics, while all claims arising subsequently to an act of heresy were rejected.” As no man could be certain of the orthodoxy of another, it will be evident how much distrust was thrown upon every bargain and sale in the commonest transactions of life, and what a blow the inquisition gave to industry and commerce! These confiscations supplied in large part the motive and resources of the inquisitions; where these failed the inquisition languished. The poor Waldenses and Fraticelli did not afford the rich plunder of the cities of Southern France. These confiscations gave rise to innumerable abuses of embezzlement and rapacity. The dwellings of condemned heretics were torn down, and not allowed to remain for habitation. So heresy worked a disqualification for inheriting property or holding office to the second generation. The sentence of the inquisitor could always be mitigated, increased, or reimposed at his discretion. The existence of the objects of its mercy was from that hour one of helpless anxiety.

The inquisition was introduced into France in 1233, into Aragon in 1238, into Italy in 1254. In Naples and Sicily it flourished under Charles of Anjou. Venice introduced it in 1288, but kept it completely in the hands of the State. It was legally introduced into Germany in 1369, but never thoroughly established. In Bohemia it began in 1257, but fell into desuetude in 1318.

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No account of the inquisition would be complete without some sketch of the Dominican order, through which it was so largely administered. Dominic de Guzman was born at Calemega, in Castile, of a noble house, in 1170. He studied for ten years at the university of Palencia. Becoming canon of the cathedral of Osma, he was soon its superior, and accompanied

his bishop in his missions in Languedoc

St. Dominic.    , . .    ^&

to the Cathari m 1203, and for some years afterward. It was Dominic’s bishop who gave the papal legates the advice, in 1206, to dismiss their splendid retinues, and go among the people barefooted and poor, and preach the gospel among the heretics, and he and Dominic would set them examples. He not only preached and held disputations with the heretics, but founded at this time the monastery of Prou-ille, for the education of poor girls of gentle blood. It became a large and wealthy convent, and the germ of the Dominican order. He labored in this way in Southern France until 1214. Dominic was earnest and resolute, full of burning zeal, but kindly, cheerful, and winning in manner. In 1214, Pierre Celia, a rich citizen of Toulouse, joined him and gave him a stately house, which for more than a hundred years was the home of the inquisition. A few others gathered with them, and they began to live like monks. As yet, Dominic's work was only in the peaceful conversion of heretics.

At the Lateran Council he obtained the pope’s approbation of their project, provided they would adopt the rule of some order. He returned and assembled bis companions, sixteen in number, at Prouille. They adopted the rule of Canons Regular of St. Augustine,

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and elected Mathieu de Gaulois as their abbot. As the order grew, it was divided into provinces, with a provincial prior at the head of each, and TheDomini-over all a grand master. These offices Order, were filled by election, with tenure during good behavior; and stated assemblies or chapters, both provincial or general, were held. Each friar, or brother, was held to the strictest obedience, and might be sent at any time anywhere on a mission. They were skilled in the arts of persuasion, in theology and rhetoric, and ready to dare and suffer for the faith. From Innocent III they received the name of friar preachers. The obligation to poverty was adopted from the Franciscans at the general chapter of 1220, and made 'a part of the constitution of the order in 1228. Dominic set an example of the most rigid obedience, and when he died, at Bologna, in 1221, he had not even a change of raiment. The papal confirmation was given December 21, 1216. Dominic sent some to Spain, others to Paris, and others to Bologna, while he himself went to Rome. In 1221, from sixteen members they had grown in four years to sixty convents, in eight provinces, from Hungary to England. Everywhere it attracted the strongest intellects of the age, and commanded the respect and veneration of the people. In 1337 they had about twelve thousand members. They sought the influential few, and were never a great popular order like the Franciscans.

Both orders engaged zealously in mission-work. They were in Morocco in 1225; Damascus, 1233; in 1237 the Eastern Jacobites were won for the Roman Church by the Dominicans, and ninety of them were

492 Culmination of Medieval Church.

martyred by the heathen Cumans in Eastern Hungary. The Franciscans met with success among the Tartars, and the king of Armenia became a friar.

Dominic had nothing to do with the inquisition, but the earliest inquisitors were Dominicans, 12321238, in Aragon, and 1254 in Northern Italy. And for that work they became martyrs and made their reputation.

France had come to the leadership of learning and arms in Latin Christendom, and upon her soil Gothic Archi- arose the greatest of the arts of the Middle tecture. Ages—the Gothic style of architecture. The first example known to us is the abbey church of St. Denis, begun in 1120. Its earliest period includes the next seventy years. In that time were built the cathedrals of Noyon, Sens, Senlis, Laon, and Paris, with the churches of St. Germain de Pres at Paris and St. Remy at Rheims. The cathedrals of Sens and Notre Dame at Paris would distinguish any age and any country, but the flourishing period of art in France was from 1190 to 1270. A list of the structures built in these years will show not only that France originated this style of building, but in num' ber and splendor of its edifices kept the lead. It includes the cathedrals, in order of erection, of Soissons, from which came the plan for Magdeburg; Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens, from which was designed the great cathedral at Cologne; Beauvais, Bourges, Troyes, Auxerre, St. Omer Le Mans, Tours, Chalons sur Marne, and the nave of Cambrai; also the splendid Rouen, Louviers, Lisieux, Coutances, and Clement-Ferrand and Limoges, with the churches of St. Ur-bain at Troyes, Notre Dame at Dijon, and the choir

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at Vezelay; also the Swiss cathedrals of Lausanne and Geneva. This will give some faint idea of the wealth, skill, and devotion of the French people in the age of St. Louis and the generation preceding.

From the French architects and workmen the Gothic style spread to other countries. In England its earliest monuments are in the Cistercian monasteries of Ivirkstall, Buildwas, Fountains, Furness, and Byland. The choir of Canterbury cathedral dates from 1175 to 1185, and that of Winchester twenty years later. From the thirteenth century came the facade at Wells, the transept of the York cathedral, Beverley minister, and Southwell; while from the last part of the century dates Salisbury cathedral, and the most splendid work of the century in England, Westminster Abbey.

The list is not much longer in Germany. St. Peter at Gorlitz, cathedrals at Brunswick, Treves, Bamberg, and transept at Bonn, and the churches at Geln-hausen, Fritzlar, Namburg, Liebfrauen at Treves, with the choir of the cathedral at Magdeburg, and the nave of the cathedrals of Freiburg and Strasburg.

In Italy, the first example is St. Andrew at Ver-celli; then come, in order of erection, the famous church of St. Francis at Assisi, St. Antony at Padua, and Maria Novella at Florence. Besides these, the facades of the cathedrals at Sienna and Cremona arose in the thirteenth century.

In Spain, the cathedrals of Lerida, Burgos, Toledo, Barcelona, and Valencia spring, in whole or in part, from this wonderful century. In the Netherlands were St. Gedule of Brussels; the cathedrals of Tour-nay, Tongres, Ghent, Louvain, Diest, Ypres, Bruges,

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Dinant, belong to the same period. This sketch will show how soon the Gothic style reached its height in France, and with what splendid examples it was illustrated.

CHARITY.

The charity of the Christian Church in these centuries was distinguished by the formation of orders Order of ^^or carrying on of works of mercy and st. John of the founding of hospitals. The oldest and Jerusalem. ^ standard order in this respect was that of St. John of Jerusalem. Founded at Jerusalem by Maurus, a rich merchant of Amalfi, in 1073, it was refounded by its master, Gerhard, in 1099, and confirmed as an order by Paschal II, 1113. Its second grand master, Raymond de Puy, gave it its rule. In 1113 it had affiliated hospitals at St. Giles, near Arles, and in Asti, Pisa, Otranto, and Tarentum, and soon established itself in the cities of the Mediterranean. In the thirteenth century its income was 29,000,000 marks ($95,000,000), which was eighteen times the income of the king of France at that time. The seat of the order was the fortress of Margrat until its capture in 1285, then at Cyprus until it surrendered to the Turks, and then at Rhodes, as the strongest bulwark of Christendom in the Mediterranean, until, finally, at Malta, where they successfully resisted the utmost endeavors of the Turkish arms. John of Wizburg, in 1160, visited the hospital of Jerusalem. There were then more than two thousand sick under its care. In twenty-four hours there were often forty deaths. It also richly bestowed house alms on the outside poor. The ordinances of Roger de Moulin, grand master, ii8i₇ provided that there

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should be four physicians established in the hospital, who should be skilled to distinguish between different diseases, and to prepare the necessary medicines. Especial care fell to the brethren who watched day and night by the sick. They had servants at their side-nine for every division of the hospital. They washed the sick, provided them with food, and helped them in every need. The beds were to be covered with clean clothing. For each pair of sick persons there were provided, in case they must get up, a fur robe and a pair of shoes. Three times a week all the sick had pork or mutton, or if they could not eat that, poultry, and they were given white bread. Cradles were provided for children born in the house, and foundlings were taken up and cared for. The spirit of the brotherhood is well shown in the legend of Saladin. Saladin had heard much of the love and care with which the sick were treated at the hospital of the knights, and determined to test it. Disguising himself, he knocked at the gate of the hospital and desired admittance. Most lovingly this was granted. He was then put to bed, and a brother asked him to make known his wishes. Saladin answered he wished something they could not do for him. That troubled the brothers, who pressed him to declare his wish, for “so rich in love is this hospital that what any sick one wishes will be given him, if it can be had for gold or silver.” Then Saladin declared his wish; he could only be cured if the right foot of Moriel, the cherished steed of the grand master, were roasted and brought to him to eat. The brothers w^rere frightened, but brought this strange request to the grand master. Without delay, he answered: “Take my horse and fulfill his wish; it is

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better my horse should die than a man.” Saladin, so closes the tale, when he heard this, satisfied himself with mutton, and gave yearly to the hospital one thousand gold byzants, expressly providing it should be paid in time of war as well as peace.

The Teutonic Knights were not as aristocratic as the Hospitallers, but vied with them in hospital The Teutonic care. Their first European hospital was at Knights. Barletta, in Sicily, in 1197. They were soon established at Halle, Freisach, Weisbaden, Cob-lentz, and Marburg. They soon had foundations in the principal cities, including Cologne, 1219; Spires, 1220; and Bremen, 1236. The hospital of St. Elizabeth at Nuremberg became the largest and wealthiest in Germany, and the chief one of the order. The sick were put to bed, the hospital took careful charge of their property. They fared as the brethren—in the morning, bread, “the best ever baked,” and two courses of milk or vegetables; at noon, three courses. If the sick could not eat the fare, food and drink were given as they wished, and they were earnestly exhorted to care for the salvation of their souls. The hospital also gave alms freely; the tenth loaf baked was given to the poor, and women were employed in the care of the sick.

Besides these knightly orders, arose various citizen orders devoted to good works. Gerhard de citizens’ Rocha founded the order of the CrossOrders. bearers, in Italy, in 1160. Urban III confirmed its privileges in 1185. The hospital of Bologna became the mother-house of the order. The order of the Cross-bearers of the Red Star arose in Silesia and Bohemia, confirmed by Innocent IV in 1252.

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The mother-house was St. Elizabeth’s Hospital at Breslau, founded in 1253. In the next twenty years hospitals were founded in the leading cities of these countries. The order of St. Anthony was founded at St. Didier la Mothe by a French nobleman, in gratitude for the healing of his son. It was confirmed by Urban II, 1095. Its church at this place was consecrated by Pope Calixtus II in 1118. The order spread widely through Germany. It possessed 364 houses, and no other gathered such large receipts from collections.

Guido of Montpellier founded in that city a hospital in the name of the Holy Ghost, 1170-1180. In iiq8 it had ten hospitals. Innocent III

. *    • t-»    t j. 1    j * Order of the

founded one in Rome for the order in _{HoIy Ghost}. 1204. Its main activity was in France and Italy, but it spread widely in England and Germany. It had seventeen houses in Denmark, and hospitals in Vienna, Buda, Pesth, Pressburg, and Cracow. Hospitals were erected on the mountain passes. There had been one on great St. Bernard in the tenth century, but it was restored in 1285; one newly founded in the Septimer Pass in 1120, one on the Simplon Pass in 1235 by the Hospitallers, as also the Luck-manier Pass, 1347, and on St. Gothard, 1331*

The order of St. James de Haut Pas was established to build bridges; its emblem was a hammer. It was established at Haut Pas, near Lucca, in 1125, and this remained the mother-house. Its house in Paris was founded in I3²²* The hospital order of Burgos was founded in 1212, to accompany and care for pilgrims to the shrine of St. James at Compostella.

Few orders relieved more hopeless misery than

3²

498 Culmination of Mediaeval Church.

that of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives, founded by John de la Martha, a priest and Doctor of theology, in 1160, and confirmed by Innocent III in 1198. By 1627 they had freed 11,809 captives belonging to the provinces of Castile and Leon alone, from the Saracens; from France, 30,720. They had released 146 companies of prisoners from Germany before 1414, and many which belonged to England. The seat of the order was St. Marturinus house at Paris. Thank God, need for work of this kind has ceased in Christendom, but the Armenian relief-work shows what its nature was! Many of its zealous brethren were slain or died in Saracen prisons. St. Maria of Grace for the Redemption of Captives was a Spanish order, founded by John Nolasko, and confirmed by Gregory IX in 1235. Its headquarters were at Barcelona.

There were also hospitals for orphans and foundlings, especially in the Romance countries, but few in Germany, where the orphans were given to the care of families. Mutes and epileptics were first especially provided for at the Elsing Hospital, in London, 1260. There were no hospitals for the insane until after this period.

Numerous hospitals and cloisters were provided for women who wished to forsake an evil life, especially in Germany. They began about 1215. The only instruction was in reading and singing; the fasts were moderate, but great stress was put upon labor. By the end of the century most of them had become Dominican or Cistercian nuns.

In the thirteenth century there were free baths for the poor established in all the cities. A number

The Church Life.

499

of small houses were given rent free to the poor, as in Bremen. Houses were also left by bequest for the use of the poor. Especial care was taken to give the dead decent and Christian burial.

The great work of Christian charity at this time was the erection of hospitals. All those in the hands of the orders above mentioned combined Hospital were but a minority of the hospitals. But Foundations, the orders awakened a zeal and better care in the hospitals. They were of three classes: The cloister, or endowed hospital; the hospital orders, led by lay brothers and sisters; and the secularized city hospitals. The century from 1250 to 1350 is the great era of hospital founding. Hospitals were founded by the citizenship of a city, by individuals who gave it to the care of the city, brotherhoods, guilds, or associations, and by private persons. These came under the oversight of the city authorities. More than a hundred were founded in Germany before 1300. Halberstadt had eight, Erfurth nine, and Cologne sixteen hospitals. The earlier idea of the hospital is well given in this extract from a contemporary document: “This house is established for works of mercy, and for the salvation of the faithful. These works shall be carried on there day and night; namely, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, refreshing the weak; women shall be cared for six weeks after child-birth; widows, orphans, and pilgrims, who come from all sides, are to be given meals and lodgings.”

Devotion and unshrinking sacrifice were shown in this work. In the plague of Black Death, 124,434 mendicant friars died. Five hundred plague-stricken people were often borne daily to the cemetery from

500 Culmination of Medieval Church.

the Hotel Dieu at Paris. The nursing brothers and sisters were more than once wholly swept away. In Devotion to hundreds and thousands of great and small the Work, hospitals, bands of brothers and sisters served the sick and poor for the love of God.

That this love and devotion was not entirely of a corporate, social, or external nature, is witnessed by the life of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia. Elizabeth was the daughter of King Andrew of Hungary, and born at Pressburg in 1207. At four years of age she was betrothed to the son of the landgrave of Thuringia, and brought to his court at the castle of the Wartburg at Eisenach, where Luther afterward translated the New Testament. Her mother’s brother, Ecbert, bishop of Bamberg, arranged the marriage. Compared with Hungary, Thuringia was a highly culti-„ . . vated land. Its court was the most splen-

St. Elizabeth.    .    ^v

did in the German Empire. It was the center of a polite society, which delighted in poetry and song. The wife of the landgrave, through a second marriage, was Sophia of Bavaria, who had four sons and two daughters. One of these was Louis, the future husband of St. Elizabeth. Two years after her arrival at the Wartburg, her mother, Gertrude of Tyrol, queen of Hungary, was murdered by a leader of the national party. There was then formed at the court at the Wartburg a party in opposition to Elizabeth, which was joined by the wife of the landgrave. In 1115 the landgrave died, and his son succeeded him. Louis was earnest and pious, and the court gayety ceased, and the singers were no longer called for. Walter von der Vogelweide ridiculed this change. Louis was no weakling; he brought the arch

The Church Life.

501

bishop of Mainz to dissolve his ban against him and his party by force of arms. When his mother wished to send St. Elizabeth to a cloister or back to her father, he stood firmly by her, and they were married in 1221. He was then twenty, and she fourteen years of age. She loved him with her whole heart, and was in every respect a true and tender wife. Her character unfolded more and more in the truest humility, compassion, and beneficence. She was a comfort to all the needy and oppressed, and in ministering to the suffering she shunned no pain or sacrifice. In the famine of 1226 she divided among the poor all the provisions which had been stored up in the castle against a time of need. At Eisenach she founded a hospital for the old and sick.

Shortly before 1226, Conrad of Marburg became Elizabeth’s confessor. His work was to cause her to sacrifice her duties toward her children, her mother-love, and her love toward her husband. She began to subject herself in the night to corporal punishment through her servants. Her husband assented to this iron rule of the fanatical confessor. Louis died at Otranto, September 11, 1227, while on a Crusade. Elizabeth was plunged in the deepest sorrow. She cried, “Dead to me is the world, with its joy and pleasure.”

Now began her time of trial. Fearing her husband’s brother, Henry Raspe, now landgrave, she fled with her children from Eisenach to the protection of her uncle, the bishop of Bamberg. Being recalled by Henry, she dwelt again for a time on the Wartburg, but in 1229 she obtained from him the castle of Marburg on the Lahn, and entered the third

502 Culmination of Medieval Church.

order of St. Francis. Under Conrad she abandoned her children to God, and gave herself to the care of outcasts and lepers. The depth of her humility was shown when scandal made busy with her fame in consequence of her relations with Conrad. Being counseled to greater prudence, she brought forth the bloody scourge, which she used, and said: “This is the love the holy man bears to me. I thank God, who has deigned to accept this final oblation from me. I have sacrificed everything—station, wealth, beauty—and have made myself a beggar, intending only to preserve the adornment of womanly modesty; if God chooses to take this also, I hold it to be a special grace.” Merely to add to her affliction, Conrad drove away the faithful serving women who idolized her, finally expelling Guda, who had been her loved companion since infancy in Hungary. As they themselves said, “he did this with a good intention, because he feared our influence in recalling her past splendors, and wished to deprive her of all human comfort, that she might rely wholly on God.” When she disobeyed his orders, he used to beat and strike her, which she endured with pleasure, in memory of the blows inflicted upon Christ. What a fearful perversion of the Heavenly Father as revealed in Christ is shown in her exclamation: “If I so much dread a mortal man, how is God to be rightly dreaded!” The ferocious bigot would present the Divine Father to this gentle spirit as a tyrant more cruel than himself. The strongest of all religious motives in the mediaeval Church was fear. Elizabeth founded at Marburg an asylum for the poor and a hospital. She died in 1231, when but twenty-four years of age.

The Church Life.

503

There was wisdom and effectiveness in the charity of the mediaeval Church. The Crusades brought to Europe the plague of leprosy, which was not unknown in the Northern lands, as the result of bad diet. A king of Jerusalem was a leper, and leprosy tainted many families of the crusading nobility. Even more rapid was its spread among the people. Leper hospitals arose everywhere, and there was need for them. The Church won undying praise for its loving and tender care for the souls and bodies of these stricken ones, and the gratitude of after generations for its separation of the afflicted and eradication of the disease. What modern medical science has accomplished against smallpox and cholera, what it seeks to do against consumption and cancer, that the Church of the Middle Ages did for a disease more loathsome and corrupting than either of them.

fart Fnurtlr.

THE DECLINE OF THE MEDI/EVAL CHURCH.

S°5

Chapter I.

THE STATES OF EUROPE.

The centuries between the death of Boniface VIII and the advent of Luther were a period of moral, religious, and economic decline. There was an improvement in the latter respect after I45°» but ^{n0 re_} newal of the spiritual life. The age of heroism, sacrifice, and success had gone. The mediaeval Church made the pope the head of Christendom. The papal captivity at Avignon, the humiliations of the schism, the contradictions of the Councils, the luxury and vice of the era of the renewed papacy, had deprived it of all moral influence for good, and of all power to revive the spiritual life. The effects were felt throughout the Church, and in the political and social world. In the fourteenth century courtly chivalry and its superficial refinement, its luxury and cruelty, formed the life and manners of the nobility. It was the era of Pedro the Cruel in Spain, of the miseries of the Hundred Years’ War in France, of judicial murders and social revolution in England, of the plague of the Black Death in Europe, which swept away one-third of its inhabitants. A specimen will show the decay of the moral life toward its close. John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, was the first nobleman of England. He was looked upon as the protector of Wyclif and his preachers, who inculcated the strictest morality, and yet this duke of Lancaster, while claiming the

507

508 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

crown of Castile in the right of his wife, lived in adultery with one of the ladies of her household. His son, Henry Beaufort, bishop, Crusader against the Hussites, and cardinal, was the father of an illegitimate daughter, whose mother was the sister of the archbishop of Canterbury. The clergy were ignorant, and public and private morality fell lower and lower.

Of the century succeeding, Bishop Stubbs says: “All that was good and great was languishing.” The Paston letters show in the class below the nobility more violence, chicanery, and greed, than anything else. Then came the violence and blood of the Wars of the Roses in England, which were anticipated in France by the assassinations and cruelties of the Burgundians and Armagnacs. They ended in the reign of Richard III in England, and the blood and cruelties of Louis XI in France. In Germany no rule could be weaker than that of Rupert and Frederick III, in which imperial impotence and beggary made the successors of Charlemagne the laughing stock of Europe. Constantinople fell, and the Turks made steady advance in Christian lands. Nevertheless, the national life increased in power in these centuries; so in England and France, and in the free cities of Germany, and the Italian cities like Florence, Genoa, and Milan, but especially in Spain. The use of gunpowder, the invention of printing, and the discovery of America and the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope, ended the life and the political, social, and commercial organization of the Middle Ages. The structure of mediaeval life was outworn, a new one must take its place. It could only be founded on the renewal of the Christian life and of the Church.

The States of Europe.    509

To Edward I, the great lawgiver among English kings, succeeded his son Edward II, one of the most worthless of her sovereigns. He was tall England, and athletic, but his low tastes, incapacity,

Edward II.

and drunkenness made him always de- '309-1327. pendent upon favorites little less worthless than himself. Finally his queen, Isabella of France, and her paramour, rose in rebellion against him; he was captured and put to death in prison, September 21, 1327. Edward III was crowned, after his father’s Edward 111. deposition, in January, 1327, when he was '327-«377. fifteen years of age. The next year he married Philippa of Hainault, and made peace with Scotland. Edward III was strong and active in person, graceful and attractive in manners. He spoke English and French, and understood German. Ambitious, magnificent, and profuse, he never won the love of the people, who w^rere burdened by the expenses of his prodigal and costly wars and courtly extravagance. He delighted in all the show and exercises of chivalry, but w^ras immoral in his private life, selfish and hardhearted. In 1340 he claimed the title of king of France through the right of his mother, though his claim was invalid through two facts: That the French crown did not descend through females, and that, if it did, another heir had a better right. Nevertheless, the English kings bore the title until, as a consequence of the victories of Napoleon, it was renounced at the peace of Amiens, 1802. In the prosecution of this unjust war, the great victories of Crecy and Poitiers were won, and the French king came as prisoner to London, while a large portion of French territory came into English hands by the treaty of Bretigny,

510 Decline of Medieval Church.

1360. The political, moral, and social disorganization of the last days of Edward III and the minority of Richard II caused the loss of a good portion of these conquests; but the last of them was not won back by France until two centuries later.

The popes were now at Avignon, and friendly to the French king. They were needy and greedy, seek-Anti-papai mg every means to drain money to their Legislation. _ccmrt. Edward resisted these attempts through legislation, which marks an era in the history of the dealing of the papacy with the States of Europe. The Statutes of Provisors, 1351, made all who procured reservations or provisions from the Papal See liable to fine and imprisonment; and that of Praemunire, 1363, forbade appeals to the papal court under the penalties of treason. The English clergy acknowledged the supreme power of the king. Seventy years later, Pope Martin V made every effort to secure the repeal of these obnoxious statutes, but failed; and a century later, Henry VIII used the Statute of Praemunire to subdue the English clergy, and render final the separation from Rome. Three other events mark this reign: The use of gunpowder in battle, first at Crecy, which put an end to knighthood and chivalry; the great plague of the Black Death, 1347-1354, which carried off from a third to a half of the population, and from which England did not recover until the reign of the Tudors one hundred and thirty years later; and the founding of English literature in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and Langland’s “Vision of Piers Plowman,” and the prose of John Wyclif.

More influential than any of these was the move

The States of Europe.    511

ment for ecclesiastical reform, begun by an Oxford doctor of theology, this same founder of English prose. John Wyclif was born at Ipres- johnWyciii. wel, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, about «3²°-'384. ^T3²⁰> ^an old and reputable family. He was educated at Oxford, and became fellow of his college, Baliol, and later, between 1356 and 1360, its master. The next year he received a parish whose patronage belonged to his college, at Filingham, in Lincolnshire. Two years later, he returned for a time to Oxford. In 1365 he was made warden of Canterbury Hall, a foundation of secular clergy at Oxford. In 1367 the new archbishop turned out the inmates, and replaced them by monks. Wyclif appealed to Rome, but lost his case, in 1370. He became king’s chaplain, and in 1366 wrote a tract in support of the action of Parliament refusing to pay tribute to the pope, which had not been paid since 1300. In 1378 he exchanged his living at Filingham for one nearer the university at Ludgershall, in Buckinghamshire, and obtained leave to study two years at Oxford.

Wyclif, from disputing the right of the spiritual power to interfere with temporal matters, was gradually led to deny the lawfulness of any temporal possessions of the Church. The points of his teaching, elaborated in his treatise, “De Dominio,” 1370-1377, as stated by Mr. Lane Poole, are:

1.    Sin deprives a man of all right to possess anything.

2.    All property should be held in common.

3.    The spiritual power is entirely separate from the civil.

4.    Should it overstep its bounds and come in con-

512 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

tacc with temporal concerns, it is subject to civil jurisdiction.

5.    The Church should hold no property.

6.    Excommunication is of no effect, unless justified by the sin of the person excommunicated.

7.    In no case should it be pronounced for an offense connected with temporal affairs.

In April, 1374, he received the rectory of Lutterworth in Lincolnshire. The same year he was sent on a royal ambassy to Bruges, to confer with papal representatives concerning “Provisions.” He lived chiefly at Lutterworth and Oxford, but became a popular preacher at London. In February, 1377, he was cited for trial at St. Paul’s, London, but the court was broken up by a brawl, and through the protection of John of Gaunt, Wyclif escaped. The same year, eighteen conclusions from his writings were condemned in five bulls by Gregory XI. He commanded Wyclif to be arrested, confined in prison, and tried. The death of the king, the backwardness of the bishops, and the resistance of the university to the pope’s right to order the imprisonment of any man in England, led to the failure of this attempt. Before the royal court and at the university, Wyclif defended his teaching. By the government he was protected and consulted. He felt he had the support of the nation, and his university nobly stood by him. He was twice called for trial at Lambeth Palace. In 1378 the princess of Wales, mother of the young king, enjoined judgment, and a mob broke up the court. Again, in 1382, his university chancellor and protector defended him, when he again escaped condemnation. The papal schism of 1378 awoke him to more

The States of Europe.    513

strenuous opposition to the papacy. He began now to send out his itinerant preachers, and to translate the Bible. The work of translation was mainly that of Wyclifs hand, though Nicholas Herford translated a part of the Old Testament, and his assistant in parish work, John Purvey, revised and finished it, probably not long after Wyclifs death. This translation and his numerous English sermons and tracts are the first monuments of English prose. The itinerant preachers were not intended to be rivals to the clergy, but to supplement the Church services by giving religious instruction in the language of the people. Their mission was like that of Wesley four hundred years later. The itinerants included a good number of men who held positions in the Oxford colleges. The common people heard them gladly. In 1381, Wyclif rejected transubstantiation, holding practically the modern Lutheran doctrine. Forty-five of these theses were condemned by the Oxford doctors, and then followed the Peasants’ Revolt. Wyclif withdrew to Lutterworth, but remained popular with the laity and the people. Early in 1383 he suffered a stroke of paralysis. The next year, Urban VI cited him to Rome, but a second stroke smote him while hearing mass, and he died three days after, December 31, 1384. Wyclif was an upright, sincere, and courageous man. The unwavering support of his university is creditable alike to it and to him. He fearlessly declared the immediate dependence of the individual soul upon God, without priestly mediation, and believed in the invisible Church of the saints. Wyclifs hostility, until the last six years of his life, against the papacy was political. His work as a religious re-

33

514 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

former lies within these two years, while in two of them he was crippled by paralysis, and was near sixty when the work began. These strong national principles advocated by him may be the reason for his protection from a fate like that of Huss, and for the sympathy and support he everywhere received. Had he begun his work as a religious reformer at the age of Luther and Wesley, the history of England and of the Church might have been different. As it is, we can but be astonished at the amount and variety of his labors in these years. Wyclif was the strictest kind of a predestinarian, following Augustine. He was the first in the Middle Ages inflexibly and successfully to resist the See of Rome, and to reject the innovations of the Lateran Council in regard to the doctrine of the sacrament, the precursor of all the Protestant reformers in what he rejected, and in giving the Bible and a preaching clergy to the people.

Edward III was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II. His queen was Anne of Bohemia, through Richard 11. whom Wyclif’s writings reached Prague, i377-«399. _and formed the teaching of John Huss. The reign of Richard was broken by the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the attempt of the king to obtain absolute power, and the return of Henry of Bolingbroke. Then followed the deposition, imprisonment, and death of the king, February, 1400, and the accession Henry iv. of the house of Lancaster in the person of ■399-«4'3* Henry IV. It was of first importance for Henry, who never sat easily on his throne, to secure the support of the clergy, and so the act “For the Burning of Heretics” became a law of England in 1400. William Sawtrey, a chaplain of St. Ostries

The States of Europe.    515

Church in London, was burned, February 26, 1401, while John Purvey, Wyclif’s friend, recanted the next March. In 1409 a blow was given to Wyclif’s preachers and those favoring them, when unlicensed preaching was forbidden. The next year John Badby, a tailor, was burned for denying transubstantiation. March 20, 1413, Henry IV died, and was succeeded by his son, Henry V. This victor of Agin- Henry v. court and crowned king of France was «4'3-»423. the darling of the English people. He began a war without justification, except his ambition, against France in 1415, and died upon her soil seven years later, leaving to a child not yet a year old the crowns of England, Ireland, and France. Like his father, he was a zealous adherent of the Church, and stern in his repression of heresy. Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was arrested for heresy in 1413, but escaped. He was seized in 1417, and the next year slowly burned to death, hanging from a gallows in chains. Thus the followers and teaching of Wyclif were stamped out. But the work of the first of the reformers was not in vain. The earliest to receive and the strongest to suffer and maintain the Protestant teachings under Henry VIII,'and the support of Parliament during the civil war of the seventeenth century, the recruiting ground for the Puritan soldiery of Cromwell, were the eastern counties of England, which were traversed and sown with gospel truth by Wyclif’s itinerants. The spiritual and moral influence struck deep into the life of the English common people, and brought forth fruit for regeneration after a century of decadence and corruption.

Henry V demoralized England by his trampling

516 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

upon the rights of conscience, and his unjust war against France. His policy caused the overthrow Henry vi. of his dynasty. Henry VI was king before 1422-1471. he _couid walk alone. He was pious, but weak and unfitted to rule. Charles VII was undisputed king in Paris in 1437. In 1444, Maine was ceded to France in return for a French wife for the king, and six years later, Normandy was lost. After a hundred years of war, all that remained to the English of their conquests was Calais and a little district around it.

In 1455 the partisans of the house of York rose against Henry, and the War of the Roses began, the White Rose of York against the Red Rose of* Lancaster. The Duke of York was taken and executed after the battle of Northhampton in 1460; but his son Edward was victorious, at Towton, March 29, 1461, Edward iv. and was crowned in June. Edward IV 1461-1483. _was handsome, brave, and immoral. One of the best generals among the English kings, he was unscrupulous, despotic, and cruel. The forces of Henry were routed at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471,. and the king died the same year in prison. Edward IV was followed by his son, the child Edward V, who, with his brother, was strangled by the command of their uncle, Richard III, in the Tower of London, in August, 1483, four months after the death of their Richard in. father. Richard, the brother of Edward, 1483-1485. _came to the throne by this foul murder, and did not spare the blood of his brother Clarence or of the brothers of the queen, to retain it; but on Bosworth Field, August 22, 1485, he lost his kingdom and his life. Henry VII then became king, and

The States of Europe.

5i7

the founder of the Tudor dynasty of English sovereigns. The Wars of the Roses were ended, the most bloody, cruel, and disgraceful in English Henry vii. history. The aristocracy was decimated, >485-1509. and way paved for the assertion of the royal power and the formation of a strong and centralized monarchical administration. Henry VII, earl of Richmond, grandson of Catherine, widow of Henry V, by her second husband, Owen Tudor, married the daughter of Edward IV, and so united the claims of the rival houses of Lancaster and York. He was cool, calculating, economical, crafty, and unscrupulous. A better man than Louis XI of France, and more like Ferdinand of Spain, he gathered into one strong hand the resources of England, and founded her greatness as a modern State and that of his house.

Scotland secured her independence at the battle of Bannockburn, 1314, which ended the twenty-years’ war with England. She alternated between

⁵³    •it'*    Scotland.

alliance with France and peace with England, from Bannockburn to Flodden Field, where James VI fell, in 1513. She had a rude feudal aristocracy, was attached to the Roman Church, and was reputed as poor and ignorant. The opening of her resources and development of her national character awaited the Reformation.

After the death of Boniface and the election of Clement V, and the ill-success and expense of the Flemish War, Philip IV was in great need of money. The old feudal revenues did not suffice for a centralized administration through paid officials of royal appointment, even in the time of peace, much less when expensive wars were added. Philip increased

518 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

the taxes and tolls, and debased the coinage, yet his means were still insufficient; so he resolved to destroy the order of the Knights of the Temple at Jerusalem, and to seize its w^Tealth. Its pride and the secrecy of its initiation and ritual, and the presence of its grand master, Jacques Molay, and the chief officers of the order, either in Paris or in France, made the king select the Templars as easier prey than the somewhat older and even more wealthy order of the Knights of the Plospital.

In the spring of 1307, Philip had an interview with Clement V at Poitiers, in which he brought forward France. the foulest charges against the Templars. Phuip iv. These were communicated to De Molay, 1285-1314. who came to Clement with the chief officers of the order, the preceptor of Cyprus, the preceptor of Aquitaine and Poitou, and the visitor of France. These supposed they had made a complete defense against the accusations, and De Molay returned to Paris, October 12th. Up to August 24th no impression had been made on the pope’s mind that the Templars were guilty. Philip used William de Paris, the papal inquisitor for France, to destroy the Templars. He sent letters to his subordinates September 20th, commissioning them to act in the case of the heresy of the Templars. On the 14th day of September letters were sent by the king, under William’s authority; to his officials Destruction throughout France, ordering the simul-of the taneous arrest of all Templars on the 13th Templars. Q_ctok_er The Templars were brought before the inquisitional commissioner one by one. They were promised pardon if they confessed,

The States of Europe.    519

otherwise they were tortured. Their depositions were sent to the king, and all their property taken in charge and inventoried by royal officers. The heresy of the Templars was published to the world Octobcr 16th. There were probably 1,500 knights and 15,000 serving brothers at that time in the order. One hundred and forty were arrested with De Molay, their grand master, at the Paris Temple, and but few in France-escaped. One hundred and thirty-eight confessions were taken under torture from those captured at Paris; all but three confessed. In Paris, thirty-six Templars perished under torture, and twenty-five at Sens. Before the papal Consistory the Templars complained of the excessive torture they had endured. De Molay confessed October 24th.

The charges were of foulness, indecency, and heresy, accompanied with blasphemy. There is absolutely no external evidence against the order. The proof rests entirely upon confessions wrung by torture or threats from the accused. It is not worthy of the slightest credit, any more than similar confessions in the case of trials for witchcraft. The charges are improbable; the evidence abounds in contradictions and improbabilities. Again-st these weighs a fact like this: A witness in Cyprus testified that when the sultan of Egypt drew out forty captive Templars who had been in his dungeon for ten years since the surrender of Tortosa, and gave them their choice between renouncing their religion or death, they refused to a man, and were starved to death.

Clement V, November 22, 1307, in a bull, declared the guilt of the Templars, and ordered all sovereigns to follow Philip’s example. This decided the fate of

520 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

the Templars. The kings of England and Aragon, who had written to Philip to defend the order, now felt the case was decided, when the pope, their defender, had condemned them. In the winter of 1308, Clement stopped all proceedings, but Philip and Clement came to an agreement in May. Seventy-two Templars were examined by a commission of cardinals friendly to Philip from June 28 to July 1, 1308, and before the Consistory, July 2d. They were either men who had left the order or had been tortured, and were selected witnesses for the prosecution. De Molay and four high officials of the order were reserved for the judgment of the pope. The Council of Vienne was convoked for October 1, 1310, to decide upon the fate of the order, and by a series of papal bulls the prosecution was organized throughout Europe. This was carried on by the French episcopate for three years previous. In August, 1308, a papal commission was formed, to gather together the results. De Molay and Perraud were cited and appeared before the commission. On the second citation, February 3, 1310, five hundred and forty-six Templars appeared to defend the order. Nine representatives were authorized to appear for all the defenders on April 7th. They presented their defense in writing on the 13th of April. On the 10th of May the commissioners were told that the Provincial Council of Sens, under its archbishop, a youth, the brother of Marigny, royal minister of finance, was about to prosecute the Templars who had offered to defend the Order as relapsed heretics. The pope had authorized this act of unspeakable meanness and injustice. The Council opened at Paris, May nth, and the next day fifty-four of those who

The States of Europe.    521

offered to defend their order were slowly burned to death, as having relapsed from confession. The Council of Rheims burned nine; three were burned at Pont d’Arche, and a number at Carcassonne. Then the commission went on with its work; evidently a defense was not what the commission desired. In April the Council of Vienne was convoked for October 1, 1311, a year later than the first summons. The commission then adjourned from May 18th to December 17th, and then sat until the next June, to accumulate testimony against the order, but no opportunity was given for its defense. On June 5th the commission closed its work, and sent its report to the pope.

After Clement’s bull of November 22, 1307, Edward I ordered the arrest of all Templars in England, January 10, 1308. The papal inquisitors Templars out-began the trials in London, October 20, ^{side Fr}ance. 1309. They could do nothing without torture, and the king three times granted them permission to use it, though against the laws of the realm. They sat without result until May 24, 1310. The pope scolded the king and bishops for not using more torture. Three times again the king repeated his permission, but the conditions were' not favorable. After eighteen months’ trial the Templars could not be convicted. They were distributed to various monasteries, and supported there until their death. In these they maintained a good reputation. In Lorraine a large number of Templars were burned, and the duke secured their property. In Germany only the bishop of Magdeburg obeyed the papal mandate of arrest. In Naples the property of the Templars was divided between the pope and the king. Four Templars were burned.

522 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

No Templars were burned in Italy, outside of the French kingdom of Naples. The Templars found able defenders in Cyprus. In Aragon the Templars were tortured, but were all acquitted in 1311. The same result was reached in Majorca and Castile. In Portugal nothing was found against them, and they and their lands were transferred to the new knightly order of Avis. In spite of Clement’s bulls, exhorting and commanding the kings to torture the Templars, “perhaps the most disgraceful that ever proceeded from a pope,” no evidence was found against them beyond the bounds of France.

When the Council of Vienne convened, seven Templars appeared before it to defend the order, but Clement promptly threw them into prison. Later, two others shared the same fate. April 3, 1312, the Council declared its assent to the pope’s bull dissolving the order. The evidence did not justify its condemnation, yet it was advisable to dissolve it. The pope ordered all the property of the order to be given to the Hospitallers, but Philip IV secured the lion’s share, and the costs to secure even a fraction of the property rendered the order of the Hospital poorer, rather than enriched, by the destruction of their ancient rivals. Clement had reserved De Molay and his four companions for his judgment. A commission of three cardinals was appointed to try them, December 22, 1313. On the 19th of March, 1314, they were brought forth on a scaffold in public, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. They had already been under arrest six and a half years. De Molay and De Charnay arose on the scaffold, and retracting their confessions, defended the order. The only parallel

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is Cranmer’s renouncing his confession at Oxford. The king, surprised and enraged, had them taken that night and burned at the stake as relapsed heretics.

No words are too strong to set forth the fraud and violence, the relentless cold-hearted cruelty, of Philip IV, or the travesty upon justice of the inquisition, which made such proceedings possible; but the most pitiable figure in this frightful tragedy is the lying, craven, treacherous Clement V. One month after the burning of De Molay, he was summoned to a higher tribunal, where neither fear nor cunning avails; and eight months later, Philip IV followed him.

The three sons of Philip IV reigned fourteen years, and died without male heirs. They all died young, though they were men of more than ordi- _{Sons f} nary physical strength and beauty. The Philip iv. first was twenty-seven, the second twenty- ^{Louls x}* eight, and the third thirty-four years of p^^y⁶ age. No wonder the people said the curse 1316-1322. of the dying Templars followed the house Charles iv. of Philip the Fair, and caused its speedy ^,322“^1328, destruction. On the death of the last of the family the French crown passejd to Philip VI of Valois, who was a cousin of Charles IV, and a grandson of Philip II. The house of Valois ruled France until 1589. Philip, until the outbreak of the war with England, was the most powerful king of France since Charlemagne. Edward III had recog- phiup vi. nized Philip as king of France in 1328, >328-'35<>. but led by the Flemish, who had expelled their count under the lead of Philip van Artevelde, and by a war of succession in Brittany, but most of all by his unscrupulous ambition, he assumed the title of king of

524 Decline of Medieval Church.

France in 1340. The victories of Crecy, 1340, and Poitiers, 1356, with the captivity of King John, led to the treaty of Bretigny in 1360. Charles had bought Dauphiny for 120,000 florins in 1349. This was important, as it included Lyons, and from that time the oldest son of the French king was called the Dauphin.

John. But more than all this was lost by the 1350-1364. treaty of Bretigny. The duchies of Aquitaine, Gascony, Poitou, and Limousin, were ceded to Edward in full sovereignty, and also Calais, with the counties of Ponthieu and Guines and viscounty of Montreal. The king’s ransom was fixed at three million ecus d’or, or in present value, $49,000,000. To raise this sum he sold his daughter Isabella, eleven years of age, in marriage to Gleazzo Visconti, tyrant of Milan, for 600,000 florins. John was a brave and honorable knight, a pattern of chivalry, but a bad king. He was prodigal, and careless of all else except the sports and joys of chivalry. France did not recover in a century from the misfortunes of these years. In 1348 came the Black Death, which swept off one-third of the population, and 80,000 from the city of Paris. In 1358 came the peasant Revolt of the Jacquerie, and the ravages of the bands of mercenaries, or Free Companies. John was succeeded by his son Charles v. Charles, called the Wise, from his efforts ⁱ3⁶4-^,38o. to restore the finances and public order. Aided by Duguesclin as his general, he won back Guienne in 1370, Poitiers in 1372, Rochelle in the next year, and by 1380 there were left only Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais, in the hands of the English. Charles failed in his attempt against Brittany. He also gave Flanders to his brother, the

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duke of Burgundy, on the occasion of his marriage with the heiress of Flanders. This was the beginning of the more than royal wealth and splendor of the dukes of Burgundy.

The death of Charles was an immense misfortune for France. He was only forty-three years of age, and left the throne to a child of twelve, Charles vi. who was in the hands of intriguing, selfish, >380-1442. and rapacious uncles. This was followed by the recurrent insanity of the king, which began in 1392, and then by his unfortunate marriage with Isabella of Bavaria. Philip, duke of Burgundy, gained Flanders on the death of his wife’s father in 1384. His son, John the Fearless, began that internal strife which was to rend France in pieces, and bring her to the utmost verge of ruin by the contention between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy, a strife as bloody and cruel as that of the War of the Roses in England in the same century, and far more disastrous. He assassinated Louis, duke of Orleans, and brother of the king, November 23, 1407, after a pretended reconciliation. It was a treacherous, cruel deed, and it bore bitter fruit. Both factions invited the intervention of Henry V of England. He came and won Agincourt in 1415. The house of Burgundy entered into an alliance with the English, which was confirmed by the assassination of John the Fearless on the bridge of Montereau by the followers of the Dauphin, afterwards Charles VII. That assassination gave the crown to Henry V. Two years later the mad king, Charles VI, and the young conqueror were both dead. The English arms prospered for seven years, and France was rent bv civil faction, and trodden under

526 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

the foot of the foreigner, while all north of the Loire was lost to its king, and only the fall of Orleans, which was closely besieged, was wanting to insure the loss of the rest, when Jeanne d’Arc appeared on the scene.

She was born on the 6th of January, 1412, at Domremy, near the border of Lorraine. Her parents _t were peasants, and she could neither read ’ nor write. She worked as a shepherdess, and was skillful with her needle. Of tall stature, she was strong-limbed, active, and enduring. With extreme religious responsibility, she felt she was called to deliver France. She set out on her mission, February 13, 1429, and rode three hundred and fifty miles through the enemy’s country, reaching the royal court at Chinon on February 24th. On the 4th of May she was before Orleans, and on the 8th the English abandoned the siege. She stood by Charles when he w^ras crowned at Rheims, July 17, 1429. Then she had fulfilled her mission. She was wounded on the 8th of September in an unsuccessful attack on Paris. At Compiegne, May 5, 1430, she was taken prisoner by the Burgundians. They sold her in October to the English for ten thousand livres. During all these months the French king, who owed his crown and his kingdom to her unselfish devotion and valor, made not the slightest effort for her release. It would be difficult to say upon whom falls the greater dishonor, the Burgundians who sold her, the English w'ho bought her, or the Church who burned her; but that of Charles surpasses them all.

Jeanne was first examined February 21, I43¹- She had been heavily ironed and kept in the strictest confinement, as while in the hands of the Burgundians

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she had made two attempts to escape. Her trial endured for three months before the bishop of Beauvais and the inquisitor of Rouen, except for an interval from April 18th to May nth, when she was very ill. Yet she never lost her presence of mind or clearness of intellect. She showed a simplicity, firmness, and shrewdness that “would have honored a veteran diplomat.” She was sustained by daily and nightly visions. The articles of accusation were presented March 27th. Jeanne was not tortured. The case was supposed to be proved and was submitted to the university of Paris, which pronounced against her; and the faculties of theology and law sent their decisions to Rouen, the place of trial, May 14th. May 23d she was brought before the court and urged to submit, but she refused. The next day she was brought out before the scaffold and the stake, and after the sermon, was persuaded to allow her hand to be guided to make the sign of the cross to an abjuration which had been drawn up, and she was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment on bread and water, May 24, 1431. The English were furious at her escape. She said that her jailers abused her, so that she resumed male attire the better to protect herself. On the 28th she was found wearing it. At first, when told she was to be burned that morning, she was overcome with terror, but soon became calm and received the sacrament. It was on the 30th of May, 1431, that the Maid of Orleans, condemned as a heretic, was sentenced to the stake in the Old Market at Rouen. She listened to another sermon, and then was fastened to the stake and burned. This was the reward of such heroism, devotion, and valor as has not been surpassed in the history of

528 Decline of Medieval Church.

France or of Christendom. In 1456 her condemnation was reversed, and in these last few years she has been canonized, and become the patron saint of France.

All the cruelty of the English against the peasant girl who led the armies of France to victory was of no avail. In September, 1435, ^the treaty of Arras, Charles vii. the Burgundians forsook the English and 1422=1461. joined the French, and the next year Charles took possession of Paris. Charles created a permanent tax and a standing army, and reformed the finances. In 1449 he recaptured Normandy, and in 1451 conquered Guienne and Bordeaux. October 19, 1453, ended the Hundred-Years’ War between England and France. The last of the possessions of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine were lost to the English crown. There remained only Calais and a district about it in English hands. This was a victory for the moral order which judges nations and in the last result decides their fate, for the cause of peace and civilization, and for the weal of both England and France.

Charles VII, while neither wise nor able at the beginning of his reign, had learned how to use the Louis xi. mistakes of his enemies, and so had left 1461-1483. the soil of France freed from the foreigners, but still a prey to the dissensions of its powerful, unscrupulous, and corrupt nobility. It was the task of Louis XI to break forever the power of the great vassals of the French crown, who had wrought such ruin for the last hundred years. To accomplish this end, he spared no resource of guile, fraud, or violence. That his end was a blessing to the French nation none can deny, but none can fail to condemn the injustice

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of the king, and even when guilty, not feel sympathy for the victims of such iniquitous intrigues. It was a bad age, and Louis had to deal with bad men, but he did not find it difficult in evil arts to equal the worst of them. He saw Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, become more wealthy and powerful than himself, add to his dominions, and finally attack the Swiss; suffer an irretrievable defeat by them at Morat in 1475, and lose his life at Nancy the next year. Meantime, Louis ruined the ducal house of Alen^on, 1473-1474; that of Armagnac, 1473; of Nemours, 1477; of St. Pol, 1475. By extinctions and by marriages, Louis humbled the aristocracy, drew their power to the crown, and secured unity of government to the French monarchy. Louis won for the French crown, Picardy and Artois, with the duchy and county of Burgundy; by will, Anjou, Maine, and Provence; by forfeiture, Alenqon and Perche; by his brother’s death, Guienne; and from Spain, Rousillon and Cerdagne. This will give some idea of the scope and results of his activity. But this cunning statesman and successful ruler, stricken with paralysis, met death like a craven, poorer than the humblest of his subjects, who had lived justly and could die trusting in God’s love and mercy, as ministered through a King who “did no violence, neither was any guile found in his mouth/’

Charles VIII, youngest son of Louis XI, came to the throne at the age of thirteen. In 1491, Charles married Anne, heiress of Brittany, and for Charles vm. the first time this ancient province was *483-1498* united directly to the French crown. Charles began his Italian campaign, 1494, and conquered Naples within a year. In 1495 all that had been gained was

34

530 Decline of Medieval Church.

lost, and Charles was glad to get back to France. He died at the age of twenty-nine, April 7, 1498. Ill-formed in body, and with small intellectual capacity and bad morals, his short independent reign had opened a new era in European politics; henceforth Italy was the prey to the stranger, and so remained for almost four hundred years.

The crown, as Charles died without heirs, now came to Louis, duke of Orleans, and the grandson Louis xii. of a brother of Charles VI. Louis was 1498-1515. neither able nor brilliant, but good natured. King at the age of thirty-six, he now sought a divorce from his wife, a daughter of Louis XI. They had no children, and had not lived together for years. Pope Alexander VI pronounced them divorced, and Louis married Anne of Brittany, the widow of Charles VIII. It is hardly too much to say that she was stronger in intellect than either of her royal husbands. Louis mixed in Italian affairs throughout his reign, but reaped only loss. He was no match for such skilled and unscrupulous players as Popes Alexander VI and Julius II, and Ferdinand of Spain. In his internal administration he enjoyed the services of a wise and able minister, the Cardinal Amboise, and ruled successfully for the common good. He died January

17 I5I5-    .

These centuries of mediceval life resulted in the establishment of the Spanish monarchy as the first power in Europe in w^realth and arms.

Spain. Three g_reat events led to this: The union of Castile and Aragon by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, the taking of Grenada and the expulsion of the Moors, and the discoveries of Columbus and

The States of Europe.    531

the conquests of Cortez and Pizarro. Ferdinand married Isabella in 1469. He aided her in the civil war, 1474-1478, until she became mistress of Castile. The next year, Ferdinand succeeded to the crown of Aragon, and for the first time in the Middle Ages, Spain was united under one government. This was completed by the conquest of Granada in 1492. The same year, Columbus gave the New World, with its ample domain and vast resources, to the Spanish crown. It was an era of immense expansion and prosperity. The Spanish inquisition, the most infamous of its detestable species, was. authorized in 1478, and established under Torquemada in 1483. Isabella died in 1504, and Ferdinand became master of Naples in the same year. Their daughter Joanna had married Philip, son of Maximilian, emperor of Germany, and Mary, heiress of Burgundy. Philip died in 1506, and on Ferdinand’s death, in 1516, Spain and the Netherlands came to Philip’s son, Charles V. Spain was now ruled by a young monarch, as were England and France. All three were candidates for the German crown. It fell to Charles, and he became the most powerful ruler in Europe since Charlemagne.

No event of the Middle Ages was more fortunate or more prophetic of a better future than the founding of the Swiss nation. On the death of _5wltzerland Rudolph of Hapsburg, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden formed their Everlasting League for the assertion of their rights, August 1, 1291. Henry VII confirmed it June 3, 1309. The Austrians were defeated at Morgarten, November 15, 1315, and Lucerne, Zurich, and Berne joined the League before 1353, and Zug and Glarus soon followed. The Austrians

532 Decline of Medieval Church.

were finally defeated at Sempach, July 9, 1386, and Nafels, 1388, but. did not entirely renounce their claims until 1474. Between 1411 and 1417, Appenzell, St. Gall, and Valais came into relations with the other cantons. By the defeat of Charles the Bold, at Gran-son, March 2. and Morat, June 22, 1475, Frenchspeaking Switzerland became related to the League, and the Swiss nation was founded.

In the history of the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the great event was the union of Denmark Colmar. Norway and Sweden being under Sweden, and one crown, were united by that act with Norway. Denmark, July 30, 1397, and this union remained practically operative in spite of the temporary withdrawals of Sweden until the revolt of Gus-tavus Vasa, 1521.

Poland and Bohemia were together under Wen-ceslaus, 1300-1305. Cracow became the capital in

„ . ^ 1312. The reign of Casimir the Great,

Poland. ^{0    0} .

^I33°-^I37°, was a period of material prosperity. He was succeeded, 1370-1382, by Louis of Hungary, whose daughter Jadwiga married Jagiello of Lithuania, 1386, and more than doubled the Polish dominions, and whose dynasty held the throne for the next three hundred years. Jagiello was a pagan, but became a Christian, and caused all the Lithuanians to be baptized. Jadwiga survived the marriage thirteen years. Her husband took the name of Wladislas, 1386-1434. The Poles overthrew the Teutonic Knights at Tanneburg, 1410. Wladislas II, 1434-1444, son of his predecessor, was king of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary, but was killed in the disastrous defeat of Varna by the Turks. The reign of his brother Casi-

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mir, 1445-1492, was one of the consolidation of the Polish power. John Albert, 1492-1501, and Alexander, 1501-1507, brothers, were feeble and insignificant princes. The power of the nobles is shown in the law passed in the reign of the former, prohibiting any burgher or peasant from holding land. Sigis-mund I, 1507-1548, was in constant war with Russia.

Russia was under the Tartar dominion from 1238 till 1462. Ivan III, 1462-1505, did for Russia the work of Louis XI in France. He absorbed into _{Rug j} the Muscovite dominion, Novgorod, Vyatka, Perunia, and Petchora. Many Greeks came to Moscow in 1472 when he married the daughter of the Greek emperor. His code was issued in 1497. Basil, ¹503-1533, carried out the policy of his father; he absorbed Pslcoff, and took Smolensk from the Poles, but lost the Crimea to the Tartars. His government was an Asiatic despotism.

Chapter II.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH.—THE PAPACY.

Charles II of Naples arrived at Rome on the day Boniface VIII died. Under his protection the Conclave met in the Vatican palace, and, October 22, 1303, chose as pope, Nicholas Bocasini, the son of a notary of Treviso, in Venetia. He entered the Dominican order when fourteen years of age, and rose to be its general. He was one of the few cardinals who remained with Boniface during the days of Anagni. He took the title of Benedict XI, 1303-1304. Benedict was a man of pure morals, pious, and of respectable learning, mild and modest in disposition. He at once reversed the policy of his predecessor. The sentence and edicts against the king of France were canceled, and the Colonnas were restored. Benedict did not feel at ease in Rome, where the power of the great noble families was so considerable, and left for Perugia in April, where he died in July. The Conclave which met to elect his successor was in session nearly eleven months, and June 5, 1305, chose Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, to the Roman See, as Clement V, 1305-1314. His elder brother had been Roman cardinal; he was chosen bishop of Comminge in 1292, and four years later made archbishop. He was weak and vacillating in character. There have been few popes whose cowardice, servility, and shameless official lying injured more 534

Constitution of the Church

the Roman See. His character has been delineated in recounting the overthrow of the Templars. The favors of Benedict XI to Philip were confirmed, the bull Clcricis Laicos recalled, and that of Unam Sane-tam defined as not to prejudge the French kingdom, or to attribute to it any new kind of subjection. Soon after his election he met Philip at Poitiers, and it is supposed there determined not to go as pope to Italy. The cardinals were with him more than a year at Bordeaux, until finally, in the spring of 1309, the papal court took up its residence at Avignon, which belonged to the king of Naples, as count of Provence. Clement lived there in weak health through his pontificate, until he died, April 20, 1314. The Papal See remained more than two years vacant, until, in August, 1316, Jacob de Ossa, a Gascon, was chosen as John XXII, 1316-1334. He was the son of a shoemaker of Cahors, who rose to the episcopate in 1300; was royal chancellor in 1308, and two years later bishop of Avignon and cardinal. He was small and homely; but energy, ability, and force of character had brought him, when past seventy years of age, to the papal chair. John was persistent and inflexible, easily moved to wrath, and his enmity was unrelenting; ambitious, and avaricious, yet pious in his way, celebrating mass almost every day, and almost every night arising to recite the office or to study. A contemporary said the blood shed in his war with the Visconti would have reddened the waters of Lake Constance, and the bodies of the slain would have bridged it from shore to shore. The ability and ingenuity of the pope were used to devise new taxes and sources of income for the benefit of the papal curia. The withdrawal from Rome had

536 Decline of Medieval Church.

been followed by the practical loss of the income from the States of the Church. Anarchy and ruin reigned in the Eternal City and the papal dominions for the greater part of the stay of the papacy at Avignon. Hence new means of support must be devised, the more as John began the building of the great papal palace at Avignon, and the accumulation of a treasure which, at his death, amounted to 18,000,000 gold florins, and jewels, etc., to 7,000,000. For this purpose he resorted to three measures: First, the sale of indulgences by the taxes of the penitentiary, which he was the first to reduce to system; he “offered absolution at fixed prices for every possible form of human wickedness, from five grossi for homicide or incest to thirty-three grossi for ordination below the canonical age.” Second, he claimed for the pope the presentation to all the collegiate benefices in Christendom, and from selling these amassed a vast treasure. Third, he established as a system the filling of vacancies from the position next below in rank or wealth, and so by a succession of promotions from poorer to richer sees, exacted a tribute from each.

Soon after his election, John, with his usual selfconfidence and narrowness, plunged into a new strug-struggie gle of the papacy and the empire. In per-between the sonalities on each side and in events, this ^PaLoufs _or strife was but a caricature of the struggle Bavaria. _Qf _the preceding century; but in ideas and remote consequences it is worthy of our attention. Albert I of Austria had been stabbed to death by John Parracida, a relative, in 1308. The electors, looking chiefly to increase their own power and riches and weaken the empire, chose as their new^r ruler the rep

Constitution of tiie Church. 537

resentative of a new line in Henry of Luxemburg, the brother of one of the electors, the archbishop o( Treves. He took the title of Henry VII, 1309-1313. Henry married Elizabeth, heiress of Bohemia, to his fourteen-year old son John, who fell at the battle of Cercy, and so brought the kingdom of Bohemia to the house of Luxemburg. After a two-years’ campaign in Italy, Henry was crowned at Rome in June, 1312. Soon his weakness in Italy was revealed, and he died at Beneventum, in August, 1313. It is pathetic that Dante’s hopes as a patriot and of terminating his exile were bound up in the success of this young and powerful king. Clement, the weaker he was in France, showing himself more arrogant toward Germany, published a bull declaring the oath taken by the emperors was an oath of vassalage, and involved the recognition of the papal suzerainty over the empire, and that the empire during the vacancy was in the hands of the pope. In October, 1314, shortly after the pope’s death, a double election took place. Louis, duke of Bavaria, had four votes against three for his early friend and playfellow, Frederick of Austria. The strife was brought to a practical conclusion by the battle of Miihldorf, in September, 1322, when Frederick was defeated and taken prisoner by his Bavarian rival. This result did not suit the pope. A year later, by a bull, he declared the empire was now vacant, and its government, during the interregnum, vested in the Holy See. All the acts of Louis were pronounced null and void, and in three months he must lay down his power, and submit his person to the Roman See. All oaths of allegiance were annulled; prelates were threatened with suspension, and cities and States with

538 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

excommunication, if they should obey this lawful emperor, who had not sought the confirmation of his title by the pope. In December, Louis issued the Nuremberg Protest, a vindication against these pretensions of the papacy to the rights of the empire. The pope excommunicated him March 23, 1324. Louis replied two months later with the Protest of Sachsenhausen, in which he repeated the political positions of the Protest of Nuremberg, but added that arms had decided the double choice in his favor, and accused the pope of tyranny, and his declaration against apostolic poverty as being heretical.

The strife between the conventual and the spiritual Franciscans in the thirteenth century raged with in-john xxii ^creasiⁿg bitterness in this. The Council and the of Vienne, 131J, interpreted the rule in Franciscans. f_{avor Q}f tf\e stricter party. The general

Gonsalvo, 1311-1313, one of the party, pulled down the costly churches, and returned the legacies bequeathed to the order. His successor, Alessandro, 1313-1314, was a conventual; but the next general, Michael de Cesena, 1314-1329, was a man of different order. A spiritual, but moderate, learned, and inflexible, he did not hesitate to resist the pope in his policy, which reversed that of the popes toward the order, with a determination as resolute as his own. John declared against the spiritual Franciscans in 1317. Four of those who would not yield were burned the next year, while an unsparing persecution was carried on against them in Southern France, 1319-1330. In the years between 1318 and 1350, one hundred and thirteen of these were burned to death in Carcassonne alone. In December, 1322, John forbade any owner

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ship of the possessions of the Franciscan order to inhere in the Roman See, or any procurator to act in his name, thus doing away with one of the pretenses against Franciscan ownership. A year later the pope went further, and struck what was intended as a crushing blow against the foundations of the order. He asserted that the teaching that Christ and his apostles possessed no property, collectively or individually, was false. This was the declaration against apostolic poverty which Louis the Bavarian pronounced heretical. The Franciscans espoused the cause of Louis Bona-grazia, their former general; Cesena, the present head of the order, and William of Occam, its keenest intellectual defender, went to his court after suffering years of imprisonment at Avignon at the hands of John. With them were joined Marsiglio of Padua and his friend, John of Jundun. In 1326, after his arrival, Marsiglio published his Defensor Pacis. He aimed to show that the pope was the author of the trouble, discord, and war, which a pacific emperor should check. It is a clear and pointed declaration of the rights of the State against the Church, and the ablest assertion of the rights of the civil power in the Middle Ages.

Louis of Bavaria went to Rome, and was there crowned, January 17, 1327. In April he pronounced the pope deposed. The clergy and the Papacy and people of Rome elected, May 12, 1327, an ^{the Em}P^Ire-aged and learned Franciscan, Petro di Corbario, as pope, who took the name of Nicholas V, and soon created a new college of cardinals. Michael de Cesena was re-elected at the General Chapter of the Franciscan order, 1329, at Bologna. By order of the pope

540 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

a new election was held at Paris the same year, and Gerhard Odo elected in his stead. This year, Louis returned to Germany, and his pope was surrendered by the Pisans to the agents of John XII, June, 1329. In August of the next year he was made to appear, with a halter around his neck, at the public consistory. Having been made an object of contempt through repeated recantation, he was fed from the pope’s table until his death in 1333. Nevertheless, the spiritual Franciscans supported Louis, as did the celebrated Dominican, John Tauler, and the Friends of God, the piety and learning of Germany, and also, for a time, John of Luxemburg, the duke of Bohemia, and the duke of Austria. While John, over ninety years of age, was about to be prosecuted for heresy, for teaching that the blessed do not see God and are not perfectly happy until after the resurrection, he died, December, 1334.

His successor was the Cistercian monk, Jacob Fournier, with the title of Benedict XII, 1334-1342. He was not and never became a politician; but he really desired the reformation of the Church, and sought to re-establish peace between the empire and the papacy. The effort was rendered futile by the king of France. The real hindrance was the alliance of Louis with Edward III of England. He made Petrarch a canon of Avignon.

The Convention of Rhense and the Reichstag of Frankfort, 1338, formally proclaimed it as the law of the empire that the choice of the electors w⁷as fixed and final, and that the papacy had no confirmatory pow^rer; the interdict was ordered not to be observed, the clergy were ordered to resume public worship in

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54i

eight days, or go into ten-years’ exile. This declaration passed into a law, and Germany at last made good its assertion of national independence.

There was nothing heroic about Louis of Bavaria. He did not know how to use his good fortune. After seeking papal absolution, 1341, the next year he declared void the marriage of Margaret Maultash, the heiress of Tyrol, with John, son of the king of Bohemia, and granted a dispensation on the ground of consanguinity for her marriage with his own son Louis, margrave of Brandenburg. The selfishness and shortsightedness of this act, as well as its offense against all the religious sanctions of marriage, turned against him the political power of the princes, as well as the moral and religious sentiment of Europe. The sympathy which had been with him in the struggle was now given to the pope.

After pronouncing against Louis’s divorce of Margaret of Tyrol, Pope Benedict died April 25, 1342. May 7th, Pierre Roger, descended from

, ; , •, r T-    t~*    • Clement VI.

a noble family of Limoges, a Benedictine monk, and later archbishop, first of Sens, then of Rouen, and cardinal, was elected pope, with the title of Clement VI, 1342-1352. With him culminated the power of the papacy at Avignon. He was a haughty, worldly-minded prince of the Church. He sought to recruit his finances, and to humiliate Louis of Bavaria. Finally, he caused the three ecclesiastical electors of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves, with Rudolph of Saxony and John of Bohemia, to elect the son of the latter, John Charles, margrave of Moravia, as emperor in Louis’s stead. He became king of Bohemia by his father’s death at Cercy in the same year. He won no

542 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

support, and was known as the priest’s king, and even after Louis’s death, in 1347, was recognized with difficulty as Charles IV, 1347-1378. During Clement’s pontificate occurred Cola di Rienzi’s short-lived reign at Rome as tribune of the Roman people—a proof of how little eloquence supplies the lack of other gifts in government. Clement now purchased the county of Avignon from Queen Joanna of Naples.

The successor of Clement was the cardinal-bishop of Ostia, like his predecessors from the diocese of

Limoges. Innocent VI, 1352-1363, was of

Innocent VI.    ^&    J ?

great simplicity, strictness, and economy in living. He did away with reservations, commendations, and pluralities, and sought to abolish the abuses of a secularized clergy. Cardinal Albornoz, a judge and field-marshal, as well as archbishop of Toledo, won back by force of arms the greater part of the States of the Church.

In 1355 and 1356, Charles IV published at the Reichstag of Nuremberg and Metz the Golden Bull, The Golden which thenceforth formed the constitution

^Bul1* of the empire. It decided that the electors of the empire should be the three ecclesiastical electors—the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Treves; and the four secular electors in the order of rank—the king of Bohemia, the pfalzgrave of the Rhine, the duke of Saxe-Wittenberg, and the margrave of Brandenburg; excluding Saxe-Launenburg and Bavaria. In the future every electorate is indivisible, and descends by strict hereditary right. The majority of the electors is sufficient for a valid election. The electoral college is convoked by the archbishop of Mainz, and the election takes place at Frankfort. During a vacancy of

Constitution of the Church. 543

the empire the elector of Saxony is imperial vicar for North and the pfalzgrave of the Rhine for South Germany. Besides, the electors are given different rights at the cost of the empire, and considerable cooperation in the administration. Thus papal interference is altogether excluded. Charles married his second son, Sigismund, later emperor, to Mary, heiress of the crowns of Hungary and Poland. After great endeavors he succeeded in securing the election of his oldest son, Wenzel, as his successor in 1378. On the death of Charles, November 29, 1378, Wenzel, 13781400, without opposition, came to the throne, but 011 account of drunkenness, cruelty, and neglect of the empire for the interests of his house in Bohemia, he was deposed in August, 1400.

On the death of Innocent VI, William Grimoard, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Victor, at Marseilles, was chosen pope, as Urban V,

Urban V.

1362-1370. He was of noble family, and for twenty years had taught canon law at Montpellier. Urban determined to leave Avignon, and to return to Rome. The victories of the English had not only so humbled and weakened France as to make her opposition inefficient, but bands of mercenary soldiers threatened Avignon itself. Urban left Avignon in April, 1367, and for three years tested the utter weakness of Charles IV and the tumultuous enmities of the discordant States and cities of Italy. Urban returned to Avignon in September, 1370, and died two months after, leaving the reputation of a saint; though Petrarch gives a vivid picture of the secularization and luxury of the papal court.

Peter Roger, a namesake and nephew of Clem

544 Decline of Medieval Church.

ent VI, was now chosen pope, as Gregory XI, 13701378. He was personally of pure morals, mild and Gregory xi P*^ous- Mixing in the confusions of Italy in 1376, he laid Florence under the interdict, and as this affected the city’s connectional interests, they sent as their ambassador to the pope, St. Catherine of Sienna. Her insight, devotion, and holiness moved the pope to give heed to her exhortations to return to Rome, and end the Babylonish captivity and exile of the papacy. He came to Rome in January* ^I377> ^and after more than a year of confusion, died in March, 1378. From that time until the present, though the pope may have been elsewhere—as Pius VII under Napoleon—the official seat of the papacy has been at Rome.

THK GREAT SCHISM.

The first Conclave held in Rome for nearly a century met after the death of Gregory XI. The third day they proclaimed as their choice, Bartholomew Urban vi P^S^1121110* archbishop of Bari, in the kingdom of Naples, who assumed the name of Urban VI, 1378-1389. Urban was a short, stout man, with swarthy face, full of Neapolitan fire and savagery. He was reputed to be well read in theology and law, and was experienced in the business of the curia at Avignon. He had been a monk, and while of irreproachable morals and zeal for righteousness, he had neither tact, dignity, nor sense of decorum. Repressed and obeying all his life, he resolved now to rule, and let his former superiors feel his power. He had never been a cardinal, and cared nothing for the traditions of the office. His rudeness and offensive manners

Constitution of the Church.

alienated all the cardinals, but his avowed determination not to return to Avignon drove the French party to action. They were in a large majority in the college, and only their divisions had permitted the election of an Italian pope. They assembled at Anagni in July, and the Italian cardinals joined them, leaving Urban alone. September 18th, Urban created twenty-eight new cardinals. Two days later the former college of cardinals, declaring the election of Urban void because of the riotous proceedings of the Roman mob during the Conclave, elected Robert of Geneva as pope, as Clement VII, 1378-1394. No doubt the tumultuous violence of the mob desiring an Italian pope had its effect upon the Conclave; but no doubt also, if Urban had conducted himself with tact and discretion, it would never have been alleged against his election. But his arrogance and obstinate self-confidence made his pontificate one of the most disastrous in the history of the papacy. He had not been six months elected when the great schism was begun, which was to lead to the deepest humiliation of the papacy for forty years..

Robert of Geneva was but thirty-six years of age. He was tall, of commanding presence, and agreeable manners, and skilled in business. His con-

1    1    1 r    ^    1 1 Clement VII.

duct the year before at Cesena, which had risen against his soldiers, made his name detested throughout Italy. The gates were shut, and five thousand people were massacred during three days’ carnage, blood, and pillage. The commander of the mercenaries, more merciful than his priestly master, saved from the slaughter one thousand women and a few men. But as pope, Clement’s warlike qualities and

35

546 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

even decision of character seemed to abandon him. He found his position made him pope in France alone. The revenues from other countries were cut off, while his supporters, driven out, fled to Avignon, where he was not able to support them. He keenly felt his lack of power, but was too proud to resign.

Meanwhile the efforts of Urban, and no one could question his vigor, were directed to acquiring influ-Urban’s ence in Naples, his native country, and Pontificate, erecting a principality at Nocera for his worthless nephew. Some of the cardinals, in 1385, seeing no end to his extravagance, took counsel to put some restraint upon his authority. Urban, hearing of it, caused six of the cardinals to be seized. They were immured in dungeons, and then brought out and tortured by the pope’s nephew and his assistants. Meanwhile, Urban paced the garden outside, reading his hours from the breviary in a loud voice, that he might encourage to more relentless torture, and enjoying their shrieks of agony. Soon, Urban had to quit the place; he took the tortured cardinals with him. The horse of one, the aged bishop of Aquila, went lame. He ordered him at once killed, and his body left unburied by the roadside. Urban was more than a year in exile at Genoa. Only one of the captive cardinals, an Englisman, was released, and that at the request of his king; the others, when Urban came to leave Genoa, were put to death, and buried in a stable. Three years later, after having been only a few weeks in Rome, he died at the Vatican.

From these deeds of cruelty and violence, perpetrated by men who called themselves the supreme head of Christ’s Church and his vicar on earth, it is cheer

Constitution of the Church. 547

ing to turn to one of the saintliest figures of the Middle Ages. Catherine of Sienna was the twenty-third child of the dyer, Jacopono Benincasa, who lived Catherine in a house near the Dominican cloister ^{of Sienna>} and church, where Catherine was born in 1347. The cloister and its life and worship exerted great influence over her earliest years. Her mother was greatly angered when she would not be betrothed at twelve years of age. An illness seemed wholly to destroy her beauty, and at fifteen she entered the order of the Penitent Sisters of St. Dominic. For three years she practiced the sternest asceticism in her father’s house in a little chamber which she scarcely left except to attend mass in the neighboring church. She drank only water and ate no meat, but only salad with oil, fruit, and bread. She scourged herself three times daily—once for herself, once for the living, and once for the dead. Not seldom did the blood run down her naked back to her feet. She wore a hair-cloth shirt and an iron chain. She watched nights in prayer until the bell rang for matins, and then lay down undressed on a pillow of wood between some boards like a coffin. This was only preparatory, but she had obtained self-conquest, and was happier than those who, with wealth and power, or under disappointments and trials, go defeated through life. At the age of twenty-three she began a more public life, and gave herself to works of mercy, relieving the poor and attending the sick, especially in houses and hospitals during the great plague of 1374. She then gathered around her a sort of spiritual family of about twenty persons of both sexes, most of whom belonged to the order. She had visions of Christ, and believed in a formal betrothal to

548 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

him, and in 1370 thought she had received the stigmata or marks of the five wounds of Christ in her own person, and was often in ecstatic intercourse with Christ and the Virgin. There is much in this materialistic-mystic devotion which ill accords with our thought or with the Scripture, but we must not forget that in spite of this, Catherine attained to a loftiness of view and a purity of character such as gave her insight and influence beyond that of the statesmen and rulers of her time. In 1374 she reconciled the warring nobility at Castle Rocca. The next year she exhorted Queen Johanna of Naples to undertake a Crusade. In 1376 she went to Avignon, where she reconciled the city of Avignon to the pope. Her influence mainly induced Gregory XI to go to Rome and end the Avig-nonese exile in 1377. During the schism she wrought at Rome for Urban VI, and the restoration of the unity of Christendom. She saw his course successful at Naples, and died at thirty-three, the end hastened no doubt by her mortifications, April 29, 1380.

On the death of Urban the cardinals chose as his successor another Neapolitan, Piero Tormacelli, who

took the title of Boniface IX. 1^80-1404.

Boniface IX.    .    > O y *t

Boniface was but thirty-three years of age, tall and commanding in appearance, and of agreeable manners. He was neither learned nor skilled in business; while pure in morals, he made it the end of his policy to restore the papal power in the States of the Church, and secure it on the side of Naples. Through endless wars and confusion of fifteen years he succeeded in subduing Rome, and establishing a firm dominion. For this end nothing was sacred or safe from his rapacity and extortion. The same Church

Constitution of the Church. 549

office was sold two or three times over. When dying, he was asked how he was. He replied: “If I had more money, I should be well enough.” He left a reputation for greed and shameless simony unsurpassed.

The university of Paris had already striven for the union of the riven Church, and on the death of Clement VII the French king had forbidden _{Benedict x},„ another choice. The cardinals of Avignon at Avignon, did not choose to leave themselves defense- ^,394'^,4,7‘ less, but swore that they would do all they could to end the schism, and each swore that if elected he would resign at the request of the majority of the cardinals. One of them refused the election, saying, “I am weak, and perhaps would not resign. I will not fall into temptation.” Whereupon, Peter de Luna said: “If elected, I would resign the papacy as quickly and as easily as 1 could take off my cap.” Having before been favorable to unity, Cardinal Luna was elected, and assumed the name of Benedict XIII, 1394-1417. Yet Benedict did not resign, and continued his resistance for more than twenty-five years. Lie was from a noble family in Aragon, small in stature, great in talent and eloquence. He was well educated and of a moral life. He was especially learned in canon law.

Rupert, who had been chosen in Wenzel’s place as German emperor, after an inglorious reign, died in 1410. On the death of Boniface IX, the

^    Innocent VII.

cardinals at Rome took the same oath to resign if elected which those at Avignon had taken ten years before. They elected an old man, another Neapolitan, Casimo dei Migliorati, who assumed the name of Innocent VII, 1404-1406. He was learned

550 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

and blameless in his life, gentle in disposition, and conciliatory in his manners. He proved indolent, feeble, and incompetent. His nephew ruled, whose gross violations of civil and moral law were unpunished. The Vatican was stormed as the Romans rose in rebellion; but finally Innocent was restored to Rome, and died there, November, 1406.

The successor of Innocent VII was chosen as a commissioner to restore unity to the Church rather than pope. The Conclave to this end chose Angelo Correr, z Venetian, nearly eighty years of age, who took the name of Gregory XII, 1406-1415. An arrangement was made for the rival popes to meet at Savona, November 1, 1407, and arrange for the ending of the schism; but this failed, largely through the papal nephew, Antonio Correr, w^rho had no idea of terminating his uncle’s lease of power. Gregory took the step of naming new cardinals, and it was thought the only way to terminate the schism was by a Council.

ERA OF THE COUNCILS.

The schism had now endured for thirty years, in spite of kings and the university of Paris. The situation seemed intolerable. The cardinals of both popes determined to meet in a Council, and, withdrawing obedience from both popes, so close the schism. The Council of Pisa met March 25, 1409. There were present twenty-two cardinals, four patriarchs, eleven archbishops and the representatives of thirteen others, sixty-nine bishops and eighty-two others by their representatives, seventy-one abbots and sixty priors, one hundred and twenty-three doctors of theology and

Constitution of tiie Church.

two hundred of laws, with ten thousand visitors. The two colleges of cardinals united May 10, 1409, and both popes were pronounced deposed June 5th. On the 26th of the same month they proceeded to elect a new pope. They chose Peter Philargi, a man of learning and stainless character, who took the title of Alexander V, 1409-1410. His career reads like a romance. Alexander was born in Crete, and as a beggar-boy in the streets knew neither father nor mother. The Franciscans brought him up. He entered the order, and studied at Oxford and Paris. He bccame tutor of the sons of Visconti, lord of Milan, and rose to be bishop of Vicenza, archbishop of Milan, and cardinal. He was now over seventy years of age, affable, kindly, and munificent. As a pope he proved to be dependent on Cardinal Cossa, and was ruled by the cardinals. Death ended his short pontificate, May 3, 1410. The Council dissolved August 7, 1409. Baltazar Cossa, a Neapolitan, began his life as a pirate, in which career two of his brothers were hanged. The future pope, more fortunate, left the sea, and studied law at Bologna, where he acquitted himself well. Made cardinal in 1402, as papal legate he showed himself ingenious and unscrupulous in raising money for Boniface IX, and an active general and good administrator. At Pisa he had refused the offer of the triple crown, but now at Bologna he no longer rejected it, and was elected May 17, 1410, taking the title of John XXIII, 1410-1415. John was a military adventurer, whose shameless licentiousness disgraced even the life of the camp, and as unfitted for an ecclesiastical office as ignorance and evil morals could make him. His pontificate did nothing to redeem his reputation.

552 Decline of Medieval Church.

On the death of the emperor Rupert, Wenzel claimed again the empty title, but his brother Sigis-mund succeeded in procuring his own election as king of the Romans, July 21, 1411, and succeeded to the empire on the death of Wenzel in 1418.

As the Council of Pisa had succeeded in giving Latin Christendom three popes instead of two, the Council situation, bad enough before, had now of Constance, reached an acute crisis. At last John’s ambassadors, to whom he had given authority to make terms for him, persuaded by Sigismund, signed an agreement, October 30, 1413, to convoke a General Council at Constance, November I, 1414. This was the great reform Council of the Middle Ages, and forever memorable for ending the schism, burning John Huss, and failing to reform the Church. It was opened November 5th, with fifteen cardinals and twenty-three archbishops present, besides other prelates. The emperor Sigismund arrived December 25, 1414, and soon the city was flooded with strangers. There were present during its sessions, twenty-nine cardinals, three patriarchs, thirty-three archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops, one hundred abbots, fifty provosts, three hundred doctors of theology, one thousand eight hundred priests, while one hundred dukes and earls, two thousand four hundred knights, and from fifty thousand to one hundred thousand visitors, including one thousand five hundred women of evil reputation and one thousand four hundred monte-banks, were in the city. Provision was made for the daily maintenance of thirty thousand horses and lodgings for thirty-six thousand men. This in a city of seven thousand inhabitants reflects great credit on the

Constitution of the Church.

553

administration of the pfalzgrave Louis, who provided for the entertainment of the Council. In 1415 the Council, to render ineffective the preponderance of the Italian prelates, divided into four nations, Italian, German, French, and English. John XXIII, after promising to abdicate, fled from Constance, March 20, 1415. The Council deposed him Mav 29th. Gregory abdicated July 4th of the same year. After the burning of Huss, Sigismund was absent from July 18, 1415, to January ²7> ¹4¹7- Little was accomplished during his absence. Benedict XIII refused to resign, and w^ras deposed July 26, 1417. He died in extreme old age in November, 1424. A few decrees bearing upon reform w’ere published October 9th. November 11, 1417, Oddo Colonna was elected pope, as Martin V, 14171431. He was the poorest and simplest of the cardinals, but of a nature genial and kindly. His first official act proved that the reform movement was ended in the confirmation of the rules of the papal chancery issued by John XXIII.

The reform Council left untouched the abuses of the papal administration, which were everywhere acknowledged, and the corruption of the Church, which was openly confessed.' It contented itself with providing for the recurrence of General Councils. The next was to be held in seven-years’ time, and thereafter every five years. Some illusory concordats were concluded with the several nations; but the provision for the recurrence of General Councils was the sum total result of the reform movement of twenty years. But if the Council could not reform the least of the abuses of the Church, which it set forth in number and amount with such startling vividness, it could

554 Decline of Medieval Church.

burn the one successful and influential reformer God gave to the Church in that generation.

John Huss was born of poor parents at Husnieck, in Bohemia, in 1369. He studied at the university of Prague, and became bachelor of arts in 1393, and of theology the next year. Huss began to lecture in

John Huss ^^{ie universit}y *^{n I}39^- Three years later

* he was chosen dean of the philosophical faculty, and in 1402 rector of the university. He was ordained priest in 1400, and in 1402 appointed preacher to the Bethlehem Chapel at Prague. Huss was devoted to the Church. In 1392 he spent his last four groschen for an indulgence, when he had only dry crusts for food. He taught as a realist against nominalism. Soon after his appointment at Bethlehem Chapel, he began the study of the writings of John Wyclif. In 1403, at the request of the archbishop, he preached before the annual Synod of the clergy. The sermon was a scathing denunciation of the worldliness and filthy living of the clergy. This raised up bitter opposition against him from their ranks, and caused him to be deprived of his office as preacher at Bethlehem in 1407. Huss was now recognized as a leader in the work of Church reform. “His fearless temper, unbending rectitude, blameless life, and kindly nature won for him the veneration of the people.” Wyclif’s works were condemned by the clerical Synod in 1403 and 1408; and in 1410 burned by the archbishop. Huss brought about the change in the university, which drove the German students from it in 1409, and was honored as the representative of the national sentiment. Huss’s enemies procured his excommunication at Rome, in February, 1411.

Constitution of the Church.

555

It was published in Prague, March 15th. The pope who issued it was John XXIII. The interdict was disregarded, and Huss continued to preach. IIuss, like Luther, was roused to positive action by the abuse of indulgences. Holy Land indulgences were offered for sale to pious Bohemians for a crusade against Ladislas of Naples. Huss attacked the papal power of the keys and absolution in a public disputation, June 16, 1412. “Sellers of indulgences are thieves who take by cunning lies what they can not seize by violence. The pope and whole Church militant often err, and an unjust papal excommunication is to be disregarded.” This was followed by other tracts and sermons. A few days after, a crowd, led by Wok of Waldstein, a royal favorite, burned the indulgences. The greater excommunication was now pronounced against Huss, but he continued to preach. The clergy, through hatred to Huss, observed the interdict, and, at the king’s request, he withdrew from Prague. At this time he finished his treatise, Dc Ecclesia, in which he attacked the papacy in unmeasured language borrowed from Wyclif, and which was publicly read in Bethlehem Chapel, July, 1413. Huss did not return to Prague, except occasionally and privately, until just before his departure for Constance.

Huss rejoiced to hear of the convocation of the Council of Constance. He had appealed against the papal excommunication to a free General Council, since he believed himself to be in full communion with the Church, and that he would find the Council in full sympathy with his views, and through his sermons would be efficient in bringing about reforms.

556 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

The emperor wished for his attendance, and promised him safe conduct. Warned not to go, he left a letter to be opened only after his death. In this letter he expresses his fear that his enemies in the Council will seek to take his life by false testimony. He asks the prayers of his friends that he may have eloquence to uphold the truth, and constancy to endure to the last. The inquisitor, Nicholas, bishop of Nazareth, gave him a certificate of orthodoxy, and the archbishop certified that he knew nothing against him; but that he had not purged himself of his excommunication.

Huss set out for Constance, October n, 1414, under the escort of John and Henry of Chulm and Huss at Wenceslaus of Duba, with thirty horsemen Constance. _an(j two carriages. Everywhere he was treated as an honored guest. Constance was reached November 2d. His safe conduct arrived a few days later, and bore date of October 18th. On the 4th of November he wrote home that he expected, after a great fight, to win a great victory. Huss, perhaps imprudently, but consistently, celebrated mass in his lodging. This was a scandal to the cardinals, who determined to arrest him and settle the legality of the act afterwards. On the 28th of November he was summoned before the cardinals; he went, and was there arrested. Eight days later he was confined near the latrines in the Dominican convent, and, in consequence, was seized with a fever and nearly died. The safe conduct of Huss was without condition, and was intended to protect him during the Council, as was shown by the date of its issue and delivery to Huss. Sigismund was at first indignant at this insult to his authority, and threatened to set Huss free

Constitution of the Church.

557

by force. The cardinals informed him that if he did so they would break up the Council. Sigismund, as his whole life proved, was faithless and unworthy of trust. The ist of January, 1415, he promised the cardinals to revoke his safe conduct, and did so the 8th of April. At his trial, June 7th, Sigismund declared to IIuss he would not protect him unless he submitted to the commands of the Council. On July 6th, Huss referred to his safe conduct, saying, “I came freely to the Council under the public faith promised by the emperor, here present, that I should be free from all constraint to bear witness to my innocence, and to answer for my faith to all who call it in question.” With this he fixed his eyes on Sigismund, who blushed deeply. But the general opinion was expressed by a citizen of Constance, who said: “It could not and might not be in any law that a heretic could enjoy a safe conduct.” A heretic, once cited on suspicion merely, had no rights. As compared with the ordinary trials for heresy, Huss was favored at Constance; he was not tortured, and he was allowed publicly to defend himself.

Soon after his arrival in Constance, Jacobel of Mies, at St. Adalberts in Prague, began' to administer the communion in both kinds—that is, both bread and wine. Huss gave his approval from Constance, and for more than a century the Utraquists became the ruling party in Bohemia. Commissioners were appointed for the trial of Huss, December 1, 1414. He was accused of denying transubstantiation and the power of the keys, of declaring the sacrament vitiated in the hands of sinful priests, of holding that the Church should have no temporal possessions, of deny

558 Decline of Medieval Church.

ing excommunication, of granting the cup to the laity, of defending the forty-five condemned articles of Wyclif, and of exciting the people against the clergy. Forty-two errors were extracted from the writings of Huss. Each article was read to him, and he was asked if such was his belief. Huss replied, showing the sense in which he held it. When asked if he would defend it, he replied that he would stand by the decision of the Council. But this did not satisfy, tor in the inquisitorial process, belief must be admitted and abjured before the penitent could receive mercy.

In March, 1415, Huss wrote De Sacramento Corporis et Sanguinis, in which he declared for the full transubstantiation, irrespective of the merits of the celebrant, and indeed he had never taught differently, for in this he never followed Wyclif. The hostility of the witnesses against Huss was notorious, but he was refused the services of an advocate that he might disable their testimony. He remained in the Dominican convent until March 24, 1415. He was not allowed to see his friends, but was furnished with writing materials. His sweet temper won the good-will of all who came in contact with him. Letters were clandestinely conveyed back and forth sometimes in food. When the pope fled, Huss was delivered to the bishop of Constance, who removed him to the castle of Gottlieben, some miles from the city, and confined him in a room at the top of a tall tower. By day his feet were fettered, and at night his arm chained to the wall. He was completely isolated, sick with fever, and grievously pained in body. The beauty of his soul is shown in his letters. These justify the strong words of Mr. Lea: “Since Christ, no man has left be

Constitution of the Chlkcii. 559

hind him a more affecting example of the true Christian spirit than John Huss, while fearlessly awaiting the time when he should suffer for what he believed to be the truth.” On the 17th of April a new commission of four was appointed to try him. W hen Huss appeared before the Council he defended himself with wonderful quickness of thought and dialectic skill, the fathers of the Council interrupting him at times with cries of “Burn him! burn him!” Huss refused to abjure.

He was condemned for what he did not believe or teach. Huss called for Stephen Palecz as his confessor, who had been his bitterest enemy, and most zealously sought his condemnation. “What would you do,” Huss asked him, “if you did not hold errors imputed to you? Would you abjure?” Palecz burst into tears, and replied, “It is difficult.” Another confessor gave him absolution. They then offered to drop the accusations drawn from witnesses if he would confess and abjure those drawn from his books. But the difficulty was the same in either case. Finally he was brought before the Council, July 6, 1415. His sentence was read, and he was degraded from the priesthood before the Council in the cathedral of Constance. Sigismund delivered him to Pfalzgrave Louis, and he to Hans Hazen, the imperial vogt of Constance, saying, “Vogt, take him as judged of both of us, and burn him as a heretic.”

Escorted by two thousand men, and with Pfalzgrave Louis at their head, he was taken out to a meadow near the river. Huss prayed, “Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!” When he came in sight of the stake he fell on his knees, and

560 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

again prayed. When asked if he wished to confess, he said yes, if there were space. He was then told that if he did not recant, it was illegal to hear his confession. He replied: “It is not necessary. I am no mortal sinner.” As he began to address the crowd in German, he was cut short. He was then bound to the stake, and two cart-loads of straw and fagots piled around him. He was heard to repeat again, “Christ Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me!” The wind sprang up, and the flames choked his utterance. His head was seen to shake and his lips to move while one might repeat the Lord’s Prayer twice or thrice, and all was over. One sweet, strong soul, true to God and his grace, had shaken to its foundations the Church of the Middle Ages.

Martin V, the new pope of reunited Christendom, arrived in Italy in October, 1418. He lived in Flor-

„ „ ence from the next February until Sep-

Martin V.    ^{J    1}

tember, 1420, when he ventured to seek the ancient seat of the papacy. Rome was reduced to wretchedness and desolation; it had been wasted by invasion and reduced in its resources until it seemed that its civilization was almost extinct. Martin, not wholly to ignore the decree of the Council of Constance, called a sham Council at Pavia, in April, 1423, which was transferred to Sienna on account of the plague in July, and w^ras dissolved without its attempting anything in March of the next year. He promulgated a reform constitution in May, which did not even touch the evils of which Christendom complained. The rest of his pontificate was devoted to re-establishing the papal authority in the States of the Church.

Constitution of the Church. 561

Meanwhile, the flames which consumed /ohn Huss had lighted an immense and inextinguishable conflagration in Bohemia. In 1418, King Wenzel at last turned against the Hussites, but died the 16th of August of the following year. The religious war broke out at Prague, July 30, 1419. On the announcement of a papal crusade against the Huss-

-D    . c * •    j Hussite Wars.

ites, Prague revolted against Sigismund in March, 1420. The emperor gathered an army of eighty thousand men, but was completely defeated at Witkow, a suburb of Prague, July 14, 1420. In that year the Bohemians adopted the Four Articles of Prague as their platform: I. Freedom of preaching; II. The communion under both kinds; III. The reduction of the clergy to apostolic poverty; IV. The severe repression of all open sins. In the eleven years following, the Bohemians defeated six expeditions sent against them, five of them fully authorized crusades with all accompanying papal benefits. More than six hundred thousand men were hurled back in utter defeat and slaughter, and the Hussite arms were as invincible in Germany as in Bohemia. Truly the blood of IIuss had been terribly avenged.

Meanwhile, Martin V died, February 20, 1431. He had been a wise, cautious, and prudent pope, and had showed moderation, common sense, and high administrative capacity. The possessions of the papacy he had recovered, and restored in part its prestige; but as a reformer he had utterly failed.

The choice for the successor of Martin fell upon Gabriel Condulmier, elected March 3, 1431, as Eu-genius IV, 1431-1447. Eugenius was a Venetian, of a rich but not a noble family. In his youth his father

36

562 Decline of Medieval Church.

died, and he distributed his portion, 20,000 ducats, to the poor, and retired to a Franciscan monastery.

Gregory XII made him bishop of Sienna

Eugenius IV. , _r i ^    •    r .

and cardinal. Eugenius was forty-seven years of age, and was tall, of commanding personal appearance, and pleasant countenance. Pious and liberal, he had little knowledge of the world or political capacity. Flis first great error was to join in a struggle with the Council of Basel, called by Martin V. November 12, 1431, he ordered its dissolution. The Council did not accept his decree, and February 15, 1432, it asserted the principles of Constance, the superiority of the Councils over the pope. At the same time, Bohemia and the emperor recognized the Council. A year later, Eugenius yielded to stern necessity, and revoked his dissolution of the Council. The Council reasserted its authority in April, 1433, and in January, 1434, Eugenius, forced by Sigismund, whom he had crowned emperor May 31, 1431, at last recognized the Council, and his humiliation was complete.

The Bohemian envoy came to Basel in January,

1433, and left in April. In November the Bohemian Council Diet accepted the proposals of the Council, of Basel. These formed the celebrated Compacts, or guarantees of the liberties of the Bohemian Church. The clergy in Moravia and Bohemia were authorized to adminster the communion under both kinds; open sins were to be repressed according to the law of God and institutes of the fathers; the Word of God should be freely preached by priests who were commissioned by their superiors; the clergy should faithfully administer the goods of the Church ac

Constitution of the Church.

563

cording to the institutes of the fathers; church property could not be occupied by others. The plague, which carried off in this year one hundred thousand persons, disposed the Bohemians to accept these terms. To the Council is due the credit of settling, on honorable terms, the disastrous wars with the Bohemians. It did what no pope could do, but it was its last worthy achievement. Its ablest and most disinterested leader, Caesarini, disappointed at the spirit and work of the Council, joined the papal party, though he remained at Basel for more than a year longer. A schism broke out in the Council in April, 1437, ^an<3 in September, Eugenius again pronounced it dissolved. Meanwhile the pope gave his masterstroke. The Greeks, pressed by the Turks and feeling the absolute necessity of the help of Western Christendom to prolong their national existence, sought, through their emperor and patriarch, to become united to the Latin Church. They made proposals to both the Council and the pope. In November, 1437, because he was nearer, and they thought they could better negotiate with him, they accepted the pope’s invitation to a Council. Eugenius called the Council to arrange and consummate the union of Western and Oriental Christendom, to meet at Ferrara, January 10, 1439, and transferred it to Florence just a year later. The Greeks, with their emperor and patriarch, accepted the terms of union with Rome, July 5, 1439. This Council, its efforts and apparent result, gave Eugenius increasing prestige against the Council of Basel. Though it was at once rejected by the Greek Church and nation, and accomplished nothing except still further to alienate the

564 Decline of Medieval Church.

East from the West and hasten the fall of Constantinople, for the time it served the papacy as the beginning of the Crusades did in its contest with Henry IV. It made evident its value as the head of the mediaeval Church. Meanwhile the Council was not idle. It suspended Eugenius, January 24, 1438, and deposed him June 25, 1439. On the 5th of November it elected Amadeus of Savoy, who was a widower, one of the richest princes of Europe, and of good repute for his private life, as Pope Felix V, 1439-1449. There was nothing noble or disinterested about Felix. He left the Council at the end of 1443. Germany, which had taken up a neutral attitude, acknowledged Eugenius just before his death in February, 1447. Under Nicholas V, Felix abdicated, and was made cardinal, April 7, 1449, when the Council of Basel dissolved, April 25th, having done nothing but blunder for the last twelve years of its existence. At first having humbled Eugenius, the obstinate and narrow-minded monk won at last through the mistakes of his opponents.

Sigismund died December 9, 1437; his son-in-law, Albert of Austria, 1438-1439, succeeded him. Thus were united the interests of the houses of Luxemburg and Hapsburg. Albert was upright and honest, of a noble and disinterested character, with no room for intrigue; a man of action rather than of diplomacy. He died too early for his country’s weal. He was succeeded by his second cousin, Frederick, duke of Styria, who was now the head of the house of Hapsburg. Frederick III, 1440-1490, was the most impotent and worthless occupant of the imperial throne during the Middle Ages. As an Italian contemporary said: “He had neither wisdom nor sense, while all

Constitution of the Church. 565

men could see his greed for presents.” He concluded his peace with the pope and the acknowledgment of him by the Concordat of Vienna, February, 1448, which ended the efforts of fifty years of the German emperors and nation to obtain a reform of the papacy and the Church. He, the weakest of them all, was the last German emperor to be crowned at Rome, March 19, 1452. His son and successor, Maximilian I, 14901519, was the last of the knights, an able and active ruler, but too fantastic for a successful statesman. He took up Sigismund’s plan of reforming the Church, and thought the best way to accomplish it was himself to be elected pope. He was a high-minded man, and a liberal and enlightened ruler of the empire.

In France, Charles VII sought to limit the action of the papacy in his kingdom through the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, July 5, 1438. This thorn in the pope’s side was repealed by Louis XI, but soon practically renewed, and finally abolished by the concordat with Francis I, 1516.

THE POPES OF THE RENAISSANCE.

The successor of Eugenius IV was Tomasso Parentucelli, who was the son of a physician. His father died when he was seven years of age, and he worked his way through the university of Bologna. For twenty years he had charge of the household of Cardinal Albergati, who was a second father to him. He became bishop of Bologna in 1443, and cardinal in 1446, and was elected pope March 6, 1447, taking the title of Nicholas V, 1447-1455.

Nicholas V, the greatest pope of the fifteenth century and the first of those of the Renaissance, the

566 Decline of Medieval Church.

founder of Rome as a papal capital and of the Vatican Library, was a little man, with weak legs, disproportionately small for his body: a face of ashen

Nicholas V.    ^J.    .

complexion, with flashing black eyes. His mouth was small, w^rith heavily protruding lips, and his voice loud and harsh. But Nicholas was a scholar and a man of letters, of high character and tried capacity, and a ready speaker. He loved magnificence and splendor. Impatient, easily angered, with a sharp tongue, but kind and quickly repentant, he was straightforward and outspoken, requiring others to be the same. It was his great design to rebuild and adorn Rome, and make it a worthy capital of Christendom. His plans reveal the simplicity and grandeur of his thought and character. He rebuilt the walls of Rome and a great part of the capital, and strengthened the castle of St. Angelo, while he renewed the water supply of the city. He fortified the chief towns of the papal States, and repaired the churches of the apostles St. Celso, St. Stephano Ro-tondo, and S. Maria Maggiore. The rebuilding of St. Peter’s and the Vatican palace was begun by him. To the new Vatican Library he gave 9,000 manuscripts, the choice collection of a life-time. He not only patronized dealers in choice manuscripts, but rewarded liberally translators, giving 10,000 ducats for a translation of Homer into Italian. He had a genuine delight in the newly-discovered life of antiquity, but was a sincere Christian. For all these purposes, Nicholas needed money. This he drew in large sums to Rome through the issue of great indulgences to those who should visit the seat of the Holy See during the papal jubilee of 1450. It is sad to see such a man as Nich-

Constitution of the Church. 567

olas of Cusa traveling through Germany the previous year to urge the value of these indulgences. All these efforts met with great success, and a golden harvest came to the papal treasury. But May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell. Pastor says: “He made the assurance of help (to the Greeks) depend upon the final carrying out of the Union of Florence. As pope it was his duty to make this condition, as he must repulse the attacks of the schismatic Greek propaganda.” That is, he made the sole possible relief of Constantinople depend upon the fulfillment of an impossible condition. In this statement is pronounced the irreversible sentence against the pope as being the Divinely ordained head of Christendom. This claim for the papacy has no support from its origin, and is denied by its history. This could not be more strikingly show^rn than when, in the greatest crisis of Christendom since the battle of Tours, the pope could afford no help. Without resorting to a Crusade, a tithe of the proceeds of the Jubilee of 1450 would have multiplied by ten the scanty nine thousand defenders who mounted the walls of the greatest capital of Christendom in the days of its final agony. It was not given. Nicholas neither recognized the demands of his position nor the day of his visitation. Other popes sought to arouse Europe to a Crusade against the infidel, but the moral power of the papacy was gone; the defense of Christendom, the leadership of Europe against the Turks, fell to other and more honest hands. To the Crusades and the defense of Christianity in the East the papacy owed more than to any other movement of the Middle Ages. They had most augmented its power and wealth, its influence and authority.

568 Decline of Medieval Church.

Now, at the supreme crisis of Eastern Christendom, she fell without an arm being lifted for her help. Two hundred years of bloody warfare did not atone for or repair the consequences of this selfish and cowardly neglect. The descent was easy to the position of Alexander VI, who said, when the Venetian ambassador advised that it would be well to unite all Christendom against the Turk, “You are talking nonsense.” Never was there a more urgent call or a nobler opportunity for a disinterested and a magnanimous policy, and never was there a greater or more disastrous refusal.

The successor of Nicholas V was Alphonso Borgia, who was now sixty-seven years of age, and owed his „    advancement to his relations with the king

Calixtus III. , .    , .    _TT ^&

of Aragon and the papacy. He was learned, of blameless character, and high political capacity, but with rigid piety and simple life, inconsiderate, narrow-minded, and obstinate. He took the title of Calixtus III, 1455-1458. Two objects dominated his thoughts—a Crusade against the Turks, and the advancement of his family. He reversed the policy of his predecessor, and through neglect of his great enterprises rendered their completion impossible. His zeal against the Turks was too late, though he ordered every church-bell in Christendom to be tolled three times a day, and all Christians to repeat Pater Nosters and Ave Marias—The Lord’s Prayer and “Hail, Mary”— for the overthrow of the Turks. He could not even prevent a Turkish fleet from sailing to the mouth of the Tiber. Soon after the beginning of his pontificate he made three youths cardinals—two of them his nephews; one of them afterwards Alexander VI. A

Constitution of the Church. 569

third nephew he made prefect of Rome and duke of Spoleto. Such was the hatred aroused by this grasping nepotism that on the pope’s death the Borgias were compelled to leave Rome.

The next pope was yEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, a scion of a decayed but noble Italian family. He had been secretary of the Council at Basel and its earnest supporter, afterward of the anti-pope Felix V, and then of emperor Frederick III. He was finally reconciled with Pope Eugenius, and °^s * became bishop of Trieste in 1447, and cardinal in ^I45^j P°P^e> *458-1464* As a young man he had been thoroughly unprincipled and cynically immoral; while at Vienna he had lived a life of luxury and dissoluteness. There were but two popes between Calixtus III and Leo X—Paul II and Sixtus IV—who did not have illegitimate children. As pope, Pius II, he now strove to live piously and rouse Europe to a Crusade. For this purpose he held the Congress of Mantua, June 1, 1459, to January 19, 1460, but without result. He lacked moral power for leadership. His great endeavor was to undo the work of the Council of Basel, which he had once ardently promoted, in France and Bohemia. While setting out on a futile expedition against the Turks he died at Ancona, 1464. Pius was the best writer among the popes of the Middle Ages, and his fame is rather as a literary man, and the source of much of our information as to the personages and manners of his time, than as a pope.

Pietro Barbo, nephew of Eugenius IV, a Venetian, forty-eight years old, was the next pope. He took the name of Paul II, 1454-1471. Paul was upright and sensitive, striving to be honorable and just. He loved

570 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

magnificence and refinement, and was a patron of literature and art, but lacked force of character or strength of purpose to realize a large design. The ’ sole result of his rule seems to have been the formal submission of the Bohemians, for it was only formal, and was purchased at the price of the advance of the Turkish arms, and the formation of the Bohemian Brotherhood. These called themselves “Brethren of the Law of Christ.” They rejected obedience to the Roman Church and to the authority of the pope. They lived a life of Christian socialism, and by the year 1500 they counted one hundred thousand members. Paul was all his life a collector of rare and precious objects of art.

Sixtus IV was the son of a poor peasant living near Savona, who gave his son at the age of nine to the Franciscans to be educated. He was

Sixtus IV.

too poor to have a surname, so he was known as Francesco di Savona. He made his way by his learning and his blameless life. In philosophy and theology he lectured at Bologna, Padua, Pavia, Florence, and Perugia, and rose to be general of the Franciscan order. Paul II made him cardinal, and at fifty-seven years of age he was elected pope, as Sixtus IV, 1471-1484. This monk and scholar now undertook the founding of a family dynasty as an aid to the chief object of his ambition, the increase of the power of the pope as the head of an Italian State. In the pursuit of this end he was as unscrupulous as any secular prince, and did not shrink from being an accomplice in a scheme of assassination, when it was only partially successful, or from using the spiritual censures of the Church to further the ends of his

Constitution of the Church. 571

policy, where the dagger had failed. lie at once advanced his nephews, two young men, to the cardi-nalate, 1471. The elder, Giuliano della Rovere, later Julius II, was twenty-eight years old; the other—the pope’s favorite, who was lavishly enriched by him— ruined himself by his excesses and died in 1474. In two years he had spent 260,000 ducats. Two other nephews were amply provided for. After promising the life of Odo Colonna, whom he held as a prisoner, in exchange for a castle of the Colonnas, he took Marino, the castle, and, after a mockery of justice, executed its owner. Colonna’s mother said: “He has Marino, I have the corpse of my son; such is his faith,” and died a week after. With Sixtus IV began the era of corruption at the papal court, than which there are no lower depths, at least in Christian history. As Mr. Creighton says, he hopelessly lowered the moral standard of the papacy and the moral tone of Europe, and the loss was incalculable.

The successor of Sixtus was Giovanni Battista Cibo, born at Genoa in 1432. His father had been viceroy of Naples and senator of Rome.

^{J    r}    Innocent VIII.

The son, bishop of Savona, became cardinal in 1473, and pope, as Innocent VIII, 1484-1492. He was neither learned nor experienced in politics, and remarkable only for his kindness and geniality. Cibo was tall and stalwart, and the father of an illegitimate family. He was elected through the influence of Cardinal Rovere, who ruled during his pontificate until 1487, when Innocent married his son Franceschetto to Madalena, the daughter of Lorenzo Medici, after which Lorenzo chiefly directed his foreign policy. His granddaughter Peretta was married in 1488.

572 Decline of Medieval Church.

In a bull, December 5, 1484, Innocent urged the extinction of witchcraft. This was, of course, not the origin of that delusion wdiich cost so much blood in Europe, and especially in Germany. It seems to have broken out about 1400, and was denounced by Pope Eugenius in 1437; but the bull of Innocent, and his appointment of Jacob Sprenger as inquisitor of Upper Bun against Germany and the lands of the Rhine, unwitchcraft. questionably gave a great impetus to the persecution. Men said the pope had spoken, and it must be so; while Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum, or “Treatise on Witchcraft,” did its work until the eighteenth century among Protestants and Catholics alike.

Even more discreditable was another incident of this pontificate where all was venal, where the pope created a thousand new offices and sold them, where crime was so rampant and unpunished that Cardinal Borgia said, “God wills not the death of mortal sinners, but that they should pay and live;” and a profit-lmprisonment ^a^^e trade was driven in false papal bulls of before the perpetrators were discovered Pnnce Djem. executed in 1489. Prince Djem, a younger brother of Sultan Bajazet, had rebelled, and, being hard pressed, saw no other refuge than to seek the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes. They received him courteously, but kept watch of him, and soon entered into negotiations with the sultan, whereby they received 45,000 ducats a year, ostensibly for the support of Prince Djem, but really as his custodians. They removed the prisoner to France, and most of the sovereigns of Europe sought the profitable task of entertaining him. Finally, the pope bought him

Constitution of the Church.

of the Hospitallers at the price of making the grand master of the order a Roman cardinal. Djem was delivered to the pope in March, 1489, and for becoming jailer of the Turkish sultan, the head of Christendom received, during the rest of his pontificate, the not inconsiderable sum of 260,000 ducats. If shameless abasement could go further, it was when, with heedless folly, the gift of the sultan of the pretended head of the lance which pierced the side of the Savior was solemnly received by the pope and cardinals, May 31, 1492. How the sultan must have laughed in his ample sleeves at the venal crowd of deceivers who ruled the Christian Church!

On the 10th of August, 1492, Rodrigo Lanqol, who took from his uncle, Pope Calixtus III, the name of Borgia, was chosen pope, and took the

, _A1    ,    u r,    , Alexander VI.

name of Alexander VI. When his election, which was the work of unblushing bribery, was announced to him, he was overcome with joy, and cried out, “I am pope and vicar of Christ.” What a vicar of the stainless Man of Calvary! Alexander VI was born at Lativa, Valencia, Spain, in 1431. He was cardinal at twenty-five. Tall, handsome, with fascinating manners, and esteemed the wealthiest of the cardinals, he was carefully economical and abstemious in food and drink; but in the thirty-six years in which he was cardinal he had nine children born in his harem; four of these, including Caesar and Lucretia, were born of a married woman. Now over sixty years of age, he lived at the Vatican in adultery and blood. It is difficult to believe there were from the papal chancellery more shameful documents than two papal briefs, bearing the same date of September 1,

574 Decline of Medieval Church.

i 501, which legitimatize a child three years old, called Giovanni Borgia. In the first he is said to be the child of Caesar (the pope’s son), unmarried, and of an unmarried woman; in the second he is called the son of Caesar, married, and of an unmarried woman. The document then proceeds to say that the defect in legitimacy does not come from the aforesaid duke, but “from us and the aforesaid unmarried woman, which, for good reasons, in the previous letter, we did not wish specifically to express.” Undoubtedly report added to the crimes of the Borgias. Caesar did not murder his brother, though he did his brother-in-law; Lucretia was not a monster of crime, though she bore an illegimate child; but in all the years after her removal to the court of Ferrara she lived a reputable life. Alexander did not live in incest or spend his spare time in poisoning cardinals, but he was openly profligate, and the lives of cardinals who were his enemies, or whose wealth he coveted, were safer at a distance from Rome. Like his predecessor, he received a liberal annual payment for the keeping in captivity of Prince Djem from the sultan, and even entered into an alliance with the Turks against France. Alexander was joyous, genial, and tolerant, where his power was not assailed. He died probably a natural death, August 18, 1503, though Ranke holds, with the majority of his contemporaries, that he was poisoned by a potion he prepared for some cardinals. When all deductions are made, his court—including his relatives and the cardinals—was a scene of shameless vice and shameful disease.

Girolamo (Jerome) Savonarola, the great preacher and reformer of Florence, was born at Ferrara, Sep-

Constitution of the Ciiurch. 575

tember 21, 1452. He entered the Dominican order, at Bologna, in 1475.    cloister of Bologna he un

dertook the instruction of novices. In 1481 he was sent to preach in Florence, ~ and by 1489 he had gained, as had none other, the attention and the hearts of that city, which was the center and focus of the Renaissance. This he won, not by flattering the taste or the love of novelty, or sparing their sins, but by his lofty moral earnestness, disinterestedness, and sense of the eternal value and necessary victory of ethical ideals and principles. Savonarola was a Hebrew prophet and apocalyptic seer in the midst of the world of the Renaissance. What he felt he made others feel—the beauty and supremacy of the moral order. God willed these things, and was all powerful to make them prevail. He was a small man, w^rith a pale countenance and wrinkled forehead, an aquiline nose and fiery, inspiring eyes. He became prior of the new Dominican cloister of San Marco, erected by Lorenzo Medici, in 1490. The number of the monks under his strict rule rose from fifty to two hundred and thirty. Savonarola’s clothing was of the coarsest, his bed the hardest, and his cell the poorest-and narrowest. At his death he left only an ivory skull, which he kept by him to remind him of the vanity of earthly honors. In 1494 he sensibly increased his influence, and made himself independent of superior authority in his order by securing the separation of the Dominican congregations of Tuscany from those of Lombardy. The same year, in August, Charles VIII came to Italy. Florence sent Savonarola as its ambassador to meet him. Savonarola hailed him as the sent of God to purify and renew

576 Decline Ob Medieval Church.

the Church. Before his return to Florence the Medici were driven out. Through his influence their rule was replaced by a theocratic republic. He demanded four things of the Florentines: The fear of God and restoration of good morals; the placing of the common good before private advantage; a general amnesty; and a popular, or democratic, government,— not a bad program for the government of any community. Amid the manifold complications, crooked Italian politics, and powerful foreign enemies, and the intrigues of domestic factions, by sheer moral force, Savonarola maintained this government for three and a half of the best years of Florentine history. When he died it fell with him, though the Medici did not return until 1512.

Alexander VI summoned the bold preacher, whose influence crossed the lines of his political policy, to Rome in July, 1495. Savonarola excused himself. In September the pope dealt a blow at his independence by reuniting the Tuscan with the Lombard Dominicans. When that could not be carried through, the pope, in November, 1496, united them with the congregation at Rome, and silenced the preaching of the prior of San Marco. The 26th of November, in spite of the papal mandate, he resumed preaching. The people stood by him all through the famine and pestilence of the spring of 1497. Alexander used every art to persuade Florence to join with him in a league against France. The influence of Savonarola was the great obstacle in the way. The hostility of Alexander was first and chiefly political. As neither Savonarola nor Florence yielded, the preacher was excommunicated, May 12, 1497. The next January,

Constitution of the Church.

Savonarola rejected the excommunication as unjust, and administered the communion in San Marco, and in February began preaching again in the cathedral. Alexander now resolved to end this defiance of papal authority, and ordered the Florentine government to send Savonarola to Rome, February 26, 1498. The 13th of March, Savonarola appealed to a Council. Meanwhile, the Franciscan enemies of his order, eagerly catching at an imprudent phrase from the sermons of one of his friends, desired an ordeal by fire. Alexander VI forbade it; but the government of Florence, guided now by Savonarola’s enemies, desired it, and he reluctantly consented. On April 7th two piles of wood, 120 feet long, with space between them only enough for a man to run through, and drenched with oil and pitch, were prepared. At twelve o’clock the parties arrived, finding a great crowd assembled. The Franciscans demanded that the Dominican lay aside his garb, and dress anew, as an assurance against sorcery, which was done; then that he should lay aside the crucifix, which was complied with. Then he proposed to bear the pyx with the consecrated bread. To this the Franciscans objected. Savonarola now' intervened, and declared in favor of the Dominican champion’s retaining the Host, saying that even if the accidents were destroyed, the substance would remain, which was good scholastic doctrine. The dispute raged until twilight, when the government intervened, and sent the people to their homes. They had expected to see a miracle, or at least a spectacle; but they went home angry and disappointed. The next day was Palm Sunday. The enemies of Savonarola, taking advantage of the pop-

37

578 Decline of Medueval Church.

ular disfavor, stormed San Marco, and led Savonarola prisoner before the city council. He was tortured from April ioth to 18th, and on the 19th made a confession that he had been deceived. A new trial was ordered April 21st, and on the 27th he was again tortured. On the 20th of May he retracted his confession, saying it had been wrung from him by torture. Again he was tortured, but on May 22d he was sentenced to death as a relapsed heretic. On May 23, 1498, with two companions, the great reformer and teacher was hanged, and then his body burned in the public square of Florence, which he so devotedly loved and served.

Savonarola claimed Divine inspiration, and many of his predictions coming true, he was hailed as a prophet. This attributing unerring truth to his words made him unsparing in his denunciation, and brought him into trouble with the Church and an increasing party in Florence, and led to his death. Yet he was a prophet; he proclaimed the only way for Italy's moral and political salvation. The predicted woe came upon her, and she was divided and trodden under foot of the stranger for the next three hundred years. She had no nobler son, she heard no truer voice, she saw no other prophet. He had Calvin's program without Calvin's gifts of government. The pope who caused his death was Alexander VI. Florence made her choice, “Not this man, but Barabbas."

The nephew of Pius II, Francesco di Piccolomini, was elected the successor of Alexander VI, September 22, 1503. He was the father of a large family of children, but otherwise of good character. He took the title of Pius III, but lived only a month.

Constitution of the Church.

579

By unsparing bribery and bargains, Cardinal Ro-vere was elected November i, 1503, as Julius II, 15031513. This was the third papal nephew in succession to obtain the triple crown. He was an able man, of lofty mind and grand designs, capable of sympathizing with all things great in art and life. He was a thoroughly secular and warlike prince and an unscrupulous politician. He fought like a

.. \. . ...    .    ,    Julius 11.

soldier and lived like a prince, but was economical and prudent in financial matters, though he was the patron of Bramante, Michael Angelo, and Raphael. A contemporary says: “He was fortunate rather than prudent, courageous rather than strong; but ambitious and beyond measure desirous of every kind of greatness.” Julius sacrificed all interests in the moral and religious concerns of Christendom, but the firm establishment of the States of the Church for the next three centuries was his work.

Giovanni di Medici had been made cardinal when a boy, and was now thirty-seven years of age. There was nothing: in his character or career to

1 •    1 •    1    ^Leo

recommend him, except his relation to the house which again came to rule Florence. The cardinals wished for a kindly, genial, and magnificent pope, so he was elected, March 11, 1513, as Leo X, ^I5^I3^_I5²⁰- Leo was a cultivated and tasteful patron of letters and art, but a cowardly and shameless liar.

Such were the popes of the Renaissance. Luther saw Julius on his visit to Rome; Leo was pope when Tetzel’s disgraceful sale of indulgences wakened the soul of the great reformer. The hour had come; the cup of indignation was filled to the brim. If Europe was to remain Christian, the Reformation must come.

Chapter III.

CHRISTIAN THOUGHT.

This period saw the last of the scholastics. It owes its importance to the work of the mystics, who deepened the inward religious life of Christendom.

Duns Scotus was born in 1274, in either Scotland or Ireland. He early entered the Franciscan order at _    Oxford, and lectured there on Aristotle.

Duns 5cotus. __    __ . .

He came to Pans in 1304, and died there in 1308. Duns Scotus became the great doctor of the Franciscan order as Thomas was of the Dominicans. He did not deal in such large general conceptions as Thomas, but was more satisfactory in his criticism and treatment of details. He had a better knowledge of Aristotle, and was the first to doubt the demonstrability of the truths of religion by philosophy, which was the corner-stone of scholasticism. Duns taught the freedom of the human will against the determinism of Thomas. He was a strenuous defender of Church authority and of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary.

William of Occam was born in 1280, in Surrey, England; studied at Oxford, became parish priest, wniiam and afterward a Franciscan monk. He of Occam. _{was a s}t_udent of Duns Scotus, and studied also at Paris. In his later years he lived mostly at Munich, where he died in 1350. Occam was a scholastic, a thorough nominalist, and as the last great 580

Christian Thought.

581

scholastic doctor of the Middle Ages, gave direction to all its thinking after him.

But the current of Christian thought in these centuries did not run in the channels of the scholastic philosophy. Rather it sought to make wav

_c    ,    ,11    ,11 Mystics.

for a deeper current and a less troubled stream in the mystic theology which it founded. Its fundamental conceptions are, that the individual soul comes to the knowledge of God through meditation, contemplation, and speculation; it dwells upon the nature of God, of the soul, and the union between them; this comes through intuition to the feelings, rather than to the reason. The first teacher of this mystic theology was the Dominican master, Eckhart, born in Strasburg. He was a scholar of Albert the Great and also at Paris. In 1304 he became provincial of the Dominican order for Saxony. In 1310 he became provincial for Upper Germany, and lectured at Strasburg, Paris, and Cologne, where he died in 1327. Eckhart taught a union of the soul with God which verged on pantheism.

Henry Suso, 1300-1365, a Dominican, was greatly influenced by Eckhart, as was also John Tauler, 12901361, who had much greater influence than both of them, through his power as a preacher. The Thco-logia Germanica, from an unknown author of about this time, was highly prized by Luther, who published an edition of it in 1518. Its leading thoughts are in common with Eckhart’s and Tauler’s.

John Ruysboek, 1293-1381, was priest and vicar of St. Gedule’s Church in Brussels from his twenty-fourth to his sixtieth year, when he retired to an Augustinian monastery in Griinthal, where he lived

582 Decline of Medijeval Church.

as prior until his death. With him mysticism took a practical direction.

A scholar of Ruysboek was Gerhard Groot, 13401384, who, at Deventer, founded the Brotherhood of the Common Life, whose brethren busied themselves in translating the Bible and winning the common people through the use of their language in the religious and Church life. From them sprang Thomas a Kempis, 1380-1471, who was the author of that religious work which, next to the Bible, has had the largest circulation in Christendom—“The Imitation of Christ.” This movement turned the thought and piety of men from the externalism of the Church forms and teaching to the inward life. The Theologia Germanica and “The Imitation of Christ” were a true preparation for the return to evangelical Christianity, as was realized by Luther and Wesley, who published editions of the one and the other for the use of the people.

Chapter IV.

THE CHURCH LIFE.

The life of this period in the Church exhibits an almost continuous moral decline. The fruitful and perennial source of it, confessed and acknowledged everywhere for more than a century before Luther, was the pope, the papal curia and administration. At the Council of Constance this decay is said to have begun, one hundred and fifty years previously, on the immense increase in the power and authority of the pope after the fall of the empire. The papal taxation made money the chief consideration in the obtaining of ecclesiastical offices, and the carrying on of the work of the Church. This was of many kinds.

There came first the tax for the confirmation of an election to an episcopate or an archiepiscopal see. Mainz, Cologne, and Treves ranked at _{palIlum Tax} 23,000 florins. Bamberg, which had paid 3,000, was raised in the year 1500 to 15,000 florins, and Mainz to 37,000. They came to cost from $100,000 to $150,000. Many bishops, like the occupant of the see of Meissen, took their poor funds to pay the expenses of their election. The income of the see or benefice for the first year ^was _AnMts. claimed by the papal see. Benedict XIII, _ProvlslonB> in his limited jurisdiction, received from this source 200,000 francs annually. At first all benefices whose occupants died at Rome could be con-

503

584 Decline of Medieval Church.

ferred by the Papal See; later, at Avignon, all livings in connection with cathedral chapters were claimed for the pope. In this manner a multitude of lucrative benefices accumulated in favored hands. Alexander VI, when cardinal, had many benefices in. Italy and Spain, besides three bishoprics, and these yielded him a clear revenue of 8,000 ducats yearly. More than one cardinal died leaving 100,000 ducats behind him, over all he had spent in gambling, in building and furnishing palaces, and in luxurious and riotous living.

Commends were the bestowal of bishoprics and abbacies for a lifetime, without the obligation to exercise the office. Expectancies were the confer-

Commends.    *    .

ment of the expectation of benefices to be-

Expectancies.    .    .

come vacant m the future, Sometimes these were sold two and three times over. By the right of jus jus spoliarum the Holy See became the heir Spoiiarum. ₀f _ajj property of those who died in their offices. This made Alexander VI so anxious about the death of wealthy cardinals that when he called on them in sickness he made an inventory of their property before he departed. The income of sees purposely left vacant was drawn to

Vacancies.    .    .

the curia when possible. Then came a never-ending and most lucrative sale of exemptions, dispensations, and privileges to ecclesiastical persons and corporations. The main source was still none of indulgences these, but, as proved by the Council of Basel, ’ the sale of indulgences. There were indulgences for Crusades and for every possible cause or institution. For one hundred and fifty years they were sold to aid the war against the Turks, but the

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money seldom got beyond the curia. The Jubilees were the great occasions for indulgences and the immense revenues they afforded. Not only these, but a class of men abounded in Christendom for the last centuries of the Middle Ages, called pardoners, whose regular business was to sell indulgences. The complaint to the Council of Vienne, 1311, says: “These vagabonds were in the habit of granting plenary indulgences to those who made donations to the Churches they represented; of dispensing from vows; of absolving from perjury, homicide, and other crimes; of relieving their benefactors from a portion of any penance assigned them, or the souls of their relatives from purgatory, and granting immediate admission to paradise.” These people never failed in lying tales of wonders and relics, which could not be suppressed until after the Reformation.

The fees of the Roman chancellery were those exacted in the trial of appeals before the _{Fees of the} papal Rota, or supreme court; the cases Roman of criminal justice, and the granting of ^Chancel,ery-bulls, briefs, etc., in answer to petitions. There was an immense increase in the number of the clergy. Hanover, with eight thousand population, had sixty-nine clergy. Hildesheim, with twelve thousand population, had two hundred clergy.

The result of this papal taxation and extortion is vividly set forth in De Clemange’s Ruina Ecclcsicr, written about the time of the Council of Constance. While the facts here are rhetorically expressed, they are borne out by almost all writers of the time, such as Petrarch, St. Brigitta, St. Catherine of Sienna, and Savonarola, Chaucer, the Italian novelists, and the

586 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

chroniclers, as well as the Councils of Basel and Constance. Yet, let it ever be remembered that there were always those in every class in society who kept pure from the prevailing contagion.

“The bishops, as they have to spend all the money they can raise to obtain their sees, devote themselves De Ruina exclusively to extortion, wholly neglecting Ecciesise. +heir pastoral duties and the spiritual welfare of their flocks; and if, by chance, one of them happens to pay attention to such subjects, he is despised as unworthy of his order. Preaching is regarded as disgraceful. All preferment and all sacerdotal functions are sold, as well as every episcopal ministration, laying on of hands, confession, absolution, dispensation; and this is openly defended, as they say they have not received gratis. The only benefices bestowed without payment are to bastards and jugglers. Their jurisdiction is turned equally to account. The greatest criminals can purchase pardon, while their protectors trump up charges against innocent rustics which have to be compounded. Citations under excommunication, delays and repeated citations, are employed, until the most obstinate is worn out and forced to settle, with enormous charges added to the original trifling fine. Men prefer to live under the most cruel tyrants, rather than undergo the judgment of bishops. Absenteeism is the rule. Many of the bishops never see their dioceses, and these are more useful than those who reside; for the latter contaminate the people by their evil example. As no examination is made into the lives of the aspirants to the priesthood, but only as to their ability to pay the stipulated price, the Church is filled with ignorant

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and immoral men. Few are able to read. They haunt the taverns and brothels, consuming time and substance in eating, drinking, and gambling. They quarrel, fight, and blaspheme, and live with their concubines. Canons are no better; since for the most part they have bought exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, they commit all sorts of crimes and scandals with impunity. As for monks, they specially avoid all to which their vows oblige them—chastity, poverty, and obedience—and are licentious and undisciplined vagabonds. The mendicants, who pretend to make amends for the neglect of duty by the secular clergy, are pharisees and wolves in sheep’s clothing. With incredible eagerness and infinite deceit they seek everywhere for temporal gain. They abandon themselves beyond all other men to the pleasures of the flesh, feasting and drinking, and polluting all things with their burning lusts. As for the nuns, modesty forbids the description of the nunneries, which are mere brothels; so that to take the veil is equivalent to becoming a public prostitute.”

iEneas Sylvius, later Pope Pius II, wrote, about the time of the Council of Basel: “The Roman curia gives nothing without money; for both the imposition of hands and the gift of the Holy Spirit are sold; nor is there forgiveness of sins unless money is paid for it.

Of course, in such a state of things the condition of the unmarried clergy was the scandal of Christendom. Clerical concubinage was socially recognized in Norway, Ireland, and south of the Pyrenees.

Ruysbroek, about 1350, said that not one priest in a hundred lived a moral life. At the Council of Basel,

1434, the bishop of Liibeck pleaded for the marriage of

588 Decline of Medijeval Church.

the clergy. He declared it was in vain that priests were deprived of wives; scarcely among a thousand could one continent priest be found. The Council decided that notorious offenders should be fined three months’ revenue, and admonished under pain of loss of benefices to put away their concubines. Until long into the sixteenth century the fines of priests for concubinage was no small addition to the income of many bishops.

The monastic orders in this period knew no revival, but a steady secularization and decline. The stricter The Monastic Franciscans secured a separation from the Orders. Conventuals, as those of the strict observance of the rule, or Observatines; and a branch order of similar design arose in the Recollects. The hostility, uncharitableness, and contention between the Franciscans and Dominicans did not grow less with the passing generations. We saw how it contributed to the death of Savonarola. No bitterness between Protestant sects ever surpassed it. In all the decline it was everywhere acknowledged that the mendicant orders exceeded all others in corruption.

This general decline affected even the inquisition. In France its force was broken by the English wars

The of Edw^rard III. Afterwards its authority inquisition. _was diminished by the growth of the royal power and the influence of the university of Paris. It had little activity in the fifteenth century, and almost none after 1450. In Castile there were no prosecutions for heresy, and no effective inquisition in Portugal. In Aragon it declined by 1450, but was renewed under Torquemada by Ferdinand I, 1483, as a measure of State. In Italy the inquisition became

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unimportant in the fifteenth century, owing not a little to the great schism. So in the Two Sicilies after 1350, as it was under royal supervision and had no prisons of its own. In Germany the inquisition was never very strong, and became utterly impotent, as was proved by the victory over it by Reuchlin in 1515*

If the inquisition ceased to terrify communities by trials for heresv, it continued its nefarious

* • , / ’    . ,    ^    . Witches.

work in the trial of witches. Paramo estimates, in the years 1404 to 1554, thirty thousand were burned by the Holy Office.

The dark shades are unrelieved when we come to speak of the moral life of the people. The Church, alas! too often poisoned instead of purged condition it. Crimes of deceit and fraud abounded. of the Though private wars passed away, the re- ^Pe°P^,e* tainers of noblemen, hired bravos, and the highway robbers, led to deadly violence against person and property. Sensual sins were probably never more common and corrupting in Christian Europe. The prevalence of murder by assassination, and especially by poison, is a marked feature of the last seventy-five years of this period in Italy. An historian of Flanders, in 1369, says vice of every kind was rampant, and in the territory of Ghent, in ten months, there occurred no less than 1,400 murders, committed in the bagnios, brothels, gambling-houses, taverns, and similar places. Luke Wadding, the learned Roman Catholic historian, says: “At that time [the early part of the fifteenth century] Italy was sunk in vic£ and wickedness. In the Church there was no devotion, in the laity no faith, no piety, no modesty, no discipline of morals.

590 Decline of Mediaeval Church.

The Churches were deserted, the gambling-houses filled.” The history of the papacy and of Italy does not show an improvement in the remaining years before the Reformation.

The great period of Gothic architecture was past in France, but it was in its bloom in England and

Architecture Germany, though it soon passed its height.

* In Italy it has most impressive examples in the cathedrals of Milan and Florence, and in Spain in the immense cathedral of Seville. In France the structures previously begun were completed, and many magnificent new ones erected. In England the decorated Gothic style prevailed from 1300 to 1380. The cathedrals of Exeter, Lichfield, Ely, and the choir at Wells, with the chapter houses at Lichfield, Salisbury, and York, Lincoln, Wells, and Westminster, are illustrations of it. The decay of the Gothic was seen in the perpendicular style which followed it. In this style is the cathedral of Winchester. Melrose Abbey in Scotland dates from 1400 to 1450.

In Germany are found the splendid cathedrals of Cologne, Strasburg, Ulm, St. Stephen’s at Vienna, Marburg, Regensburg, Prague, Munich, and Halber-stadt, besides many beautiful churches like that at Kuttenberg in Bohemia.

In the Netherlands the cathedrals of Antwerp, Mechlin, and Louvain were remarkable.

It must be remembered that the churches, the abbeys, convents, and ecclesiastics were the chief patrons of the new arts of painting and sculpture. While the nobility and rich guilds employed the art of the architect, the patronage of the related arts of painting and sculpture throughout the Middle Ages was in

The Church Life.

great part through the Church, and this accounts for the Scriptural and ecclesiastical character of the subjects of the greatest artists, from Giotto to Michael Angelo.

In these centuries there was no cessation of provision for charity, but the spirit of sacrifice had departed; all was quantitative. Masses were _Charlty read in hundred and thousand fold repetition. Service was heaped upon service, and indulgence upon indulgence. More and more hospitals were founded between 1450 and 1500. But the life of love was gone, the charitable orders became secularized, and many of them were disbanded. There were two peculiar manifestations of charitable activity in this period. The Beguines were founded at Frankfort about 1242, and spread over Germany and Flanders. In the fourteenth century there was no city without them. They arose from the need to care for the surplus of single women, caused by the Crusades, the wars, and the plague, who were left without protection or support. They were supplied with houses, light, and fuel free. They gained food and clothing by their labor as nurses, and spinning and weaving. There was a mistress for each house, and they lived in common. They were under the care of the city or the clergy, especially the Franciscans. They increased greatly during the fifteenth century, wealthy citizens often leaving a house to the Beguines in their wills. In 1452 there were 106 houses in Cologne, with nearly 900 inmates; there were 60 houses in Strasburg, and 30 in Basel. Their life, a half nun's without fixed rule, had its dangers. They were attacked by the secular clergy, and especially

592 Decline of Medieval Church.

by the Dominicans, but without success. In the fifteenth century they gained the reputation of being hypocritical, idle, gluttonous gossips, and even immoral in their relations with the monks. Large institutions of the same name are still maintained in Belgium.

The houses for men, called Beghards, were

Beghards.    °

founded on the same plan. They never

Alexians. .    ^{r    J}

enjoyed the same favor, and died out much sooner. The Alexians, an organization of men drawn from the poorer and ignorant classes, spread over Germany after 1350. Four to six men lived in a house in common, from current gifts or from common property. Later, they became useless and worthless.

A Roman Catholic authority tells us that, in the fifteenth and too often in the fourteenth century, the _M , monks yielded to idleness and luxury, and

Monasteries.    ^{J    J} ’

love for the poor grew cold: the careful investigation and relief of distress among the laboring population of the neighborhood was given up; and nothing remained but indiscriminate almsgiving at the convent gates. Of course, this did more to increase beggary than to relieve distress.

The same authority assures us that long before the end of the Middle Ages the hospital, intended originally for the poor, came in Germany to be

Hospitals. , . ,    f    .

looked upon by its clerical administrators as a source of income, and at last was regarded very much in the same light as a rich benefice. The descent was the more facile because, from the twelfth century onward, most of the hospitals were exempt from the control of the bishop. The hospitals which where subject to the order of the Holy Ghost were regularly bestowed upon Roman prelates, to be held

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in commendam. In France things were even worse. "‘The whole history of the Frankish hospitals in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is one of constant abuse. In some cases this was due to the usurpation of the heads of the houses, who dissipated the property of the hospitals or used it for their own advantage; who left the attendants without means of support, and refused to admit the sick and hungry. In other instances it was the attendants who wasted the revenues in idleness and dissipation.” It was therefore fortunate for suffering humanity and the best thing that could happen to the institutions when they fell to the care of the towns under the control of their magistrates, which Louis XI confirmed by an ordinance in 1463. In England there was a like decline in the work of the monasteries and the hospitals. Beggars abounded. A writer estimated that for fifteen men who worked, fourteen were idle. Such a city as Augsburg had three thousand beggars. The Church was immensely rich, with innumerable hospitals, and with property and foundations, yet so ill organized, distributed, and administered, that there was nevertheless enormous beggary. In its work of charity, which had been its peculiar glory, the mediaeval Church had broken down, and must give way to a new era.

38

fart Fifth:.

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

595

Chapter I.

PICTURES FROM MEDIAEVAL LIFE.

It is a beautiful English morning in June. The laborer comes out of his cottage into the fresh and smiling landscape. Yonder is the hall of the lord of the manor, and not far away the parish church. About these are centered the two circles, temporal and spiritual, which include his life and its interests. His cottage is poor, bare, and often unhealthy, but it is set in lovely green; and with its moss-grown thatch, climbing-vines, and a few flowers, it does not fail of picturesque interest. Although he is his lord’s man for life, and can never know what freedom is, yet at least the cottage is his while he lives, and from the few acres of land about it he can raise the most of the support of his family, while his cow can pasture in the common field and his pigs in the woods. He has his troubles, however. His daughter can not marry without the consent of his lord, and the purchase of it is no small matter. His sons must follow the plow on the estate, unless one may obtain entrance at the monastery as a serving brother, or he find favor for another, so that he may be apprenticed to a trade before he is twelve years old. The probability is that the generations after him, like those before, will pass their lives as villains bound to the manor and its lord. He looks toward the parish church as the bell strikes the hour of prayer, and he

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598

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vaguely feels all Christians pray together then. He feels that the church is his; about it lie buried his kindred of the generations gone; its service and festivals break the narrow round of his daily life; it brings thoughts of a better life beyond this, if also of terror for his sins and dread of purgatory. In the great hours of his family life, in marriage and baptism, in sickness and death, at any time of distress, he feels he has right to the service and sympathy of the priest, who can bring something of the infinite power of God and comfort of Holy Mother Church to his heart and life. He thinks little of any of these things to-day, for this is a high festival of the Church, St. John’s-day, the 24th of June. He and his will go to the town to enjoy the spectacle and the merry-making which accompanies it.

At the town it is a gala day, and fair as well. All are intent upon the great procession which starts at noon. There are the city magistrates, in all the pomp of civic pride and bearing the insignia of their office. There are all the guilds of the city, with their officers and members in the garb which distinguishes them, and in a splendor of apparel which worthily represents the wealth and resources of the city. In heraldic devices, the arms of the city, the banners and emblems of the guilds, the allegorical and historic representations, the artisans have exerted themselves to show the skill and taste as well as the wealth of the community; hence there is no lack of variety, picturesqueness, and splendor. The rich citizens and their families also show in dress their wealth, which moves to envy the dames of gentle blood who see or hear of this display, which is only rivaled by the king's court.

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 599

But this is a Church festival, and in richness and variety of display the Church, even in such a pageant, is unsurpassed. The bishop, in richly-embroidered and costly vestments, leads the procession of the clergy. After him come the canons of the cathedral, looking almost like cardinals in their purple robes; then the monks of the Benedictine orders, of Cistercians in white, and those of the Charter-house; the friars, Franciscans in brown cowls, the Dominicans in black; and, at last, a small body of Carmelites in white. Then the charitable orders, the ancient and renowned Knights of the Hospital, with eight-cornered cross of white, the Knights of the Holy Ghost, and the orders of only local significance. As the journeymen and apprentices have their part in the civic procession, so do the sisterhoods, the minor clergy, and the scholars of their schools. All file into the vast cathedral made for processional pomp and the throng which accompanies it. High mass then follows in all the richness and splendor of a service which appeals almost solely to the eye, as the Latin sung, where audible, is to the lay world unintelligible. After the service, the clergy and Church orders return to their homes, the magistrates of the city and guilds to their halls, to partake of the rich banquets provided for such occasions. As we come out of the cathedral we can but see that the whole square close up to the buildings in front is filled with booths of the most incongruous kinds of merchandise, all seeking purchasers. Among them are the jugglers with their performances, while in the afternoon, on a platform by the side of the cathedral, the clergy and their scholars give a miracle plav, which is greatly enjoyed

6oo

The Social Life.

by all as the best dramatic representation of the time. The Church dominates the life of the city as well as the country, and her influence is overshadowing in the common life and even the amusements of the people.

Another holiday comes this week to the villains, servants, and tenants of the manor, for the eldest son comes of age. Preparations have been made for a long time, and not only what the country side could furnish, but the merchants of London and beyond the sea have been drawn upon. After the sports of the day, the jousts and the chase, the guests return to the great hall. Once a castle with tower, moat, bridge, and battlement, it has been made more habitable and convenient for the use of more peaceful days. The spacious hall, with open timbered roof and wainscoted sides, is still the center of life in manor-house or hall, as in the old castle. Its walls are hung with banners and streamers to-day, and mingled with them are the armorial bearings of the house, memorials of the daring of its sons on many a well-fought field, from Antioch and Jerusalem to Cyprus and Constantinople, and from Bouvines’ woful day to Crecy, which avenged it. The table on the dais at the farther end and through the center, or as to-day down the sides, with the tressels and benches, show that it now, as for centuries, serves as reception-hall, banqueting-room, and dormitory for the men of the lord’s retinue. To-day a sumptuous feast is served. The relatives and friends throng the old hall, and are seated according to their rank. The prior of the abbey, founded by a long-dead ancestor, has the place of honor. The dinner is of many courses. The fashionable dress of

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 601

the pages and esquires, with shoes whose long-curved toes are as noticeable as the bright colors of their garments, and whose polite and courtly bearing fits them soon to appear in the presence of the king, can not withdraw attention from the amount and value of the ancestral plate, or the skill with which they serve the feast. There are meats in many courses, and nuts and wine, but the commonest vegetables and fruits of our time are missing. The lord of the manor is dressed like any nobleman of his time, and his wife in rich cloth of Flanders, which is more comfortable than the dress worn when the lady of the manor must appear later in the day. Then it is of stiff brocade, and does not allow her to sit down after she has put it on. So uncomfortable is this prevailing fashion that the ladies often bid adieu to their vanity, and donate the costly robe to the Church, and thus replenish its stock of rich vestments. The talk is of a family and neighborhood character, as to the fortunes and preferment of this or that prelate connected with many at the board; as to the different parties at the court, and the advancement or reverse of friends in the king’s service. With kind words and hopes for friends, came not seldom bitter speech and defiance of those who were at enmity with them, for rank and pride find quick occasion for offense and little place for forgiveness. The hot blood of chivalry knows no second thought; swords are often drawn, and when timely interference is not rendered, the festal occasion may end in a scene of blood. Finally, the last course is served, the conversation slackens, and minstrels are brought in. The elder sings the tale of border war, of defiance and conflict,

The Social Life.

of insult and revenge, with a minor strain in memory of the fall of a lord of their line. Then the younger man takes up the strain, and sings of knightly daring and fair lady’s love. He tells the story of Roland at Roncesvalles, and then melts all with the tenderest strains of the troubadours, in tales of gallantry and courtesy, as well as feats of arms. The ladies look down with eyes and cheeks aglow, and declare he is well worthy to rank with Walther von der Vogel-weide or Tannhaiiser. The older bard now sings in praise of the young heir, who is to add honor to an illustrious name, and his younger companion, with a border ballad like Chevy Chase and a pean of victory, closes the hours of song. The hall is cleared, and the dance and play go on till dawn.

Let us leave the revelers to their welcome repose from the night’s festivities, and betake ourselves to the city of Paris, where we behold a scene of far different character. It is in the reign of St. Louis, who is now following the cross in the Holy Land. What is this crowd in the streets? At the head of a body of halberdiers and the noisy rabble of Paris rides a queenly form; it is Blanche, the regent of France. She directs her way to the chapter house of the canons of Notre Dame, but passing the main entrance she rides to the door of their prison-house. The canons, apprised of her coming, meet her in a body, and threaten her with excommunication. But she scorns them and their threats. Dismounting from her horse, she is the first to strike the dungeon door. Nor will she depart until the hateful place is broken open, and she sees come out into God’s free air again the pale, emaciated forms of the peasants of Chatenai, with

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 603

their wives and children—that is, all that are left of them, all that have not perished in the fetid air and scant food of the dungeon cells within. The poor wretches throw themselves at the queen’s feet, and pray to be delivered from the power of these holy canons of Holy Mother Church under the shadow of Notre Dame, whose endowments they enjoy. Queen Blanche well knows that theirs is no groundless fear. She recalls that when the men were first imprisoned, because they were unable to pay some tax the canons had imposed, and were dying in that place of torment, the queen offering bail for these poor people was insolently answered that the canons would have no interference between them and their subjects, whom they had a right to put to death if they chose. Then the heartless priests sent out and brought the wives and children of these peasants and thrust them in where their fathers and husbands were dying. Pity and anger alike move the queen, as she looks upon the imploring crowd. She firmly insists that the canons shall set free the serfs whom they have so abused, and make them free villains for an annual rent; and thus forever she delivers them from the tyranny of their cruel lords.

Again, turning southward, we find a more inspiring scene in Rome. It is the pontificate of Julius II, who has taken up the plan of Caesar Borgia to create a great State in Central Italy, not for himself, but for the Church. In the midst of great schemes, besieging cities, and suffering defeats, but finally successful in his plans, the war-like, art-loving pope has called Florence’s great artist to Rome. He shows him the vast ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican, and

004

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tells him suitably to decorate it. In vain, Michael Angelo pleads that he is a sculptor, and not a painter. The impetuous pope will listen to no excuses; so at length the artist gives w^Tay, and the work is commenced. He finds no end of difficulties: the proper arrangement of the scaffolding, the preparation of the colors, the incapacity of his assistants, whom he is forced to dismiss and work single-handed, and the chronic want of means caused by the wars of the pope. But alone on his back, with the paint dropping on his face, the patient master works with an intensity and fiery zeal which overcomes all obstacles. Julius in his impatience often ascends the ladder, and assisted by the artist clambers over the scaffolding. “When will you have done?” inquires the eager pope. “When I can,” answers the heroic genius, who scorns no toil. “You seem to wish I should have you thrown down from the scaffold,” rejoins the pope. At last, after four years of labor, interruptions, and disappointments, October 31, 1513, on the eve before the day of All Saints, the completed work is finally unveiled. We may join the crowd, and gaze for the first time on the most powerful creation of brush and color the ages have to offer. Ten thousand square feet and lunettes have been filled with the vast design representing the history of man’s redemption in three parts: Before Moses, Under the Law, and Under the Gospel—that is, from the Creation to the Last Judgment. Three hundred and sixty-three figures look down upon the beholder. Some are twice, the prophets and sybils three times, the size of the human form, but carefully studied and wrought from beard to finger-tips, exciting our astonishment

Pictures from Medieval Life. 605

for their truth, vigor, and life. We join the throng in admiring the great masterpiece, in which the greatest of Italian artists not only disclosed his genius, but impressed his soul. We confess that the period of the Middle Ages, which inspires us with its saints and scholars, its mystics and reformers, in Dante and Michael Angelo has its masters also.

From these pictures we turn to the processes, tendencies, and results of the life of the Middle Ages.

The Middle Ages prepared for modern times in these centuries by teaching the people of European Christendom to work. The early conquer- The Prcpar*-ors of the Roman Empire did not have ^{t,on work}' enough buildings and agricultural property to make removal and wholesale emigration difficult. The able young men were all warriors. The Scandinavian invaders were more stationary, but were easily brought to settle in the more kindly and fertile lands of England and France.

The result of the prevalence of the feudal system was to keep all lands in the hands of the lord; of course there were alwavs exceptions, but

V, 1 1 Agriculture.

the tendency was seen in the Polish law forbidding the non-noble classes to own lands, 1500. About the castle or dwelling of the lord were grouped the demesne lands, which were cultivated by the weekly forced labor of the villains and cotters. The former class usually held thirty acres of land, which was stocked for them, and who were bound to work so many days in the week, or make some occasional payments to the lord. As time went on, these villains sought to pay a rent in kind, or in money, in place of personal service to the lord. By 1400 such com

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mutation had become comparatively common in England. The cotters were laborers on the domain, who had small holdings of four or five acres. Both of these classes had rights to the common pasturage and the use of the woods for swine. The beeherds, swineherds, and servants of the house and estate, were serfs, and all these classes were bound to the land of the lord. It was possible in this organization to bring in a better form of tillage than when all was in independent holdings. Hence, in the prevalence of the manorial system, as this was called, the “three-field” system of husbandry was in general use. There were no fences. Each man received his portion in strips of from two to five acres in different parts of the great common field, so distributed between the different qualities of soil as to make the shares as nearly as possible of equal value. These were cultivated under the management of the lord through his bailiff or steward, in connection with the prcepositus, who was the representative of the villains, and the hayward, who was always present to superintend whatever work was going on. Thus the times for plowing, sowing, and reaping were all appointed, and every man worked under superintendence for the common good; those tilling their shares of land as well as carters, plowmen, shepherds, swineherds, cowherds, and dairy maids. According to the usual system of tillage, a field which had been lying fallow a year would be plowed in the fall, and sowed to rye or wheat. When the wheat or rye was harvested the next spring, the field would be plowed and sowed to barley or oats, and then after this crop was harvested would lie fallow a year before being again sowed to wheat.

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 607

In this way one-third of all holdings and of all arable land was in winter crops of wheat or rye, one-third in spring crops of oats or barley, and one-third lying fallow and untilled. Of course, in this system there is very little or no use fertilizers of any kind to restore the productivity of the soil that came from lying fallow. The meadows and pastures were by themselves, and seldom or never plowed.

A well managed estate in Germany would have its chief farm-house with the chapel, a smaller house with guest-chambers and dining-room for servants, a building for weaving and making clothing, a granary, horse stables, two cow stables, a great barn, shed, a prison, a brewery, bakery, and bath-house.

The dwelling of the peasant had few comforts. That in France is thus described: “The dwelling of the villain consisted of three distinct structures, the first for grain, the second for hay, the third for himself and family. In the great chimney crackled the fire of vine-branches and fagots. It was furnished with a crane of iron, a little iron tripod, a shovel, great andirons, and a pot-hook. At the side of the hearth an oven; near by a great bed where slept the villain, his wife, and his children, and even the stranger who sought hospitality. There were also a bin, a table, a bench, a case for cheese, a pitcher, some baskets, which completed the furniture. Besides, the villain owned some coarse implements: a ladder, a mortar, a little hand-mill—because each has to grind his own grain, a wedge, some hooks ^ or nails, some gimlets, fish-hooks, lines, and baskets.”

In Franconia the peasant’s dwelling was in a quadrangle, built together and not separated by any court

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from the stables, barns, and sheds. In Swabia the peasants lived in the second story over the stables, the roof carried into the same height as the barn beside it and a part of the building. In Saxony the hearth of the family was in the middle of the house, on which burned a fire the whole day, and glimmered through the night. There the peasant’s wife ruled, and about her were children, servants, horses, and cattle; and at hand, under the same roof, cellar, granary, and chambers.

In England the dwelling had an earthen floor, with, of course, no carpet, and there was hardly any furniture; meat was served on spits, for there were no plates and no glass from which to drink. Royal palaces were little better off until the reign of John, and well-to-do citizens in towns did not live better till after 1300. Yet in these circumstances agriculture developed, and one-half of the cultivated land of Europe was cleared from forest in the Middle Ages. The Black Death checked agricultural progress by breaking down the manorial system, but brought in the gradual abolition of serfdom in England. The population remained nearly stationary for one hundred and fifty years, at about 2,000,000. In Germany the thirteenth century was the prosperous era for the tillers of the soil. Many bought themselves free from the fixed rents and dues to the lords, while the extensive clearings of the forest, and the colonization of Austria, Prussia, Bohemia, and Poland to the east gave great opportunities for acquiring independence. In the next two centuries came a marked decline in wellbeing, the income of the average peasant family being reduced to about one-third that of the thirteenth

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 609

century. According to the highest statutable rate in England, 1400-1500, the wages of a common servant in husbandry was $5 a year, and his wife $2.70, besides their food. From this they had to feed their family, pay for fuel, rent, and clothing.

The towns grew as the people learned to work at new industries, and to seek to satisfy new wants through an extending trade. The igno- Trade and ranee and helplessness of the individual, ^{Art,san L,}*^c-the unscrupulousness of the itinerant traders who undertook large risks for large gains, and the self-interest of those who wished themselves to supply their townsmen’s needs with as little outside interference as possible, led to civic and trade regulations and organization. Originally, all matters of trade, both in markets and fairs and the domestic trade, wholesale and retail, were under the control of the lord of the manor in whose domain the town was situated. He could judge as he pleased. So in Leicester the townsmen were compelled to settle their disputes by the wager of battle. After such a performance, which began at six A. M. and ended at three P. M., one of the parties by accident falling into a pit, the townsmen paid the earl threepence for every house in the high street (annually), that twenty-four jurors henceforth might judge and decide all pleas among themselves. Many burghers were villains, and owed service to their lord. Leicester in 1190, like other towns, bought the freedom of its citizens from all such obligations. The towns paid an annual rent, and so were free from all royal tolls.

Henry I of England gave permission to form guild merchants. Between 1100 and 1300, one hundred

39

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and fifty towns in England and Wales had guild merchants. This organization regulated trade—that is, Guild Mer- only members of the guild could carry on chants. trade in the town, and they issued the necessary regulations to insure good quality in the articles sold. They made common bargains in buying and selling for all the members of the guild. They aided each other if they fell into poverty, were imprisoned, or were unjustly accused. They were most helpful in the binding and formation of contracts and the collection of debts. Membership in the guild gave the merchant credit and reputation.

Soon, by the side of the class tilling the soil, arose a class which lived by the labor of the hands in manufacture. The work at first was piece-work.

Craft Guilds.    .    ,

A man needing a piece of cloth or a plowshare would bring the yarn or the iron to the artisan’s house, or order him to come to his own house, and when the article was done, pay him for the work. By and by the artisan would take a boy or a younger man to work with him and learn the trade, and as he had a little leisure and a little capital, he would buy material for himself, and manufacture for the current demand. His work would be for the local market, and it would be important to retain it. Thus would be formed associations for the shutting out of foreign workmen, and maintaining a monopoly for those of that calling who were citizens of the town. Thus the weavers were organized under royal protection at Nottingham in 1160, and between 1100 and 1270 at York, Oxford, Huntingdon, Winchester. At London, one was organized, under the jurisdiction of the lord mayor, by 1300. The guilds, besides enforcing a monopoly,

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 6ii

assured the quality and measure of the goods against the grosser kinds of cheating which were in vogue. They instituted a seven-years’ apprenticeship before men could follow their calling, and limited the number of apprentices by allowing each master only two, or sometimes three. The movement was stimulated by the tendencies of the time. The general disposition to seek local or class franchises, the love of pageantry and public display which the guilds made in the city processions, the desire to insure the soul by means of masses provided for by the endowment of a guild, and by its contributions for the weal of a deceased member; above all, the protection which a firmly-organized class gave, and the opportunities for social enjoyment, instruction, and amusement in the great Churches, made these guilds extremely popular. No one who could become a member remained outside some such organization. The man alone was like the man outlawed.

The guilds began by providing that everyone carrying on a trade or craft should be a citizen of the town. The time came when only members of the

Guilds and

guilds could enjoy the privileges of citizen- civic Organ-

O    ^J _A    _ izations.

ship. In order better to regulate the production and sale of articles, always, of course, almost exclusively for the local market, all workmen, and eventually all citizens, associated themselves in some guild, from the cobbler in his stall to the merchant with his ships on every sea. Every occupation that engaged a score of men had an organization of its own, with regular meetings, elected officers, prescribed payments for common purposes, exercised the right of search, had certain powers of jurisdiction,

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common religious interests and practices, with a definite position in the municipal organization. Of course, in such circumstances there could be no individual freedom. All important action was corporate, and the limits to private action were narrow and well defined. When large masses of capital began to be employed in seeking a wider market, of course the guild system fell into decay.

The people became, in a large degree, self-governing in these associations, and the citizenship of the town limited to those who were of the trading or the manufacturing class. There arose thus in these ages the great middle class between the lords and the tillers of the soil, through whom mainly came the progress which has marked modern life in Europe. The guilds looked after the interests of the producer as well as the consumer. Their representatives were always found in the governing body of the town, whether in Italy or Flanders, in Germany or England, though sometimes bitter strife and bloodshed had to overcome the opposition to such a participation in the municipal government.

The victualing crafts were kept closely under the mayor’s control. No mayor could deal in these wares at wholesale or retail. He issued and enforced, from time to time, the assize of bread, ale, wine, and the like, and regulated the prices, places of sale, and quality of the provisions, especially flesh and fish.

In England the towns were not large during the Middle Ages. In 1400, London is estimated to have had 40,000 inhabitants, York and Bristol 12,000, Plymouth and Coventry 9,000, and Norwich, Lincoln, Salisbury, Lynn, and Colchester from 5,000 to 7,000,

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 613

and all other towns fewer. In Germany, though Munich had toward 100 towers in her city-wall, and Frankfort between 60 and 70, and scarcely Towns a populous city had less, yet hardly a city ^{and CI}*^,ea* of Germany, 1300-1400, had more than 40,000 or 50,000 inhabitants. Nuremburg, in 1450 at the height of its greatness, had only 20,000 men. In Italy the great cities of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Milan were larger, and in the fifteenth century developed a rich, varied, and splendid civic life. In these cities came, first, freedom and peace, and then industry and wealth. The world had learned in good part the arts of the ancient civilization, and was preparing in many respects to surpass them; this must affect the class once the largest in Europe who did not work, but lived to fight.

The noble class had conquered the land, and for centuries their services had been indispensable to protect what remained of civilization from

1 • •    f-,% 1 kt 1    Nobles.

the invasions of the heathen Northmen, Hungarians, Wends, and unbelieving Saracens. But after the general reception of Christianity in Europe from the year 1,000, their importance in this direction ceased. On the other hand, their constant private wars, their idleness, pride, and violence, made them the great hindrance to the advance of civilization. They were not easily dealt with; they had been richly rewarded for services which cost their blood; they owned most of the land, and exercised most of the prerogatives of government. The king was weaker than they; the people had no political existence; the clergy only could humble their pride, check sometimes their violence, and bring them to penitence for

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The Social Life.

their crimes. They were incredibly ignorant, but brave, hardy, and attached to the Church and to their families. At this juncture the Crusades afforded them occupation for a couple of centuries, and broke their political power.

Just before the outbreak of that movement came the alliance between the Church and military life

which is called chivalry. The young

Chivalry.

candidate for knighthood, at the age of fourteen, leaves his home, goes to some other lord, and there receives his training in courtly service and arms. He is as thoroughly trained to obedience and the skillful performance of all menial services, as in the wielding of his lance. He is to be as polite and graceful in the castle as brave upon the field. When the years of his apprenticeship are over, comes the day for the solemn ceremonial of his knighthood. He prepares himself in body and in soul for entrance into that order which is the prime of honor and courtesy. He bathes, and then at the church passes the night in vigils. Fasting still, he attends religious service in the morning; the armor, sword, and banner are blessed by the priest, when he is girded as becomes a knight. The final stroke which makes him noble, when not at the royal court, is usually given by one of superior rank, though any knight has power to impart knighthood. Then away to the castle, to the assembly of all the friends of his father’s house, and to the great feasts and the jousts and dance, which close the day. He is now a master of his calling, and heir to all the privileges of noble birth. He must not work, he must not earn money; it is his privilege to spend it. He must not

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 615

engage in trade; he looks down on all men not as idle as himself. Yet arrogant, quick to anger, relentless and barbarously cruel as he often is, he has his code, which has been summarized as follows:

I.    Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and observe its commands.

II.    Thou shalt protect the Church.

III.    Thou shalt have respect to the weak, and constitute thyself their defender.

IV.    Thou shalt love thy native country.

V.    Thou shalt never give way before the enemy.

VI.    Thou shalt war against the infidel without

truce and without mercy.

VII.    Thou shalt exactly perform all feudal duties,

when not contrary to the law of God.

VIII.    Thou shalt not lie, but faithfully keep the

word thou hast given.

IX.    Thou shalt be liberal and generous to all.

X.    Thou shalt everywhere and always be the champion of the right and the good against injustice and evil.

The age of great men and great deeds passed away, and the sports of chivalry remained. In the tourneys, so often prohibited by the Church, many Effcct were killed and more disabled for life. But °* chivalry, in the general development of European civilization this class played 110 unimportant part. They brought: respect and deference to woman into the social life of Christendom. They cultivated a high regard for truth as well as courage, and really only a coward lies. They formed the manners of the nobility and the court of Europe, and furnished the officers for its armies. They furnished an ideal of honor which, thoug 1

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deficient in many respects, quickened the moral sense of Christendom. And yet, as a whole, it must be confessed the standards, as well as the practice of chivalry, fell lamentably below the Christian ideal. At last the great feudal military class has been largely absorbed into the citizenship of the modern State, but the Reformation and the French Revolution were required to produce this result.

The problem of living in the open country with plenty for all material needs is not a serious one, Learning how except as to the awakening and right to Live, direction of new desires. The Middle Ages sought to solve the new problems of life in an increasingly highly organized society. They attacked these problems through corporate action. The guilds, the brotherhoods, the orders, were the characteristic features of the life of these ages. Men thought of themselves as members of society, as having the same rights and duties as others; men became trained to think of and with others, and to work with them. The races where this training was most complete and thorough, earliest came to take part in a free political life. We forget sometimes how much lies back of the most ordinary forms of our social and political existence. Very slowly men learned how to live in cities. In 1351 straw roofs were forbidden in Erfurth; cattle and swine ran in the streets. A pig running in the streets of Paris caused the death of the heir to the French throne through a fall from his horse. Swine were first forbidden in the streets of Frankfort in 1421. The streets were unlighted and unpaved. In consequence of the necessity of building and dwelling within the city walls, the streets were narrow, the

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 617

houses high, the homes sunless. Indeed, men were in their homes as little as possible. The abundant holidays took men from the shops; the fetes, processions, and countless assemblages in church or cathedral, in guild-hall or market-square, took the leisure of the people. Then visits and converse with friends was largely carried on at the public houses or taverns. Entertainment of friends at home must have been confined to the rich burgher class in the cities. In these sewerless, fetid streets and sunless dwellings a modern man would soon leave the Middle Ages by way of the typhoid fever, and in fact it was in that way that a goodly portion of the inhabitants went out of life. The strong perfumes in which our ancestors delighted hardly made up for the lack of personal cleanliness and that of their clothing. There was no large manufacture of soap, for there was but a limited

demand.    ^

Unfavorable seasons, and they were many in these centuries, brought famine in their wake, as there was generally no sufficient supply in store, and the means of communication were so poor that the acutest need was with difficulty supplied. With the famine came the plague. Says Mr.' Denton, of the fifteenth century: “A century during which more than twenty outbreaks of the plague occurred, and have been recorded by the chroniclers, can hardly be regarded bv us except as one long unbroken period of pestilence. The undrained, neglected soil; the shallow, stagnant waters which lay upon the surface of the ground; the narrow, unhealthy homes of all classes of the people; the filthy, neglected streets of the towns; the insufficient and unwholesome food; the abundance of stale fish

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The Social Life.

which was eaten; the scanty variety of the vegetable? which were consumed,—these things predisposed the agricultural and town population alike to typhoid diseases, and left them little chance of recovery when stricken down with the pestilence.” Add to this that the moat, or ditch, around the city’s walls was so filled with water that fishes lived in it, and we can see that some lessons in the art of living have been gained which we will not have again to learn.

But the Middle Ages have better things to show us. It was the age of youth, of abounding vigorous

Dante. life, and of rare but great achievements.

1265-1321. ]y[_en learned not only to think, but to express their thought. In these centuries the great national literatures were born. How distinctly these great forerunners stand before us! First, always, is the great seer of the “Divine Comedy.” Dante learned his stern life-lesson in disappointment and exile. But in grandeur and clearness of conception and poetic power he has never been surpassed. His words are not written upon paper; they are etched upon his soul. No epithets are like his. Single strokes compress and then express in a word all the life and character of the object. No one book tells so much of the thought, the standards, and motives of life of the Middle Ages. No one knows the Middle Ages who has not read Dante. Happy is he who, to its mastery, has a discriminating and not too tedious commentary. Petrarch set the Italian tongue to refined and stately music in his sonnets, while Boccaccio, the first of modern novelists, is noted as much for his license as his genius.

England in Geoffrey Chaucer has a genuine poet.

Pictures from Mediaeval Life. 619

There will never come a time when the “Knight’s Tale” and the “Nun’s Tale” will cease to charm. His poems are flowers still sparkling in the morning dew. He gives the best view of English society in the fourteenth century, though, alas!    ‘

with its coarseness as well as its finer traits. The company at the Tabard Inn will live when people tire of reading history. He can be safely commended as the most interesting chronicler of his time. Like Balzac, setting out to describe the society of his day, on the score of morals the earlier writer is quite his equal.

Froissart, in France, is the admirer and chronicler of chivalry full of interest and adventure; while Comines is the first historian in the modern sense. In Germany the great Nibelungen Lied in the thirteenth century is a genuine effort of the Teutonic spirit in a purely worldly form. Richard Wagner is a worthy interpreter of its actors and ideals. The greatest German poet of the Middle Ages, Wolfram von Eschen-bach, could neither read nor write, but, like Homer, relied on the good memory of his admirers to perpetuate his poems. A century later, the Song of Roland and other tales of'chivalry in France were the beginnings of a new literature, and later came the legend of King Arthur and his round-table.

No man has more completely realized the life of the Middle Ages than Shakespeare in his historical plays, from King John to Richard III. Not only is there the play of passion true to all ages, but there are displayed the characteristic traits of the mediaeval society. Harry Percy and Henry V are true to feudal ideals, and the quarrel between Mowbray and Boling-

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The Social Life.

broke in Richard II to feudal life; while Richard III sums up the faction, treachery, and cruelty of the Wars of the Roses.

These centuries not only headed worthily the long procession of those who have built up a great literature in the tongues of modern Europe; they acquired taste and skill in the arts. Gothic architecture is its original product, and fitly embodies its spirit. The great structures of the masters of this art can be understood only by being seen. They were built to appeal to the eye, least of all for use or convenience, or for aught in worship which appeals to the ear. Only the gorgeous procession or the pomp of a splendid ceremonial can add anything to their effect. They remain undying monuments, making the vision teach the soul. They are sermon and liturgy in one. Therefore a single good photograph is worth pages of description or the most artistic writing.

So wrought these artists at the problems of the builder’s art, and while Europe’s great minsters endure, the fame is safe of these master spirits and of the ages they adorned. With them wrought the men who rediscovered the arts allied to architecture. Giotto began modern painting, Van Eyck discovered the use of oils, and how beautifully he used them! Then came, toward the close of this period, the noble assembly of Italian artists. Alongside of Bramante’s great cathedral dome at Florence are Gherberti’s gates of its baptistery; then came the great painters like Perugino and Raphael, with Albrecht Diirer, and the master of them all, Michael Angelo. The ages which schooled these men and saw their beginnings had learned time’s greatest lessons in the arts.    ,

Chapter II.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION.

We have traced the history of the Christian Church and the Christian religion for over nine hundred years, and considered briefly their social life and the political history; let us sum up the results.

The service of the Christian religion as ministered by the mediaeval Church, even with all of perversion and misrepresentation of the Christian

The Service

spirit, was an immense benefit. We have to recall the fact that what we call modern life and modern civilization rests upon it. Modern life does not draw its principles, or methods, or inspiration from heathen sources, whether of the Orient or of the antiquity of Greece or Rome, nor from the Mohammedan religion, after allowing all possible influence to the teaching of the Arabian prophet, the taste, refinement, and learning of Damascus, Bagdad, or Cordova, and the Saracen poets and philosophers. More than that, the foundation on which wc build is mainly that of W'estern Christendom and of Latin Christianity. It is true we are far from having exhausted the influence of the great minds of the Greek Church, who schooled Christendom and gave Christianity her creeds and ground-work of dogmatic theology. It is also true that the missions of that Church among the Sclavic races have hardly begun to bear fruit, and must yet mightily influence the history of

622

The Social Life.

the world, and not a little that of Christianity. But the Greek Church has yet to experience that reformation which has made both the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches new and better religious forces in Christendom. Western civilization has felt the influence of the thought and work of Greek Christianity, and hopes for it a most beneficent future; but its foundations rest upon the work of the mediaeval Church, which found its center at Rome. To that Church were due the conversion and training of the Teutonic and ^Scandinavian nations; through her were mediated the arts and culture of the ancient world. Under its influence the Saracen conquest was checked, the States of modern Europe, except Russia and Greece, were formed, and the world learned to work, to think, to develop national literature and the arts of the architect and the painter, the sculptor and the musician. Over against this service we must weigh the ill wrought for Christendom, and the injury to truth and the spirit of Christianity. We must own that in things wrought for evil, the purpose and intent were often pure and noble.

We have sketched at length the history of the papacy, to show how it arose, what it was, and what

it accomplished. The ideal was ever a

The Papacy. . , . ,    . . . , - t-.

united Christendom, with its head at Rome.

This spiritual head of all Christian peoples, raised high above selfish interests and political aims, should bring purity and peace to Christendom. It should protect the weak and down-trodden, it should instruct the ignorant, and cause a united front to be presented to aggressive heathenism, Mohammedanism, or heresy. Divinely ordained, it should not only ad

Results and Conclusion.    623

minister sacramental grace, but keep alive and powerful those lofty principles and religious ideals by which men are helped and society advances to nobler and purer existence. This was the ideal which claimed the reverence of men like Bernard and women like St. Catherine, but all the history of the mediaeval Church shows its utter contradiction to this ideal and to every claim which is based upon it. The papacy did very little for Christian missions, though it sent out Augustine of Canterbury and supported Boniface. The great work of Christian missions was done in the age of the decline and even degradation of the papacy. The papacy united Europe for the Crusades, true, but it did more than any other cause to render them an utter failure. The head of Christendom should either have led or commanded the movement, or allowed others to do it, and loyally assisted them. The pope did neither. The papacy was to be a common center for the life of Christendom amid warring races, nations, and political tendencies. It would be difficult to find the efforts at making peace which counterbalanced those that stirred up war, or to point out the moral influence of the papacy, from the Avignonese exile to Leo X, which' elevated the public life of Europe. We do not question ideals—they may be noble and beautiful—but we must base our judgment upon facts.

So the exemption of the clergy from the civil jurisdiction, and their exercise of the tremendous power of the interdict and excommunication. It is true that in a world of brute force, where the only law is the will of the strongest, the power of the clergy, unarmed and defenseless, to strike down the most power

624

The Social Life.

ful, and to shelter the persecuted and protect the weak, is most valuable. But it is to be noticed that Exemptions th^ese powers did not exist, or were little and supremacy exercised when Europe, on that theory, of the ^CIersy*j_ia(j _m0st need of them. The first interdict was not issued until 1031, and it was not used as a papal weapon over nations until Innocent III. It may be questioned if Europe would not have arrived as quickly and safely at the reign of law without it as with it. That there was often a use and value in the power of excommunication for public morals and for public good there is no doubt. On the other hand, no other power of the Church of Rome has been so often and so shamefully abused for political ends.

The doctrine of transubstantiation, a daily and literally repeated physical miracle, was the crown of the Transub- whole Church system. The priesthood, to stantiation. _wi_1Qm alone is intrusted such miraculous powers, must indeed be the only and sufficient channel of Divine grace to men. The sanctity, miraculous power, and value, as an indispensable means to salvation, of such an office overshadowed all moral defects in those who administered it. In the legislation of Innocent III and the teaching of Thomas Aquinas, as in the masterpiece of Raphael, this doctrine of the sacrament is the great center of Christian teaching. For a commentary upon it read this doctrine into the teaching of Christ or Paul, of the service of the early Church as described by the “Teaching of the Twelve,” or by Justin Martyr, and see how crude and vivid is the contrast. Only the coarsest materialistic application of a figure and symbolic action conveying the profoundest spiritual truth, could give it the least

Results and Conclusion.    625

shadow of apparent support in the New Testament. It is not a development, but a perversion of doctrine, which shuts out the teaching of our Lord and of his apostles, and the practice of the early Church as our test of Christian teaching and worship.

So the practice of auricular confession to the priest seemed like extending, in a practicable form, the discipline of the monastery to the whole community, and the making universal the    ’

sense of moral responsibility and the immense value of spiritual realities. That there is no necessity for such a practice appears clearly from the fact that the Church for eight hundred years knew nothing of it, and yet did well its work, and that large bodies of Christian believers for centuries have proved that neither the forgiveness of sins nor the fruits of a holy life are dependent upon confession to a priest. The experience and history of the institution in the Roman Catholic Church have not been such as to commend it as a safe means of moral advancement or holiness of life. Rather would we learn of the Church of the apostles than that of the darkest of the Christian ages.

The ideal of a priesthood invested with such high and miraculous powers, and fitted for its duties by an entire abstention from ordinary life, celibacy of its cares, its enjoyments, and rewards, was ^ ^Cler«y* necessary and attractive. The superhuman gifts demanded superhuman men to administer them. There is no sadder picture in the history of Christian morals than the facts and influence of sacerdotal celibacy. Admitting all that can be claimed for the purity and holiness of many in all ages, the verdict of the

40

626

The Social Life.

partial historian of the Middle Ages must be one of irreversible condemnation.

The endeavor in a small community, bound together by the strongest of religious ties, and in strict discipline, to cultivate and enforce virtues

Monastic Life.    , , , , , . .

which shall pervade, and through their influence prevail in society, has not only attraction, but value; but the speedy decay and later frightful degeneration of the monastic institute, teach us the superior value of the method of Christ and the apostles of living in society to help and to save it.

Even of the inquisition it may be said it arose from the importance to the minds of men of that time of right belief. Plague and famine seemed

Inquisition.    ,    .

to them less destructive and less to be dreaded or guarded against than heresy. One might kill the body, the other destroyed the soul. Hence some of the purest and most devoted men of the time, like Capristano and St. Bernardino, favored the inquisition. Nowhere else did the turning away from the spirit and example of Christ produce such frightful results; but it was the necessary consequence of the religious teaching and conceptions of these ages.

It all formed one scheme of life and thought, and each part wrought together for the supremacy of the whole. Each represented an historic tendency and the predominance of an ideal which fashioned and controlled the mediaeval Church. If a reason be sought for the departure from the simplicity of the Christian Scriptures and the practice of the early Church, it can be found, not alone in the lack of learning and extinction of culture consequent upon the overthrow of the Roman Empire and ancient civilization, but

Results and Conclusion.

627

chiefly in the mass conversions of the new nations of Europe, whether forced or voluntary, which caused mediaeval Christianity to rest on no personal knowledge or inward conviction of the truths of the Christian faith, or experience of their power, but only upon an entire external assent to Christian teaching and outward conformity to Christian practice. The religion of any Church in any age, thus founded and administered, must be external and formal. Doubtless such a conversion was an immense advance over heathenism and a gain for humanity, but doubtless, also, it made necessary a reformation which should return to the teaching and practice of the early Church if Christianity itself were to survive.

For as all these tendencies and ideals led to the triumph and supremacy of the Church in the thirteenth century, so they wrought together for its corruption and fall in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. How deep was that corruption and profound that fall, let no Protestant, but an official of the papal court from 1510 to 1530, the Italian historian, Guicciardini, tells us. Writing in 1529, he says: “No man is more disgusted than I am with the ambition, the avarice, and the profligacy of the priests, not only because each of these vices is hateful in itself, but because each and all of them are most unbecoming in those who declare themselves to be men in special relations with God, and also because they are vices so opposed to one another that they can only co-exist in very singular natures. Nevertheless, my position at the court of several popes forced me to desire their greatness for the sake of my own interests. But, had it not been for this, I should have loved Martin

628

The Social Life.

Luther as myself, not in order to free myself from the laws which Christianity, as generally understood and explained, lays upon us, but in order to see this swarm of scoundrels put back into their proper place, so that they may be forced to live either without vices or without power.”

It should be borne in mind that the Middle Ages was a period of beginnings. From the clearing of the forest to establishing the foundations of settled order and peaceful society, all was preparatory. Their importance is often overestimated, if this fact is forgotten. The population of Christendom in these ages never rose above fifty millions, and probably for the most part of the time was but half that. The simplest Christians of the apostolic age felt the influence of intellectual life and artistic culture, and had a breadth and freedom of thought, and knowledge of the arts of peace, unknown to the mediaeval society before 1450. But in this society was a vigor of youth, a manifoldness and abundance of life, a loftiness of aspiration, and a depth of devotion, which will always command the interest of men.

A brighter day was dawning. The invention of gunpowder overthrew knighthood, and made way for the recognition of manhood in all classes of society. The invention of printing, about 1440, made possible the intellectual training and culture of the people. The revival of learning, or the Renaissance, from 1450, discovered the beauty and value of the world of antiquity, the eternal human interest of the thought and works of Greece and Rome.

The invention of the mariner’s compass made possible longer voyages by sea. Columbus discovered

Results and Conclusion.    629

a new world, and transformed the conceptions of the old. Vasco de Gama sailed around Africa to the Indies, and forever destroyed the trade of Venice and the prosperity of the great cities of Southern Germany, the Rhine, and Flanders. The consequences of this commercial revolution transformed Europe, and transferred the seats of its wealth and power from Italy and Germany to Spain, France, and England. The Middle Age world had passed away. The new world had been discovered, and through the Renaissance, which can be better treated in connection with the Reformation, of which it was the forerunner, man had discovered himself and his place in it, and Copernicus had shown that the sun, not the earth, was the center

of the solar system.

Could it be that the mediaeval Church could stand in this new world without change? Could the new world and society form themselves without a conception of Christianity independent of authority, and more conformed to the ideal presented in the New Testament? The consideration of the everywhere-acknowledged corruption of the Church, and its incapacity to effect even a partial reformation, answers this question. The mediaeval Church, like the mediaeval world, was outworn and decayed, and must pass away.

Where, amid the ambition of Sixtus IV, which did not stop at the foulest murder; the easy licentiousness and venality of Innocent VIII; the corruption, utter and cynical, of Alexander VI; the double-dealing, wars, and bloodshed of Julius II; the measureless perfidy of Leo X,—where, among the popes of the Renaissance for fifty years before Luther, can we find support or trace of moral principle or the Christian

630

The Social Life.

spirit? All was selfish and venal, all earthly and sensual, where not devilish. After a century and a half of humiliation and abasement during the exile at Avignon, the schism and the era of the Councils, the papacy came to absolute power and greater wealth and influence than before since the thirteenth century. The Councils were discredited and overthrown, and justly. They undertook the work of reform, whose necessity was universally acknowledged, and completely failed. In this vast and most critical opportunity, what was the new papacy, with its augmented power and resources, roused to do? Simply to demonstrate its utter and necessary incapacity to reform the Church of which it was the head. When men gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles, then might reform come from the papacy of the Renaissance. Men of all parties now recognize that the abuses of the old regime in France made necessary the French Revolution. None can doubt that those of the mediaeval Church, accumulating through two centuries and culminating in the papacy from Sixtus IV to Leo X, made inevitable the great Reformation. The debt of the Roman Catholic Church to this Reformation is less only than that of Protestantism itself. If there had been no reaction, the Christian spirit must have been dead, and we should be compelled to confess that there is no God in history, and no moral judgment passed by its course upon institutions and states of society, as well as upon men and nations. Its advent was not only necessary, but inevitable, for the preservation and progress of the Christian religion and the birth of the modern world.

It could come only when the individual soul was

Results and Conclusion.

awakened by the voice of Christian truth, so that the Christian spirit, finding entrance, could purify the Christian Church and society. With all its defects, errors, and excesses, acknowledged and confessed, the movement which made this possible deserves the gratitude of mankind. It opened a new and better era in the Church and of the civilized world. IIuss had been burned, Savonarola hanged; the hour had struck for the Monk of Wittenberg. “He that liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore/’ has not forsaken his Church.

APPENDIX.

LIST OF POPES DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

Gregory I, 590-604.

Sabinianus, 604-606.

Boniface III, 607 (?).

Boniface IV, 608-615 (?). Deusdedit, 615-618 (?).

Boniface V, 619-625 (?). Honorius I, 625-638.

Severinus, 640.

John IV, 640-642.

Theodore I, 642-649.

Martin I, 649-653, dep.; d. 655. Eugenius I, 654-657. Vitalianus, 657-672.

Adeodatus, 672-676.

Donus I, 676-678.

Agatho, 678-682 (?).

Leo II, 682-683.

Benedict II, 684-685.

John V, 685-686.

ConoQ, 686-687.

Theodore, 687.

Sergius I, 687-701.    „

John VI, 701-705.

John VII, 705-707.

Sisinnius, 708.

Constantine, 708-715.

Gregory II, 7I5-73**

Gregory III, 731-741. Zacharias, 741-752.

Stephen, 752; died before consecration.

Stephen II, 752-757*

Paul I, 757-767-

Constantine, usurper, 767768.

Stephen III, 768-772.

Hadrian I, 772-795*

Leo III, 795-816.

Stephen IV, 816-817.

Paschal I, 817-824.

Eugenius II, 824-827. Valentine, 827 (?).

Gregory IV, 827-844 (?). Sergius II, 844-847.

Leo IV, 847-855.

Benedict III, 855-858.

Nicholas I, 858-867.

Hadrian II, 867-872 (?).

John VIII, S72-SS2.

Martin II, or Marinus, 882-884. Hadrian III, 884-885.

Stephen V, 885-891.

Formosus, S81-896.

Boniface VI, 896.

Stephen VI, 896-897.

Romanus, 897 (?).

Theodore II, 898.

John IX, 898-900.

Benedict IV, 900-903.

Leo V, 903, dep.

Christopher, 903-904, dep. Sergius III, 904-911. Anastasius III, 911-913.

Lando, 913-914*

John X, 914-928.

Leo VI, 928-929.

Stephen VII, 929-931.

John XI, 93^I"93⁶*

Leo VII, 93⁶-939*

Stephen VIII, 939“942.

Martin III, or Marinus II, 942946.

Agapetus II, 946-955*

John XII, 956-963, dep.

633

634

Appendix.

Leo VIII, 963-965.

Benedict V, 964-965.

John XIII, 965-972.

Benedict VI, 972-974.

Boniface VII, 974, driven into exile.

Donus II, 974.

Benedict VII, 975-983 (?).

John XIV, 983-984.

Boniface VII, again ; d. 985. John XV, never lawfully consecrated ; d. 985.

John XV, 985-996.

Gregory V, 996-999.

Antipope John XVI, 997-998. Silvester II, 999-1003. "

John XVII, 1003.

John XVIII, 1003-1009. Sergius IV, 1009-1012 (?). Benedict VIII, 1012-1024.

John XIX, 1024-1033.

Benedict IX, 1033-1048. Sylvester III, 1044.

Gregory VI, 1045-1046. Clement II, 1046-1047. Damasus II, 1048.

Leo IX, 1048-1054.

Victor II, 1055-1057.

Stephen IX, 1057-1058.

Benedict X, 1058-1059, dep. Nicholas II, 1058-1061. Alexander II, 1061-1073. Gregory VII, 1073-1085.

Clement III, 1080-1100. Victor III, 1086-1087.

Urban II, 1088-1099.

Albert, 1102.

Paschal II, 1099-1118.

Sylvester IV, 1105-1111. Gelasius II, 1118-1119.

Gregory VIII, 1118-1121. Calixtus II, 1119-1124.

Honorius II, 1124-1130. Innocent II, 1130-1143. Anacletus II, 1130-1138. Gregorius, 1138.

Celestine, 1143-1144.

Eugenius III, 1145-1153. Anastasius IV, 1153-1154. Hadrian IV, 1154-1159. Alexander III, 1159-1181. Victor IV, 1159-1164. Paschal III, 1164-1168. Calixtus III, 1168-1178. Innocent III, 1178-1180. Lucius III, 1181-1185.

Urban III, 1185-1187.

Gregory VIII, 1187.

Clement III, 1187-1191. Celestine III, 1191-1198. Innocent III, 1198-1216. Honorius III, 1216-1227. Gregory IX, 1227-1241. Celestine IV, 1241; d. before consecration.

Vacancy until election of Innocent IV, 1243.

Innocent IV, 1243-1254. Alexander IV, 1254-1261. Urban IV, 1261-1264.

Clement IV, 1265-1268. Vacancy until election of Gregory X, 1271.

Gregory X, 1271-1276. Innocent V, 1276.

Hadrian V, 1276, d. before consecration.

John XXI, 1276-1277.

Nicholas III, 1277-1280.

Martin IV, 1281-1285. Honorius IV, 1285-1287. Nicholas IV, 1288-1292. Celestine V, 1294, res.; d. 1296 Boniface VIII, 1294-1303.

Note.—The cjuestion-marks (?) indicate doubt or dispute in regard to the dates preceding them.    "

Appendix.

635

THE GREAT SCHISM.

Rome.

Urban V, 1378-1379.

Boniface IX, 1389-1404. Innocent VII, 1404-1406. Gregory XII, 1406-1415, res.; d.

1419-

Alexander V, 1409-1410. Jolin XXIII, 1410-1415, dep.; d. 1419.

Martin V, 1417-1431.

Eugenius IV, 1431-1447. Nicholas V, 1447-1455. Calixtus III, 1455-145S.

Pius II, 1458-1464.

Paul II, 1464-1471.

Sixtus IV, 1471-14S4.. Innocent VIII, 1484-1492. Alexander VI, 1492-1503.

Pius III, 1503.

Julius II, 1503-1513.

Leo X, 1513-1521.

Avignon.

Benedict XI, 1303-1304. Clement V, 1305-1314.

Vacancy until election of John XXII, 1316.

John XXII, 1316-1334. Benedict XII, 1334-1342. Clement VI, 1342-1352. Innocent VI, 1352-1362.

Urban V, 1362-1370.

Gregory XI, 1370-1378. Clement VII, 1378-1394. Benedict XIII, 1394-1423. Clement VIII, 1424-1429.

Felix V, 1439-1449.