MEDIAEVAL POPES, EMPERORS, KINGS, AND CRUSADERS;

OR,

GERMANY, ITALY AND PALESTINE, FROM A.D. 1125 TO AD. 1268.

BY MRS. WILLIAM BUSK,

LONDON:

Printed by \V. J. Golboubn, 6, Princes Street, Leicester Square.

PREFACE.

A history of one of the several dynasties, Saxon, Fran­conian, and Swabian, that reigned in Germany and Italy during the Middle Ages, may seem at first sight to possess little attraction for the English reader. But as the point of view is changed, as the object of vision is approached, opinions formed at first sight are apt to change likewise; and such it is hoped may be found the case with the history selected for the subject of these volumes.

The Middle Ages themselves, “ those ages of unknown merit,” as they are described by the great philosophic historian of Germany, Johannes Muller, it were assuredly at the present day a work of supererogation to vindicate against the scorn with which they were looked down upon as the Dark Ages, by the self-sufficient—might it not be added the superficial P—philosophy of the last century. That has already been amply done by our enlightened countryman, the really philosophic historian of those Ages ; and the British public has now learned to respect in Mediaeval laws and usages, tinctured though they may be with barbarism, the parents of those most valued in­stitutions which that public still, even in the nineteenth

'

century, deems pretty nearly the perfection of civiliza­tion,—as well as to prize in them a rich mine for the archaeologist, the poet, the novelist, and the psychologist. Still, this moderate appreciation would hardly enable the English thinker to conceive either the enthusiasm awakened in Germany for the Middle Ages—first, perhaps by Goethe’s drama of Gotz von Berlichingen—or the stores of in­formation consequently provided for the use of the historian. German inquirers of all descriptions have dedicated themselves severally to the investigation of the social, political, commercial, intellectual and artistic state of Europe during this portion of its existence, further dividing every subject that could admit of division. Hence, until the last revolutionary paroxysm absorbed the whole nation in the present, the half-yearly Leipzig Catalogue teemed with distinct works profound and astute, if occasionallj exaggerated or some little visionary, as well upon the conditions of the different classes of society, and their relations to each other, with the changes in those relations, as upon Mediaeval legislation, literature, science, classical erudition, arts, trade, manufactures, man­ners, customs, sports — in fine every imaginable topic belonging to the Middle Ages—discussed separately by different countries and epochs. The account given of each being so elaborate that, for instance, one subject, viz.: Literature, is divided for the purpose info eleven branches, the investigation into, and history of, each of which is deemed the work of one man’s life.

Through all these very learned, and often very in- gen’ous, but somewhat heavy productions, what English reader could be expected to toil ? Nay, it may be doubted whether a translation of any single one of them

could be endurable to his fastidious taste, seeing that the prolixity, in which the German, to whom time seems no consideration, delights, would to British im­patience be intolerable. An attempt has therefore been here made to skim the cream of some of the most important; in order thence and from other sources, to compound a dish more adapted to compatriot palates ; to wit, a comprehensive but condensed portraiture of society in those ages, and especially in Germany, where, one of the living celebrities of that country, finds the most complete, the almost idealized exemplification of mediaeval characteristics. Wolfgang Menzel says, A nation, the development “ of which has been so genuinely that of humanity, “ could not at any step of its progress miss the stamp “ of healthful energy. As in every sound nature the “ development of the bodily powers precedes that of the “ heart and disposition, which in its turn precedes that “ of the understanding, so did the development of the “ German people necessarily follow the same course, to “ run it the most worthily, the most proudly of all “ nations. As in olden times the Germans excelled all u other nations corporeally, to wit, in heroic energy, or “ more properly heroic strength,” [Anglice the personal vigour then indispensable to the heroic character] “ so did they in the Middle Ages leave all far behind “ them in overflowing fullness of heart.” But to re­turn from this specimen of thorough Germanism to the subject of the present volumes. The portraiture in question is offered in the form of a history of that period of the Middle Ages, which another of our German explorers, Loher, esteems their culminating point,—the period which Johannes Muller recommended to a young

a 3

candidate for fame in the historical department of litera­ture, llaumer—as more especially deserving study and commemoration.

Although it is to be presumed that few readers will think of disputing the judgment of this generally ac­knowledged great historian, it may not be amiss to point out the grounds upon which that judgment rests; to enumerate some of the striking events, some of the pecu­liar phases of European life, that fall within the period in question. Amongst them are;—all the Crusades except the first, with nearly the whole of the precarious exist­ence, and the death, of the offspring of that first Crusade, to wit, the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem;—the morn­ing and noontide, if not the very earliest dawn of those extraordinary military monks, the Knights Templars and Hospitalers;—the concomitant noontide of Chivalry, that idealization of feudalism, which some of the most anti-chivalrous, or anti-feudal, modern democrats will not wholly condemn—e.g. the German Rauschnik allows that “in those barbarianized times, chivalry alone preserved “ the very ideas of honour, honesty, and good morals from “ annihilation — the first great heresy, subsequent to Arianism, of Western Europe ; — the provisions foi the maintenance of universal orthodoxy to which that heresy gave iise, in the institution of the Orders of Men­dicant Friars, and of that investigation into religious opinions, which. ,n course of time, grew into the fearful tribunal of the Inquisition ;—the ephemeral Latin Empire of Constantinople;—the Tartar inundation which, under Gengis Khan’s descendants, threatened to sweep away European and Christian civilization;—the revival of the Arts from iheir deathlike lethargy, consequent upon the

seeming extinction of their classic glories ;—and the birth of modern literature, with the preliminary, or, in very truth, simultaneous elevation of the several mother-tongues of modern Europe, from the mere jargon of the vulgar, to the dignity of cultivated languages.

But if these are events sufficient to interest the general reader, far from being all, they are scarcely the principal claims of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries upon the attention of the historian, the philosopher, and the politician. Those other claims rest upon their being especially and essentially a period of transition. And few, if any period of 110 greater length than the portion of these centuries with which we are here concerned—about an hundred and fifty years—present changes so important, such a multifarious development of effects from their causes, such a generation of successive by previous conditions, social and political.

In this period is comprised a considerable part of the progress, by which the feudal system led, in Germany and Italy, to a result so different from those in which, either in France or in England, it died away, yet one which might perhaps, a priori, be thought natural and probable ; i. e. the breaking up of the nation—then, despite the pre­ponderance of a few vassal princes, really, in Germany at least, one grand congenial whole — into a number of separate, rival states, as far independent as their want of size would allow. In Italy, northern and central, where alone this result obtained, the process was already materially advanced. A result now bitterly regretted by sagacious statesmen as well as by poets in both countries, as having, by destroying German and Italian nationality, rendered German and Italian patriotism and true greatness empty names; whilst, on the other hand, it must be allowed

to have mainly fostered, if not given birth to, that rich variety ( Teutoniee manysidedness) of German life, in which modern German philosophers, novelists, and dramatists delight. This portion of the process exhibits, in the first country, the very germ and faint early blossoming of civil liberty, in the form of one of the most peculiar elements of feudal and federal Germany—the one most essentially influential upon that manysidedness—namely, the Free Imperial Cities, long constituting so many tiny vassal republics; respected by the despotic princes within whose dominions they were situated. In the other country appears simultaneously, or rather previously,—Italy very decidedly taking, in this as in most things, the lead— not only the blossoming, but the full bloom of that civil 1 berty, in the far more rapid rise and progress to far more positive independence, of the numerous Italian cities, during their arduous struggle for actual, if not yet avowed, republicanism, against the chivalrous Emperors who strove to recover Imperial rights lost through the casual weakness of their predecessors. And here, likewise, appears the incipient fading of the brilliant flower, in the abuse of the liberty so resolutely won by these little republics, and the commencement of their consequent subjugation by separate, petty, indigenous—they might almost be termed domestic—tyrants.

This period of time embraces, further, the establishment of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes, and the latter portion of the struggle betwixt the then acknowledged spiritual and temporal Heads of Christendom, for supre­macy ; a struggle, which may be regarded as the first effort of mind, after the downfall of the Western Empire in the person of the helpless Augustulus, deposed

by the able Barbarian, Odoacer, for emancipation from thraldom to physical force ; but which presently degenerated into an outrageous usurpation of arbitrary power, a tyrannous oppression of lawful authority, superior as well as inferior, clerical as well as lay:—thus following the usual reckless course of revolutions; those political tempests which, like their meteorological prototypes, whilst they spread temporary devastation and misery around, yet purify the atmosphere; and, destroying the seeds of per­manent evil, promote the wholesome development of life. For hardly can it be made a question, whether the complete ultimate triumph of the Popes did not, by lulling them into absolute security, induce a combination of despotic arrogance with moral relaxation, which at a later epoch very powerfully contributed at least to forward, if it were not a mam cause of, the success of the Reformation.

To the psychologist this period is one of peculiar interest, inasmuch as being an age of feeling and passion, it was one of ungoverned impulse, that offers the most glaring contrasts in conduct and in manners—the extremes of vice and of virtue, of brutal ferocity and of chivalrous courtesy, of rude simplicity and of magnificence, profuse even to absurdity; of not only chivalrous and irouba- dourish idolatry of woman, but of female Professors at Universities, whilst Councils were deciding that woman —though certainly a human being, which earlier Councils had questioned—was of a nature so inferior as to be unsusceptible of education'5.

The history, in which all or much of this should be

*                      The memorandum for this decision has been lost, and the present writer cannot be certain which Council so advanced women to the rank of humanity, or what author has mentioned it.   ■

brought before the reader, is that of a race of almost uninterruptedly able and energetic monarchs, standing well nigh alone in having retained to the end the original splendour of their rise; striving, according to their own idea of monarchial duty, to restore the empire to pre­eminence of power and dignity, even such as Charlemagnt had left it; opposed by an almost equally unbroken series of able and energetic Popes, labouring to establish an universal supremacy of the Church over lay sovereigns, analogous to the superiority of eternal over temporal interests, of mind over matter. The dynasty finally expiring under circumstances romantic and tragical to a degree, that might satisfy the merest novel devourer’s craving for emotion.

As it is very possible that such readers as are not altogether unacquainted with these Swabian princes, may have learned to detest them as faithlessly ambitious tyrants, or recklessly barbarous, unprincipled profligates, a few more preliminary words may be needful to prevent a book occupied with heroes, supposed to be so odious, from being thrown aside in disgust, unread. These princes have always been very variously appreciated, for which there are two reasons. First, they were so appreciated according to the Guelph or Ghibeline partisanship of the old Chroniclers ;—in those days every Chronicler being a par­tisan, who implicitly received and recorde.l the self-interested statements of his leaders. Hence the nioi e hesitating and inquiring modern historian often finds two positively con­tradictory accounts of the same transaction, with nothing to guide his judgment between those conflicting narratives, or between those of his more immediate predecessors—all which it is his business to collate—save perhaps his own

prepossessions, monarchial or republican. For who does or can look at the past, wholly free from a bias impressed by the present ? Not even the most philosophical appear completely to escape it. Secondly, these princes are variously appreciated according as the moral standard by which they are measured is taken from the opinions, habits, and sentiments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, or of the more enlightened, refined, and polished nineteenth. Need it be said which is the fair standard for comparison ?

To avoid inconveniently and pedantically loading the pages with references, a list is here subjoined of the works upon the authority of which the present history rests ; and they will seldom be particularly quoted, unless some state­ment may appear to need especial positive authentication. For the older authorities, Chronicles, &c., the writer of these pages has generally trusted to the diligence and accuracy of those modern authors who appear to have studied each his own peculiar department, with a laborious scrupulosity to which, for the whole collectively, the ordinary life of man w-ould scarcely suffice ; but whenever any doubt or difficulty has occurred the original documents have, if accessible, been carefully consulted.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

Schmidt, Geschichte dor Deutschen.

Luden, Geschichte des Teutschen Yolks.

Wolfgang Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen bis auf die neuesten Tage.

A. Menzel, Geschichte Deutschlands.

Mannert, Gcschichte der alten Deutschen.

Pfister, Geschichte von Deutschland.

Pfister, Geschichte von Schwaben.

Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit.

Stenzel, Geschichte Deutschlands unter den Frankischen Kaisem.

                        Geschichte des Preussichen Staats.

Voigt, Geschichte Preussens.

Politz, Geschichte Preussens.

        Geschichte des Konigreichs Sachsen.

Bottiger, Geschichte des Kurstaats und Konigreich.es Sachsen.

        Geschichte Heinrichs der Lowe.

Mailath, Geschichte des CEsterreichischen Kaiserstaats.

        •              Geschichte der Magyaren.

Schneller, Geschichte (Esterreichs.

        Geschichte Bohmens.

Menginn, Geschichte von Bayern.

Klemm, Geschichte von Bayern.

Zschokke, Bayerische Geschichte.

Sachs, Geschichte von Baden.

Barthold, Ges chichte von Pommem.

Wigand, Klein-Hessische Chronik.

Leo, Niederlandische Geschichte.

— Geschichte Italiens.

Hasse, Geschichte der Lombarden.

Dahlmann, Geschichte von Danemark.

Fessler, Geschichte von Ungam.

Roepel, Geschichte Polens.

Broniksowski, Geschichte Polens.

Karamsin, Geschichte des Russischen Reichs, ubersetzt von Hanenschild.

Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzziige.

Anton, Geschichte der Tempelherm.

Sartorius, Geschichte des Hansebunds.

Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte der Assassinen.

        Geschichte der Goldenen Horde in Kiptschak.

        •                      Gemaldesaal der Lebensbeschreibung grosser

moslimischer Herrscher.

Hurter, Leben des Pabst Innocenz IH.

Neander, Leben des Heiligen Bernhards.

Munch, Konig Enzrns, Beytrage zur Geschichte der Hohenstaufen.

Savigny, Geschichte des ROmische Reclits im Mittel Alter.

Eichhom, Deutsche Staats und Rechts Geschichte.

Meiner, Geschichte des Yerfalls der Sitten.

Hormavr, Sammtliche Werke.

Funk, Gem&lde aus der Kreuzzuge.

Vogt, Rheinische Geschichte und Sagen.

Justi, Vorzeit.

        Elizabeth die Heilige Landgrafiim von Thtiringen und Hesse.

Gervinus, Geschichte der poetischer, nationale Literatur der Deutschen.

Rauschnik, Biirgerthum. *

•      Denkwiirdigkeiten aus der Geschichte der Vorzeit.

Loher, Fiirsten und Stadte zur Zeit der Hohenstaufen.

Weber, Ritterthum.

        Pabstthum.

Wachsmuth, Europaische Sitten-geschichte, vom Ursprung volks- thumlicher Gestaltungen bis auf unsere Zeit.

Uhland, Walter von der Vogelweide.

Rumohr, Italienische Forschungen,

Muratori, Annali d’ltalia.

        Scriptores Rerum Italise.

Giannone, Istoria Civile di Napoli.

Denina, Rivoluzioni d’ltalia.

Micale, Italia pria dei Romani.

Villani, Istorie Florentine.

Varese, Storia di Genoa.

Capecelatro, Storia della citta e reame di Napoli.

Manno, Stmia di Sardegna.

Renneri, Storia di Corsica.

Bartolotti, Istoria della Reale Casa di Savoia.

Amari, Storia del Vespro Siciliano.

Sforzosi, Compendio della Storia d’ltalia.

Mozzi dei Capitani, Studj sulla Contessa Matilda.

Testa, Storia della Guerra di Federigo I. contra i Comum di Lombardia.

Gerardo, Vita d’Ezzelino III. da Romano.

Tiraboschi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana.

Balbo Vita di Dante.

Arrivabene e Foscolo, Secolo di Dante.

Vasari, Vite dei Pittori.

Lanzi, Storia Pittorica d’ltalia.

Bettinelli, Del Risorgimento d’ltalia negli Studii, nelle Arti, e nei Costumi.

Lanzi, Principe di Scordia, Degli Arabi in Sicilia.

Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des R6publiques Italiennes.

                        Histoire des Fra^ais.

                — Histoire de la Litterature du Midi.

Michaud, Histoire des Croisades.

Wamkoenig, Histoire de la Flandre et de ses institutions, politiques et civiles, traduite par Gheldolf.

Guichenon, Histoire g6n6alogique de la maison de Savoie.

Michelet, Histoire de France.

Augustin Thierry, Recits Merovingians.

        Histoire de la Conquete d’Angleterre.

Calmet, Histoire de la Lorraine.

Dom Vaissette, Histoire du Languedoc.

Voigt, Histoire du Pape Gregoire VII., traduite par l’Abbe Jager.

Montalembert, Vie de Sainte Elizabeth.

Barrau, Histoire des Croisades contre les Albigeois.

        De Montfort et les Albigeois.

Reinaud, I5Abbe, Notices sur la Vie de Saladin.

        Monuments Arabes.

La Cume de Ste. Palaye, Memoires sur l’Ancienne Chevalerie considerse comme un Etablissement politique et militaire.

Millot, Histoire litteraire des Troubadours.

Roquefort, L’Etat de la Poesie Francaise au douzieme et treizieme Siecles.

Renaud et Fave, Histoire de l’Artillerie.

Hallam’s History of Europe during the Middle Ages.

        History of Literature.

Robertson’s History of Charles V.

Mills’ History of the Crusades.

        History of Chivalry.

Perceval’s History of Italy.

Napier’s Florentine History

Bower’s Lives of the Popes.

Bowden’s Life of Gregory VII.

James’ History of the Life of Richard Cceur de Lion.

Addison’s History of the Templars.

Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn).

Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, translated by Murdock.

Jones’ History of the Waldenses.

Kemble’s Saxons in England.

Sharon Turner’s History 01 the Anglo-Saxons.

*              — History of England during the Middle Ages.

                 Essays on Rhyme in the Archaiologia,

Hippisley’s Chapters on early English Literature.

Milner’s Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of England during the Middle Ages.

Humbold’s Kosmos, translated by Mrs. Sabine.

Lach Szyrina’s Letters, literary and political, on Poland.

Krazinski’s Germanism and Panslavism.

Should the title of any foreign work be incorrectly given, the writer must plead in excuse that several were procured from, foreign libraries during some years of a wandering life, and less carefully noted in that respect than in regard to their contents.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

Introduction 1

Section I.

Condition of Europe, and of the Countries connected with Europe, in the beginning of the Twelfth Century. 2

Section II.

Condition of the Holy Roman Empire at the beginning of the Twelfth Century  33

Section III.

The Contest between the Pope and the Emperor for Supremacy, originating in Ecclesiastical Investitures and Lay Patronage ... 63

Section IV.

Intellectual, Artistic, and Social Condition of Europe in the first quarter of the Twelfth Century.............. 97

BOOK I.

LOTHAB II.—CONRAD III.

CHAPTER I.

Rise of the House of Hohenstaufen. — Loyalty of Frederic of Hohenstaufen to Henry IV..—Marriage with Princess Agnes.—

Duke of Swabia.—Death.—Services of his Sons, Frederic and Conrad, to Henry V.— Frederic’s claim to succeed his Uncle, Henry V.—Arts that baffled him.—Election of Lothar . . . .157

CHAPTER IT.

LOTHAR II.

Lothar’s Troubles.—War with the Hohenstaufen Brothers.—Conrad anti-king.—External affairs.—Of Denmark.—Of Slavonia.—Mis­sionary labours of St. Otho.—Affairs of Poland.—Of Burgundy.—

Of Germany.—Papal Schism.—St. Bernard.—Affairs of Southern Italy.—Coronation-Progress.—End of Civil War.—Apulian affairs.

—Lothar’s second Italian Expedition.—His Death . [1125—1137.] 179

CHAPTER III.

CONRAD III.

PAGE

Election Manoeuvres.—Conrad elected.—Dissensions with Henry the Proud.—Death of Henry.—Rise of the terms Guelph and Gliibeline.

—The women of Weinsberg.—Compromise with the Welfs.—Other German affairs.—External affairs.—Italian affairs.—End of Schism.

—Roger’s Conquest of Apulia, and Government.—Dissensions of the Popes and the Romans [1138—1145.] 213

CHAPTER IY.

KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM.—CONRAD III.

End of Baldwin II.’s Reign.—Accession of Eulk and Melisenda.—

Rise of Zenghi. — Fulk’s Policy and Death. — Melisenda and Baldwin III.—Internal Dissensions and Intrigues.—Relations with the Mohammedans.—Fall of Edessa.—Zenghi’s Death.—Prepara­tions for the Crusade  [1125—1146.] 248

CHAPTER V.

CONRAD III.

The second Crusade.—March of the German Crusaders.—Passage through Hungary.—Through the Greek Empire.—Intercourse with Constantinople.—March of the French Crusaders.—Disasters of the Crusaders in Asia Minor.—Crusaders in Palestine.—Siege of Damascus.—Of Ascalon.—Unsatisfactory end of the Crusade.

[1147—1148.] 271

CHAPTER VI.

CONRAD III.

Conrad at Constantinople.—King Henry’s Government.—Relations with the Pope.—Henry the Lion’s Crusade.—Conrad's return.— Rebellion of Welf.—Of Henry the Lion.—Death of King Henry.—

Of Conrad.—Of St. Bernard.—State of Europe and Palestine.

[1147—1152.] 294

BOOK II.

FREDERIC I., SURNAMED BARBAROSSA.

CHAPTER I.

Election of the Duke of Swabia.—His character.—Affairs of Germany. —Contention for the Danish Crown.—Ecclesiastical Disputes.— Henry the Lion.—His Quarrels and Claims.—Lodesans at the Diet of Constance.—Affairs of Italy.—Preparations for the Coronation- Progress—Actual state of Italy.............. [1152—1154.] 313

CHAPTER II.

FREDERIC 1.

Coronation Progress.—Roncaglia Diet.—Transactions in Lombardy.— Siege of Tortona.—Adrian IV. Pope.—Adrian, the Romans, and Arnold of Brescia.—Adrian and Frederic.—Frederic at Rome.— Capture of Spoleto.—Return.—Guelph Snares . , [1154—5.]

CHAPTER III.

FREDERIC I.

Affairs of Germany.—Henry the Lion and Henry Jasomir.—Frederic’s Marriage. — Affairs of Poland. — Of Bohemia.—Of Denmark.— Relations with France and England.—Affairs of the Sicilies.—Of Lombardy.—Dissensions and Reconciliation with the Pope.

[1155—1158.J

Notes..    , . , .

PAGE

338

368

395

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MEDIEVAL

POPES, EMPERORS, KINGS & CRUSADERS.

INTRODUCTION.

At the opening of the twelfth century those complicated political relations, that reciprocal action of different countries upon each other, that comprehensive system of statesmanship, which now unites the whole of Europe into a sort of federal commonwealth, did not exist. But in the course of the period of about 150 years, the history of which it is designed here to give, that system may be con­sidered as nascent; owing its birth partly, perhaps, to the familiar intercourse produced by the Crusades amongst numerous individuals of nations till then scarcely conscious of each other’s existence, and to the value the Crusaders learned in those distant and prolonged expeditions to feel for mutual support and co-operation ; but mainly to the authority, spiritual and temporal, so largely exercised, so universally claimed by the popes, and naturally tending to fashion all Christians into one family, under the paternal sovereignty of the popes. The history of the Holy Roman Empire, under the emperors of the Swabian dynasty, will therefore be the more easily intelligible if preceded by a sketch of the condition of Europe, and of those parts of Asia and Africa in communication with Europe at the close of the first quarter of the twelfth century, the date of the appearance of this dynasty amongst the competitors for the crown. A somewhat more detailed account of the state of Germany and of Italy, which, however re­pugnant to the liberal views of modern policy, must be classed together, as integral members of, and conjointly constituting the Holy lloman Empire, will be requisite, and

VOL. I.   B

must be accompanied and complicated by a brief expo­sition of the rise, progress, and state at the same epoch of the contest between the popes and the emperors, the then recognized spiritual and temporal heads of Christendom. An additional slight sketch of the intellectual and social state of the world in which the personages of the narrative lived and acted, may it is hoped be in itself interesting, and will assuredly assist the reader in forming an estimate of the character and conduct of those personages.

SECTION I.

CONDITION OF EUROPE, AND OF THE COUNTRIES CON­NECTED WITH EUROPE, IN THE BEGINNING OF TIIE TWELFTH CENTURY.

Spain and Portugal, to begin with the western extremity of Europe, were then divided between theii last conquerors, the Moslem Arabs, and their previous conquerors, the Christian Goths; who, driven in the first instance by the Arabs into the recesses of the Asturian and Pyrenean mountains, were gradually recovering by arms the terri­tories that by arms had been wrested from them. Put even in this common object, the Christians of the Peninsula did not act conjointly. The lost provinces of the Gothic monarchy of Spain, as they were reconquered, were formed into the separate and very small kingdoms of 0\ iedo, Galicia, Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre, and the counties (meaning not provinces hut principalities, so entitled and governed by earls*) of Parcelona and Portugal, the respective sovereigns of which states, though all intent upon regaining land from the Mahommedans, were generally at war with each other, as well as with the common enemy, and eager, each to augment his own dominions, nearly regardless at whose cost In the first quarter of the twelfth century, the bulk of these states was unusually united, although of some the union was evidently temporary. The opening of the century had seen Leon, iti which

*      The reader is requested to observe, that throughout: these volumes the use of the word couuty, as being the only one to designate such a principality, -will be strictly’confined tu this sense.

Oviedo and Galicia had happily merged, Castile, and the two northern provinces of Portugal, form the kingdom of Alfonso VI., who, having been gallantly assisted in his conquests from the Moslem by two Burgundian princes, Earls Raymond of Burgundy, and Henry of Besancjon, gave, in recompense of their services, to the first the hand of his daughter Urraca, with Galicia, as a vassal kingdom, for her portion; to the second, that of his illegitimate daughter Teresa, with the two Portuguese provinces, as a vassal county, for her’s. The subsequent death, in battle, of Alfonso’s only son, made Urraca his heir ; and, as Queen of Leon and Castile, she, upon the death of her first husband, accepted for her second, Alfonso King of Aragon and Navarre. But this comprehensive union was most transient, if not illusory. The ambitious Alfonso strove to usurp the sovereignty of his wife’s dominions, in which she haughtily denied him any authority; and they were wholly engrossed by conjugal civil war, until pacified by a divorce, upon the plea of consanguinity. The king of Aragon and Navarre then turned his arms against the Spanish Arabs, and in many victories earned his surname of the Battler. Urraca was next engaged in similar broils with the son of her first marriage, Alfonso Raymond, who, upon his father’s death, had inherited Galicia; but, dissatisfied with so small a kingdom, was impatient to succeed to or supplant his mother in Leon and Castile. The county of Portugal was distracted in like manner— Alfonso Henriquez endeavouring to wrench the sceptre from his widowed mother, Countess Teresa. When he had effected this, he imprisoned her, and devoted himself very successfully to the war against the Mahommedans. The other Christian potentate of Spain, Raymond IV., Earl of Barcelona, which county comprised the whole of Catalonia, was then chiefly occupied in securing the French provinces that he had acquired with his wife Dulce, the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Gilibert, the last king of the Arelat, or Lower Burgundy, who died a.d. 1092. Her share was now called the county of Provence, some lesser districts, forming the marquisate of Provence, having been assigned to the younger daughter, wife of the Earl of Toulouse. A considerable degree of liberty was enjoyed throughout the Christian portion of the Peninsula, evidently

b 2

the result of the whole male population being habitually in arms against the Maliommedans. Every recovered town became an outwork against those from v. uorn it had been wrested, and chartered rights and privileges were freely granted, to induce the citizens to defend that outwork heartily. The recent historian of Ferdinand and Isabella, Mr. Prescott, who has diligently explored Spanish archives, asserts, that acts of enfranchisement, meaning probably municipal charters, of even the eleventh century, are still extant.

The Mahommedan half of the Peninsula was not in a much more united condition. The mighty caliphate of Cordova, the population of which, south of the Douro, had once been estimated at 25,000,000, was extinct,'having, upon the death of the last caliph, crumbled into ten petty kingdoms, mostly at war with each other as well as with the Christians. Their weakness attracted from Africa a fierce Arab tribe, called by Spaniards the Almoravides,(.i) who had previously made themselves masters of the north­western district of the southern continent, and formed ii into the empire of Morocco. They quickly subjugated the disunited princes of Moslem Spain, and the Almoravide leader, Aly, was acknowledged sovereign of Spain and Morocco, by the hallowed title of Emir al Muminim,{2) signifj’ing Prince or Lord of the Faithful. But the learned and polished Spanish Arabs, impatient of the yoke of rude and ignorant barbarians, incessantly rebelled against Aly, and war raged from the Straits of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. It scarcely need be added, that the western Peninsula was uninfluential in Europe. What little influence it did possess, appeared in attracting adventurers to a field of constant warfare, where the martial propensities of the age might be piously indulged against misbelievers; whilst, besides the favour of the church, booty or rich guerdon, as was apparent in the case of the Burgundian earls, might be hoped for, thus diverting crusaders from the Holy Land.

France, even already, as since, exercised a more active intervention in the affairs of other countries; but in the first quarter of the twelfth century, her government was feeble, and her power proportionately small. She was only recovering from the state of deplorable weakness and

degradation, into which she had sunk under the latter Carlovingians, and could hardly yet be called convalescent. Something less than a century and a half prior to the epoch under consideration, the third or Capetian dynasty had seized the throne, and much raised its dignity by the increase of power derived from the incorporation of the extensive territories of Hugues Capet with the crown domains, in those days almost the only source of public revenue. At this change of dynasty, Walloon, or the Romane Langue d'oil of northern Gaul became the court language, in lieu of the German spoken by the Frank Merovingians and Carlovingians; the name of Western Frankland was softened into France, and the nation speedily forgot the German origin of that name. But if increased in power and strength, France was still far from strong, because far from one and indivisible ; whilst all the land east of the Rhone, the Saone, and the Scheldt belonged to Germany, the remainder consisted of provinces really distinct in nationality, as Norman, Breton, Frank, and Romano-Gallic, speaking different languages, hardly regarding each other as compatriots, and severally ruled by vassal princes, often equal if not superior in power to their suzerain, such as—to say nothing of the Duke of Normandy, become King of England—the Dukes of Aquitaine, Brittany and Burgundy, the earls of Champagne, Poitou, Anjou, Toulouse, Flanders, See., of whom the last two were Princes of the Empire, as well as Peers of France, Flanders being speciiically divided into Neustrian and Austrasian Flanders, or Flandres sous la couronne and Flandres Imperiale, whilst Flemish, i.e. low German, was the vernacular tongue of both parts. To enhance this disunion, the northern and southern provinces acknow­ledged different codes of law, the former living under Frank, the latter under Roman legislation; hence some of the southern towns enjoyed such municipal franchises, inherited from their Roman founders or colonizers, as rendered them, Marseilles especially, more than half inde­pendent republics. Further to counteract the growing power of government, the illegal marriages of two suc­cessive kings, Robert and Philip, had provoked dissensions with the Roman see, ultimately, in both cases, bringing down a sentence of excommunication upon the royal offender. And such were then the terrors of this church.

thunderbolt, that the anathematized monarchs, deserted by their respective courts, could hardly find servants to perform the menial offices of their households.

Lewis VI., who in the year 1125 occupied the throne, or rather his able minister Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, had however begun the operation of strengthening the sovereign authority by administrative reforms, and other judicious measures, of which two claim mention even in such a sketch as this. The one, at the time seemingly far the most important, was the annexation of perhaps the largest vassal duchy, Aquitaine, and the county of Poitou to the royal domains, by marrying the youthful heiress of both, Duchess Elinor, to his son and heir, alieady crowned as his colleague. Hut these judicious nuptials failed to realize the beneficial cffects anticipated ; whilst the other measure, comparatively little thought of, granting towns in the northern provinces charters that gave them some small degree of self government, and thus weakening the great vassals by raising up a rival power, produced permanent advantages.

England was in the twelfth century, by her French provinces, more integrally connected with the continent than she can now, since the death of William IV. dissolved her connexion with Hanover, be deeded; and already in the first quarter of that century, her Norman kings were full as mightv monarchs as the liege lords of their duchy of Normandy. William the Conqueror had ruled victorious Normans, as well as vanquished Saxons, with a rod of iron , thus, despite the bitter hatred borne by the latter to their oppressor, consolidating his authority, and rendering him: self a very formidable rival to his suzerain. Under his sons this absolute despotism was, indeed, .11 some measure relaxed. The rivalry of the brothers for the crown, and the dissensions of William llufus with the church, had enabled the Anglo-Norman great vassals to acquire something of that feudal power, which, if when pre­ponderant fatal to all good government as to monarchy, lias perhaps mainly preserved Europe from Asiatic slavery.

In England, however, this was as yet far from being the case, William Uufus, if less despotic than his father, had still been one of the most absolute of Euro]lean sovereigns; Henry I., who reigned in ll^SJiad by his marriage with the

Scotch Princess Matilda, niece to Edgar Atheling, blended the blood of Alfred with that of the Norman conqueror/3) and thus in some measure reconciling the Anglo-Saxons to his sway, strengthened his authority, rendering it more secure than had been his brother’s or his father’s. The circumstance of his infant daughter being sought in marriage by the able as ambitious emperor Henry V., whilst, her brother being alive, she had no prospect of succeeding to the English throne, might be accepted as an European testimony to the dignity and stability of his position. But English, or rather Anglo-Saxon princesses, had long been wooed by continental sovereigns/.1) Muni­cipal rights and privileges secured by charter, there were at this time seemingly none in England, but the towns had enjoyed much substantial liberty under the Anglo-Saxon kings, and retained a large proportion thereof, notwith­standing Norman tyranny.

In Scotland reigned David, brother to the Queen of England ; but so limited were the early relations of this kingdom, being confined to llome in spiritual concerns, in temporal to England and some of the Scandinavian states, with which last it contended for the Hebrides, and the Orkney and Shetland islands, that even this passing notice seems supererogatory.

It might be supposed that the same remark would apply to all the northern states of Europe; and in some degree this may be true, but not fully in respect to any, and wrould be altogether incorrect as to one portion of Scandinavia. Towards the close of the ninth century, each of the three countries comprehended under that name, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, had severally united its divided provinces into one distinct kingdom. Denmark, at the opening of the twelfth century, was considered as a dependency, if not actually as part, of Germany, her kings invariably doing homage to the reigning emperor at their accession. In fact, for want of a definite law of succession (little or no distinction being made between legitimate and illegitimate children, and age the point most considered), so much uncertainty seemed to hang over a Danish monarch’s right to his crown, that all eagerly sought for such an imperial sanction to their title, as acceptance of their homage. At home, these kings, few

of whom died a natural death, were habitually engaged in civil war; and their foreign relations were chiefly wars with their several neighbours, the kings of Sweden, the dukes of Saxony, and some of the princes of Poland and of north-western Russia, for the sovereignty over the independent Heathen Slavonian tribes inhabiting the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic, from which sea they severed the two last-named states. Over none of these tribes, though they were often temporarily sub­dued, had any one of the belligerents, at the close of the first quarter of the twelfth century, established permanent authority.

It was only during this same quarter of a century that either Sweden or Norway had ceased to pour fort devastation upon Southern Europe, in swarms of pirates, led by their sea-kings, and excited by those singular warriors, whose extraordinary bursts of insane fury rather than uncontrollable valour, accompanied during the pa­roxysms by almost preternatural strength, procured then* the distinctive appellation of Berserkr heroes, an epithet implying in the old Norse tongue that they fought un­clothed (5) or at least unprotected by armour. As late as the year 1107, Sigurd, king of South Norway—absolute unity not being as yet permanent in Scandinavia—had, at the age of nineteen, set forth with a fleet of sixty vessels, upon such a vikingr or piratical expedition. For two years he emulated the plundering and devastating exploits of his predecessors. Then landing in Portugal, he assisted Earl Henry to gain two victories over the Almoravides; and now, delighted thus to have fulfilled a religious duty—he called hiraself a Christian—whilst indulging his martial ardour, his viking* spirit was sud­denly converted into the devout enthusiasm characterizing the age. Sigurd steered for the Holy Land, made crusaders of his pirates, and actively co-operated with Baldwin I., King of Jerusalem, in the siege and capture of Sidon. Upon his return, he visited Constantinople, sold his fleet to the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, left hitn his pirate crusaders to man it, and, almost alone, made his way home by land, wedding a Russian princess on his road. This was the last vikinqr expedition. Sigurd sub­sequently united the whole of Norway under his sceptre;

then, growing weary of his Russian wife, he easily pre­vailed upon his Norwegian bishops to sanction his divorcing her, and marrying one of his subjects, with whom he had fallen in love. The external relations of Norway were chiefly with Scotland, arising out of their several claims to the above-named islands; those of Sweden, with Russia and Denmark, touching the sovereignty over some of the independent Slavonian tribes upon the Baltic.

Russia had originally consisted of a number of such independent Slavonian tribes, scattered between the Euxine and the White Sea, but not extending westward to the Baltic, or eastward to the Ural Mountains, from which last they were severed by Tartar hordes, as from the former by other Slavonians. Towards the close of the tenth century, some of these Russian tribes, weary of their incessant indecisive wars among themselves, and admiring the viltmgr exploits of their Scandinavian neighbours — WarangiansW as they called them, Warangian in their language signifying pirate,(?)—invited one of these vikingr warriors, named Rurik, to be their common prince. Rurik eagerly accepted the invitation, and he and his immediate descendants speedily subjecting the neighbouring tribes, Tartar as well as Slavonian, who, as they were conquered, took the name of Russians, from Rossi, that of the tribe to which their Scandinavian conquerors belonged,(8) reigned over the whole with the title of Grand Prince of the Russians. Neither the title of Czar, nor the city of Moscow, whence the nation was afterwards known as Moscovite, were then in existence. But scarcely was this grand principality constituted, ere, by division and sub­division amongst sons, it was again broken up into innu­merable little states, ruled very independently by their several princes, who, nevertheless, all owned as their sovereign the Grand Prince of Kiew in Southern Russia. But even this degree of union became a cause of weakness rather than of strength. To the principality to which this sovereignty was attached, then Kiew, afterwards Vladimir in northern Russia, all the princes aspired, and for many generations it remained the lawful heritage of the oldest of the whole princely race, as was each principality of the oldest of its own branch.(9) Hence, incessant civil wars amongst the princes for the supreme dignity, for

b 5

sovereignty in the dependent principalities, for relative rank in respect to each other, &c. The foreign relations of the princes included wars with Sweden and Denmark for sovereignty over some of the independent Slavonian tribes, with Poland both for similarly clashing pretensions in regard to other of these tribes, and for territorial claims, their respective frontiers being undefined; and with Hungary upon the like conflicting frontier claims. But the principal intercourse of the Russians, commercial, amicable and hostile, was with the Greek empire, from which, through the marriage of a Constantinopolitan Princess to a Grand Prince, they had received Christianity, and such civilization as they yet possessed. But with the rest of Europe Russia held more communication than might be supposed; Russian princes applied to the German as well at? to the Greek emperor for assistance in their wars, foreign or internal; and Russian princes and princesses intermarried with the royal families of Germany and France, as well as with the German princes of the empire. Even with England they were not unconnected the exiled children of Edmund Ironside found their first asylum in Russia; and the family of Harold, when driven from England by the issue of the fatal battle of Hastings, having sought refuge in Denmark, his daughter Gyda was, by the intervention of King Swayne, Canute the Great’s nephew, married to the Russian grand prince.C10)

In Poland, as far back as the close of the tenth century, Boleslav, then its prince, had received the regal title from the Emperor Olho III., and at the same time the Polish Church had been relieved from dependence upon the Archbishop of Magdeburgh as its Metropolitan- the Pope having, in concurrence with the new King, erected Gnesen into an archbishopric, to which the primacy of Poland was attached. Thenceforward Boleslas and his successors had done, or refused to do, homage to the emperor for their crown, or had done it for some temporarily subjected Slavonian dis­trict, claimed as German, according to the relative strength of emperor and king. But during this period the royal title had been forfei . I. Boleslas II., having been rebuked by the Bishop of Cracow for his notorious vices, murdered [he venerable prelate upon the very steps of the altar, and the Pope, who canouized the victim, ever since, as St.

Stanislas, the patron Saint of Poland, deprived the sacri­legious murderer of his regal dignity. Boleslas fled, no one knew whither, and his brother Vladislas, who succeeded to his authority, submitted to the Papal decree, contenting , himself with the title of duke. The condition of Poland seems to have been then, as it continued to be to the last hour of its existence, what might be termed a democracy of nobles. That is to say, the population consisted of nobles all equal among themselves, however different in fortune and in title, and of their slaves, who, if less completely slaves then than at a later period (H), were hardly esteemed

Eart of the people; the whole governed by kings or y dukes, theoretically absolute, but practically inthralled by the nobles, save as their domination was counteracted by the nominal monarch’s talent and energy; able princes being despots, weak ones puppets. The frontiers of Poland, separated from the JTJaltic by independent, Hea­then Slavonian tribes, were to the north-east imperfectly defined ; and to the south the possession of Walachia and Moldavia was disputed with her by Hungary and the Greek empire, whilst those provinces themselves asserted their independence of all three.

Hungary appears to have been early occupied by a mixed population of Gothic, Slavonian, and Turkish or Tartar race, together with the descendants of the old Roman colonists, as the Walaclis call themselves, though they are rather held to be the aboriginal Dacians, slightly intermixed with Roman blood. In the ninth century the country was overrun by the Magyars, whose leader, Arpad, announcing himself as descended from the Hun, Attila,(l2) claimed the kingdom as that conqueror’s heir. These Magyars, concerning whom it is still a question whether they are Finns, Tartars, or Turks, showed themselves on shore worthv rivals of the piratical Northmen in de­vastating and desolating Europe, until decisively defeated by Otho the Great, a.d. 955. In the debility consequent upon this disaster, their marauding propensities gradually subsided. Their king, Geisa, was under these circum­stances converted to Christianity by his wife, the beautiful Sarolta, a Transylvanian princess; and numbers following his example, received baptism. But their faith continued wavering until confirmed by the son of Geisa and Sarolta,

Stephen, afterwards canonized, who surrendered Hungary to Pope Sylvester II., receiving it back in vassalage. The wise Sylvester, however, evidently treated this vassalage as purely spiritual, wherefore his successors scarcely claimed more authority over Hungary than over other European states. Towards Germany, Hungary appears, after Otho’s great victory, to have stood much in the same relation as Poland, her king doing homage to the emperor when weak or wanting his support, refusing it when able. Hungary was habitually at war with Poland for Moldavia, and other frontier districts; with Venice for Dalmatia, which, about the year 1125 the republic wrested from Stephen II., the minor son of King Kalmeny, or Koloman, and with Constantinople for the countries next to be mentioned.

From the Greek empire Poland and Hungary were then separated by three states, the very names of which were forgotten in their subsequent Turkish thraldom, till revived in the revolutionary movements of the current century. These were the kingdom of Bulgaria, which sometimes did and sometimes did not comprise Walachia, and the prin­cipalities of Servia and Bosnia. All three were originally Slavonian; but the first had been overrun and conquered by a Tartar horde from the Volga, whence their name, Bulgarians or Volgarians, who had in their turn been conquered, though scarcely subjugated by the Greek emperors. But in the decadency of the eastern empire, Bulgaria, like Servia and Bosnia, had half broken the yoke, now seeming to be established in independence, now again nominally subjected. The two principalities had to contend in like manner with Hungary, whose kings struggled for at least the suzerainty over them, as well as with the court of Constantinople.

The Greek, or, as it termed itself, the East Roman Empire, although siill comprehending much the larger part of what has since been designatedas Turkey in Europe ana the western extremity of Asia Minor, retained little beyond the name of its pristine power and dignity. Externally threatened by the f urks upon the eastern, by the Bulgarians, and other half-barbarian, though European, nations upon the northern side, it was internally a prey to palace intrigues and con­spiracies, producing'the deposal and the murder of emperors.

often followed by usurpation of the throne. Amidst these various perils the court of Constantinople had sunk deeper and deeper in Asiatic luxury, was more and more engrossed by Asiatic pomp and splendour, by enhancements of rank, and regulations of ceremonial, hiring foreign mercenaries, not only for a guard, but for the main strength of the army. These mercenaries were called Warangians, probably because the first were Scandinavians passing through Russia, and therefore known to the Greeks by their Russian name; Anglo-Saxons are said to have thronged into the Warangiaa corps after the Norman conquest, yet in spite of such dangers threatening such helpless imbecility, still did the name of the East Roman Empire command so much respect that those able and powerful western emperors, Charle­magne and Otho the Great esteemed a matrimonial alliance with it an object of policy. The first sought for himself the hand of the infamous Empress Irene, and happily failed. Otlio successfully asked for his son, Otho II., the Princess Theophano, daughter of Romanus II., with the Constanti- nopolitati pretensions to Magna Grecia and Sicily, which upon the decline of the Carlovingians had been revived, for her portion. This portion was nevertheless but a name, those provinces being then held, the first by Lombard and other native princes, whilst the few sea-port towns that still professed allegiance to the remote and feeble empire as the easiest means of securing actual independence, paid neither tribute nor obedience to the imperial Katapan, even when such an officer was able to occupy Bari; the second by the Saracens ; and against neither had anything like an efficient attempt to inforce those pretensions been made for centuries. The loss of Sicily was virtually confessed if verbally con­cealed, by transferring the name of the theme, i. e. province, to Calabria. In the first quarter of the twelfth century, however, this empire was enjoying a transient renovation. Able and energetic emperors of the Comnenian race had reigned at Constantinople since the year 1081 ; had re­pressed palace intrigue, repulsed the Turks and Bulgarians, and, although offending the Franks by their arrogance (for still did the degenerate East Romans revel in inflated ideas of their own superiority over the barbarians of the west), had, even whilst dreading these barbarians, taken advantage of the success of the first crusade to recover some of the lost

possessions of the empire ; to wit, nearly, if not quite the whole south-western sea coast of Asia M;no»-, and to acquire a nominal suzerainty over some of the principalities gained by the Franks in Syria. The second of the dynasty, the brave, clement, wise and virtuous John, surnamed Kalo- Joliannes, in ridicule of his want of beauty, was emperor in 1125.

Those Syrian principalities fall next under consideration, and from various circumstances claim a degree of attention utterly disproportionate to their magnitude, power and intrinsic value. One of these circumstances is the local connexion of the kingdom of Jerusalem with Christianity, of which it was the very birth-place; another, the immense influence it exercised over Europe, as constantly impelling to crusades, which crusades in their turn exercised a lasting influence over the development of European civilization. Another, of weight with the writer, and, it is hoped, the reader of these pages, is the acquisition of that kingdom by one of the sovereigns whose history they are to contain. In the first quarter of the twelfth century the very existence of these SyroFrank states was so recent as to justify a few words touching their creation.

That Christian Europe ought to unite in order to wrest the Holy Lrnd from misbelievers, and establish it as a Christian state, is an idea said to have originated with the learned Pope Sylvester II., before the close of the tenth century, when tne oppressed Christians of Syria sought aid at his hands. He addressed an epistle in the name of the suffering Church of Jerusalem to thewhole Catholic Church; but the Catholic Church did not respond to the appeal. Some strong excitement was required to render such a mighty common effort possible, and such excitement the fol lov ing century supplied. When the fierce hordes of nomade Turcomans from the steppes of Taitary subjugated the civilized Arabs, reduced the caliph to puppetliood, and finally tore Palestine from the clement Fatcmite anti-caliphs of Egypt, the virtual toleration and protection previously enjoyed by Christians in their pilgrimages to the scenescon­secrated by religion ceased. The Turcomans had no motives for forbearance, and their cupidity was excited by the mag­nificence sometimes displayed upon occasions so unsuited to pomp as au act of devotion or of penance, i. e. a pil­

grimage. Throughout Europe the minds of men were gradually inflamed by resentment of the outrages, the atrocities now perpetrated upon pilgrims connected with some of the hearers by the ties of blood or of vassalage, of both sexes, of the highest rank and of the holiest condition, —even a mitred abbess was among the victims seized for the harem. In the last half of this eleventh century, Pope Gregory VII., whose aid the frightened Constantinopolitan court had implored, and who hoped compliance would be repaid by the reunion of the Greek with the Latin Chui'ch, projected raising Christian Europe against the misbelieving barbarians, whose domination desecrated the holy city. The chord vibrated to his touch, since in one of his epistles he says, 50,000 men were ready to follow him upon such an expedition; but his own ambitious schemes in Europe interfered with the execution of this more disinterested scheme, and it dropped.

It was not till the pontificate of Urban II. that the proper instrument for finally enkindling the well prepared mind of Europe appeared. This was Peter the Hermit, whose pas­sionate description of the oppression, the sufferings of Chris­tian pilgrims, which he had witnessed—ay, and undergone —firing the train, produced the sudden universal response to the Pope’s eloquent exhortation to take arms in the cause of God. Jerusalem had indeed even since Peter’s visit been recovered from the Turcomans by the Egyptian Fatemites; but this change had no effect upon European feelings, Turcoman and Arab appearing, it may be presumed, identical to the unlettered chivalry of the west. At Cler­mont, in Auvergne, where Urban II. in person preached the crusade, the unanimous exclamation of Deus id vult! Deus id vult /(*3J (literally, God wills it, or more idiomatically, The will of God) resounded. The Pope accepting this shout as not only of good augury, but the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, solemnly said, “ When the army of the Lord our God rushes upon his enemies, be that the battle cry !’’

Whilst the princes who had taken the cross were diligently preparing for the distant and difficult enterprise, ignorant fanaticism, impatient of the inevitable delay, raised tumul­tuary armies from the very dregs of the people to forestall them. These were severally led by Gaultier de Perejo, a

veteran knight, but from his poverty nicknamed Sans Avoir,04') (i. e. have nought,) by the hermit himself, by a German priest, and, according to some writers of authority, a fourth, the largest, lowest, and most ruffianly of all, amounting to 200,000 persons, bv a goat and a goose. The first-named two leaders alone had any idea of even attempt­ing to inforce discipline,and they found it next 1o impossible. All began their operations by massacring the Jews;(15) all mistook every town they reached for Jerusalem ; and nearly all perished by the way, victims partly to the hardships and privations of the march, inevitable for armies so constituted, but mainly to the revenge provoked by their own misconduct. The few survivors, with the hermit and the knight, reached Asia Minor, where they waited for a more orderly army, to which, when it began its march, the wreck of all four furnished recruits. This army, duly equipped and led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, but en­cumbered by crowds of non-combatants, passed through dangers, hardships and privations scarcely inferior to those that had destroyed, all but annihilated, its predecessors, whose remains it gathered up as it proceeded. In Asia Minor it was joined by other armies under divers princes and princely nobles ; and in 1099 the united host had achieved the conquest, first of the principalities of Edessa and Antioch, and then of Jerusalem, w ith great part of Palestine. The conquests are calculated to have cost 880,009 European lives, reckoning the disorderly hordes at 250,000, and the victorious army at 710,000, women and children included, of whom 80,CC0 at the utmost appear to have even seen Jerusalem and the other settlements.(l6)

When the Holy City was taken, the next business of the Crusaders was to provide for its government and future security from Moslem or Pagan desecration The princes felt themselves absolved from the engagements into which they had entered at Constantinople, to hold their conquests in vassalage of the Greek Emperor, by the complete violation of the reciprocal engagement into which Alexius Com- nenus had entered, to supply them ivith auxiliary forces, provisions, and all necessaries, in every way promoting the success of their enterprise. Holding themselves, therefore, free to dispose of their conquests at their pleasure, they, after much discussion, resolved to constitute an independent

kingdom of Jerusalem, of which one of those who had re­deemed the holy places with their blood should be king. After some little coquetting with llaymond, Comte de St. Gilles et Toulouse, the wealthiest amongst them, who had formed a little army of his own by supporting, and thus in fact drawing into his service, every knight and humbler warrior whose own resources were exhausted,—even some inferior nobles, who with their few retainers were in the same straits,—their choice fell upon the Duke of Lower Lorraine, apparently the most single-minded man, as well as the most distinguished leader amongst them. Godfrey, pious as valiant, declared that he should deem it sacrilege to wear a kingly crown there, where the Son of God was crowned with thorns ; to receive royal honours where He, for the sins of mankind, had died upon the cross. Accordingly, whilst he cheerfully accepted the burthen, the duties, of sovereignty, he positively refused to be crowned, or to bear any higher title than Guardian of the Holy Sepulchre and liaron of Jerusalem. These his surviving comrades joyfully acknow- leged,and proclaimed him sovereign at the close of July 1099.

And a burthen indeed the sovereignty he accepted was. The Crusaders now deemed their vow amply fulfilled, and the army broke up. Earl Raymond, resenting his disap­pointment of the crown, with the band which his money and their necessities had attached to his banner, separated himself from Godfrey, devoting his thoughts and means solely to that object for which he had previously impeded the operations against Jerusalem—the conquest of Tripoli as a principality for himself. The Italico-Norman, Bohemund, Prince of Antioch, and Godfrey’s own brother, Baldwin, Earl of Edessa, withdrew, with their followers, to those dominions which, by force and craft combined, they had acquired during their military pilgrimage, and the main body returned to Europe. Only about 300 knights, and 2,000 men of inferior condition serving on foot, remained to defend the newly-established little Christian kingdom against its numerous and potent enemies, and to complete the con­quest of Palestine, without which its continued existence was evidently impossible.

Wilken, the diligent and highly esteemed German his­torian of the Crusades, who has been and will be chiefly relied upon in everything relative to the Syro-Frank states, says,

that both Godfrey and Bohemund, in reverence for the holy city, received the investiture of their new states from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. But whether he did, or did not, take so peculiar a step, Godfrey lost no time ’n legislating for his new subjects; and invited all who should deem themselves equal to the task, to propose laws for the king­dom.

But Godfrey hardly saw the completion of their labours. Whether poisoned by the Moslem foes who feared him, or worn out by past fatigues and privations, and by present anxieties, he died within the year, when the veneration which his virtues and abilities had inspired induced the election of his brother Baldwin as his successor. Baldwin gladly ac­cepted his nomination, transferred his county of Edessa to his nephew, Baldwin de Bourg, or Bruges, and, less scrupu­lous than Godfrey, was crowned King of Jerusalem. Baldwin I. was a brave warrior, and recklessly cruel and per­fidious as had been the course by which he had possessed himself of Edessa, he proved a good king for the infant kingdom. His reign of eighteen years was a scene of con­stant war with one or other of the neighbouring Moslem states, whether Turkish or Saraccn,<l7) as some contem­poraneous writers distinguish those north and east of Syria, i. e. the Turkish,, from Syria itself and the Southern Arab states, including the African and even the European, which they term Saracen.

An incident of one of these wars is worth inserting, both as characteristic of the times and country, and to modern feelings little consonant with the reckless cruelty laid to Baldwin’s charge. Upon his march to encounter an invad­ing Egyptian army, he found an Arab woman alone by the roadside, in the agonies of parturition. Flying with her husband before the advancing Christian army, she had been surprised by her hour of suffering and of hope, when her husband, in search of better assistance, had left her. Bald­win dismounted, covered her with his own cloak, supplied her with water from his private stock, and made every provision circumstances would allow for her comfort in so miserable a condition, as well as for her security. When, the following year, he was defeated, and closely besieged at Itamla, he was, one night, told that an Arab at the town- gate insisted upon being admitted to him. This proved to

be the woman’s husband, come to guide her benefactor safely through the besieging army. He would undertake only for one ; but the Iving accepted the offer, and thus freed, found means to relieve Manila.

For the conduct of these wars Baldwin had hoped to be reinforced by a supplementary crusade 250,000 or 300,000 strong, which the news of the triumphant success of the first had impelled, in unconnected bodies, to tread in its steps. But these new crusaders proved still more un­governable than their predecessors. They were guilty of innumerable atrocities ; they murdered friendly Christians, whom, because they could not understand their lauguage, they took for Paynims, their generic name for non-Chris­tians. These bodies of crusaders, whatever their numbers, were cut to pieces on their way through Asia Minor, a.d. 1102, and the disheartened survivors for the most part returned home, only a few of the more persevering pro­secuting their journey to fight under the standard of Jerusalem.

The Greek empire, which should have valued the Syro- Frank states as outworks against the threatening Turks, was rather hostilely than friendlily disposed towards them. To say nothing of the crusaders’ tacit disavowal of the sovereignty claimed by Alexius, and promised by them, the rude warriors of the west had so scared as well as offended the Constantinopolitan court, even whilst doing prospective homage, that the interest of the empire was no counterpoise to its ill will. In addition to which, the enthusiastic religious zeal of the crusaders was so incom­prehensible to the Greeks, that the passage of every new bod\ awoke new fears of sinister designs, and the Franks were perhaps yet more dreaded than the Turks.

The chief European assistance obtained was afforded by the mercantile cities of Italy, Venice, Pisa and Genoa, and for this the King was compelled to pay a high price ; compelled not merely to close his eyes to their violating capitulations he had concluded, plundering and slaughtering those whose i_ves and property he had guaranteed, but to grant them, in addition to enormous commercial privileges, whole dis­tricts of the seaport towns they had helped him to take, wherein to establish their factories, in actual independence of his lawful royal authority. Nor was this the worst of

Baldwin’s position. The Syro-F rank states themselves were not cordially and steadily united against their Moham­medan foes, and throughout Lis reign he was harassed with civil wars,which will be sufficiently characterized by mention­ing the origin of one of them. Bohemund of Antioch and Baldwin of Edessa having fallen into Turkish captivity, their dominions were defended and governed for them by the nephew of the former,Tancred, Prince of Galilee,Tasso’s hero. Upon recovering their liberty they showed their gratitude by demanding the surrender of all Tancred’s own conquests to be divided betwixt themselves. He, of course, refused, and the civil war in question ensued. But notwithstanding disappointments, difficulties and annoyances, the Christians proved superior to the Mahommedans, and Baldwin ma­terially enlarged his kingdom.

In 1118 he died childless, though thrice married, and in regard to his matrimonial career, an anecdote is related more in accordance with what might ’nave been anticipated from the usurper of Edessa, than his courtesy to the suffering and helpless Arab woman, and not uninfluential upon the fortunes of Palestine. Baldwin had brought an European wife with him upon his crusade, but she died, and he espoused an Armenian princess. Afterwards, hearing that Adelaide, Countess dowager of Sicily, had accumulated great wealth during her regency for her son Roger, the second earl, and probably wanting money to carry on his incessant hostilities, he divorced this Armenian wife, and solicited the hand of the Countess. The offered title of queen proving irresistible, she repaired with her treasures to Jerusalem, and was solenir.lv wedded to Baldwin. But she had not borne the coveted title two years, when he pronounced his divorce illegal, and his consequent nuptials fiigainy; recalled his repudiated second wife again to share his throne, and dismissed his third as no wife at all, retaining the riches she had brought with her, upon what plea it were hard to guess, unless perchance that he had spent the whole. Dishonoured and plundered, Adelaide returned to Sicily, and resentment at her shameful treatment, is said to have long prevented her royal descen­dants and their subjects from sharing in the crusades/18)

Upon the death of Baldwin, his nephew, Bakhvin, Earl of Edessa, claimed the crown as his heir, and obtained it.

mainly by the exertions of his kinsman, Joscelin de Courtenay, to whom he made over Edessa in thankfulness. It is said that an elder brother of Godfrey and Baldwin, Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who had accompanied them upon the crusade, but returned to his patrimonial earldom when his vow was discharged, had, upon the tidings of Baldwin’s death, set out for Palestine, in the hope of reap­ing his succession. Upon his road he learned the election of Baldwin II.; and although urged to proceed, because he, as nearer of kin to the two deceased monarchs, would be preferred to his nephew, refused, exclaiming, “ Far be it from me to provoke feuds in the realm that mv two brothers, and so many of my fellow-christians sacrificed their lives to gain, where my Saviour shed his blood !” and like a worthy brother of Godfrey he returned home.

Baldwin IT. was as active a warrior as Baldwin T., and like him received much, by no means gratuitous, assistance from the Italian cities. For instance, his capture of Tyre was mainly owing to Venetian co-operation, which he had solicited, and which the Doge brought in person ; but refused to act until promised a third of the city in full sovereignty. Yet such were the advantages flowing from the establishment of the Syro-Frank states to the trade of Venice, Pisa and Genoa, the pretty nearly exclusive channel of their communication with Europe, that those advantages might well have been deemed sufficient induce­ment to assist in extending and defending those states. Baldwin II/ s career was not uniformly prosperous ; never­theless, by the year 1125, his kingdom had attained to within a trifle of its utmost dimensions, and by far the largest part of Palestine was subject to his sceptre.

Whether the principality of Antioch and the counties of Edessa and Tripoli were or were not members of the kingdom of Jerusalem, is still one of the disputed points of history. That for the interest of all parties they should have been so, is certain ; and Heeren, a great authorit upon such subjects, maintains that they were vassal states, but does not clear away the difficulties. The first two having been acquired by Bohemund and Baldwin, before the crusaders had even set foot in Palestine, it seems more likely that they would be held independent of the subsequently conquered kingdom, from which they were Digitized by Microsoft®

severed by considerable Moslem states, under Saracen Emirs. For Antioch, which, when Tancred died without children, absorbed his Ciliciau conquests, and far surpassed the kingdom in extent, its princes occasionally, and only occasionally did homage to the Greek emperors; but of them it was very really independent, and in all negotiations with Mahommedans has quite the appearance of an inde­pendent state, although in its internal affairs, the Kings of Jerusalem often interfered like suzerains. Edessa, though also large and remote, it can hardly be doubted would become a vassal county, when its earl became king; it was his to give at his pleasure, and he was not likely to give it otherwise. Tripoli, the great object of Earl Raymond’s desires, was not conquered till after his own death, when his son Bertram won it, probably as part of the existing kingdom. Its earls, though vassals very for­midable to their sovereign, and often acting independently of him, habitually appear as members of the Jerusalem baronage.

The population of Syria prior to the arrival of the crusaders, was motley in races as in creeds. It consisted of Syrians, professedly of the Greek church, but split into Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, &c. kc.;—of Turks and Saracens, similarly divided, not only into the great Maliommedaii sects of Soonees and Sheahs, but further subdivided into many minor sects, not worth enumerating;— and of Jews, in like manner split into many sects. To these are to be added, after the conquest, European settlers from France, Italy, England, Germany, all designated as Franks, though dissimilar to each other there as at home, and the progeny of such Franks by native women, known by the contemptuous name of poulains, literally colts, but idiomatically half-castes. The whole of the non-Frank population is represented by contemporaneous chroniclers as, morally and intellectually, in the most degraded condition; the half-castes as imbued, with all the vices of the natives, effeminate, timid, quarrelsome, sensual, and exceeding the natives ini their oriental jealous seclusion of the women, who, as a natural consequence, were thoroughly un­principled. In confirmation of these reports, it is certain that a Synod sitting at Naplouse in 1120, enacted laws against the most revolting crimes, as though such were of

daily occurrence. But against this, it is to be observed, in the first place, that in 1120 few poulains could be of an age to commit the crimes of men ; in the next, that the Roman Catholic Franks, hating the Syrians as schismatics, oppressed and debased them; and finally, that in the northern states, Tancred, who in true chivalry was far in advance of his age, treating the natives differently, made good light infantry of them.

A kingdom thus situated and thus peopled, governed by a foreign conqueror, with a few foreign troops to guard him, pressed upon from three sides, and it might be said, from within, by enemies whose hatred of victorious invaders was embittered by difference of religion, hardly needed other causes of instability to ensure its downfall. Yet these were not wanting. Every evil of the feudal system was here in its most virulent acthitv, unsoftened by feel­ings of hereditary connexion, that could not but grow up with it at home, counteracted solely by the municipal rights granted to the towns, partly to invite settlers, partly because introduced by Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, in their own city districts. In this tottering state, where, if anywhere, a strong government was requisite, the great vassals strove as pertinaciously, and at least as suc­cessfully as any of their European brethren, to emancipate themselves from the authority of their acknowledged sovereign. The Pope claimed suzerainty over kingdom and principality, because recovered from misbelievers; and though little regard seems to have been paid to the claim, it served as a prop to the various pretensions with which the clergy harassed the monarchs. The confusion thus created, was augmented by the contests of the re­spective patriarchs of Jerusalem and of Antioch, for supremacy, and for the annexation of all newly acquired districts to their several provinces. And, as if such internal feuds were insufficient sources of weakness, the sort of co-sovereignty exercised by Venice, Pisa and Genoa, in the sea-port towns, involved the king in the wars provoked by their commercial rivalry.

But if one great Crusade had failed, bands, sometimes larger sometimes smaller, of armed pilgrims seeking the remission of their sins through the agreeable penance of slaughtering Mahommedans, were perpetually visiting the Holy Land ; and upon them, and that singular phenomenon

of the middle ages, the monastic orders of chivalry, did the kingdom of Jerusalem mainly depend for the prolongation of its ever precarious existence. Such an institution as that of these monastic knights, requiring entire self-devotion to religion amidst the active life of the camp, blending the love of war with the love of God, could arise only in an age when every thing, opinion as well as feeling, was passion. And that these orders, if subsequently corrupt, were at their origin the very ideal, the sublimest poesy of pure chivalry, is admitted by a modern liberal, usually sneering, German author, who adds, “The infancy of the three Cosmo-historical Orders was characterized by a simplicity alike touching and exalted, their adolescence by splendour, and heroic feats of arms.’X19) The three orders thus eulogized, are the Knights Templars, the Knights Hospi talers, or of St. John of Jerusalem, and the Teutonic, or Marian Knights. But as the third order was not yet in existence in the first quarter of the twelfth century, it is only of the other two that the rise has to be here described.

The last named of these two was the earliest in action, and in its peculiar character of Hospitalers preceded even the first Crusade. It was a kind of offset from a Bene dictine monastery, established at Jerusalem in the eleventh century, with the sanction of the Egyptian Caliphs, by some merchants of Amalfi trading to Palestine, ex­pressly as an hospital for sick and destitute pilgrims, and supported solely by the charity of its founders and their * successors, and the gratitude of such pilgrims as possessed, the means of requiting the services they had there received- When from these sources the monastery had accumulated sufficient funds, the abbot and his monks built a separate house for the reception of female pilgrims; and when the concourse of devotees rendered more accommodation neces­sary, a second for male pilgrims, which they dedicated to St. John Eleemosynarius. This Saint, a patriarch of Alexandria, being canonized for his charity, was an appro­priate patron for an hospital; but when opulence and power began to impair the original simplicity of the order, a wish seems to have arisen to substitute St. John the Baptist, or St. John the Evangelist, for this less celebrated St. John, and which of those two was the patroil intended, bccame another much disputed question.

When Godfrey, after Jerusalem was taken, visited the

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wounded, he found them carefully tended by these monks. He was charmed with all the arrangements of the monastery, especially the privations to which the confraternity con­demned themselves, in order to supply their patients with expensive medicines or nourishment; and pronouncing it too valuable an establishment to be left dependent upon casual charity or casual gratitude, endowed it with lands in Brabant, the chief province of his European duchy. And now the monks especially devoted to hospital duties, severing themselves from the monastery under their Superior, Gerard d’Avesnes, or di Scala,—which was his name seems doubtful—assumed the designation of Hospitalers, and built a third separate house, as well for their own residence as for the reception of high-born pilgrims. They, at the same time, adopted the rule and dress of regular Augustinian Canons, adding to the costume an eight-pointed white cross, affixed to the left side of their black mantles. In 1113, they obtained from Pope Pascal II. the sanction of their organiza­tion, together with exemption from payment of tithes, and from ecclesiastical subjection to bishop, archbishop, or patriarch. Three years later, their second Superior, Iiay- inond du Puy, elected Grand Master upon Gerard’s death, completed the fundamental legislation of the new order. Their code required that every candidate for admission should be born in lawful wedlock (-0) of free Christian parents, and added to the regular monastic vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, a pledged promise of moderation in word and deed, and of the faithful discharge of every dutv of love and charity towards all Christians needing assistance. But so far, it will be observed, there is nothing chivalrous, nothing unclaustral in the functions of the Hospitalers; all the vows and duties are well befitting the character of a monk, being simply an improvement thereon. The super­addition of the office of champions of Christendom to that of nurses of sick and wounded Christians, occurred later.

Some inquirers into the origin of the Knights Templars (again a qucestio vexata, they are ever occurring) aver the founders to have been Hospitalers, who, irresistibly impelled by the martial spirit of the age, again separated themselves from their hospital brethren, to undertake the protection of pilgrims instead of the nursing of them. But this opinion, never very prevalent, is positively rejected by the more

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critical investigation of late times,(21) which either pro­nounces that origin an insoluble problem,(?‘2) or adopts the following most generally received account. About the year Illy the high reputation of the Hospitalers suggested to Hugue de 1’ayen, and eight other noblemen, the idea of founding a rival monastic order, which should superadd to the ascetic practices, then so highly esteemed, instead of the feminine duty of tending the sick-bed, the masculine prero­gative of wielding the sword, making this a religious duty. The fourth vow which they added to the usual three was, therefore, to defend pilgrims, and wage incessant war against misbelievers. The second clause of this fourth vow could not but be most acceptable to the king and the people of so imperilled a state as Palestine, and accordingly Baldwin II. at once took the new order into especial favour. He gave this association of warrior-monks, who were without a home, a portion of his palace for their temporary abode, and they received a plot of ground whereon to build a monastery from the Chapter of the Temple, the name borne—when purified and consecrated as a church—by the Mosque Aksa el Sakhara, better known as Caliph Omar’s Mosque,, placed in the centre of the sits of the Temple of Solomon (the remainder of which, as a garden, surrounds it),(23; thaf site where Abraham, devoutly submissive, prepared to sacrifice his son,(241 where his grandson Jacob was favoured with divine communion.Ci5) This plot of ground, granted by the Chapter, w as adjacent to the Temple Church, whence the order took the name of Knights of the Temple, or Knights Templars. Notwithstanding the assistance thus early afforded them, so indigent for some years were the Templars, that when taking the field two knights were obliged to ride one horse, a fact recorded m the after periixl of their wealth and pomp, by the engraving upon the seal of the Order. " ’ ’ •   the Templars were

tinctive garb they adopted was a white cloak, typifying their innocence and their charity towards all Christians, with a red cross, implying their expectation of dying martyrs, in battle against the Paynim. The inscription upon their black flag, the renowned Reausmnt, namely, the first verse of the 113th Psalm, “ Non nobis JJomine, non nobis ned nomine tuo da gloriam," was selected to express

often indebted

support. The dis-

humility. But within ten years from their institution the condition of the Templars was entirely changed. Not only had they won from the Saracens booty and lands amply sufficient for all their lawful occasions, but as the fruit of the renown they had acquired by their prowess as efficient champions of Christianity in Asia, riches poured in upon them from all sides, and in all forms; as estates in Asia and in Europe, assignments of tolls, duties, and the like.

The constitution of the Templars, grounded upon the rule of the Benedictines, was not fully settled and sanctioned by the Pope in Council until the year 1128; but at once to complete the portraiture of this first and greatest of the orders of knight-monks, it may he allowable here, pre­maturely, to mention such points as seem essential to that portraiture. Every Knight Templar was to be of legiti­mate and noble birth, healthy, that he might be capable of adequately fulfilling his fourth vow, and free from debt, that neither might he be precluded, by imprisonment, from service in the field, nor the order impoverished by paying for him. A Knight Templar was never to retreat from fewer than four enemies; never, if made prisoner, to give more than his knife and his belt for his ransom. lie could not individually possess money, and was, indeed, as much as might be, to get rid of his individuality. He was not to correspond with his nearest relations, except through his Superior; not to run a race, send out his esquire, bathe, take medicine, or be let blood, without his Superior’s per­mission. At the frugal meal eaten in common, during which, to prevent idle conversation, portions of the Bible were read, he was to sit as long, and no longer, than his comrades. He was forbidden to kiss even his mother, to wear gold ornaments, at least without disguising them, should such be given him, by paint, or to pursue any idle sport, even hawking; only 'n lion hunting, as a useful, perilous, and honourable occupation, was he allowed to indulge.

Like the Hospitalers, the Templars were exempted from all external control, spiritual or temporal, save the Pope’s, and governed by a Grand Master, who acted as papal legate, each in the concerns of his own order, and to whom implicit obedience was due. This despotic authority was, however, tempered by the concurrent authority of a

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Council, formed of the Grand Dignitaries of the order, with­out whose consent he could neither make a law, appoint a high dignitary, undertake an expedition, nor alienate even an acre of land. Every officer of the order,—Commander, Preceptor, or the like—was similarly hampered by a Council of his own subordinate officers. The post of Grand Master was elective, and the mode of election is remarkable, as offering, perhaps, the first attempt at the systematic com­plication by which the Italian republics soon afterwards endeavoured to guard against the attainment of power by intimidation or corruption, and which at Venice attained, before the close of the next century, to the very idealization of complexity. Amongst the Templars, upon the death of a Grand Master, the commanders and baillis present ap­pointed a Grand Commander, as provisional governor, and an Electoral Assembly. The sole business of this electoral assembly was to elect two Electors, who aggregated to themselves ten more, because twelve was the number of the Apostles; and these twelve chose for their president one of the chaplains attached to the order, as in some sort a repre­sentative of Our Saviour. Need it be added that this was done in simplicity of heart, to enhance the solemnity of an important transaction, without an idea of sacrilege, presumption, or even disrespect ? The thirteen, by a mere majority—a majority of one sufficing—elected a Grand

Master.'26)

An inferior class of Templars, called Serving-Brothers, consisted of plebeians, in whom all the requisites of knights, except nobility, were indispensible. This second class of serving-brothers was subdivided into two classes, the first of which were all fighting men, distinguished by their dress from the knights to whom they supplied esquires. They formed separate squadrons in battle; and not only were they eligible to some of the inferior official situations whence inferior councils were taken, but of the thirteen electors of a grand master, four were always serving- brothers. The lower class consisted of menial attendants und handicraftsmen. There was yet a third class of Tem­plars, called Lay Templars. These were married men, living in the world, but bound by the fourth vow of the order, fighting under its banner, and owing implicit obedience to the grand master. To increase their strength,

the Templars 110 sooner had funds adequate to the expense than they hired native Syrians, whom, officered by knights, they trained and employed as light troops, both infantry and cavalry, and called Turcopoles, a name supposed to be derived from their business of driving away Turks, Tur­eas pell ere ; and in these Turcopoles, it is to be observed, no deficiency of any soldierly quality appears. As the wealth of the order increased, so did the number of knights, serving-brothers, and especially of Turcopoles, till, at the zenith of their fame and prosperity, the grand master, it is averred, could take the field at the head of 50,000 men.

The fame of the Templars speedily awakened a spirit of emulation in the Hospitalers. First, a few individuals, and gradually the whole Order, grew impatient of their con­finement to the humble, but truly Christian duties to which they had devoted themselves, whilst the rival Order of Templars was glorified as undertaking the championship of Christendom. This feeling they indulged: they did not indeed abandon the task to which they were pledged ; but they added to it the military functions of their rivals. This change induced another, and the title of Knights of St. John of Jerusalem began to supersede the simple one of Hospitalers, which, when retained, was modified as Knights Hospitalers; assuredly the most appropriate, as express­ing this singular union of the character of a stalwart warrior with that of a sister of charity. These two military Orders were long the habitually effective defenders of the kingdom of Jerusalem, its best bulwark against the Moslem.

Of the adjacent states one only, with the exception of the provinces of Asia Minor, recovered by the Greek empire, was Christian, namely, Armenia; and it, even whilst pro­fessing fealty to Constantinople, and really independent, had been of little account. One reason of this insignifi­cance may have been that Armenia belonged neither to the Latin or the Greek communion, having a peculiar Church of its own, differing from both in doctrine as in ritual, though professing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. About the year 1125 Armenia was subject, as a tributary state, to the Seljuk Turks. The Armenia, of which frequent mention will occur in connexion with the Syro-FranK states, is Lesser Armenia, at this period not yet in existence.

It remains only to speak of the Moslem neighbours of these states. The once formidable Commander of the Faithful, though still bearing the title of Caliph, still surrounded with oriental magnificence at Bagdad, had long been the mere shadow of departed power. When the descendants of Abbas supplanted those of Ommeyah in that high office, the Spanish Mahommedans repudiated the usurper's authority, proclaiming a Caliph of their own, in the person of the sole survivor of the deposed, or rather massacred dynasty. Those of Africa rejectinl the Bagdad Caliph as head only of the Soonee sect, which they deemed heretical, acknowledging in his stead a Slieah Caliph, the descendant of the prophet’s daughter Fatima, established in Egypt. But the far more numerous Soonees of Asia adhered to the original Caliph; and he was still a mighty potentate when the usual fate of Asiatic sovereign races befell the Abbas,-lides. Gradually enervated by luxury and sensuality, the Caliphs were daily more enslaved by their ministers, till the single act of sovereignty they performed was nominating an Emir al Oinrah (Lord of Lords, or Prince of Princes) to be viceroy over them, in Trinculo’s happy phrase. Even this miserable remnant of power was lost when Bagdad and the Caliph fell into the hands of the Turcomans, who, embracing the religion of those they had conquered, kept the head of that religion in a sort of honorable captivity, amidst empty pomp and luxury. From this utter degradation he hpd bee nominally relieved, about the middle of the eleventh cen­tury, by Togrul, the victorious chief of the Seljuk Turks, whom the < aliph in return named Sultaa of Persia, and constituted his own vicegerent throughout the Caliphate. But if supreme over the Caliph, the Sultan of Persia did not ensla\ e him, as had the petty chiefs; and whilst he, the Sultan, remained equally supreme over his Seljuks, his apparently free captive, the Commander of the Faithful, might, at Bagdad, fancy himself really so. Towards the end of the century, with the death of Malek Shah, this supremacy ceaneA. Divers chiefs and princes of his own race, appointed by him governors of districts and pro­vinces, made themselves virtually independent, under the several titles of Sultan, Atabeg, or Emir, according to the greater or less extent of their respective dominions. Of Diginzsd by Microsoft ®

these the principal, in the first quarter of the twelfth century, were the Sultans of Iconium, Mousul, and Damas­cus, the last of whom had already sunk into the puppet of his Vizier, or Atabeg, a title said to be analogous to that of Maire du Palais.1'1")

In Egypt, which had not been overrun by Turcomans, reigned, as before intimated, a Sheah Anti-Caliph, the descendant and representative of Mahommed. But the Fatemite-caliphs had walked in the footsteps of their Abbasside antagonists; and becoming enervated amidst voluptuousness and luxury, had suffered their viziers, not only to usurp their whole authority with the title of Sultan- vizier, but to render the office hereditary in their families. Egypt was now no formidable enemy.

The Syro-Franks had yet another neighbour state, to whom it were hard to say whether the designation of princi­pality, sect, or band of outlaws, were most applicable. Somewhat prior to the first crusade, an individual named A1 Hassan Subah, son to a holy man, a reputed worker of miracles, of the Sheah sect, established himself, with his followers, in the mountain range of Lebanon. He bore no higher title than Sheik, or Old Man, and seems never to have had more than sixty thousand subjects, but was the most despotic of princes. From amongst these few thou­sands he is believed to have constantly selected the finest and most promising boys to be trained for his purposes. He caused a superstition, bewildering, if not stupifying the intellect, to be instilled into these youths, through the most austere education, in the most rigorous seclusion, exchanged at intervals for orgies the most sensual, to and from which they were conveyed in a state of insensible intoxication, produced by a drug called Hashich, or Hashishi. Such licentious enjoyments they were taught to expect in this ■world or the next, as the certain recompense of implicit obedience to their sovereign. Thus lessoned, thus im­pressed, these youths were, upon arriving at manhood, the unhesitating instruments of the Sheik’s will, and were em­ployed by him to assassinate whomsoever he pleased, whether Christian or Soenee Moslem, whether prince, emir, vizier, sultan, or caliph, might be the designated victim. Most of the murders commanded by the Sheik, some writers say all, (2S) appear to have been dictated by Sheah fanaticism.

But in some cases so difficult was it to discover any interest he could have in the life or death of the individual slain by his known emissaries — though the slightest motive, either of offence to revenge, or of object to attain, was admitted as sufficient—that the Sheik was thought by his contemporaries occasionally to sell the agency of his human tools, in order to defray the expense of their education. By Christains this strange potentate was called the Old Man of the Mountains; his people, either from his own name, Hassan, or from that of the drug used to stupify them, Assassins,(29) whence the word was generally adopted as synonymous with murderer. By Asiatics they are considered merely as a branch of the Iamailis, the name given by them to all secret Sheah associations, from that of Ismael, (30) one of the twelve Imams, as the martyred descendants of Fatima and Aly are denominated. The main body of the Ismailis was established in the mountains of Persia, whence this colony had been sent to the Lebanon. The murder of a zealous Soonee Sultan of Mousul, by order of the Sheik, gave rise to the first alliance of the Syro-Franks with a Moslem. The Caliph, or those who acted in his name, imputing the crime less to fanaticism than to the money of a rival, the Sultan of Damascus, threatened the sup­posed instigator with war and deposal. The Sultan, or his Atabeg, though he had slaughtered Christians, and made drinking cups of their skulls, now sought assist­ance from Baldwin, obtained it, and remained unmolested by the Caliph or his Turkish masters. He subsequently thought the Assassins dangerous allies; and his son, upon succeeding to the viziership, is said to have massacred six thousand of them—a somewhat startling number. (31) A1 Hassan Subah died in 11!24, and was succeeded, not by a son, but by the most energetic of his ministers, Buzruk Umed

SECTION II.

CONDITION OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

At the extinction of the Carlovingian dynasty, France being finally severed from the Iloly Roman Empire, as constructed by Charlemagne and Leo III., (32) Germany and Italy remained its constituent parts. Of these parts, Germany, that is to say the territories over which the German monarchs claimed sovereignty, at this time ex­tended northward to the Baltic and North Sea, westward to the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone, and southward to the summit of the Alps; the eastern frontier was less clearly defined, whether Hungary and Poland be or be not included.

The eastern and northern provinces of Germany proper, or excluding Poland and Hungary, were occupied by several Slavonian^) tribes, of whom the most southerly, inhabiting Styria, Carniola, Carinthia, Moravia, Bohemia and Lusatia, were then really incorporated with Germany, notwithstanding Bohemia’s continued maintenance of a distinct nationality, and occasional attempts at separation. Of the tribes dwelling upon the shores of the Baltic, the inhabitants of Pomerelia and Pomerania were still mostly Heathen and independent, although the Duke of Poland claimed them as vassals, and flattered himself he had converted them. The remaining tribes, that held the districts now forming the duchies of Mecklenburg and Holstein, were governed by a native Christian King, Henry, whose mother was a Danish princess; and, how­ever reluctantly, they professed Christianity, and acknow­ledged the mesne suzerainty of the Duke of Saxony. The kingdom of Burgundy, perfectly distinct, it must be remembered, fror; -.lie French luchy of Burgundy,

had been inherited by the Emperor Conrad II., though whether through his wife Gisela, a niece of the last king, Rudolph III., or through that king’s bequest to Conrad’s predecessor, Henry II., may be questioned, both claims having been inforced by a military demonstration, ■which the Burgundians were glad to forestall by admitting the somewhat irregular pretensions of the Empress. Conrad had, nevertheless, to tight for Gisela’s heritage, with the husbands and sons of other nieces of Rudolph’s, daughters of an elder sister, and eventually found it expedient to leave a considerable part, of course in vassalage, to his chief competitor, Eudes, Comte de Champagne et Blois. Upper Burgundy he incorporated with the empire, and over the western provinces, abutting upon the Jura, appointed a rector or governor, it is said, with a ducal title.(34J But in the Arelat, where his authority was less complete, he could not prevent powerful nooles front making principalities of their counties, for which he was fain to receive their homage and oaths of allegiance.

Teutonic Germany, Germany prior to any Slavonian incorporations, was divided into five national, or, as they are happily denominated by Mr. Hallam, provincial duchies, over each of which reigned its own duke, a vassal of the German monarch as such, and independently of his coronation as Emperor. These duchies were Franconia, Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia, and Lotharingia, which last consisted of the bulk of the provinces between the Rhine and France, lying north of the kingdom of Burgundy The name of Lotharingia, transformed by the French, whom the English as usual follow, into Lorraine, was given to this duchy when it was the kingdom of a Carlovicgian LotLar. (35) Of these five duchies Franconia, as the country of all Franks, Salic and Ripuarian, was first in dignity, and originally extended from Thuringia, its eastern march, to, and even across, the Rhine, compre­hending much of what was subsequently the Palatinate of the RHne.

Italy was at this time divided into the kingdom of Lom­bardy (comprising all northern Italy, except Venice, and in Central Italy the duchies of Lucca, Parma, and Modena, with some of the Legations, now part of the Papal do­minions'), the duchy or marquisate of Tuscany, the re- ■ y - rosoft

public of Venice, then confined on the land side within the limits of the Lagoons, the exarchate of Ravenna, as the very small district around that city, governed by a Con- stantinopolitan officer, bearing the title of Exarch, was still pompously designated, the Papal states, consisting of little more than the duchy of Home, and the duchy of Apulia, the Magna Grecia of classic antiquity. Over all these states the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire claimed sovereignty; and except over the remnant of the exarchate and Venice, which, to secure real independence, adhered to the debilitated Eastern empire, powerful and energetic emperors had fully exercised the authority they claimed. Even the Normans, as they conquered first some Apulian counties, and then pretty nearly the whole duchy (a few sea-port towns still defied them), gladly did homage to Henry II., Conrad II. and Henry III., in order to obtain, by imperial investiture, a confirmation of their title to their conquests. But since the death of the last-named emperor, civil war, during the latter part of the eleventh century and the first quarter of the twelfth, had weakened the imperial power, and, as a natural consequence, the im­perial authority was disputed by popes, and by Norman dukes and earls. The principal apparent difference between Italy and Germany lay in the number of populous and prosperous towns with which the former was covered; in which respect, north of the Alps, only the Arelat and some districts of Lotharingia bore any, the slightest re­semblance to Lombardy and Tuscany.

The political aspect of the Holy Roman Empire will be the more intelligible if a retrospective glance be taken at its condition under the Carlovingian dynasty; a condi­tion of which, independently of this consideration, it is for two reasons desirable to acquire some knowledge. The first, that the empire of Charlemagne was the ideal that every subsequent energetic emperor aimed at realizing; the second, that in the institutions of his empire is to be found the germ of that Imperial organization, which was progressively developed through the chivalrous feudalism of the middle ages, through many alternations of improve­ment and deterioration, into the peculiar feudal federation in which in Germany it resulted; and which subsisted, until swept away, togethf ~ with most con.incntal institutions, by

the hurricane of French ambition, revolutionary, republican and imperial.

The Dukes appointed by Charlemagne to the German duchies, originally with the concurrence of the duchy,(36) were simply imperial officers, intrusted with the military command of the district,—as is indeed implied by the title, both in Latin {Duos) and in German (Herzog).(37) Their services were remunerated by fiefs attached to the ducal office, and they were removable at pleasure. This amovi- bility, including the loss of the ducal fiefs, decidedly marks the purely official character of the duke, land granted in fief being held, not during pleasure, but for life, though liable to forfeiture through misconduct.(38) In fact, Charlemagne’s dukes were more like generals of mili­tary divisions of the empire than vassal princes or noblemen of the highest dignity.

Another class of Imperial officers, civilly independent of, and unconnected, though co-existent with, the dukes, was that of the Earls, the Latin Comes and German Graf. To them was committed, each in his own district of jurisdic­tion or Grafschaft, Am]lice, earldom or county, the ad­ministration of justice, though not exempt from the occasional interference of those locomotive judicial inspec­tors or judges, the Missi Dominici. In military matters every eail was subject to the duke in whose duchy his district lay.

But the nature and position of Charlemagne's empire, immense in extent, the parts slightly connected, and sur­rounded by barbarians naturally jealous of their inde­pendence, and fearful of being the next subjugated, rendered an incessantly active vigilance requisite for the defence of the frontier, such as the dukes had not leisure, or the earls authority to exercise. To supply this want a new class of officers was created, with the title of Markgraf, anglicized as Margrave, and meaning literally March Earl, or Earl Warden of a march or frontier. These margraves, though subordinate to the duke of whose duchy their respective margraviates formed part, were far superior to the earls in place and power, uniting the military and judicial authority in themselves.

Again, in all the five duchies, intermingled with ducal fiefs and with counties, were extensive crown lands, annexed Digitized by Microsoft ®

to an Imperial palace, wholly independent of duke and earl, and administered, both militarily and judicially, by another imperial officer, called a Pfalzgraf, literally Palace-Earl, but usually Englished either Palsgrave from the German, or Palatine from the Latin form of the title. In every duchy there was a Palsgrave, while a Chief, or Arch-Palsgrave, constantly accompanied the Emperor, acting as palace- judge^and conjointly with the Chief Chaplain, now grown into a Chancellor, really constituting the ministry of the empire.

All four classes of officers were paid by fiefs attached to their respective offices, and were removable at pleasure. It presently became the object of all four to render office and remunerative fiefs hereditary in their respective fami­lies ; whilst the dukes and earls further strove to augment their actual power, by adding, the dukes the judicial, the earls the military authority, to that which they already possessed.

The body of the nation consisted of Freien, i.e. Freemen, otherwise freeholders (landed property being deemed indis­pensable to perfect freedom), militarily subject to a duke, judicially to an earl, or in both forms to a margrave, but in other respects quite independent of them. Fealty, like allegiance, they owed to the Emperor alone, and to him no service but in arms. To the battle field they were bound to follow the ducal standard, on horse-back, with armed and mounted followers, or singly, or on foot, according to the size of their estates. The land thus held w^as designated as allodial (because assigned by lot when the conquerors divided part, at least, of the conquered territory amongst thetnselves)(:;'Jj in opposition to the land granted in vassalage by the monarch. And the freeman looked with ineffable disdain upon the vassal and his fief, feof, or feod, the very name of which, formed from feo, wages, and od, estate, expressed his dependent, inferior condition/40) These proud freemen were divided into two classes, according to the extent of their property. The highest, akin seem­ingly to the old English Franklins, was denominated Schceffenbaren Freien, because from their ranks only could be selected the Schcejfen (assessors, or might they be termed j urymen ?), who formed the tribunal of the earl or his deputy ; and at o: e time they were the only witnesses whose

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testimony was admissible before that tribunal.^1) The inferior or poorer freemen equally esteemed themselves superior to vassals; but the position of this class was marked by its name, Pfleghafte Freien, angUct, protected freemen. The smallness of their possessions incapacitating them for independent self-defence, they were obliged to seek or accept the protection of some neighbouring noblfr man, whom, in return, they bound themselves to serve in aiJ his feuds, and to whose jurisdiction they became amenable. This class, too indigent to possess horses, naturally formed the infantry of the German armies, alike in national and in private wars.

So far beneath these freemen as scarcely to be regarded by them as fellow creatures, were the Unfreie, or not free, the thrails of their superiors. In Charlemagne's days these non-free barely amounted to one-tenth of the population of Germany, although their compatriot legal antiquaries dis­tinguish amongst them, even at that early period, many shades or degrees of thraldom. For the present purpose, a less scientific division into two classes may suffice, respectively designated as Horige and Leibeigene, terms both of which li'erally mean belonging, but pretty nearly answer to our Villeins addcripti glebce, or attached to the soil, and Villeins in gross or regardant. Neither class was permitted to bear arms; but as servants they followed their masters to the field, and, upon an emergency, might, in his defence, be required to fight with knives and club?. The Leibeigene were so completely their Lord’s goods and chattels that he could sell them as slaves.

Towns were then scarce in Germany. The early German temper is known to every reader of Tacitus, as antipathetic to the agglomeration of human beings, the concentration of life within walls, seemingly more congenial to the Latin and the Celtic nature. Iliis innate antipathy would necessarily be heightened by detestation of the colonial fortresses which the Romans, expressly to serve as curbs upon the free Teutonic spirit, built upon the Danube, the Rhine and the Moselle. Accordingly, when these Roman cities were destroyed by the successive inundations of Goths, Vandals and Huns, they remained long desolate, only beginning to revive when they severally became the residence of a prelate and a cathedral chapter. Whether, amidst

their desolation, they did or did not retain the municipal forms of Itoman colonies, is a question upon which legal antiquaries are at variance.

In Italy, Charlemagne had found the kingdom of Lom­bardy divided into several large and powerful duchies, whose dukes virtually ruled the monarch to whom they professed obedience. Upon completing the conquest, he broke up these duchies into counties, to which, as usual, he appointed earls, his own officers, though occasionally it should seem suf­fering Lombard nobles to act in that capacity, and left the ducal title, shorn of its formidable preponderance, to the lord of the city whence the duchy took its name. But whether, as in Germany, he made the functions of duke and earl distinct, or they here differed only in dignity, is another of the many qucestiones ve vntce of history.!42) To the Roman See he granted a portion of his Italian con­quests, to be held, however, like the duchy of Rome itself, as fiefs of the Holy Roman Empire. Magna Grecia, where Amalfi, Naples, and a few more sea-port towns had, at the epoch of the Lombard conquest, declared themselves re­publics, was, with the Island of Sicily, still called part of the Eastern Empire; and this, with the exception of the Lombard duehv of Benevento, he left untouched. The con­trast between Italy and Germany in regard to thriving towns was far more striking at the time of this Frank conquest than at a later period. South of the Alps, the towns were the remains of Roman colonies, or founded by the Prae- Roman power and ci\ ilization of the Etruscans, and had retained almost all the forms and organization, if not the substance of self-government, under the long tyranny of the Roman emperors, and amidst the ravages and conquests of Ostrogoths and Lombards. With these republican forms, Charlemagne, so long as the municipal authorities obeyed him and his imperial officers, does not appear to have meddled. These thriving cities afforded here that intermediate class betwixt the noble and the villein, which Germany found in the peasant freemen.

During the three centuries that had elapsed since the resuscitation of the Western, as the Holy Roman Empire, the progressive development of every political and social condition had wrought considerable changes. The feudal system had attained to the fulness of its vigorous maturity. Digitized by Microsoft®

Without wasting a word upon so threadbare a subject as the character of that system, it may be observed, that wherever it prevailed, it was modified by national idiosyn­crasy. In Germany the modifying element was the extraordinary original freedom of the people ;(43) and so eflicient was it, that by the end of these centuries every freeman may be said to have had a voice in almost every measure or transaction that could affect his interests, whilst, if accused, he could be tried only by his peers, or, rather, his independent fellow-countrymen For instance, no fief could be transferred, or its condition materially altered, without the concurrence, not only of the superior lord, but likewise of the sub-vassals, or vavassours; no judge could lawfully pronounce a sentence without the concurrence of a court of assessors, whether consisting of the vassals of a nobleman or prelate, or of the Schcrffen of a town or village.

The absolute sovereignty exercised by Charlemagne had been impaired by the division of his empire amongst his grandsons. In Germany it was yet further impaired, when, upon the extinction there of the direct male line of his descendants, the crown became elective—the elec­tion-like question addressed under the Merovingians and Carlovingians to the people or the nobles, “ Whether they would have the next heir of the deceased king for their king?” being evidently as mere a form as the similar question addressed to the people at the coronation of an English monarch. But the death of Lewis the Child, there the last of his race, producing a real election, Conrad I., though belonging by females to that race, owed his crown solely to the choice of his countrymen. And rapidly did the weakness of the imperial authority increase, as the extinction of successive dynasties, confirming the new, elective character of the empire, afforded oppor­tunity for extorting concessions from the candidates for sovereignty; concessions not designed, like England’s Magna Charta, to secure good government to all, but to indulge the few with oppressive privileges.

Nominally, nevertheless, the emperor was still absolute, his power being limited rather by casual circumstances than by law. Of these circumstances, the chief were the almost equally absolute power enjoyed by the great

vassals, and the want of a regular revenue. The head of the Holy Roman Empire depended for defraying all expenses, public as private, upon the crown lands, his private patrimony, and the usual feudal dues and royalties. These last appear to have consisted of tolls, harbour dues (either of which, imposed by other authority than the monarch’s, was usurpation and downright robbery), the right of coinage, a poll-tax, paid by the Jews as the price of toleration, that is to say, of their lives, mines, salt springs, forests, chases, fisheries, and the like; the right of plundering wrecks included. (H) Some of these royalties were indeed claimed by princes of the empire, as inherent in their own sovereignty, and were constant subjects of contention with the emperor; who, on the other hand, often granted royalties as rewards, or sold them. The worst consequence of this want of revenue, was the impossibility of maintaining an army, a want leaving the empire, upon every occasion of war, aggressive or defensive, against foreign or domestic foe, entirely de­pendent upon feudal service, any extension of which, beyond its very limited period, could be obtained only by negotiation and compensation, and which, even within that limited period, might be withheld by a refractory vassal prince. Another consequence, less apparently im­portant, but not perhaps without very materially noxious effect, was the want of a settled central seat of govern­ment. The only way in which the emperor could turn the scattered crown domains and his patrimonial estates to account, was consuming their produce ; wherefore he was constantly removing with his court, ministers, tri­bunals of justice, &c, from palace to palace, from city to city.

The single legal restriction upon the Imperial authority, was, that the concurrence of the Diet was indispensable to the validity of certain acts, e.g. to the creation of a duchy, the laying a prince of the empire under the ban of the empire, and the like. In legislation this concurrence does not seem to have been actually necessary, since, although laws were usually enacted by the Emperor and Diet con­jointly, Imperial edicts, published when no Diet was sitting, were held equally obligatory. The Diet itself, a faint reflection rather than the remains of old German liberty,

consisted, in the beginning of the twelfth century, of all the immediate vassals of the crown; and it is worth not:ng, that whilst a seat 11 the Diet was evidently a. highly prized prerogative, attendance was so often deemed an onerous duty, that heavy fines 011 failure were neces­sary to insure it.

To whom the right of electing the King of Germany and future Emperor appertained, was long indeterminate, being variously claimed, or rather appropriated, as cir­cumstances varied. It appears to have been originally esteemed vested in the five national duchies, and usually exercised by their dukes; but whether voting in their individual capacities, or as representatives of their duchies, is by no means clear. Sometimes they alone voted which would favour the first notion; but at others more of the immediate vassals, or even mesne vassals, took part in these elections. From the first the three Rhine archbishoprics, which always enjoyed great pre-eminence, and denied that they were included in any duchy, seemingly, upon that plea, shared the right with the duchies. When St. Bon - face, otherwise the Anglo-Saxon missionary, Winfred, was appointed Archbishop of Mainz by Pope Gregor'. III., supreme authority over the whole Frank, i. e. German and French, Church, was conferred upon him and his suc­cessors, if not the title of primate/45) another qucestio vewata. The arch-chancellorship of the Iloly Roman Empire was permanently attached to this See; wherefore it was the office of the Archbishop to convoke and to preside at the Electoral Diet. The Archbishr.ps of Treves and Cologne were respectively arch-chancellors of the Arelat and of Italy ; but whether they enjoyed the right of suffrage in those capacities, and, as such, representing the Arelat and Italy, which otherwise had no voice in the election, or on account of the exemption of their powerful sees fro.n connexion with duchies, or in virtue of their functions at the coronation of the elected sovereign, does not appear. The iron crown of Lombardy, like the Imperial crown, was really given by the German election. (46)

Whilst the Imperial authority was undergoing this process of deterioration, the Imperial officers had steadily and successfully pursued their objects. The dukes had

gradually rendered both ducal fiefs and ducal office vir­tually hereditary in their own families. If no law, no Imperial edict, or act of the Diet ratified or recognized such hereditary right, it was tacitlj admitted ; and the emperors, affecting to grant, as an individual favour, what they could not withhold, uniformly invested the son with the duchy of his deceased father. The dukes had further, by the acquisition of a county within their re­spective duchies, acquired judicial authority, (4?) which they presently extended beyond the limits of the county that gave it; and they had moreover managed to free themselves in its exercise from the interference of Missi Dominici, whose office had gradually fallen into desuetude. By the end of the eleventh century the national dukes were more like vassal monarchs than princes of the empire.

Hence the emperors regarded the dukes as their most formidable opponents, whom it became the chief object of their policy in every way to weaken, and, if possible, to extinguish. By the year 1125 they had, in a manner, dis­encumbered themselves of two out of the five national duchies, viz., Franconia and Lotharingia. The former, Conrad II., the first Emperor of the Franconian dynasty, when he found it impracticable to retain his duchy with the empire, dismembered ; and keeping the ducal do­mains as his private patrimony, annexed the ducal rights and functions to the bishopric of Wurzburg. The Lo- tharingian duchy had been previously weakened by division into two duchies, those of Upper and Lower Lotharingia, or Lorraine. The first, which comprehended the terri­tories lying between the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Moselle, was granted in the eleventh century to a family claiming Carlovingian descent, who held it, though losing province after province, until, in the eighteenth century, the Duke, chosen as the consort of Maria Theresa of Austria, exchanged the single province of the original duchy remaining for Tuscany, in order to facilitate the unavoidable cession of that single province to Lewis XV. of France. To Lower Lorraine, which comprised all the rest of the original duchy, the ducal rights and functions were attached; and it was still a formidable duchy, when the Emperor Henry IV. availed himself of the death of Godfrey of Bouillon without children, to weaken it.

Giodfrey had inherited it through the adoption of his maternal uncle, Godfrey, surnamed the Humpbacked, Duke of Lower Lorraine, and the gratitude of Henry IV. for his staunch loyalty and distinguished services in the field. His brothers, not having been adopted into the Bouillon family, had no pretensions to it; and the Em­peror, conniving at the mightiest of the earls taking the opportunity to emancipate themselves from ducal authority, conferred the impaired duchy upon the Earl of Limburg, to whom Godfrey, at his departure for his crusade, had committed its administration. Henry V., at his accession, a.d. 1106, punished the new duke’s fidelity to Henry IV. during his own rebellion, by depriving him of the duchy, which, leaving him his new title as Duke of Limburg, he transferred to the Earl of Louvain, one of the most power­ful Brabant noblemen, and who, descending in a direct line from Charles the Simple, was the real representative of the Carlovingians. At every change some great vassal broke his connexion with the duchy.

The efforts of the earls had been as successful as those of the dukes, though the position of the whole class was not identical. The emperors had favoured them as a counterpoise to the dukes. Their sons were always per­mitted to inherit their counties, in which many of them had obtained military authority, though still obliged to obey their duke’s summons to the field, and there arrange themselves, with their vassals, under his standard. Many of the earls hud become powerful princes of the empire, not much inferior to duke or margrave; but the greater number, to whom fortune had been less propitious, had sunk ’nto vassals of dukes, margraves, or prelates, whilst many counties had been annihilated by absorption into superior principalities. Of the original division of the country into districts of ju­risdiction, each under its Graf, or judge, called the Ga u- verfassung, i.e. district constitution, no mention occurs after the first quarter of the twelfth century.C4^)

The margraves and palsgraves had no object to pursue beyond rendering both office and official fiefs hereditary iu their respective families, in which they had succeeded; but, it may be observed, the title of margrave will now occasionally be found unconnected with a menaced frontier,

having been either retained after the march had lost its cha­racter, or transferred from a real march. Hence, perhaps, in other countries, where its signification was not apparent from the words, it sank into a mere title of nobility, as marchese, marquis,   The palsgraves, diminished in

numbers, were, like the margraves, princes of the empire, but ranked not with the chief princes—the Arch-Palsgrave excepted, who had suddenly risen in power and dignity. When Conrad I., Duke of Franconia, the first non-Car'lovin- gian Emperor, was elected, he gave his duchy to his brother, the Franconian Palsgrave, who permanently united these seemingly incongruous offices. When this duke re­signed his pretensions to succeed to his Imperial brother, in favour of Henry, Duke of Saxony, Henry rewarded him with the Palatinate of Lotharingia ; and the two palatinates thenceforward remained united. When Conrad II., the founder of the Franconian dynasty, dismembered his duchy, he gave these united palatinates, as the Palatinate on the Rhine, to the Arch-Palsgrave. The Palsgrave on the Iihine was thenceforth one of the chief princes of the empire. He presided over the Imperial Diet in the Em­peror’s absence, and left his former duty, as palace judge, to a humbler substitute.

Against all these formidable immediate vassals, the em­perors had steadily supported the mesne, or sub-vassals and the vavassours; one mode of giving them weight had been making their fiefs legally hereditary, for which they were indebted to Conrad II. With the same object, the emperors had favoured the rise of another class of Princes of die Empire out of the bosom of the Church. The prelates had proved no less ambitious than the laity ; but the emperors had judged that ecclesiastical princes, whom, as was then customary, they appointed, and whose dignities could notin the nature of things be hereditary, must needs be firm supporters of their authority. They had there­fore willingly granted them fiefs and counties, with princely rights, in every way promoting their territorial acquisi­tions. Abbeys for either sex, holding immediately of the crown, shared with episcopal and arch-episcopal sees in this devout or politic munificence; and Abbesses thus endowed were remarkable, as a solitary instance, of women entitled to sit and vote in the Imperial Diet. By the twelfth century

there were in Germany six-prince-archbishops and thirty- five prince-bishops, besides immediate abbots and abbesses, independently of abbeys and cloisters of inferior dignity; so that perhaps nearly half the land was held by eccle­siastics, owing military service for that land, and charged with the adni’nistration of justice to their vassals.

Some land the Church had always possessed, and Charle­magne had felt that the duties attached to its possession were inconsistent with .the clerical character. To avoid its being thus desecrated, he decreed that those sanguinary and secular functions should be invariably committed to some lay nobleman, who should transact all the temporal business of the see, abbey, or lowlier church This deputed representative of the ecclesiastical lord was named in Latin Admcatus, in German. Vogt,(i®) Schirmvogt or Kastenvogt, and in French, Vidante; in England the office, as that of an independent nobleman, appear* to have been unknown, the churchman intrusting its duties, with the management of his domains, to one of his own vassals, as his reeve, or steward. Hence it is difficult to find a perfectly correspondent English word, and the Vogt is a person of whom t will be too often necessary to speak, for the foreign name to be well admissible. Mr. Hallam, adopting the Latin form, translates it advocate; but the ideas of general and of judge are so glaringly opposed to that of advocate, that the habitual use of this word seems inconvenient; and as we have a Lord Steward amongst the great household officers, perhaps steward may be taken as the least objectionable substitute. From the comparative poverty of the early church, the office, when instituted, was neither laborious nor important, and was gratuitously undertaken, as an act of devotion. As the affairs to be managed and the troops to be led became those of large principalities, the labour increased, and was re­munerated with fiefs belonging to the See or Abbey, and the Steward was now selected by the prelate to be represented. The stewardship, thus profitable, was eagerly sought by nobles, even by petty princes; the founder of a new cloister usually kept it for his own family, and it became so decidedly hereditary, that women succeeded to this essentially masculine office. What was hordidly sought was not likely to be honourably used ; and the protecting

stewards of churches now became their oppressors and plunderers; of one indigent knight, it is recorded, that he pillaged, and in every way harassed a cloister, to extort his appointment as its protecting steward. (5<>) Before quitting this part of the subject it must be stated that the Emperor bore the title of Schirmvogt—which, in this case, must be Englished Warden or Protector rather than Steward—of the Roman Catholic Church, and especially of the Papal See.

Very material changes had likewise taken place in the condition of other classes; but these may be more con­veniently explained after the far greater change, the very start, so to speak, from nonentity into existence, exhibited by the towns, shall have been placed before the reader. During these three centuries occurred the first germination of the seed whence subsequently grew and flourished that very peculiar product, characteristic of feudal Germany, the Free Imperial Cities, beside which the liberties of the colonial cities planted by the Romans in Southern Gaul fade into insignificance. Ultimately the Free Imperial Cities really were so many vassal republics, each with a domain of a few miles square, federal members of the Empire, and immediate vassals of the Emperor, which last, by the way, was the true mediaeval sense of free in Germany.

During the whole period German towns had been upon the increase. The first to arise would be those formed about royal and Imperial palaces, in order to supply the wants, and profit by the expenditure, of the court. The next would be those similarly formed, from similar motives, around cathedrals and episcopal palaces; and amongst these the old Roman cities in which prelates had established themselves, would naturally take precedence. These would revive the earlier and the more vigorously, from having a second source of prosperity, to which every day added importance; viss. their site upon navigablt rivers, then well-nigh the only channels of internal traffic. Other vivers would gradually produce other towns; but the greater number of those early built owe their existence to the first Saxon Emperor, Henry, surnamed the Fowler, because when the ensigns of sovereignly were brought him, he was found flying his hawks, his favourite pastime.

Henry I., who is believed to have descended paternally from Witekind, the great Saxon antagonist of Charle­magne, and belonged, through females, to the next in dignity of Saxon families, the Billungs, ranks high amongst the intrinsically great monarchs Germany has to boast. Early in the tenth century, when the Magyars, newly settled in Hungary, by their incessant incursions habitually desolated Germany and northern Italy, and not seldom eastern France, Henry conceived the idea of pro­tecting his own dominions by dotting them over with fortresses. In pursuauce of this idea he walled large villages, built walled towns, and decreed that in each dis­trict every ninth man should reside in the fortress to form its garrison, whilst the remaining eight should cultivate his land for his benefit; and to the ninth, when selected, he gave the title and privileges, whatever they might be, of a citizen. He ordered, further, that a certain proportion of the harvest should in each district be always stored within the town walls, where, in case of hostile inroad, the whole population, with stock and crop, should take refuge. And he endeavoured to render these towns agreeable as a residence to persons in easy circumstances, by placing tribunals of justice in them, and granting them divers privileges, as municipal institutions, markets, fairs, &c.

Henry’s sole object had been the defence of the country; but besides the security afforded by walls and organization, the riches flowing from the trade that the markets and fairs attracted, awoke a spirit of emulation throughout Germany. The feudal, especially the ecclesiastical, lords of towns saw the advantages derivable from such urbr.n prosperity— towns were lawfully taxable by-bath lord paramount and mesne lord—and in every way they promoted, even whilst they disdained, the commerce of their own cities. Thus, e.g. an archbishop of Cologne obtained from William the Conqueror commercial privileges in England for Cologne. From more narrow-minded lords charters were purchased or extorted; and as early as the first quarter of the twelfth century some parts of Germany, if they still could not compete with Italy or the Arelat, yet boasted a considerable number of thriving cities, amongst which Bruges, then a sea-port, Ghent, Antwerp, Cologne, Itatisbon, Magdeburg, Dortmund, and Guslar, are

named as peculiarly mercantile or manufacturing, and opulent.

Even amongst the Slavonians upon the southern shore of the Baltic an impulse was given to a seemingly pre­existing propensity for commercial towns, which it is somewhat startling to find in a people addicted to piracy, and living, according to most authors, in a social state, nearly patriarchal. But it is confidently asserted that the Slavonians were fishers, agriculturists, and especially traders, as well as pirates; in proof, as also in consequence, of this their commercial character, it is as confidently asserted that their town of Jumnata, Vinetha, or Wineta, as the name is variously given, at the mouth of the Oder, was, in the ninth century, not only the emporium of the Baltic trade, but frequented by merchants from all parts of Europe, and even from Asia or Africa (as attested by the quantities of Arab coins found in the neighbourhood), and was then the largest of European towns.(oi) Vinetha fell a victim to the inroads of the sea in the eleventh century; but to supply its place Wollin or Julin, Wolgast, Demmin, and Arkoiia in Bugen, had arisen.

All German towns appear to have been originally the property either of the crown, or of some prince, prelate, or noble; even the Roman colonial cities having, according to the prevalent opinion, lost all their original municipal rights and privileges.(52) All were governed by officers whom their feudal superiors appointed; the immediate generally by a Burggraf, or Castle-Earl, of course a noble­man, under whom a Schultheits (a rragistrate) adminis­tered justice. Of towns belonging to a mesne superior, a Vogt, Steward, was the governor, either with a Schultheiss, or acting in both capacities, probably according to the wealth of the lord and the importance of the city. But whether Schultheiss or Vogt sat in judgment, in towns of all classes, the concurrence of a court of assistants, the already mentioned Schcejfen, was indispensable. Only from one class of freemen, it has been said, could these assistants be selected, and even in this class eligibility was not indefeasible. By the laws of Cologne no man who was deformed, one-eyed, deaf, lame, a stammerer, a leper, a murderer, perjured, ill-reputed, an usurer, who had offered money for the office, or was under twenty-four years of

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age, could be a Schceffe.i®3) And of these oddly associated

S rounds of exclusion from office, some of which it may ave seemed a work of supererogation to enumerate, it is to be observed that the first six likewise excluded from the right of inheriting property, leaving indi\ iduals so afflicted to be taken care of by healthier or better formed heirs, who were compelled to support them.

Subordinate to these feudal officers was a Municipal or Town Council, over which presided a Burgermeister, usually Englished Burgomaster, but in fact, a mayor, to which council were committed the police of the town and the management of its domain. Again subordinate to this municipal council was, what may be termed, the organization of the town; each trade forming a Guild,(5+) under its own council of masters, presided over by the chief of the masters of the trade, called the Altmeister, (Anglice old master or Alderman). This guild council decided not only every question of wages, and other rela­tions between master and journeyman, or master and apprentice—in which last capacity no one born out of wedlock could be received—but even the processes of manufacture, the price of wares, and the mode of con­ducting business. In case of war, each guild formed a distinct company under its own Altmeister; the unfree having been first permitted to bear arms in towns, for the defence of their town walls. The earliest ap­pearance of guilds is in the towns of Flanders and Hainault, which, in wealth, in liberty, and in democratic violence, ever took the lead of those east of the Rhine, where this institution only arose in the twelfth century. Almost every village in Lower Lorraine had, by this time, an analogous organization.(-55)

Both burgomaster and heads of gu’lds were still ap­pointed by the feudal governor. But gradually, as a town throve, symptoms of a desire for some degree of liberty and self-government began to show themselves. The Schultheiss and his court of Schcrffen encroached upon the authority of the governor; the Burgomaster, and Municipal Counci' upon the authority and the department of the schultheiss; the towns purchased or extorted specific exemptions, rights, and privileges from their lords, or obtained relief by charters from the emperors, who

fostered them as a support against the formidable great vassals. Thus the Robber-Knights, as those landless, or nearly landless knights, whose swords literally were their “ bread-winners,” were called, being the enemies most dreaded by the trading portion of the community, a town was sometimes guaranteed against the erection of a knight’s castle within a specified distance, even against the erection of a new one by the mesne lord within its walls.

But as yet, the chief object of the towns appears to have been the increase of their population ; to achieve which, they held out divers lures to divers classes. They endeavoured to tempt the inferior nobles to enroll them­selves as citizens, bv assigning exclusively to them, under the several names of Patricians, or Geschlechter,{^>) Anglice races or families, all posts of authority, down to that of Municipal Councillor; the small non-noble freeholder, by the protection afforded him, even whilst resident upon his own estate, under the queer-sounding designation of Pfahlbiirger, or Palisade-Citizen, which was gradually extended to include all suburbans; and finally the villenage, by decreeing that a Villein who had dwelt a year and a day within the town walls, unclaimed by his Lord, was, unless the Lord could show that he had diligently though vainly sought the fugitive, ipso facto, released from the feudal authority of that Lord, as from actual villenage; becoming, in some inferior and still unfree condition, a denizen of the town. That con­dition seems to have been a sort of easy thraldom to the Municipality, until, in 1106, Henry V'. enfranchised the handicraftsmen throughout Germany, though real freemen he could not make them, landed property being, it will be remembered, indispensable to that chaiacter. These handicraftsmen seem to have all originally been villeins, en­franchised or not, and they were now mostly pfahlbiirger, having their workshops without the walls; but the money they earned, in process of time overcame the Teutonic disdain for mechanic arts, and tempted the poorer freeman to join their ranks.(67)

The change that had taken place in the two classes of non-noble freeholders next demands attention. The pride of independence, which had looked scornfully down

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upon the greatest vassals, lasted long with respect to sub-vassalage; but in regard to fiefs, held immediately of the crown, it seems to have been dying away even before the extinction of the Carlovingian dynasty; and the sense of family degradation that drove the Welf, Etico, to hide his shame under a monk’s cowl, when his son accepted very large domains in vassalage of the Einperor Arnulf, may have been produced more by that son’s mode of enlarging, than by his acceptance of the grant. Tlie grant was of as much land as the grantee could drive a plough round during the imperial siesta. He, the grantee, having stationed his best horses in relays, fastened the traces of a small gold plough to his saddle, and succes­sively transferred it to each animal galloped at full speed to the next relay. The success of the trick was only limited by the breaking down of a favourite mare in the stage allotted to her; and the story was deemed au­thenticated by the subsequent aversion of the Welf family for mares.

To return. By the twelfth century, this contempt seems to have much subsided, and many of the freemen passed into the state of vassalage. Of the highest class, the wealthiest were tempted by the title of Graf and the rights of jurisdiction attached to it to make the ex­change.^) Many of somewhat less lofty pretensions rose to nobility with the title of Freiherr, Anglics Baron, though they were far from becoming as yet the equals even of the Vavassours; and of the poorer portion of this class of Schaffenbaren Freien numbers obtained a degree of nobility, as Knights. Many of these knights took service under emperor, prince, prelate or noble, who wished to increase his force; whilst others, who possessed little beyond „ strong tower, maintained themselves by downright robbery upon the high road or river, whic‘ that tower chanced to command. And it becomes evident that such conduct could not be then deemed a very dis­reputable extension of the right of private war, when we read of a Prince-Archbishop of Cologne who, a full century later, being asked by the Knight, whom he had just installed Constable of a newly-built castle, how he was to feed Kis people, answered by pointing to two high roads that crossed each other at the foot of the hill

upon which the castle stood. The Knights constituted the Chivalry, or in modern conception, rather the cavalry, of the Empire, by the name of Reichsritterschaft, implying that, how indigent soever, they were immediate vassals. The poorest of this schceffenbaren class, seeking the efficient protection they were too weak to dispense with, sank into the secondary class of Proteeted-Freemen.

Of this secondary class, the original Proteeted-Freemen, those who were best off commonly became pfahlbiirger of some town, whilst the others were pressed down amongst the non-free, sheltering themselves, if possible, under the shadow of the Church,—who secured great privileges or indulgences to her dependents,—by becoming church Ministeriales, that is to say, inferior officers or servants of some ecclesiastical establishment. This degradation of the protected freemen, who might be termed the Yeo­manry, was more general than the changes in the upper class, but by no means universal. In fact, all these changes were little more than beginning at the opening of the twelfth century; and the Schceffenba ren Freien and Proteeted-Freemen together, still formed a very respectable body. Neither had these changes proceeded everywhere alike. In Switzerland and the Tyrol there had always been much less villenage than further from the Alps, and more small freeholders remained in those countries, forming the bulk of the population ; whilst in parts of the duchy of Saxony, namely in Frieseland, and along the western sea coast, feudalism was still scarcely known, the inhabitants being almost all freeholders, whether of large or of small estate, all bound to serve the Emperor in arms when needful, but to nothing else.

If the poorer freemen were generally in course of degradation, the evil was in some measure compensated by a consequent amelioration in the condition of the non-free Those who had sunk to that level had not become villeins; they formed a higher class, bearing the name of Zihsleute, or Rentpayers, the paying of rent for the use of land, whether in money, in kind, or by service other than military, being of course incompatible with the perfect freedom of which the ownership of land was an essential element, Admittance into this class of rent-payers was now the great object of the best villeins, as also of those Digitized by Microsoft®

who had been emancipated, either by the goodwill of their lords, or by making a crusade; and though this change, likewise, was only beginning, gradually the rent- p'iyers, instead of the non-noble freeholders, constituted the bulk of the nation. Such enfranchised villeins as failed to rise so high, produced a class of men previously unknown to feudalism—to wit, that of labourers working foi wages. But this class was quite in its infancy at the period now under consideration. That the condition of even the lowest villeins was ameliorated, may be ascribed mainly to the influence of progressive civilization.

In the subjugated Slavonian districts, German immi grants were usually established as Rent-payers, • upon very advantageous conditions. The non-free natives, whether agriculturists, herdsmen, fishermen, traders, if indeed traders there were, or pirates, who, under their native princes, had enjoyed much practical liberty, were yet more completely inthralled under their German masters than villeins in gross in Germany. And through such thraldom, some writers aver, that the naturally m;'d, frugal, industrious, hospitable and honest disposition of the Slavonians, degenerated into the cunning and the cruelty of slaves.C59)

The social and political state of Italy was at one and the same time less complicated and more confused than that of Germany. The first, because being a conquered country the inhabitants were simply divided into two classes, the free as noble conquerors, who ruled and fought, and the conquered, who worked and paid. The second, it might seem contradictory dissimilarity, resulted from every successive horde of conquerors bringing with them the laws of their own country, without abrogating those pre-established; so that not only the two classes, but even individuals of each class l'ved under different codes, as determined by birth or choice. Most especially was this the case in Southern Italy, where the Jaws of both the East and the West Roman Empires remained co-existent with those of the Lombards, the Normans and the Saracens, whilst even the Jews were under their own law, ad­ministered by their own Rabbis.

In Italy, although here likewise the original conquerors had held the lands they seized as allodial, the feudal system

now prevailed, the modifying element being the old Roman municipal organization, which saved the towns from the villenage into which the rural population sank under their lords. The city magistrates still bore the venerated title of Consuls, though no longer as rulers of the world, or even of a republic, but in the humbler character of Mayors, and even that still humbler of Heads of Guilds, in Italy called Arti,(e0) whence the numbers of officials so denominated, that occasionally perplex a reader’s classical associations. Two, four, six, or even twelve, are the usual number of Consuls in a city, but more are frequently met with; and Lucca, in the year 1124, actually boasted of sixty. Genoa up till nearly that time, offers the variety of two Con­suls, regularly elected for periods of four years, which she then altered into four, five or six annual Consuls. The Consuls who acted as Mayors shared their authority with one, two or three Municipal Councils ; namely, the Great Council, which comprised all the citizens; the Senate, culled from the higher classes of those citizens; and a sort of Privy Council, yet more select, entitled la Credenxa. Yet, notwithstanding this seemingly continuous Roman organization, the towns here, as in Germany, are said to have owed their first mediaeval ideas of strength, and consequently of resistance against oppression, to the walls built as a defence against the inroads of the dreaded Magyars.(fil) Of their prosperity much was due to the favour of Otho the Great, who sought in them allies against the struggles of the princely and other great vassals for independence. The Consuls had, at least ever since the establishment of the feudal system, been appointed by the Sovereign in person, or through his officers; and it was only as the cities increased in wealth and power, that they began to strive for the right of electing their magistrates. In the Exarchate, the Consuls and all other magistrates of the district, were selected from one Council, of which they remained members. (r>-)

Venice had obtained prodigious commercial privileges at Constantinople during the great alarm corceived by the Greek government, at the successful ambition of the Italo-Normans. Thus enriched, she was becoming a very considerable state in power, if not in extent; what territory she did possess lay not in Italy, but on the

opposite Dalmatian coast, by the acquisition of which, she evidently aimed at the command of the Adriatic. The originally absolute authority of the Doge, the Venetians were gradually restricting, as prosperity awoke the desire for self-government amongst the opulent merchants. Pisa and Genoa, occupied by their contests for Sardinia, which they had conjointly conquered, and content with the trade of the Western Mediterranean, had not interfered with Venice in the East, till the crusades brought them all together as rivals in the Syro-Frank states.

The progress of Tuscany and the Papal dominions should next come under review. But their condition, as well as that of Apulia, indeed of all Italy in the year 1125, was so much the result of the contest between the Pope and the Emperor, that it will become apparent in the account to be given of that contest, when two- classes of persons, common indeed to all parts of the Holy Roman Empire, as to nearly the whole of Europe, though the first seems most appropriately spoken of in connexion with Italy, shall have been disposed of.

This first, and very important class, is that of the Clergy, Secular and Regular. The Secular Clergy comprised the episcopal body, with the cathedral chapters, constituting the councils of their respective bishops, the parish priests with their curates, called vicars in the Roman Catholic Church, and the chaplains of princes and nobles, to whom they were likewise secretaries, archive- keepers, household schoolmasters, and often physicians.

Of prince-prelates, like those of Germany, Italy had only one ;—the Pope had for centuries occupied a distinct as well as a loftier position ; and the Patriarch of Aquileia, once almost the rival of the Supreme Pontiff, had sunk into insignificance, when, upon the destruction of Aquileia by the Huns, he removed to Grado, one of the Venetian islands, where he had since, in a manner, become the Venetian Metropolitan. The one Italian rival of the German ecclesiastical princes was the Archbishop of Milan, who, as such, entitled hknseff Comes, or Earl of Milan, and claimed the temporal authority belonging to an earl, with which he strove to combine spiritual independence, scarcely acknowledging the supremacy of the Pope. The other numerous Italian bishops and archbishops had little

or no feudal authority beyond the precincts of the cities, in which their episcopal palaces were respectively situated.

Of the great body of the clergy, the condition in many respects altered so materially during the above mentioned contest, that it may here suffice to say, celibacy, though recommended as meritorious by the Nicene Council, as early as the year 325, had not yet been positively enjoined, except to prelates, and was very far from the general practice of the parish priests. The Chapters, although ranking with the Secular clergy, had at this time pretty generally adopted the institutions framed for them by St. Augustin, submitting to the somewhat claustral life thereby enjoined, whence their members received the name of Canons, as living under rule.

The classes of the secular clergy hitherto spoken of, were common to all Christendom; but there was another peculiar to Rome, though occasionally employed elsewhere: this is the College of Cardinals, forming the Papal Privy Council. The title of Cardinal was derived from the <Kid name by which, in the earliest times of established Christianity, the permanent connexion of clergymen with any specific church was digniiied, i.e. clerici cardinales, literally hinge-clerks or priests. Accordingly the original Cardinals were merely the Priests and Deacons attached to the principal churches of Rome, whose constant pre­sence in the Papal metropolis led to the Pope’s selecting his counsellors from amongst them. This, in its turn, rendered the position of hinge-clerk an object of ambition, coveted by prelates; and now the title of Cardinal, whether or not previously given to the priests of the Roman churches, was bestowed upon bishops, generally the subur- bicarian, or more especial suffragans of the Roman See, whose local position facilitated their acting as Privy Counsellors; and still every cardinal was nominally, if not really, attached to a Roman church. The Cardinals were not formed into a College until later in the twelfth century.

The Regular Clergy will require more detail. It is customary to speak of different monastic Orders; but in point of fact, there was in Roman Catholic Europe but one real Order of Monks, that of the Benedictines, all others being offsets from this one, as reforms of, or improvements upon, it-> rules. (*'3) The Friars, who were

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not in existence in the twelfth century, occupied a lower grade in the Hierarchy. When, in the sixth century, St. Benedict gathered the dispersed and independent ascetics together into monasteries, there to live according to the strict rule (as a monastic code is technically called) he drew up, they truly supported themselves by the sweat of their brows, tilling the ground with their own hands. They thus brought barren districts under cultivation, and were, even in a political point of view, a most useful fraternity. This they continued to be, when, in places where field labour was abundant, they added to husbandry manufacturing, in which they seem to have very gene­rally been the instructors of their neighbourhood And this they might be thought still more to become, when the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, supported by Charlemagne, effected the substitution in the cloister of more intellectual occupations, such as copying and illuminating manuscripts, teaching children, and affording medical, even surgical assistance, for mere manual work. But this change, however judicious, and at the time beneficial, was the first step in deviation from that pure monastic simplicity, in which abbots and abbesses lived, not onlv like, but with their monks and nuns, even sleeping in the common dormitory,(64) and esteemed mitres and other prelatic decorations, inconsistent with monastic humility.

Deviation once begun made rapid progress, fostered by the riches which, in addition to the earnings of their own industry, flowed in upon convents for either sex, from the gifts and bequests of penitent or terrified sinners of all ranks, or by endowments of sovereigns courting church favours. These endowments, bequests and gifts were of every imaginable kind, from fiefs, including counties and ducal rights, through fisheries, ferries, tolls, and the like, to exemption from some specific toll, guaiautees against the building of a bridge within a certain distance of a cloister’s ferry, against the intrusion of a chapel or oratory into a district the spiritual wants of which a cloister supplied, down to ornaments, and wax lights for an altar, a night light for the infirmary, and even a waira bath and a better meal upon certain anniver­saries. A French nobleman actually granted the Abbey of Belle-Perche the right of plundering all wrecked

vessels, except his own, With riches, the luxurv of the

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age, such as it was, crept into the cloister, idleness, and a general relaxation of discipline, extending in many cases to habitual licentiousness, ensued; and when this became so notorious that a lay patron or a prelate found it necessary to supersede a vicious or an inefficient Superior by an austere monk, commissioned to reform his convent, the intended reformer not unfreq uently fell a victim to his zeal by the hands of his flock, or of mercenary assassins in their pay. Often no remedy short of breaking up the monastery, and dispersing the inmates, whether monks or nuns, for castigation and consequent refor­mation, amongst other cloisters where rigorous discipline still prevailed, proved sufficient. Towards the close of the eleventh century, the reaction naturally consequent upon such flagrant depravity, led to founding Orders of reformed Benedictines, in most of which the founder strove to improve upon the austerities and privations devised by his predecessors. All held themselves Benedictines, acknowledging as their Head the Abbot of the original monastery, the Abbey of Montecassino, who was Abbot of Abbots of the Benedictines; although each reformed Order was separately governed by an Abbot of Abbots of its own, with little reference to Montecassino. Of these numerous reformed Orders, it will here be enough to mention a few of the most remarkable.

The Cluniacenses, so named from the mother abbey of Clugny, celebrated for its magnitude and the extent of its library^05) was one of the earliest and of the least austere Orders. As the duty subsidiary to their religious rites and exercises, they addicted themselves wholly to intellectual pursuits, including the Fine Arts. The Cis- tertians, a somewhat later institution, and one of the austerest, in an antagonistic spirit, devoted themselves exclusively to manual labour, in the first instance to agriculture, professing such an actual horror of Belles Lettres, probably as idle, that they visited the sin of versifying with expulsion. When they became mission­aries, they so far modified this exclusiveness, that they introduced manufactures amongst the Heathen whom they were endeavouring to convert, and translated the Bible into the language of their Catechumens for their instruction. At home they suffered not a woman’s foot to desecrate

the abbey church; anil the excessive mortifications and privations enjoined by their Rule for some years, scared away novices. The Cistertians still had but one cloister, whilst those of the Cluniaeenses were rapidly increasing in number. One Order, of about the same date, the Prasmonstratensian, rejecting the Rule of St. Benedict for St. Augustin’s, called itself tin Order, not of Monks, but of Regular Augustinian Canons. The founder was an opulent nobleman of Lo'ver Lorraine, named Norbert, a libertine voluptuary, who being struck down, though not killed, by lightning, arose a new man, founded this Order, sold his estates, divided the prire between his Praemonstratenses and the poor, and revelled in the mar­tyrdom inflicted by the ridicule of his former gay associates. His Order was of course austere. Another Order of Augustinian Canons, that of Fontevraud, founded by Robert d’Arbrissel in 1100, is principally distinguished by the singular circumstance of the chief Abbess being Head of the whole Order, supreme over abbeys of men, as well as over abbeys of women. This, perhaps unique dignity of an abbess, results from the especial dedication of the Order to the Blessed Virgin, whose actual repre­sentation this Chief Abbess is esteemed. Robert, who required temptation to be defied and conquered, not shunned, built the cloisters for the different sexes so nearly contiguous, as to have their church in common; but so strict was the separation enjoined elsewhere, that dying nuns were brought into the church, and there laid upon the paved floor, to receive those rites of religion; usually administered beside the death ben. He showed judgment, however, in providing that this Abbess of Abbots and Abbesses should never be a nunnery-bred virgin, but a widow, who might know something of the world,(66 It may be added that a few Asiatic monks, of the Greek Order of St. Basil, had sought shelter in Southern Italy from the oppression of Moslem masters, and been permitted there to build convents of their own Order.

The other class of persons alluded to, is the Hebrew race. The Jews, then universally hated and despised, incompatible as the two sentiments may appear, whose very existence was rather connived at than tolerated, had

nevertheless everywhere made themselves indispensable to their oppressors. The church denunciations against usury, under which name was comprehended all interest whatever paid for the use of money, necessarily threw the whole money-lending business into the hands of those upon whom excommunication was powerless; and well they knew how to profit by the monopoly. Not only kings, princes and nobles, but the very prelates who anathematized all usurers, ay, popes themselves, were constantly obliged to resort to Jews for loans, pawning church plate, pawning the most venerated relics to unbelievers, who did indeed exact usurious interest from their debtors. In Germany the Jews long enjoyed ancther advantage, through Teutonic disdain for trade; whilst in Italy, Catalonia and the South of France, commerce was, during the earlier portion of the Middle Ages, held so little derogatory to noble birth, as not to incapacitate for knighthood, the Germans deemed it utter, irreparable degradation to a freeman. Hence, the first merchants who settled in German towns were foreigners, mostly Jews; and no inconsiderable number of years elapsed, before the sight of the riches acquired in trade by those foreigners, could tempt the natives to incur the lucrative disgrace.

The Jews were most numerous in the episcopal cities, many of which being commercial, attracted them; and where the bishops, with a view, they alleged, to their con­version, encouraged them to settle. At Worms the Children of Israel asserted that they had had a Synagogue in times anterior to the Christian era. The jurisdiction over them was there hereditary in the Dahlberg family, which, through its descent from a Hebrew soldier, one of the Iloman colonists there planted, claimed relationship to the Blessed Virgin.(67)

But whilst thus tacitly tolerated, the Jews were sub­jected to the most absurdly and often frivolously op­pressive laws. They were forbidden to practice agricul­ture, or any mechanical art; they were compelled to wear a peculiar garb of a peculiar colour, and to reside in a particular quarter of every town, in Italy called the Ghetto, into which they were nightly locked. Councils forbade their employment as physicians, or in any office of administration, whilst such was their superior science Digiiizsd by Microsoft®

and skill, that prelates, ay, occasionally even popes, as well as kings and princes, relied upon them in emergencies, in cases of dangerous disease as well as of financial embarrassment. Whether it were as financiers, or in reference to the Imperial right to slaughter them, of which right their poll-tax was the annual redemption, that the Jews were called Imperial Kammerknechte (Exchequer thralls) may be questionable.

But however irrational the treatment, however anoma­lous and uncertain the position of the Jews, they do not appear to have been actually persecuted prior to the first crusade. When upon that occasion the crusading rabble massacred them wherever found, the Rhine prelates en­deavoured, but neither very successfully, nor, perhaps, efficiently, to defend their Hebrew subjects, against the wilful executioners; and some kinsmen of the Arch­bishop of Mainz appearing amongst the massaerers, he himself was subsequently taxed by the Emperor, Henry IV., with complicity. At Worms the Jews sought the protection of the Bishop, of which he made their receiving baptism the condition. They asked time for deliberation; and returning home, slew their children, their wives, and themselves. The Emperor, indignant at such an attempt to render hypocrisy compulsory, allowed to all Israelites who might have accepted such terms, a period of grace, within which they might return un­censured to their own religion. The Bishop of Spires sold his protection for money, to the offence equally, though upon different grounds, of the Emperor and of his own flock. The example thus set by a bigoted and blood­thirsty mob, however contemned the wretches who set it, was followed, and not by crusaders alone. Thenceforward the massacre of Jewish creditors seems to have long been esteemed by debtors, called Christians, both the easiest way of freeing themselves from inconvenient pecuniary de­mands, and an acceptable sacrifice to the God of Mercy. Even monarchs, if they did not actually authorize such massacres, appear to have taken therefrom a hint, if hint were needed ;• and in most countries Jews were now alternately suffered to accumulate wealth by usury, then banished,’ and their property confiscated; and then again tacitly permitted to return and resume their usurious

dealings. Such treatment, together with the atrocious accusations under which the Jews habitually laboured, as of sacrificing Christian children, and using their blood for purposes medical, magical, or simply superstitious, reacted upon the persecuted victims, rendering them, what­ever they might have previously been, crafty, cruel, and inveterate enemies of their persecutors.

SECTION III.

THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE POPF. AND THE EMPEROR FOR SUPREMACY, ORIGINATING IN ECCLESIASTICAL INVESTITURES AND LAY PATRONAGE.

It now becomes necessary to speak of the contest for supremacy between the then recognized Heads, spiritual and temporal, of Latin Christendom ; and rightly to under­stand the character of this contest, it is requisite to look back to the primitive position of the Pope. Under the Western Empire, prior to its final overthrow by the Herule, Odoacer, the Pope appears to have been simply Bishop of Home, though exercising metropolitan rights over Central and Southern Italy—then destitute of archbishops —with some degree, or some species, of general primacy due to the name of Rome, partly as having so long been mistress of the world, but principally as the reputed See of St. Peter. At the dissolution of the Western Empire, Rome and her Bishop transferred their allegiance to the Eastern; and the Pope, although elected by the clergy and people of Rome, could not, until sanctioned by the Constantinopolitan Emperor, take possession of his See. But Constantinople was too distant, and its court habit­ually too feeble, to afford’protection or inforce obedience; and now the popes began to aspire to independence, asserting the superiority of all ecclesiastical, over all tem­poral, authority.(68) But so little effort was made to support the assertion against real power, that a double papal election was referred to the Arian Ostrogoth, Theodoric, and decided by bishops whom he selected for the office. Nevertheless, the Roman pontiffs gradually assumed more and more the government of Rome, to the apparent satisfaction cl’ the Remans, who ill brooked

subjection to Constantinople, and valued their popes, both as chosen by themselves, and as, for the most part, men of exemplary character. Hence, when the dispute about images produced a lasting schism betwixt the Greek and Latin Churches, Pope Gregory II., after vainly endea­vouring to recall the wanderers from his fold, ultimately authorized the Romans to refuse payment of taxes to Constantinopolitan officers, and to renounce allegiance to a heretical Emperor; thus, unquestionably, assuming temporal authority.

Under the influence of this Pope, Rome, hitherto in­cluded in the Exarchate of Ravenna, proclaimed herself a Republic, by the not very republican title of the Duchy of Rome. Of the internal condition of this Republic, little more seems to be known, than that, whilst the classical names of the old Roman Magistrates made a splendid figure therein, the turbulent ambition of the Roman Baronage filled the city with broils, whilst the Pope really governed it. In this state the duchy remained, until, later in the eighth century, a pope’s quarrels with the Arian Lombards induced the memorable, and, in its consequences, perdurably momentous, application to the Frank monarchs for protection.

Effectively, but not gratuitously, was that protection afforded. The Lombard kingdom of Northern and Central Italy, with the Lombard duchies in Southern Italy, were conquered, and from Lombard power neither pope nor Roman republic had thenceforward anything to fear. But this immense acquisition of territory, and the supreme authority in republican Rome, conferred by the title of Patrician, appeared to the Frank deliverer inadequate remuneration of his services. The Western Empire was revived, and, under the name of the Holy Roman Empire, vested i\ Charlemagne. The Pope, Leo III., affected to crown him Emperor without previous consultation, by sud­den inspiration at the altar; nor, although the ceremonial was evidently prearranged, and the purpose, if not publicly announced, was yet, according to some writers, well known beforehand to be contemplated, (69; did Charlemagne contradict the personally-flaUering assertion. His silence afforded subsequent popes an argument, when insisting that the empire was their spontaneous gift; and Charle­magne himself ji.isi have barned to apprehend such a

corollary from the style of the transaction, when he made his son Lewis, who was crowned during his own life, take the crown from the altar, and with his own hand place it upon his own head.(70)

At the moment, however, from the relative positions of the Pope and the Emperor, no pretension of the kind was advanced. The Pope held in vassalage of the Emperor, not only the lands, whatever they were, granted by Charle­magne to the Roman See, bat also the duchy of Rome itself, and knelt, it is averred, to do homage for all. Nay, Charlemagne was more than Lord Paramount of Rome, and official protector of the Church; he was, or acted as, its Head. He convoked Church Councils; (71) and when no Council was sitting, he issued laws upon ecclesiastical, if not also upon spiritual subjects. He arbitrarily appointed bishops and abbots, whom he held amenable as the laity to his jurisdiction, and his sanction, at least, was indispensable to legalize the election of a pope. And so completely did the popes then acknowledge the sovereignty of the emperor, that not only did Charle­magne send his officers, Missi Dominici, to judge between Leo III. and the nephew of his predecessor, who, after half murdering him, brought divers charges against him ; even his son, the feeble Lewis the Debonnaire (whose Latin surname of Pius the Germans more correctly render by der Fromme, the Pious), exercised the like supreme authority. Pope Pascal I., being accused of a murder, sent legates to defend him before the Imperial tribunal; but Lewis, disregarding the legates, dispatched to Rome his own Missi Dominici (upon this occasion either a duke or an earl, and an abbot), who being perplexed by con­flicting evidence, the Holy Father in person appeared before them, and cleared himself by making oath of his innocence. (?2) It was only when the division of the empire, and the dissensions and follies of the dividers, Charlemagne’s grandsons and great grandsons, had debili­tated the Imperial authority, that Papal ambition revived. When the weak Charles the Bald, after the death of his brothers desired to be crowned Empeior, Pope Johi \ III. haughtily said, “ If he wants me to crown him, I must choose him, or, at least, sanction his election.”(73)

Still the pretension was advanced only when circum- Digitizsd by Microsoft®

stances favoured; and most favourable were they during the decline of the Carlovingians. France and Germany were then engrossed and exhausted by war with each other, and by the ravages of the Northmen ; Germany by those of the Magyars likewise ; whilst Italy, devastated by the Magyars in the north, by the Saracens in the south, was distractcd by the contentions of her princes with each other, and with the kings of both Burgundys, for the titles of King of Lombardy and Emperor. This con­tinued to be the state of Italy, until Otho I. was invited thither separately by the exasperated Pope, John XII., and by the beautiful Adelaide of Burgundy, the widow of one of those kings, persecuted by the murderers of her husband, to force her to marry one of them. Both implored him to rescue them from the tyranny of Berengario II., who at an earlier period had sought his protection against the equally tyrannical King I go, Adelaide’s father-in- law. Otho, the final deliverer of Germany from the Magyars, achieved this adventure likewise. He rescued, and, 'being a widower, wedded Adelaide, took Berengario prisoner, conquered Italy, and received the Imperial crown von the hands of the thankful Pope. He was the first non-Carlovingian monarch so crowned.

The able, energetic, and powerful Otho, re-established the Imperial authority in its pristine vigour. The Italian princes, both northern and central, welcomed his sove­reignty as a deliverance from tyranny ; did so, although he weakened the formidably strong duchy of Friuli, by de­taching from it a large district, which, as the march of Verona, he incorporated with the duchy of Bavaria, and emancipated from their yoke some thriving cities, which he made free, that is to say, dependent only upon the Imperial government.(?4) With Magna Grecia he meddled not, until, as before intimated, he had obtained, as the portion of his daughter-in-law, the Greek claim to sove­reignty, of which he then required the recognition. And so far were the popes from disputing Otho’s sovereignty, that they looked to it for protection against their neigh­bours, whose violence they still dreaded. It is even positively asserted by some writers, that Leo VIII., by an act of the Lateran Council which sat a.d. 964, re­cognized the permanent union of the kingdom of Italy Digitized by Microsoft®

and the Empire with Germany, and the right of every lawfully elected German monarch, to both the Italian and the Imperial crowns, as also to the patriciate in, and sovereignty over, Rome, where Patrician and Pope appear to have ruled conjointly,(75) or the latter through the former; recognizing farther his right to give prelates investiture by the ring and crozier, and to nominate the pope. The authenticity of this act has been, and indeed still is disputed; (76) but it is certain that at this epoch the union of these states was willingly admitted because found convenient. A German monarch, naturally pre­ferring his native land and largest realm as his residence, would be habitually absent, and therefore leave the pope, the great vassals, and the towns, more independent than would a less powerful emperor, always present in the Peninsula.

The attempts which Italy, as forgetful of her suffer­ings prior to her subjugation by Otho, as regardless of her prosperity under him and his successors, made to rid herself of her, then as now, antipathetic German sovereigns, first upon the death of Otho III. without children, then upon that of his equally childless cousin and successor, Henry II., wrought no permanent effect. Conrad II., surnamed the Salic, to mark him a Salic- Frank, the first emperor of the Franconian dynasty, fully established his sovereignty there; and the Normans, who were even then conquering Magna Grecia, eagerly sought a ratification of their doubtful titles to their new principalities, by doing homage for them to him. In like manner the few Lombard princes in the South, still unsubdued by the Normans, endeavoured to secure his protection ; and Italy seems thenceforward, for a consider­able period of time, to have acknowledged her allegiance bound by the suffrages of Germany.

But during this period some of the Italian princes greatly increased in power, and one of these was the Pope. The Chair of St. Peter, now an object of ambi­tion, was no longer occupied by pious churchmen ; princes aspired to its possession for their sons and brothers, and the whole character of the Papacy was changed. The simony, the licentiousness, in short the general corruption, defiling and desecrating the Church, which soon after­Digitized by Microsoft®

wards drove Pier Damiani to renounce his bishopric of Ostia, that in solitude he might escape from the knowledge of disgusting sinfulness, had extended to, if it did not emanate from, the Head. At Rome vice of every kind prevailed; three generations of profligate women, paramours or mothers of popes, strove to fix the papal crown hereditarily in their family; and to aug­ment the confusion, two or three popes were sometimes simultaneously enthroned.

Such was the condition of the Church when Henry III., a prince in whom great abilities and great energy were united to virtue and genuine piety,(77) succeeded hi? father, Conrad II., and devoted his powers to three great objects. These were, the strengthening the Imperial autho­rity, the rendering it hereditary in his own family, and the reformation of the Church, which he deemed the especial duty of the Emperor, as its official protector. With respect to the last and most momentous of these objects, he conceived his own task to be twofold; to eradicate the only ecclesiastical offence actually falling under his j uri,-diction, to wit, simony; and to cleanse the Papal See of the vices that polluted it, by installing a pope such as the Spiritual Head of Christendom ought to be, to whom he might leave the general purification of the Church.

No one disputing the right of the Emperor to a pre­rogative repeatedly exercised by his predecessors, he visited Italy, and with the concurrence of the Roman clergy in Synod assembled, proceeded to depose the three Popes, who were than struggling to snatch the tiara from each others heads. He next required from the Roman clergy and the prelates present, a pledge never again to elect a pope without the sanction of the emperor, and he 'lien looked round for a fitting supreme pontiff The Italian ecclesiastics were too corrupt to afford a single eligible candidate for the spiritual sovereignty, except, perhaps, one of the three deposed popes, Gregory VI., whost only offence was having simoniacally purchased the Holy See. This sin he frankly confessed, and ex­piated by resigning the wrongfully attained dignity. Rut this expiation could not render him re-eligible, wherefore Henry successively seated four German prelates in St.

Peter’s Chair; and the genuine Christian spirit that uni­formly guided his choice has seldom been, as in truth it cannot well be, disputed.

Of these four popes, the first two died each within a a year from his nomination, poisoned, according to some contemporary chroniclers, by the Romans, because trans­alpine and not elected by them. The third, a kinsman of the Emperor’s, propitiated them, by seeking their con­firmation of the imperial appointment, ere he would assume the pontifical office and the name of Leo IX., and proved more fortunate, being esteemed an actual Saint. His morals were the very perfection of purity, enhanced by ascetic austerity. He constantly wore sack­cloth next his skin, and as Pope, walked thrice every week barefoot to St. Peter's. His unbounded charity, the refuge of all the destitute, was generally believed to have been supernaturally tested, and rewarded. The legend is, that Leo one night shared his bed with a poor leper to whom none would afford even house room, and in the morning the leper vanished, revealing himself as the Redeemer of mankind. Zealously did Leo set about the reforms desired by Henry, in which, as in the whole course of his pontificate, he was entirely governed by one of the most remarkable men of that age, the monk Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory VII.

Of the early life of this extraordinary individual, little is positively known. He is reported to have been the son of a blacksmith or a carpenter of Saona, a Tuscan village, educated at Rome by monks; and it is certain, that very young he dedicated himself to the Church—the course by which, in those days, plebeian talent sought and found cultivation, distinction, eminence, thus qualify­ing, if it could not counterbalance, the rigid severance of ranks in the feudal world. Hildebrand had risen to the post of Chaplain to Gregory VI., who had been one of the instructors of his youth, and whom Henry, neglecting his more worthless competitors, Benedict IX. and Sylvester III., took with him across the Alps. Hildebrand accompanied his fallen patron to the Abbey of Clugny, where the ex-pope passed some years. There Hildebrand took or renew'ed the monastic vows, and so won the esteem of both abbot and monks, that when the vacancy occurred

he was made prior. Leo chancing to visit the abbey immediately after his nomination to the papacy, the new Prior was presented to him as a valuable counsellor bj the Abbot, attended him to Home, and was appointed Sub-Dean and Treasurer of the Holy See.

Whether Hildebrand then already nourished the am­bitious projects for the Popedom, which he subsequently entertained and acted upon, or conceived them gradually, as his views expanded with success ; whether he were an honestly bigoted zealot for the exaltation of ecclesiastical supremacy, or an artful and aspiring demagogue, reckless of the means by which his ends were attained—he has even been accused of poisoning some of his predecessors in St. Peter’s Chair—; has been, and still is, disputed bv antagonist partisans, whilst at this distance of time it were hard actually to decide the question. It may, how­ever, be boldly pronounced, that he was neither the crafty, savage, and profligate, usurping tyrant that he has been represented by Imperialists and Protestants, nor the perfect spiritual Father of Christendom that he has been painted by the advocates of all papal pretensions. But. to an impartial investigator of the course of events, and of individual conduct, it seems tolerably clear that both parties, Gregory VII. and his antagonist, Henry IV., nave been absurdly calumniated b\ their respective ad­versaries; that the former had the good and bad qualities usually accompanying genuine bigotry, as naturally result­ing from conviction of the transcendent excellence, of ascetic habits and p:ivations, or rather, indeed, from the austerely harsh, but strictly moral, temper that generates such conviction; and that, having dreamt he was called by St. Peter to reform and emancipate the Church,(78) he really believed this visionary, magnified reflexion of his waking thoughts, to be a divine revelation. Nor, in those ages, can such fanatic credulity be pronounced inconsistent with a shrewd, and in other respects sound, masculine un­derstanding. If this view of Hildebrand’s character be correct, it may be inferred that he must, in the first instance, have been highly gratified by Henry Ill's zeal for church reform, and would therefore, for awhile, co­operate cordially in carrying out his views.(79)

The lirst object of Leo IX. and his adviser, as of

Henry III., was the purification of the Church from simonv. To effect this, the Pope, attended by Hildebrand, visited different countries, everywhere convened national synods, in which he declaimed against the vices polluting the Church, and admonished all prelates who had obtained their dignities simoniacally of their guilt, exhorting them to confess, repent, and endeavour to expiate the sin by abdication, and threatening the refractory with excommu­nication. The fervour of his harangues proved efficacious; and whilst numbers cleared themselves, as he required, by oath, from the suspicion of simony, others, confessing their guilt, resigned their sees or abbeys. The excitement thus produced in the public mind in that age of passion and of piety, genuine if superstitious, when in toilsome and hazardous pilgrimages the seeds of future crusades was germinating, can, in these utilitarian days, hardly be conceived. It prepared the way for the ulterior operations of Hildebrand, perhaps even in his own breast; and was increased tenfold by the next papal reform. This was directed against the licentiousness of the clergy, under which name was included, as regards priests, lawful wedlock. The Pope forbade all who were in Holy Orders to marry; forbade the admission of married men to Ordination, and commanded ecclesiatics of all ranks to dismiss their concubines, the wives of the priests being thus classed with the frail companions of the higher ranks of the hierarchy.

In relation to this, now so generally reprobated, point of Romanist discipline, it may here be observed that some modern philosophic investigators of the past have adopted an opinion that, in times the tendency of which to make everything hereditary was as strong as it was in the middle ages, to the celibacy of the clergy alone may their not having become a caste, like the Indian Brahmins, be due. And, in fact, endeavours to render benefices here­ditary had been made—in regard to the papacy one has iust been mentioned—instances had occurred of a canon’s daughter receiving a canonry as her wedding portion. But if a political evil has been thus obviated, neither Leo nor Hildebrand in inculcating clerical celibacy were actuated by political views. If they even thought of detaching the priesthood from worldly ties and interests,

Leo assuredly would see this consequence solely under its religious aspect; nor does it appear likely that Hildebrand, whatever he might do at a later period, then looked at it in any other light. Admiration of asceticism was at its zenith, and indisputably inspired an injunction so consonant with the high appreciation of virginity apparent from the earliest times in the Church. The same opinions and feelings that dictated the Papal decree, produced the eager approbation with which it was received by the great body of the laity, as by the whole of the regular clergy. That in the married priests—and it should seem that, except in Italy, the majority of parish priests were at this time married men—in their families, and in those of their wives, it provoked the most determined opposition was inevitable; and at this opposition those prelates who solaced their celibacy with illicit attachments, connived, if they did not stimulate it. Hildebrand was too prudent to think of trying to inforce two reforms at once, or actually to compel the sudden disruption of all family ties. Celibacy was enjoined, wedlock forbidden to the clergy. With this first step he was, for the moment, content, and as yet no ecclesiastical law positively constrained priests to repudiate their wives. The seed was sown, and left to strike root.

Thus, in some degree of fermentation touching both simony and clerical celibacy, but in a materially improved state of morality and discipline, and apparently submissive to the recognized Imperial sovereignty, the Church remained, throughout the pontificate of Leo IX., and of tiis immediate successor, Victor II., similarly appointed by Henry III., and similarly governed by Hildebrand. In temporal affairs, Henry, a really able monarch, had been equally successful; he had considerably overawed the most powerful of the German princes; he had strengthens the sub-vassals and vavassours, whose loyalty his father had secured, by making their fiefs legally hereditary; he had procured the election of his infant son, as his colleague and successor; and, hod his life been prolonged, it would seem as if he might indeed have achieved his great temporal objects, have bequeathed to his posterity an absolute, hereditary, imperial sovereignty over both Germany and Italy, as also over popes rulrng

a purified Church: but concerning the probable effects of such success upon the destiny of Europe, it were idle to speculate. In the full vigour of manhood, Henry’s progress was arrested by death, the result, if the ever- recurring mediaeval accusation be credited, of poison administered by those who feared him.(80) His successor was not quite six years old.

But the widowed Empress Agnes appeared to be imbued with his spirit, who bequeathed her the regency. With a firm hand she grasped the helm, governing conformably to the principles of her deceased consort; and Hildebrand, upon the death of Victor II., hastened to her court, to ask her pleasure respecting his successor. She named another German prelate, a brother of the Duke of Lower Lorrain, whom Henry had offended and she hoped to conciliate, by giving his brother the triple crown. Hildebrand submissively accepted her nominee, who took the name of Stephen IX.; and if what he saw of the cabals forming to wrest the regency from the Empress mother, by showing him an opportunity in prospect, perhaps gave birth to the scheme of completely emancipating the Papal See from Imperial control, he also saw that the hour for putting the scheme in execution had not yet struck. And when upon the death of Stephen, the powerful family of Tusculum, in consi­deration of a large bribe exerting itself as of old, carried the election of a Iloman pope, Hildebrand at once denounced the election as illegal, appealed to the Empress, and prevailed upon the Roman clergy to abandon the intrusive pontiff, as an antipope, to await her decision, and finally to accept the Burgundian prelate she selected, as Pope Nicholas II.

Nicholas, like his predecessors, was implicitly governed by Hildebrand, now Cardinal Archdeacon, whose superior intellect was generally acknowledged ; and under this pontificate he took the first decided step towards relieving the popedom from that imperial sovereignty, which even in that step he distinctly admitted. He induced Nicholas to regulate papal elections, by a law which vested the right of suffrage solely in the cardinals, to the exclusion both of the other clergy and of the citizens of Rome, who had hitherto taken a sort of share in electing either

VOL. I.   E

the imperial nominee, or the candidate supported by less lawful lay power. But this law explicitly recognized the Imperial sanction as indispensable to the validity of the election.(81) Agnes was naturally displeased with this encroachment upon the prerogative, constantly exercised by her lost consort, and hitherto by herself; as the imperial right was, however, acknowledged, and she was annoyingly as awkwardly hampered by the above-mentioned cabals, she prudently confined her opposition to remonstrances against this interference of Cardinals with an Imperial prerogative.

Hildebrand nevertheless deemed it expedient to secure efficient support against future more active opposition from the Regent or her son; and this he sought in the warlike Normans, who were now masters of the great part of Magna Grecia. The twelve Norman adventurers who originally held that region in separate counties were, as before said, avowedly vassals of the Emperor. But since doing homage to Henry III., they had triumphed over an Italian confederacy for their expulsion, taking the chief con­federate, Leo IX., prisoner; when it occurred to them that a pope, almost destitute of temporal power, would be a more convenient suzerain than a mighty emperor, and they gladly transferred their homage to their holy captive. That the Emperor had not sanctioned the transfer, is a matter of course. With similar willingness, prompted by similar motives, Robert Guiscard, who by courage, prowess, and craft, had absorbed the several, counties of his brothers and other countrymen, into a duchy for himself, now met Hildebrand’s overtures ; swore allcgiance to Nicholas II, and received from him investiture of the duchy of Apulia, and of all that he should subsequently conquer from the Saracens.(82) It will be remembered that the popes claimed suzerainty over all lands won from misbe­lievers, to whomsoever they might have originally belonged.

During all these pontificates church reform had been in progress, and with respect to simony much had been effected; under that of Nicholas some attempts had been made to inforce the observance of clerical celibacy. Violent resistance was provoked, and no where more than in Lombardy. There most of the parish priests were married; and the Earl-Archbishop of Milan, in his zeal

for the spiritual independence of his See, as that of St. Ambrose, encouraged their refractory disposition. (83} The irritation produced by these circumstances led, upon the death of Nicholas, a.d. 1061, to a double papal election; the Lombard prelates, regardless of the law of the deceased Pope, electing Cadaloo Bishop of Parma, who thereupon entitled himself Honorius II., even whilst the Cardinals, duly assembled at Rome, were electing Anselmo Bishop of Lucca, who took the name of Alexander II. Both parties hastened to solicit the sanction of the Empress. The Lombard messenger was naturally the first to reach her court, and Agnes, much dissatisfied with both the new law concerning papal election, and the assumption of the right to create and give investiture of a duchy of Apulia, as also with some other of Hildebrand’s recent proceedings, confirmed the election of Cadaloo. But effective support she could not give him, this being nearly the last act of her regency, which, together with the person of her little son, was about to be violently torn from her.

The cabals against the Empress-Regent had resulted in a conspiracy of prelates, princes, and nobles, headed by Hanno, Archbishop of Cologne, Adalbert, Arch­bishop of Bremen, and Otho, previously Margrave of Nordheim, to whom Agnes, upon assuming the regency, had given the duchy of Bavaria, conferred upon herself by her late husband. The conspirators had tried to get up a rebellion against female rule; but so satisfactory to the nation had been the Regent’s government, that this was found impracticable. They then adopted a dif­ferent course. They captured the royal child by strata­gem, committing his custody and education to Hanno. This virtually gave Hanno the regency, government being administered in the name, as if by the act, of the little monarch; and the prelate’s confederates quickly became as jealous of his power, as they had previously been of the Empress-mother’s. During their struggle for the person of the young King, and for their own individual interest, they concerned themselves very little about the contest for the papacy, in which Hanno declared for Alexander, and his chief ally and rival, Adalbert, for Honorius.

The royal child, Henry IV., himself, is allowed by the less virulent amongst his enemies, to have been en­dowed by nature with all the great and good qualities that should have rendered him an excellent sovereign, But the various unintentional or intentional and conflict­ing faults of his education, went nigh to extinguish them. If, as his abductors alleged, he had been some­what over indulged by his widowed mother, the gloomily ambitious Hanno, cloaking his design under colour of severe discipline’s being indispensable to remedy such over indulgence, really endeavoured, by harshness and privations, to cow his future master into permanent sub­serviency. From Archbishop Hanno’s clutches the royal boy was cleverly rescued by Archbishop Adalbert, another able, ambitious, and unscrupulous statesman, but unlike Hanno, a patron of learning and the arts, and, according to his adversaries, an agreeable libertine. He sought to perpetuate his own authority by unfitting his royal ward for the duties and labours of the high station to which he was born, enervating his character, and plunging him into the most degrading sensuality.C84) It required very many years of the painful schooling of adversity to cor­rect the evils produced by this variously, and in the last instances, intentionally vicious education.

The ambition of the great vassals, and the maladminis­tration of worthless favourites, who won the adolescent monarch’s confidence, by fostering his follies, his passions, his vices, provoked rebellion; whilst his desire to obtain a divorce from a wife, whose only fault was having been forced upon him, inthralled him to the designing. Siegfried, Archbishop of Mainz, promised the divorce as the price of Henry’s obtaining for him the withheld tithes of Thuringia, which large province Henry 1. had united to the duchy of Saxony. The prelate got his tithes; but the monarch did not get his divorce, and by his support of the Mainz claim incurred the bitter hatred of the Saxons, whose every feeling was previously indis­posed to a Franconian Emperor. They had not yet forgiven the Franks for the Frank Charlemagne’s sub­jugation of their ancestors after a long and often repeated struggle, or his massacre of 4,500 of their ancestors after quelling one of their insurrections; they were proud of

the liberties they had extorted from the conqueror, proud of the brilliant dynasty of sovereigns they had given the Empire, and irritated at the re-transfer of the crown to a Frank of Franconian family, upon the extinction of that Saxon dynasty.

Whilst Germany was thus immersed in civil broil, intrigue, and profligacy, the contest for the tiara had been decided in Italy. Hildebrand had obtained for his Pope, already strong in the support of the Normans, the adhesion of the only other, really formidable, Italian vassal potentate, the Marchioness of Tuscany. That she vras formidable was due to the Franconian Emperors. Conrad II. had united the duchies of Tuscany and Lucca with the county of Mantua to bestow them upon Marchese Bonifacio, who seems to have retained that title rather than take the ducal, but whose excessive haughti­ness is recorded in his hesitation to sit down at the imperial table in company with some noble sub-vassals, whom the Emperor had seen fit to invite to dinner. To this arrogant Marquess, who appears to have been con­stantly increasing his dominions, Henry III. gave in marriage a niece of his mother, the Empress Gisela’s; Beatrice, daughter of Frederic Duke of Upper Lorrain, the last male of his line, whence Beatrice inherited his ample patrimony though not his duchy. The sole surviv­ing fruit of this union was the celebrated Countess Matilda. Bonifacio was accidently, or purposely slain in a hunting party, when the widowed Beatrice wedded Godfrey, the deposed Duke of Lower Lorrain, giving her daughter to his son, Godfrey the Humpbacked. The father had forfeited his duchy by rebelling against Henry III., in resentment of that Emperor’s refusal to reunite Upper and Lower Lorrain in his favour, and he perhaps in­stilled his own enmity towards Henry into his wife’s ruind. She however repaired to her imperial cousin’s court, accompanied by her daughter, to implore her new husband’s pardon. She obtained it, and even the re­storation of his duchy, but was with her daughter de­tained at the Imperial court, partly as hostages for his good conduct, partly in punishment for their having married enemies of the Empire without their suzerain’s permission. Agnes upon assuming the regency had at once released both mother jmr! daughter, sending them

honourably home; and as a further conciliatory measure, raised Godfrey’s brother, Stephen IX., to the papacy. But the German, as well as the Italian members of this mighty family, were more mindful of wrongs than of benefits. Duke Godfrey is said to have devised the stratagem by which the infant Henry IV. was in childhood stolen from his mother, and their alliance was assured to the opponents of the Emperor’s family. Alex­ander triumphed, and Honorius, despite his Lombard partisans, is ranked amongst anti-popes.

During Alexander’s pontificate of twelve years, little was done towards inforcing clerical celibacy, his energies and Hildebrand’s being still chiefly directed against simony ; but it is now that the dea of the complete emancipation of the Church from lay sovereignty first appears, suggested possibly by the disregard of her con­cerns, the heedlessness of papal movements, that the parties contending for the regency evinced, and confirmed by the vices which, disgracing Henry’s early youth, might well be judged to unfit him for the head of that Church. The idea once started, rapidly gained ground. Henry himself, looking to the Pope for the divorce he was still eagerly seeking, and implicated by the misconduct of the favourites to whom, in his reluctance to suffer business to interfere with his pleasures, he left the govern­ment of his realms, in the appearance of simony, an offence of which he seems to have been individually guiltless, tacitly sanctioned, by not resisting, papal encroachment upon his jurisdiction. For instance, he suffered a question as to the alleged uncanonical election of a Bishop of Constance to be referred to the Pope. The example thus set was followed elsewhere, and Henry looked supinely on, whilst German and Italian prelates were learning to hold their elections imperfect until confirmed by the Pope. With respect to the divorce, which was to be the recompense of such forbearance, Henry, after incurring much obloquy and enmity in its pursuit, saw, a,t length, that it was unattainable; whereupon he re­conciled himself to a wife he could not shake off, and, if still not an exemplary husband, seems to have lired. m perfect amity with her, till then* union, which gave him three children, was severed by her death.

Again* upon the death of Alexander II. in 1073, Digitized by Microsoft®

Hildebrand exhibited his professed respect for the Im­perial sovereignty. The Roman people, enthusiastically attached to the able Cardinal, whose counsels had so exalted their late pontiffs, and them in their pontiffs, at once, ere the conclave could assemble, tumultuously pro­claimed him, Hildebrand, Pope; and the Cardinals, fully sympathizing with the people, confirmed the proclamation by electing him. But Hildebrand refused to assume the papacy until Henry IV. should have ratified the election. Whilst awaiting his pleasure, although he acted pro­visionally as Pope, he signed himself only, Gregorius, in Romanum pontijicuni electus. But this was his last act of deference towards the Head of the Empire; and even the pontifical name that he took, was a symptom of disclaiming that Head’s authority; it was Gregory VII., implying that the deposed Gregory VI. had been a lawful Pope. The ratification solicited was promptly given, the youthful Emperor apparently not having conceived any suspicion of hostile designs in the new Pope.

But had he been less trusting opposition would have been unavailing, for most propitious to papal pretension was the moment at which Gregory VII. began the war. Henry, young, ill-educated, indolent, and dissolute, involved in civil broils, detested by the Saxons, and surrounded by princes eager to break the bonds in which his father and grandfather had hampered them, and to revenge themselves for having been obliged to submit, on the one side; on the other an able, experienced and resolute Pope, still in the vigour of life, if no longer young, idolized by his flock, in intimate alliance with the warlike Normans of Apulia, and zealously supported by the Great Countess, Matilda of Tuscany. But Matilda is too important a personage to the era in which she lived, as well as to the impending contest, not to require a less summary introduction.

Upon the death of her mother Matilda had succeeded to the principality granted by Conrad II. to Boniface, which the Marquess had considerably increased. His daughter through great part of her life continued to do the same, and she eventually possessed, besides the original grant of Tuscany, including with the suzerainty of Sardinia and Corsica, as Pisan property, Lucca and Mantua, the duchies of Spoleto, Parma, Modena and Reggio, the

Ferrarese, parts of the march of Ancona, and some districts of Liguria; whilst she exercised an influence, almost amounting to sovereignty, over great part of Lombardy. This powerful princess, who was usually addressed with the forms peculiar to crowned heads, was entitled in­differently Duchess, Marchioness, and Countess, but signed herself “ Matilda by the Grace of God if anything,” after

Countess. In her, the blind devotion of the nge was combined both with feminine virtues, viz., woman’s single­ness of purpose and self-sacrificing enthusiasm, and with masculine courage, energy, and abilities. In wai she habitually headed her armies in person, and is said at the early age of fifteen, whilst under maternal authority, to have led two expeditions, despatched by Marchioness Beatrice to the assistance of Alexander II. In peace her life was as nearly that of a nun, as was compatible with her princely duties. Her government was wise, just and prosperous. She was extraordinarily learned, a great patroness of science, especially of legal science, the cul­tivation of which she deemed essential to a ruler, and a great collector of books.C85) Two accusations have been brought against Matilda. The first, by old Imperialists, and modern Protestants and Infidels, is, that her attachment to Gregory VII. was of a licentious character, which might be thought satisfactorily refuted by the austere nature of both parties. Matilda, though twice married, is believed by her admirers to have died a virgin, and is so termed in her epitaph; it is certain that she speedily separated herself from both her husbands. If this refuta­tion be deemed insufficient, it may be corroborated by the observation, that she as zealously supported his pre­decessor and his successors, thus proving that her attach­ment was to the papacy not to the individual Pope. The second charge is the device of modern liberals, who tolerate popes through sheer intolerance of emperors, and ascribe to the middle ages the opinions and feelings of the nineteenth century. They allege that she cared neither for Pope, Papacy, nor Church, supporting them merely

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' She was usually called the Great

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because it was her interest so to do, because she wanted protection against Imperial enmity and rapacity. To mention this supposition is almost to refute it; for who can conceive that the powerful and energetic Matilda feared the then weak, vacillating, and harassed Henry IV., who would have purchased her friendship at any price that she could have set upon it P

Thus supported and thus favoured by circumstances, Gregory entered upon his pontificate with fearless activity, dedicated in the first instance to inforcing the celibacy of the clergy. To this end he not onlv renewed in the strongest terms the previous prohibitions and denunciations, but pronounced the rites and Sacraments of the Church worse than nugatory when administered by a married priest. The reform of this pseudo-heresy for a while absorbed his exertions, even to the neglect of what had till now seemed the great object of his life, viz., the prevention of simony. It is not unlikely that he had by this time discovered how much more useful an instrument for carrying out his views—views naturally expanding from day to day—would be a priesthood unfettered by family ties, than the existing clergy; and until he should have the command of such an instrument he might well be reluctant to alienate the young Emperor, who, what­ever his disorders, had hitherto cordially co-operated with him in his reforms, and, when not overruled by his bribed favourites, selected fitting prelates. Even, when two years later, a.d. 1075, he took steps decidedly adverse to lay patronage, and encroachments upon Imperial authority; summoning a General Council without the concurrence of the Emperor, and issuing, conjointly with this Council, a prohibition to ecclesiastics to receive investiture of abbey, or bishopric at the hands of a layman (to which investiture he now gave the name of simony), he adopted no means of inforcing that law,(86J as though he had wished it to lie a while unnoticed.

But such usurpations of authority could not pass unnoticed, even when nominal. The bare promulgation of the decree deeply offended Henry, who was thoroughly indis­posed to resign a right transmitted to him by his predeces­sors, who assumed or obtained it as a means of excluding objectionable prelates, and become actually indispensable,

since the ecclesiastics, whom Gregory sought to make inde­pendent of his authority, held ha’f his realm in fief. In fact, the Church could not acquire worldly wealth without foifeiting something of her independence. Accordingly, even Wolfgang Menzel, a liberal, and, therefore, anti imperial, but philosophic writer, observes that in this contest the aggression was always on the pr.rt of the popes, and never of the emperors, who merely strove to maintain prescriptive rights. Nowhere, except in Italy, had earlier popes professed to interfere with the election or appointment of prelates, though, when circumstances were peculiarly favourable, as in the case of a foreign prelate dying at Rome, they would obtrude a nominee upon the Chapter. In most countries the other suffragan bishops of the pro­vince, conjointly with the clergy, and originally, and still occasionally, with the laity of the diocese, pro­posed a candidate, whom the sovereign approved or rejected. If he approved, he gave investiture, and con­secration by the metropolitan, or, in the case of an archbishop sometimes by the pope, followed of course. Gradually the Chapter of the Cathedral superseded the body of the clergy, and the practice of the monarch’s re­commending a candidate began to prevail very generally, as it always had iu Germany. In Italy, chapter, clergy of the diocese, brother suffragans, laity, prince, and pope, con­tended for the right of election, and succeeded or failed, according to their relative force or address. The Pope alleged, with truth, that everywhere enormous abuses of lay patronage disgraced the Church : for instance, in Ireland many sees had become hereditary in great families, lay members of which were often appointed bishops, and dis­charged their episcopal and ecclesiastical functions through ill-paid Vicars: the archbishopric of Armagh is said to have been thus abusively held for two hundred years. But, on the other hand, abuses as gross, if different, prevailed in Italy, where there was little regular lay patronage, and where prelates sold benefices quiie as notoriously as could any lay patron.

Ilenry, disregarding the Pope’s prohibition, continued to confer sees aril abbeys as before; and, as his choice was generally good, Gregory for a while closed his eyes to the offence. But new the married clergy appealed to the

Emperor for protection for themselves and their families. The marriage of ecclesiastics was especially the cause of the Middle Orders (if the phrase may be anachronistically used when a real middle order hardly existed), to which both parish-priests and their wives belonged. In this class Henry had always found loyal subjects, staunch supporters against the rebellions of the princes and great vassals, and he, in return, cordially espoused their cause. Gregory, already exasperated by the strenuous resistance which his injunctions upon this point had encountered, not in Ger­many only, but throughout Europe, was so exasperated by this double offence of the Emperor’s, that he cast all cautious temporizing aside for ever, and resorted to decidedly hostile measures. He was perhaps confirmed in this determination by the consciousness that an alteration which he had made in the oath archbishops took at their consecration, had unobservedly secured to the papacy, prospectively at least, a more despotic sovereignty over the whole ecclesiastical body than it had yet possessed. This oath had hitherto merely expressed spiritual obedience; he changed the words to absolute subjection, and rendered the obtaining the pall contingent upon taking this slavish oath. The thraldom of the metropolitan necessarily included that of his suffragan bishops and their clergy.

Thus resolved, Gregory excommunicated, for alleged simony, five of Henry’s favourite courtiers, and commanded the monarch to dismiss from his councils and presence those whom the Church had condemned. The monarch dis­obeyed the papal mandate; whereupon the Pope summoned his sovereign to appear before the papal tribunal, there to justify, if that were possible, his conduct, denouncing ex­communication against his royal and imperial self, should he persist in his disobedience. Henry did persist in retaining his favourites, and Gregory launched the excommunication, silencing the remonstrances of his own Council against a measure conceived to be illegal, by asking whether Christ had expressly excluded kings from the flock lie com­mitted to the charge of St. Peter ? A question the more effective from Philip I. of France having, to avert a similar anathema, submitted to clear himself of simony in the form required by Gregory.

It was now open war between the Pope and the Emperor. German and Italian synods, Convoked by the Emperor, and

UiyHiZGU'Dy IVJiCi OoOr    1

comprising the chief prelates of either country, formally deposed the Pope upon the accusation of hostile Italian cardinals, who charged him with every crime, every vice. Gregory received due notice of these proceedings, and forthwith prospectively deposed the Emperor, should he not by a certain day have submitted so fully to the Church, even admitting the Pope’s arbitration or judg­ment between himself and his rebellious subjects, as to have merited and received absolution. A second Lom­bard synod retaliated, by excommunicating the deposed Pope.

The state of the Church and the Empire, out of which this warfare rose, required a somewhat detailed explana­tion ; its progress may be more concisely despatched. The German rebels, in furtherance of their own views, promptly acknowledged the right of arbitiation assumed by Gre­gory ; and in the end Henry found it expedient to purchase absolution, by submitting to a painful and humiliating penance. For so submitting he has been severely condemned as mean and dastardly; but what­ever his faults, and by this time bitter experience had pretty well corrected them, mean or dastardly Henry never was. His censurers both forget the ills consequent upon the sentence, when its power over the public mind was absolute,(87) and measure him by a standard of later times. In thoss days, the highest in station and proudest in character, submitted unhesitatingly to every penance imposed by the Church. Without recurring to the Em­peror Theodosius, grovelling in sackcloth, and ashes at the church-door, before Archbishop Ambrose, it may suffice to observe that, not only had Henry’s predecessor, the canonized Henry II., done penance, barefoot and in sackcloth, at a church-door, in expiation of a silly practical joke upon a bishop; but that his own energetic rather, Henry III., and the haughty Marchese Bonifacio, had, as a church penance, submitted to be scourged. The idea was suggested by Gregory’s arrogant as brutal prolongation of the painful situation; and surely, had Henry, after he had begun, refused to persevere in standing barefoot end fasting in the snow, his so doing would have been imputed to effeminate impatience of cold and hunger.(E8J

But perhaps it watt yet iil >ie the failure of Henry’s Digitized by Microsoft®

penance and imperfect absolution to effect its object, that has given the transaction the aspect of Gregory’s triumph, and, consequently, of Henry’s defeat. For the absolution so arduously purchased availed him little. His excommunication had been but the pretence of princes who sought to supplant him, and when deprived of that they found others. Gregory certainly now, if not before, extended his views from the emancipation of the Church to the subjection of the Emperor, whom he sought not, however, to degrade in relation to any save the Pope, since the greater the servant the greater the master. In pursuance of his claim to judge between monarch and subjects, between king and anti-king, he again summoned his sovereign to appear before his tribunal, and clear himself from his subjects’ accusations. This was claiming temporal sovereignty, not spiritual authority; and Henry, who perhaps regretted having fruitlessly humbled him­self, refused to humble the Imperial dignity. Gregory, thereupon, sanctioned the election of an anti-king, Henry acknowledged an anti-pope, and on both sides the ex­asperation daily increased. The German Emperor now found his best support in Italy, in the Lombard clergy of all ranks, even in a Roman synod; and, in spite of Matilda, he installed his anti-pope in the Lateral), and besieged Gregory in the Castle of St. Angelo. Gregory was in imminent danger of capture, when Robert Guiscard brought a Norman army to rescue him, in doing which lie burnt Rome from the Lateran to the Coliseum. Gregory accompanied his deliverers to Salerno ; and there, the Romans being too much irritated by the disaster attending his rescue to admit of his return, he died in exile. His death was consonant to, and illustrative of, his character. When entreated, in proof of his forgiveness of his enemies, to absolve all whom he had excommunicated, he said, “ With the exception of Henry, styled by his followers King of Germany, of Guibert, the usurping pretender to the Roman See (Henry’s Pope), and of those who, by advice or assistance, promote their evil and ungodly views” [that is to say, of all his own enemies], “ I absolve and bless all men.” And after tins tolerably comprehen­sive, unchristian exception, his last words were, “ Because I have loved justice, and hated iniquity, therefore do I die in exile.”

The death of Gregory was of no advantage to Henry. ITis successors, Victor III., Urban II., and Pascal II., whom the Cardinals, as a corollary from the newly-asserted independence of the Church, successively elected without the slightest reference to the Emperor, pursued the same object with Gregory; and, being in every way inferior to him, pursued it, especially Urban, with more unscrupu­lous virulence. And they were supported as zealously as he had been by the Great Countess, whose excessive piety seems to have so hood-winked her powerful intellect, as to blind her to the criminality of the papal course. Urban II., as Head of the Church, stirred up Henry’s second wife, a Russian Princess, called Adelaide or Agnes (this last being the German form of the Russian Yanka), to accuse him of the most improbable as well as most revolting offences ; stiired up his two sons successively to revolt and snatch at their father’s crown. And the eldest, Conrad, whom his father had left in Italy as Imperial Vicar, or Viceroy, must have requited some seducing, since he is described as of so reverentially filial a nature, that even in rebellion he never would suffer his father to be spoken of disrespectfully in his hearing; but his excessive piety threw him into the hands of papal emissaries. When they had served the Pope’s purpose, both he and his stepmother died neglected, not improbably of mortification and repentance; the son at the court of the Great Countess, no longer his patroness, the wife in a nunnery. Matilda was accused by Henry’s friends of poisoning both, to prevent their retracting their accusa­tions. Put the accusers of Matilda have not even attempted to support the charge, which is as utterly repug­nant to her character, as it is a fearful, and surely slanderous, exaggeration of Urban’s recklessness in the pursuit of his object. It will be seen in the course of the narrative that, in those days, the premature death of a person of consequence was invariably ascribed to poison; a melan­choly characteristic of the age, however innocent might be the accused. The second son, Henry, ambitious, unscrupulous, energetic, and able, wouii' need little stimulus beyond his own impatience, to wrest all remaining power from the father, who had already procured the ungratefnl son’s election and coronation, as his own subord ■ nate colleague and future successor. The Emperor was Digitized by Microsoft®

now weakened by the Crusade, which had robbed him of his best warrior, in one of his most loyal vassals, Godfrey of Lower Lorrain, the nephew and adopted heir of Matilda’s first husband, and of many faithful adherents among the inferior nobles, while none of the rebellious princes had taken the Cross. The towns, indeed, were steady in their , loyalty. Worms expelled her Bishop for his disloyalty, and was rewarded with chartered rights, as also by be­coming Henry IV.’s favourite residence. Bodies of the yet unfree mechanics, who had hitherto borne arms only to defend their walls, followed him to the field under the Heads of their Guilds. Even the peasantry repeatedly rose in arms to defend their persecuted Emperor, although the nobles when victorious, punished, what they called the presumption of villeins, by the most horrible mutila­tion of their prisoners. But grief at this second filial defection had overwhelmed the unhappy father. The Emperor failed his friends, dying of a broken heart.

To the Pope, this fruit of their machinations was, for the moment, the reverse of profitable. Henry V., upon the throne, adopted the imperial policy for pursuing which he, professedly, had rebelled against his father, and he acted upon it with all the vigour of his character and of his youth. He first reduced his realm to such tranquillity that war was felt to be hopeless, and even Matilda frankly proffered the oath of allegiance, only stipulating not to be required to assist against the papal see. Henry, who just then wanted not her contingent, and admired this prototype of our own Elizabeth, assented, visited her to receive her homage, addressed her as a mother, and ap­pointed her Imperial Vicar in Lombardy. He then approached Home in such force, that Pascal II. at once proposed a compromise. of the grand question of the right of investiture. This Pope’s main object evidently was to get rid of the homage done by ecclesiastics to laymen; and to accomplish this he offered, on behalf of the Church, to resign all fiefs for which homage was done, in consideration of the Emperor’s relinquishing the pretended right of investiture; the Church thenceforward subsisting upon tithes and free gifts. Henry readily agreed to a plan that would place half of Germany and no small part of Italy in his hands, and proceeded to Rome for his coronation.

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But prior to the ceremony the treaty was to be signed, and, for this purpose, first read aloud in St. Peter’s church. Henry entertained so much apprehension as to the pro­bable reception of the terms, that he would not enter the Basilica until the guard of every door was given to his troops. Then he presented himself, and the treaty was read; when the cardinals, prelates, and clergy present, vehemently protested against such spoliation. A tumult arose; Pascal confessed his inability to fulfil the con­ditions he had himself proposed. Henry thereupon pronounced the treaty void, and the Pope refused to crown him. The Emperor now seized Pope and Cardi­nals, carrying them off as prisoners; and the Holy Father, to redeem himself and them from captivity, signed another treaty, recognizing and confirming the Imperial right of giving investiture. He was released; he crowned Henry Emperor, and as a free agent ratified the treaty he had signed in prison, further pledging him­self never to excommunicate the Emperor. A Boman Synod, nevertheless, cancelled the treaty, as having been extorted under duress, and excommunicated Henry V. ;(8<J) Pascal submitting to the decision of the Synod. Again war raged between Pope and Emperor, and, thereby en­kindled, also between the Emperor and many of the Princes of the Empire.

The death of the Great Countess soon afterwards com­plicated the quarrel, by adding a new, and long continuing cause of contention, of which a few words will explain the nature, to those already dividing the Spiritual and Tem­poral Heads of Christendom. Matilda, after the death of her first consort, Godfrey the Humpbacked, finding herself a childless widow in middle-age, without near relations, alienated from her nearest, the Emperor, and im­pelled by her devotion to the papal see, made a deed of gift of her possessions to that see, merely reserving to herself a life interest therein. At a later peri ad. In order to gain an important partisan to the Pope, she contracted a second marriage. The partisan to be gained was the Italian Welf, Duke of Bavaria. This Welf, son of the Welf Cunegunda by Marchese Azzo d’Este, already a very considerable Italian prince, upon the death of his uncle Welf, the last male of that old and illustrious Swabian family, had, by Henry IV.’s permission, been Digitized by Microsoft®

invited from Italy, to become the heir and representative of the Welfs. He married the daughter of the rebel Duke of Bavaria and joined in his rebellion; had subsequently obtained the duchy as the price of deserting his father-in- law, and since then had been faithful to Henry IV.(90-) But what fidelity could be proof against the idea of uniting the splendid dominions of Matilda, to his duchy of Bavaria, and his ample possessions in this duchy and in Swabia ? Welf the son wedded the elderly Matilda, and Welf the father rebelled against the Emperor. But all parties were disappointed by the results of these unhallowed political nuptials. The temper and habits of the Great Countess were ill fitted to brook marital control; and young Welf, when he found the possessions, to obtain which he had sacrificed himself, would never be his, was little disposed to conciliate their delusive mistress.(91) The ill-assorted pair soon parted, and the angry Duke of Bavaria became once more the faithful, if the word must be so prostituted, vassal of Henry IV.

Such being the position of the Great Countess, at her death Henry V. claimed, and took posession of her fiefs, as lapsed to the crown for want of natural heirs, and of her allodial lands as next of kin. Pascal II. produced the deed of gift, in virtue of which, the wording of the deed being indefinite—Matilda’s own intentions are still a disputed question—(92) he claimed her whole heritage, fiefs which were not her’s to give, as well as allodia, while the Emperor denied her right so to dispose even of the allodia, as to alienate them from the empire; and her widower, Welf, asserted, though he attempted not to in­force, his right to inherit the property of his wife. The war between Pope and Emperor was now fiercer than ever; but Henry kept possession of the Matildan heritage, and installed an anti-pope, elected by the Romans at his in­stigation in the Lateran.

At length in 1123 this long strife between the two Heads of Christendom was, if not ended yet, temporarily suspended by a treaty, termed indifferently the Calixtine Concordat, from the name of the Pope, Calixtus II., with whom it was concluded, and the Peace of Worms from the place where the negotiation was carried on. This treaty settled the question of investiture by a compromise; Digitized by Microsoft®

the Emperor relinquishing the right of conferring see, or abbey, by ring and crozier, and the Pope recognizing his right to give with the sceptre investiture of, and to rcceive homage for, the fiefs and temporalities belonging to such see or abbey; and further recognizing his right to 1)3 present, either in person or by deputy, at the election of prelates, and to decide in cases of double or disputed elections. The right of pronouncing upon the fitness of the person elected, the Pope reserved to himself or the Metropolitan ; but the Emperors, by refusing investitures, still managed to reject prelates whom they did not choose to intrust with the fiefs of the see.

This Calixtine Concordat has been represented as a complete victory gained by Henry V., and it did, in fact, give up one point which the more zealous popes, especially Pascal II., were bent upon carrying. This was the ex­emption of ecclesiastics fiom doing homage to a layman; the exemption of haiids that had held the consecrated host, from being placed in hands reeking from bloodshed or midnight orgies, in the hands of one devoted to worldly business, if not to worldly pleasures. Nevertheless it was not an unfair compromise; the Emperor, on his part, relinquishing the assumed right of giving the 'hurch office or dignity, whilst he retained his sovereignty over the temporalities attached to that office or dignily. Thus a step toward* the emancipation of the Church from lay sovereignty, this certainly was; the magnitude of which, that is to say, the degree of imperial power over the election of prelates remaining, depended much upon the order of the proceeding, whether investiture were to precede or follow consecration, a point which Calixtus had, ki all likelihood, purposely left questionable, so that the order most favourable to the papacy might be claimed under more propitious circumstances. Upon this ground the victory has been claimed for the Pope; but a more real victory, is the virtual abandonment of the imperial claim to authority in papal elections, of which no mention is made. The treaty took no notice of the contention for the Matildan heritage. Cali::tus disgraced his partial victory by his brutal treatment of the forsaken anti-pope Burdino, Archbishop of Braga, a man of exemplary cha­racter and venerable age, whom, after subjecting him to

insulting exposure, he imprisoned for life, and that not even in a monastery, but in the dungeon of a fortress.

Two vears after the conclusion of this treaty Henry V. died without children; the epoch selected for the open­ing of the ensuing history. But ere commencing the regular narrative, this preliminary sketch must be com­pleted by a survey, first of the political changes wrought by the half century of strife between the spiritual and temporal authorities, and then of the state of letters, of the arts, and of society, in the year 1125.

That all the princes and great vassals prodigiously increased their power, during a life-long strife in which both parties courted their favour, was a matter of course; this was especially the case in Germany, and in none was this increase more striking than in the spiritual princes. The llhine Archbishops now held themselves actual eccle­siastical princes, of the character of the national Dukes, and the Archbishop of Mainz was decidedly the first prince of the Empire. The other prelates, while not attempting to vie with their acknowledged chiefs, had maintained their relative position. But if exalted in relation to the Emperor, Doth by their acquisition of power and by the Calixtine Concordat, the Clergy was degraded in relation to the Pope. His authority over the whole body was now despotic, and the instincts of despotism revealed themselves in jealousy of intermediate authorities. He withdrew much of their natural business from the prelates, to commit it to officers of his own ; the pre­lates, excluded from their proper sphere of activity, turned their ambition more entirely to secular objects ; and much of the corruption, from which Henry III. and Gregory VII. had cleared tire Church, is said to have reappeared.

A simultaneous change had occurred in the constitution of the Cathedral Chapters. Much liberty in electing their bishops and archbishops they had not gained, having simply exchanged imperial for papal dictation; but during the struggle they liacl pretty generally emancipated them­selves from all annoyance of claustral restraint, having established themselves in separate houses, and discharging their ecclesiastical duties through salaried vicars. These changes rendered stalls in a chapter objects of desire to nobles, even to princes, as provision for younger sons; Digitized by Microsoft ®

and they began to be so occupied, to the gradual exclusion of men of humbler birth, who had formerly obtained them either as the remuneration of teachers in the Cathedral schools, as the recompense of learning and talent, or to afford means of pursuing profound studies untroubled, by the necessity of earning a subsistence; and such labo­riously studious canons had been permitted, in order to escape interruptions by their ecclesiastical duties, to per­form these vicariously. Intense study had then been deemed the only excuse for such a transfer of duty, or for holding more than one church benefice, upon neither of which was there now, practically, any restriction. These noble Chapters, when allowed to choose their prelate, elected only their noble kinsmen; and plebeian bishops, though still occurring, became rare exceptions.

In the lay vassalage, the chief alteration to be noted appeared in the position of the Ministeriales, Germanic,& Dienstleute, and Anglice household officers, or servants of princes and monarchs. These ministeriales had long been held in supreme contempt by the Germans, as menials; and originally, no doubt, all the officers of the palace, except the Chaplain and Palsgrave or palace judge, were so; nor is it recorded when or how the non free, or the very lowest of the free, were supplanted in the upper department of palace service, by haughty nobles. It may, however, be conjectured that the influence which these menials, like the freedmen of ancient Rome, would naturally acquire by being constantly about the Emperor’s person, early excited envy, ana that the real importance of their posts—for it has been seen there was no regular ministry, the chief Chaplain acting as the Emperor’s Secretary, while his treasures were in the custody of the despised ministerialis his Chamberlain, through whose hands all public money passed—would gradually render those posts objects of ambition. Rut still, long after the highborn had judged it expedient to condescend to be imperial ministeriales, they incurred such degradation, thereby, partly because becoming subject to the jurisdiction of the Palace Judge, as to be deemed unfit to ntermarry with nobles owing none but military service. The praciice of remunerating the higher minis­teriales with fiefs held by military service, combined

with the real power they acquired, gradually modified this contempt, till at length it so completely died away, that Princes of the Empire, even national Dukes, accepted such Imperial household offices as Arch-Chamberlain, Arch­Marshal and the like, upon state occasions performing in person the offices thereunto belonging. For the ordinary service of the palace, nobles or princes of inferior dignity held the posts of Chamberlain, &c.; as some less exalted bishops did that of Chancellor. The imperial household offices do not appear to have as yet become hereditary.

The princes of the Empire had followed the example of their sovereign in elevating the character of their households, though they had not like him a double set of noble officers. In Saxony, which, as before said, was the most free and least feudal part of Germany, this disdain of household service was not yet extinct, though slowly subsiding. It was still thought derogatory, except in the imperial and perhaps the ducal palaces, and those of the least affluent Saxon nobles who did so far con­descend, chose the service of an ecclesiastical prince, as less degrading than that of a lay-prince who might himself be the ministerialis of another.

But the most permanently important change that had occurred, was perhaps in the condition of towns ; they had made a stride towards that of Free Imperial Cities. When the distress of Henry IV. led to their forming, for the first time, an integral part of a feudal army, the patricians acted as their chivalry, the richer citizens and traders as an inferior cavalry, and the poorer with the non-free mechanics were the infantry of these urban corps. The cities had thus felt their strength. Henry IV. rewarded them with charters, allowing them to elect their own magistrates, though he dreamt not of those magistrates superseding or interfering with his own Burgrave in immediate, or the Lord’s Steward in mediate towns. Henry V., as lawful sovereign, learned to prize the loyalty, that had opposed him during his rebellion, and, as before said, enfranchised all the city handicraftsmen,(93) thus authorizing them to bear arms. But though the guild organization was quite as well adapted for civic broils, for resisting oppression or extorting concessions, as for Digitized by Microsoft®

war, city ambition was as yet confined to the city aris­tocracy. No humbler citizen thought of disputing its authority, unless perhaps in Lower Lorrain where the democratic principle was earliest developed. East of the Rhine it was this city aristocracy only, that the conscious­ness of city power had, as yet, filled wiih ambition of ampler rights; that purchased or extorted concessions from their mesne Lords, or obtained from the Emperor new charters, often granting the most whimsical rights and privileges; as e.g. that the military service of the citizens should never remove them to such a distance as to prevent their going home to sleep.

In Italy the few great vassals remaining had, indeed, like their German brethren, increased in power; but the habitually absent emperor was to them so convenient a sovereign, that they sought not to weaken him further, still less to put one of themselves in his place. They were generally loyal, as were the prelates, whom the new reforms in the Church had irritated against the pope. The lesser nobles and sub-vassals or vavassours, who regarded the princes as their oppressors, of course embraced the opposite party, and were papalists or anti-imperialists.

In the Lombard cities a combination of circumstances had awakened a passion for liberty, or what they thought such, violent as are all Italian passions. Gregory V1 L, when the Lombard clergy so determinately resisted his will, sought a stay against them in the citizens. To this end Matilda courted and humoured the cities, to some conceding chartered rights, in others suffering her prerogatives as suzerain to slumber. The cities naturally supported the party to which they were so much indebted, although their gratitude was insufficient to induce them to rest content with the rights and privileges spontaneously granted. Lombard, and even Tuscan towns, Florence being one, had revolted against the Great Countess in her latter years; with all the energy of her youth she led her forces against the rebels, anil in general compelled sub­mission. But not even the Great Countess could always triumph over the awakened spirit of the age, and some cities extorted further concessions from her. Pisa, which alone in Tuscany had hitherto resisted both Bonifacio and his daughter, which had risen to such commercial

prosperity, that Matilda’s Chaplain and Biographer, Dom- nitza, terms it a godless city, swarming with Turks, Syrians, Parthians, Chaldeans, and other Heathen. Pisa had obtained from Henry IV. the strange promise not to appoint another Marquess of Tuscany, without the concurrence of this, his ever loyal, city. After the death of Matilda, the contest for her heritage offered an oppor­tunity of which many Lombard and Tuscan cities availed themselves to usurp those rights and privileges that had excited their desires. Some Piedmontese cities followed their example, and threw off the yoke of the Marquess of Susa, or rather of the Earl of Savoy, for this marquisate having passed to the Lords of Maurienne by marriage, the title of Marquess seems to have been dropped, and the lesser to have been blended with the more consi­derable principality, into the County of Savoy. These cities organized their male population for war, in a manner very analogous to what has been described in Germany. They entitled themselves Comune, anglice, Commonwealth, but the independence to which they aspired being only of their immediate Lords, they dreamt not as yet of disowning the authority of the Emperor. They elected their magistrates, but did so subject to the Emperor’s approbation. They received an imperial officer as their governor, and in episcopal cities the Emperor usually so appointed the Bishop, partly because the bishops were in general imperialists, and partly to augment the power of bis own deputy, by the union of spiritual with temporal authority. Under this Governor were the Consuls, selected from the aristocracy of the city, and in general, two of the before mentioned elected Councils; the one Great Council of which every free­man was a member, being found inconveniently numerous. As to the manner in which elections were conducted some uncertainty or confusion appears to exist, probably because it was different in different places, but always more or less complicated.

Very early in the career of these cities, the smaller nobles in their neighbourhood had found it desirable to seek their protection against the tyranny of the Princes; and obtfired it by enrolling themselves among the citizens, which obliged them to reside six months of every year Digitized by Microsoft®

within the walls. More considerable nobles by degrees followed their example, and one and all converted their city mansions into strong towers, whence the lordly owners waged war with each other, or defied the authorities. If every citizen, who could afford it, emulated his superiors by converting his mansion into a fortress,(9*) as with respect to some towns is said, this fact may explain the prodigious number of such towers in every considerable city. Yet even this hypothesis cannot give probability to the statement, that Pisa in the eleventh century, with a population of 200,000 souls contained 10,000 such towers, one for every twenty inhabitants.

Consciousness of strength awoke ambition, and amongst the cities that strove to enslave their feebler neighbours, Milan stood pre-eminent. Her archbishop-earl had long been the most powerful prince in Lombardy; one of these arrogant prelates having presented Otho I., at his coronation, to the pops, every subsequent archbishop had claimed the right so to present the future emperor. Milan was excited to emulation by her prelate’s grandeur, even while struggling to free herself from his authority; a struggle begun by a confederation of the non-noble, calling itself La, Motta, as early as the eleventh century. By the year 1125 she had subjugated Como, Crema, and Cremona, and was at war with Lodi. The equally powerful Genoa and Pisa were pretty much engrossed by their commercial pursuits, by their rivalry with each other everywhere, and with Venice in the eastern Medi­terranean, and by their wars between themselves for the exclusive possession of Sardinia and Corsica. The more powerful and far more republican Queen of the Adriatic, Venice, though she transferred her allegiance backwards and forwards, as seemed most propitious to her actual independence, was too much absorbed in her concerns at Constantinople and in Syria, diversified by her wars with Hungary for portions of the opposite Dalmatian coast, where the very year of Henry V.’s death she took Zara, to concern herself much about Italian politics. Rome, delighted as she had at first been with the suc­cessful ambition of her Popes, was soon infected with the republican aspirations of her northern sisters, which revived the recollections of her own classical, republican Digitized by Microsoft ®

grandeur. She often rebelled against her pontifical ruler, as often supported him against the Liege Lord of both, the Emperor; and yet oftener warred with her neigh­bours, whom she required, as of yore, to bow their necks to her yoke.

Another change had occurred in Southern Italy, or, at least, in Sicily, but little connected with these dissensions. The Arab Emirs of Sicily had thrown off their dependence upon Egypt, in order to divide the island amongst them­selves. But the division soon gave rise to quarrels; and thus weakened, the Normans found them an easv prey. Roger, the youngest brother of Robert Guiscard, con­quered them; and, forming the island into a county, assumed the title of Earl of Sicily, and was succeeded by his son, Roger II. Robert Guiscard was also dead, and had been succeeded in his duchy of Apulia by a son, and then by a grandson, William, the reigning Duke.

SECTION IV.

INTELLECTUAL, ARTISTIC, AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF EUROPE IN THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

In order as far as may be to complete this preliminary sketch, it only remains to say something of the learning, the literature, the arts, the opinions, the feelings, and the habits, that characterized the period under consideration. Unfortunately the information to be gathered upon the latter points, those by which the sovereigns of the Swabian dynasty, their adversaries, their subjects, and their con­temporaries in general, must be judged, is very scanty. The annalists, who recorded what they deemed material, could have no presentiment of the curiosity of a later age concerning the manners, sentiments, ideas, aud knowledge of their times. They, naturally enough from their very

VOL. I.   F

ignorance, conceived that they had reached the culminating point of civilization, refinement, and knowledge ; that pro­gress, and, it was to be hoped, change, were over, and pos­terity had only to preserve what their fathers had gained. Hence, whilst the Academical institutions and the sur­viving productions of those early ages afford a tolerable basis for estimating their learning, their literature, and their arts, the degree of civilization then existing can only be inferred from the laws, from occasional complaints of increasing luxury, which show what that luxury was, and from actions or anecdotes incidentally mentioned. It will be well, therefore, to begin with that of which most is or can be known.

At no period were letters and the arts actually extinct throughout Europe as they have been represented. In the Constantinopolitan Empire, where Greek was still a living language, both, howmuchsoever degenerated, were, as long as that Empire existed, always, for their own sake, appreciated and cultivated; whilst in western Europe, the preservation of classical literature from utter oblivion appears to have been mainly, if not wholly, owing to the exclusive use of the Latin language in all the rites of the Roman Catholic Church, which rendered some know­ledge of that dead language imperative upon the clergy. The language that ecclesiastics in all countries were obliged to learn, naturally became their medium of com­munication with their supreme Head, at Rome, and with each other. For the acquisition of Latin, schools were necessary; and, accordingly, there is no century in which mention of schools is not found, especially in Italy. There Latin chroniclers and Latin versifiers, historians and poets they are not to be called, are likewise constantly found , and the names of the librarians of the papal library are handed down in an almost unbroken series, as those of important personages At the schools in question the trivium, as it was denominated, consisting of grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, appears to have been pretty generally taught, in addition to the Latin language. Not so the quadrivivm, which, comprising music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, was long thought to require extraordinary mental powers and energies, both in teachers and in students, for its acquisition, and was attempted only

at the superior seats of learning, then termed High Schools. The objects and merits of this trivium. and quadrivium were at once celebrated and impressed upon the pupil’s memory in the following contemporary distich: —

Gramm. loquitur, Dia. vera docet, llhet. verba collocat,

Mus. canit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit astra.

There appeal's, however, to have been an incipient, if not a growing opinion, that, even together, the trivium and quadrimum did not comprise the whole realm of science, since at York Alcuin names jurisprudence, natural history, poetry, chronology, and divinity, as additional studies.(95) In these High Schools were educated the earliest revivers of letters, as the Goth, Jornandes, the Anglo-Saxons, Bede and Alcuin, the Lombard, Paulus Diaconns, the Frank, Eginhart; and, from one of the Italian schools, Charle­magne obtained one of his first, if not his very first, classical instructor.(9<>) The ninth century produced a prodigy of learning in the Apulian Sergio, who is recorded as, with equal and perfect fluency, reading out, at sight, a Greek book in Latin, and a Latin book in Greek ; and who produced two sons, one named Gregorio, as learned as himself; the other, Bishop of Naples, and canonized as S10' Atanasio.

If any epoch of actual extinction, or even of complete lethargy there were, it was in Italy, during the tenth century, with which it was confidently believed the world itself was to end. For so brief a remnant of existence, it seems to have been thought scarcely worth while—at least, by the Italians—to earn fame by laborious study. If the French Gerbert, as Fope Sylvester II., showed that in other countries this opinion was less prevalent, so com­pletely was he an exception amongst his Italian contem­poraries, that by them he was abhorred as a sorcerer, on account of the learning he had acquired in the schools of the Spanish Arabs. But in the very beginning of the following century, when the universe was found to have survived the fated year 1000, a gleam of light stole over the midnight gloom, brightening as the century advanced. Early in its first half a learned society established a school at Bologna, for grammar and logic; other studies- were gradually added to these; and in the second

F 3

lialf of this same century, Irnerius, Wernerius, or Guar- nerius, as the name is variously given, under the especial protection of the Countess Matilda, founded a Chair of Roman or civil law. For the idea that the civil law had been entirely forgotten, until revived by the discovery of a copy of Justinian’s Pandects at Amalfi, a.d. 1135, is proved to be erroneous, both by this professorship of civil law at Bologna, and by the occasional reference to the various books bearing Justinian's name, Code, Institutes, Novels, and even to the Pandects themselves, found in older writers.C9?) In this study Bologna speedily rose to celebrity.

Gregory VII. now commanded everv bishop to open a school, in connexion with his Cathedral, in which in­struction should be gratuitously given, the remuneration or maintenance of the teachers, of course always priests, being provided for by prebends, or other benefices, appro priated to that purpose. The command was not, indeed, universally obeyed; but still many schools professing to teach the trivium, and some even the quadrivium, were opened by chapters and monasteries throughout Italy.(9>s) Of these, the school appertaining to the abbey of Montecas- sino, in the duchy of Benevento, was the most distinguished. The monks of Montecassino, who then supplied great part of Europe with prelates, and saw more than one of their abbots seated in St. Peter’s Chair, long retained their pre­eminence in learning, and especially in astronomy. One of their number, a converted African Mussulman, named Constantine, is said to have travelled through Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, and India, studying all sciences, though applying himself more particularly to medicine; to have been master of ten languages, and to have translated many astronomical and medical works out of Arabic into Latin. The profound science of Constantine insured success to the school of medicine that Robert Guiscard founded at Salerno, and which was speedily renowned as the best in Christendom. It was much frequented by Jews, having not unfrequently as many as six hundred students of that nation.

Tt should seem to be about this century that the copying of MSS. began actually to supersede agriculture, as the occu­pation of monks, and was equally cultivated by nuns. An Abbot of St. Albans is reported to have always had two

or three penmen at work in his own apartment, and to have made the presence of one transcriber at least an in­dispensable rule of the abbey.(") One consequence of this new pursuit was, that the habit of writing led to trying original compositions, and monkish chroniclers now appear; another, that cloisters for either sex beginning to pride themselves upon their libraries, a saying became current, that a monastery without a library, was like a castle without an armoury. But the reader will not, it is to be hoped, suffer the word to place before his mind’s eye the vision of a modern library ; so understood, it were but the mirage of the sandy desert. The smallest conceivable number of volumes was honoured with the appellation; and Danish annalists of the ninth century, in lamenting the destructive ravages of pirates, designate a beautiful copy of the Bible, which they carried off or burnt, a Bibliotheca. Such as they were, however, libraries were now indispensable in cloisters; and henceforward, amongst the regular monastic posts, are constantly found those of Librarian, of Archivist, or keeper of the conventual archives, deeds, and documents, almost as certainly as that of Cellarer; and occasionally that of Chronicler.

The learning, the intellectual cultivation of the eleventh century, in the highest perfection of which they were susceptible, could hardly be better exemplified than in Lanfranco of Pavia, and his scholar, Anselmo of Aosta, both of whom died Archbishop of Canterbury. Both were skilful jurists, as well as profound metaphysicians and theologians, according to the, then prevalent, scholastic philosophy and theology. Nor let this last clause be understood in a sense depreciatory either of these remark­able men, or of the studies to whicli their lives were dedi­cated. If the subtleties of scholasticism, which both origi­nated and resulted in the endeavour to adapt theology to Aristotle’s dialectics, or these to the dogmas of theology, as the reader may please to take it, were unduly admired by our remote ancestors, they have been quite as unduly ridiculed by our more immediate progenitors. They were suited to the mental condition and wants of those times; and well and fairly has the judicious Historian of the Middle Ages described the merits and the evils of this system of philosophy, or scheme of philosophizing. He says, “It Digitized by Microsoft ®  '

gave rise to u great display of address, subtlety, and sagacity, in tbe explanation and distinction of abstract ideas, but at the same time to many trifling and minute speculations, to a contempt of positive and particular know­ledge, and to much unnecessary refinement.” Surely, as such, it was at the very least a good exercise for untrained mental faculties, scantily provided with means of ac­quiring information — a course of gymnastics, useful in developing and strengthening the human mind, to be laid aside, like other educational processes, in the maturity of that mind. And is it not sufficient justification of scholasticism, in its proper season, to state that Leibnitz held Descartes, in whom France still glories, indebted to the forgotten and disdained Monologion and Prosologion of Anselmo for much of his philosophy, and especially for his celebrated argumentative demonstration of the existence of the Deity.(100)

To return from the philosophy to its professors. Lan- franco, a man of the highest, it is said, of princely birth, was educated at the High School of Bologna, and accord­ing to some accounts became a Professor of law there. If he did, it was not for long, since he returned to his native city, Pavia, there to practice with great success and high reputation as a causidino, or jurisconsult. But his passion for learning rendered the business of bis pro­fession irksome, and he quitted Pavia for the High School of Paris, though quite as much to teach as to learn, since he is averred to have first introduced there the study of logic, metaphysics, and scholastic philosophy. But he wanted leisure to Increase his own stores of knowledge, and impatient of losing that leisure in teaching others, retired to the newly-built abbey of Bee, in Normandy, and there took tbe monastic vows, in order to study in peace. Again he was disappointed. Thither, those who had studied under him ir. Paris followed him; again he was obliged to teach, and the school of Bee became famous. Lanfranco was elected Abbot, and resided there, till called thence by William Duke of Normandy, who employed him as statesman and embassador, and, when seated upon the English throne, made him Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselmo trod in Lanfranco’s every footstep; like him studied at Bologna, studied and taught at Paris, became digitized by Microsot’

tlie scholar of Lanfranco at Bee, succeeded him there as Abbot, and at his death succeeded him as Archbishop of Canterbury. It is worth noticing of this scholastic primate that he was the first high dignitary, spiritual or temporal, who after the conquest protected instead of oppressing the Saxons.(i°l) The respectful admiration then felt for learning is happily shown by a little incident of Lanfranco’s later career. Having occasion, when Archbishop of Canterbury, to visit Rome, he of course waited upon the Pope, Alexander II., when His Holiness rose to receive him, observing as he did so, that he paid such honours not to the Primate of England, but to the Master of Learning.(i02)

After this general survey of the state of learning and literature, a more particular notice of their condition in the different countries of Europe, at the epoch in question, must be taken. In England, throughout the earlier centuries, the learning of the day, with the addition of the Greek language, introduced in the seventh century by Theodore, the papally appointed, Cireek Archbishop of Canterbury, continued to be taught at the Schools of Oxford, Cambridge, and, as has been seen, of York. In the eighth century the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin was, if not the first, seemingly the most valued, of the classical preceptors of Charlemagne, and his chief agent in carrying out his designs for the revival of letters. Irish High Schools appear to have been, in these early ages, quite as well reputed as the English. Indeed Moore asserts that classical literature and theology were introduced into northern Anglo-Saxon England from Ireland, by the exiled heir of the kingdom of Northumberland, who, being educated in the sister island, when recalled to ascend the throne, took his Irish preceptor, St. Aidan, home with him, and gave him Lindisfearne or Holy Island, where the Saint founded the celebrated monastery of that name.

Nay such powerful reasoners were these Irish schoolmen, that one of them, Feargil, Latinized into Virgilius, is said to have, in the eighth century, by sheer ratiocination divined the spherical form of the earth. His contemporary, the Anglo-Saxon missionary, Winfned, canonized as St. Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans, was terrified at Digitized by Microsoft®

so new fangled a heresy, till satisfied by Pope Zachary that such notions were not incompatible with the doctrines of Christianity.

But the intellectual peculiarity chiefly distinguishing the British islands is that in them the living languages appear to have been, if not first cultivated, yet first written; that is to say, the then In ing languages; and the honour of thus taking the lead, does not surely turn upon the survival of the language, but upon those who spoke it having been the first to feel, that the language of life, of thought, and of passion, elsewhere disdained as the vulgar tongue, the name then given to all non-classical languages, was as capable of expressing lofty sentiments and important philosophic truths, as the Latin. Thus whilst science and the classics were taught, after the manner of the day, in their proper places, Anglo-Saxon poetry simultaneously flourished ; and in lieu of being, as all other contemporaneous poetry seems to have been, intrusted solely to verbal recitation and the memory, was deemed worthy of the labours of the scribe, to insure its unimpaired preservation. If the original MSS. do not exist to attest this, very early copies are stiU extant, and Dr. Gervinus, the learned German historian of Teutonic poetry, considers Anglo-Saxon England as the asylum of all northern developed cultivation, consequently as the birth-place of romanticism. Nor was the literary employ­ment of Anglo-Saxon confined to that department of letters, to which the first attempts of the vernacular were usually limited. Chronicles were written in Anglo-Saxon ; Alfred translated Latin works into his mother tongue; and, whilst upon the continent all laws were promulgated and com­piled in Latin, the code of the Anglo-Saxons, if not, as some writers assert, originally put forth n the mother tongue, understood by those whose conduct it was to govern,(lu3.) was rendered into that language by the orders of Alfred, perhaps by himself.

Of the Celtic languages, Welsh and Irish, which are still as much living Languages as the Provencal, one was perhaps written even ca/lier than Anglo-Saxon. The most recent critical investigations of the literary remains of the Welsh, have proved that the poetical productions of Aneurih, Taliessin, Llywarch Hen, Myrddin—AnglicS Digitized by Microsoft®

Merlin—who all belonged to the sixth century, were very early written; and that some of the earliest transcripts, though not perhaps the original MSS., are still extant.O0*) The same may be said of the Anglo-Saxon Caedmon in the seventh century.

It might, upon divers grounds, have been supposed that Irish would have been still earlier cultivated than Welsh. From Ireland it has been seen that learning, according to Irish claims, was first introduced amongst the Anglo-Saxons, and Irish High Schools, whether or not the earliest institu­tions of the kind for the cultivation of science and classic lore, were assuredly frequented by students from England and the Continent, even in the sixth century. Again Ireland seems first to have supplied missionaries to convert heathen Europe to Christianity, as Columban and Gall, or Gaul, in that sixth century, and Kilian with the Anglo-Saxon Willebrod early in the seventh, who before its close were followed by the compatriot of the latter, Winfried, or St, Boniface. In the eighth, Irish scholars still went forth as missionaries, if of a different character, as mis­sionaries for the diffusion, not of religion but, of knowledge. Two of these, named Oswald and Clement, are said to have landed in Normandv, crying, somewhat after the manner of mediaeval apprentices, “ Who’ll buy Wisdom ? That is our merchandize. Who'll buy ? Who’ll buy ?” whilst another Irishman, named Dungal, was the most celebrated astronomer of the century. But it may be that, owing to this zeal for science and classic lore, the Irish language was disdained. The oldest ver­nacular MSS. known belong to the tenth century, and the oldest historic poem referred to by Flaherty, is of the eleventh.

But if the British Isles kept pace with Italy during the earliest portion of the middle ages, if up to the tenth cen­tury classical learning had been professedly taught in their High Schools, in that century the Anglo-Saxon portion of them shared the night of darkness and barbarism, which Tiiabosclii describes as then overspreading his fair native land. The ravages and conquests of the Danes appear to have destroyed the very desire for information, together with the libraries in which it was stored.

In France Charlemagne’s endeavours to revive science

f 5

and literature had been unsuccessful. Even during his life their success was apparently small, Alcuin’s letters, addressed from Tours to his imperial pupil, bieathe his annoyance at his destitution in Gaul, of all resources for scientific pur­suits, and solicit permission to send scribes to Eng»and to copy books for him. The permission was doubtless given, but Alcuin, who died before Charlemagne, could hardly live to profit thereby, and with Charlemagne, his institutions in that country, naturally less interesting to him and his son than their German fatherland, seem to have expired. Immediately after his decease, in the ninth century, when learning was held to be flourishing in Italy and in the British Isles, France was sunk yet deeper in darkness and barbarism, than were those countries in the following tenth century; in the course of which, notwith­standing the expected catastrophe at its close, her death­like lethargy began to be slowly shaken off. The first impulse was probably given by the infusion of new blood, the Scandinavian, in the north-western district; as was a second in the eleventh century, apparently by the teaching of Lanfranco and Anselmo at Pans; and this seems to have started France in a career, in which her onward course was long nearly uninterrupted, and her success sufficient to enable her, whether rightfully or wrongfully, to boast, her pre-eminence over all other lands in civilization.

Thenceforward the Parisian High School bore away the palm in scholasticism from all rivals. But it was in the first quarter of the twelfth century, when a more enlarged system of study began to supersede the trivium and quadrivium, that the Parisian school really acquired transcendent fame; for which it was indebted to Abelard This very remarkable individual was long thought of merely as the guilty and unfortunate lover of the gifted as impassioned Eloisa; but it was not in this character that he awakened the admiration of his contemporaries, or provoked a large mass of envy and consequent enmity. He was the profoundest scholar, the acutest and ablest metaphysician of his day, and it is as such that he must here command attention. Pierre Abailard, the eldest son of a Breton nobleman, renounced his birthright, in older to dedicate himself wholly to study. His know-

ledge of Greek excited general wonder, his abstruse scholasticism, his astute reasoning in defence of tbe most intelligible indeed of the systems of the day, Nominalism, of which he became the principal expounder and champion, though not the founder(l°5,>, his bold theories bordering upon, if not amounting to, heresy, and his eloquent invectives against the unmonastie lives of monks, against the unapostolk wealth and luxury of the clergy in general, filled the hall in which he lectured with hearers, amongst whom are said to have been numbered twenty future cardinals, and fifty future bishops. Against imputations of heresy he strove to guard himself, by alleging that he professed to teach, not the truth, but, bis notion re­specting it, and by always submitting those notions to papal authority. These precautions were unavailing; and the Parisian High School exprlled him for here­tical doctrines. He retired to a solitary place, whither his scholars, that they might not lose the benefit of his instructions, following him, constructed huts for shelter, until he had erected a monastery, entitled the Paraclete, as a more suitable asylum. It will be recol­lected that until the art of printing rendered books generally accessible, public lectures were almost the only means of acquiring knowledge. This appears to have been the position of Abelard and the School of Paris about the year 1125.

Up to the twelfth century, no language appears to have

been written in France except Latin, and the only work

in that language requiring notice here, is that source

of romance, the pseudo-Turpin’s Life of Charlemagne;

though some critics have assigned the date to a later

period, because the Chronicles of St. Denis, which were

only begun in the twelfth century, are therein appealed

to as authority. But this citation may easily have been

the addition of a late transcriber, by way of confirming

the authenticity of the book; whilst the bulk of the

evidence, both internal and external, is in favour of the

eleventh century. A writer so regardless of the restraints

of chronology and geography, had he written after the

first crusade, would surely have sent his heroes crusading

to Palestine, instead of merely sending Charlemagne a

pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and if Calixtus II., who died r o o        ?      »

in 1124*, pronounced the book to be genuine, the work of the old Archbishop, as he is said to have done, it could hardly have been then a very recent production.

With respect to the vulgar tongue, the decrees, indeed, of two Church Councils, that of Tours a.d. 813, and of Arles 851, order homilies to be translated into either Rustic Latin, the name given to the dialect then spoken by the natives of Gaul, or Frankish, i. e. German, because other­wise the people, who did not understand Classical Latin, could not benefit by them. But the order should seen? to mean a verbal translation of a homily as delivered. This Rustic Latin, afterwards called Roinane, Walloon,(106J or Langue (Toil, wras cultivated by the Normans (who quickly exchanged their own language for that of the van quished, amongst, and with, whom they dwelt) before it had superseded German at Court, and it long continued to be found in its greatest purity at Rouen. The gallicized heirs of the ancient northern Scalds, sang their hereditary lays and legends in French, or this Rustic Latin, and appear to have breathed their own love of this style of poetry, into all around them, whilst, as a consequence of their conversion to Christianity, the mythical heroes of the Edda and their own ancestors, gradually merged in the Paladins of Charlemagne,and the Round Table of King Arthur; blending the supernatural of the northern, with that of the oriental imagination, which captivated them in Palestine, and in Moslem Spain. These were the habitual, if not absolutely the only, strains of the Trouveurs or Trouverea of the Langue d'oil.O-08) But of those to which the eleventh century gave birth, nothing remains, whence it may be inferred that nothing was written. The earliest known to have been committed to paper are either Abelard’s amorous ditties,(>09) or a poem upon natural history, presented by an Anglo-Norman, Philippe de Thun or de Thaun to Henry I. of England, a.d. 1120, the Langue if oil being now one of the literary languages of England, or a Langue d'oil version of an earlier Latin poem, by one Marboduus, upon precious stones.(ilu)

But if no written French poetry of the eleventh century remains, French prose has been supposed to have been then written The Anglo-Saxon Ingulp'ius, who became

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the Secretary of William the Conqueror, in his Chronicle asserts that the Conqueror had his laws collected and written in French or I.angue (Foil. If this were so, the code has disappeared like the legendary lays ; and it must be added that moderm criticism suspects the work ascribed to Ingulplius to be a forgery of the fourteenth century.C111) The code of laws which Godfrey, upon assuming the government, ordered to be compiled for his crusade- created kingdom, and which is known as Les Assises

E BONS USAGES DU ItoYAUME DE JERUSALEM, appeal's to have been certainly written at least as early as the poem above mentioned, and written in the Langue (Foil, which most of the crusaders understood. But in his fully occupied reign of a year, it was really impossible that the work should be completed ; and in that of his brother Baldwin it probably appeared. If it did, however, that original MS. is lost; and the earliest copy extant, in which places are named as Estates of the Kingdom, that were not conquered till late in Baldwin I.’s reign, is believed to have been made in the twelfth century, under Amalric, Baldwin II.’s grandson.

Of southern France, that is to say the Arelat and those other French provinces, where the Langue (Foe, or Provencal was spoken, awkward as the separation may seem, it will for two reasons be more convenient to treat, when the condition of the rest of Europe, relatively to literature and language, shall have been surveyed. These reasons are, that they were later than the north in shaking off the lethargy of ignorance, consequent upon barbaric invasion, overflowing the country with floods of Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Huns, and Arabs, in their onward course; and that their claim to be the birthplace of modern language and literature, may then be better appreciated.

Germany had two schools, existing even before Charle­magne ; that of the abbey of Fulda, founded by the Anglo-Saxon St. Boniface, and that of the abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland, founded by the canonized Irish missionary, Gall or Gaul; both were flourishing, though not esteemed by the monarch equal to those of Itf iy, and of the British Isles. And they continued to flourish,

as did several of those he added, especially that, in

i j >

Lower Lorrain, of Liege, the very cradle of his race, and in Saxony that of Padesborn. Hence Germany, not­withstanding the ravages of the Magyars, did not, like France in the ninth century, and England and Italy in the tenth, sink into utter ignorance during the degeneracy of the Carlovingians, of whom indeed she usually had the least degenerate for her rulers. But ere proceeding to the result of Charlemagne’s exertions in behalf of classical learning in Germany, it is proper to speak of another simultaneous, and surely kindred effort of his, in another direction.

In the eighth century Germany still abounded in legendary lays or ballads, with some longer poems, that aspired even to the epic character, narrating the adventures, the achievements, and the disasters, of her heroes of yet elder days, transmitted orally from generation to gene­ration, and probably modified and lengthened by each in its turn. Charlemagne, a truly great man, unblinded by prejudices, then the offspring alike of intolerant religious zeal or of ardent admiration of what was thought classicism, determined to rescue these records of the glories of his Heathen forefathers from oblivion. He therefore caused the old lays to be sought out in all parts, and carefully written down from the dictation of living singers, even the rudest and lowliest. This endeavour to perpetuate the earliest productions of the Teutonic Muse, is said to have given birth to the first attempt to write German.(U2) Both were unproductive. Charlemagne’s son, Lewis the Pious, in a fit of either half-educated, pseudo-classical contempt for barbarism or of pseudo-Christian abhorrence of Heathenism, gave the whole collection to the flames. And so completely was this attempt at writing German forgotten, that later in the same reign Otfried had to devise anew the orthography, for his German Harmony of the Gospels,(H3; written by the monarch’s command.

Lewis’s act of high treason against old Teutonicism did not however quite effect the destruction designed. The old ditties still survived in the memory of those who could not write; and, as will be seen hereafter, became the sources, f not actually the originals, of later, still existing poems. Nav, a fragment of one of those collected by Charlemagne, Hildebrand und Hatiiubrand, is 1 by Microsoft

still extant, it should seem, almost in its earliest form; certainly much older and more epic in charactering) than any other surviving old German relic. The age of the MS. of this fragment, which is conjectured to he about the eighth century, may be doubtful; such may be the case of a contemporary German song, in celebration of the victory gained by Lewis III. of France over the Danes, A.n. 881 or 882;(H5) the lays may have been pre~ served orally for some time before they were committed to writing, but Otfried’s work assures to the German lan­guage the honour of having been written prior to any of those derived from the Latin—a priority which has been ascribed to the fact, of Latin never having super­seded the native language of Germany, to her still speaking that spoken in her primeval forests, changed only by matureBcence, cultivation, and general refinement.

For a time, however, the manifestation of imperial taste seems to have determined the literary bent of Germany. The genuine breathings of national poetry ceased, and to versify in Latin became the general ambition, whilst those would-be classical effusions were all, equally in consonance with the imperial sentiments, dedicated to religious sub­jects, consisting of hymns, lives of Saints, legends of miracles, new versions of passages in the Bible, and the like.

One of the most admired Latin poetR or poetasters of the tenth century, was an Abbess of Gandersheim, named Hroswitha, who, it may be worth noting, highly eulogizes, as her instructress in classical literature, her predecessor in her dignified office, Gerberga. daughter of the Emperor Henry the Fowler, and widow, first of a Duke of Lothringen, secondly of a King of France. The most esteemed of Hroswitha’s productions were her Miracle Plays, which were inspired, she averred, by the perusal of Terence, were acted by her nuns, and were held to have invested religion with the classical charm of the drama. But these plays are mere dialogues, as destitute of dramatic spirit as of poetry. In fart the drama may be said to nave been then unknown, although, as a sort of religious exercise, Priests were in the habit of acting passages of Scripture history, speaking the very words of Holy Writ. The Lady Abbess also wrote a Chronicle in verse, which has

long been valued only as an historical authority, ilroswitha had a very superior rival in a monk of St. Gall, named Eckehard, author of a Latin narrative poem, entitled Walter of Aquitaine, a tale of the Court of At Lila, whom the recent ravages of the Magyars, the supposed descendants of the Huns, had vividly recalled to the imagination of that day. And so simply antique in character is this poem, so truly German, unmingled with chivalry, that modern critics, Gervinus and the poet Uhland at their head, cannot imagine it to have been conceived in a dead language, and think the monk either blended together and adapted, or found so blended, and then translated, a number of old German ballads. Eckehard’s hymns are still included in the Church service.

The first half of the following eleventh century affords, besides Latin chroniclers in verse and prose, a sort of mediaeval, German, Admirable Crichton, in the son of a Swabian nobleman, Hermann surnamed Contractus, because a cripple from infancy, who died a.d. 1054, at the early age of forty-one. Hermann Contractus was educated at St. Gall, understood all languages, especially Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, w’rote history, poetry, and treatises upen ethics and astronomy, calculated eclipses, and expounded Aristotle’s logic ; and although his tongue was as crippled as his limbs, crowds thronged his lecture room. He set his own poems to music, he made musical instruments and clocks, and unlike deformed persons in general, is said to have been most amiable, and as much beloved as he was admired. This prodigious scholar likewise condescended to cultivate his mother tongue, and translated the Psalms into German. Another instance of German written in this century has been recently dis­covered by the Austrian historical investigator, Hormayr, though whether it be still in existence is at least very doubtful. In an old biography of Altmann, Bishop of Passau, he has found mention of one Ezzo, as the composer of a noble lay of the Miracles of Christ, in his mother tongue, a.d. IOoO.U16) In the last half of the eleventh and the first quarter of the twelfth century, amidst the civil wars and calamities of Henry IV.’s reign, and the incessant troubles of his son’s, this fair prospect of increasing cul­tivation was overcast.

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In Italy it has been seen that, when the world was found to have survived tbe close of the tenth century, the schools began to revive, and at the command of Gregory VII. to increase. It does not, indeed, appear that he made any endeavour to enlarge or improve the course of study, though it seems to have been under the patronage of his great ally and support, Countess Matilda, that a school of law was added to the previously existing High School of Bologna. Writers of that century praise the schools of philosophy belonging to the Cathedral of Milan, which were undisturbed by the incessant wars, Milan was even then waging against her neighbours. Parma was named the Golden City, Chrysopolis, in honour of the encouragement she afforded to learning. The Montecassino school has been already mentioned.

Of the pupils formed in these schools, Lanfranco and Anselmo, the real pride of Italy in those times, have been described, and the only point to be added is, that Lanfranco appears to have been the first who thought of endeavouring, by collation of copies and by reasoning, to correct errors in MSS., restore right readings, and the like. Of other pupils there were many; but M. Guizot stands so nearly alone amongst modern criiics, in discerning any sort of merit in their productions, that few indeed can it be worth while to particularize. San Pier di Damiano, as he called himself in honour of his brother Damiano, to whom he owed his education, wrote upon- religious subjects, was often employed by the Popes as Legate, and was revered, as much for bis virtue, as for his ability and learning. Of Italian prose chroniclers the two Landolfos, senior and junior, both Milanese, seem best to deserve mention, inasmuch as Galfridus or Goffredo Malaterra, who wrote the history of the Norman conquest of Southern Italy and Sicily, was not an Italian but a Norman. Of those who called themselves poets, although William of Apulia seems to have thought he might fairly challenge a comparison with Virgil, it must be admitted that his epic on the Norman Conquest, and Donizo’s Life of Matilda, can command attention, like the versified Chronicle of the German Abbess, only as historical authorities. Tiraboschi bestows some praise upon Laurentius Diaoonus as be is usually called, a Digitized by Microsoft®

Veronese, and Deacon or Dean of Pisa, who celebrated in a poem called epic, and divided into seven books, the subjugation of the Balearic isles by Pisa; but the writer most worth remembering seems to be a monk of Montecassino, named Alberioo, who died in 1123, not so much for his own merit, as because it is supposed that his extravagant Latin rhapsody, a Vision of Hell, may have suggested the idea of the Coijmedia Divina to Dante.

The northern and north-eastern portions of Europe had so little influence upon the civilization or the lite­rature of the west and south, that little need be said concerning them. Throughout Scandinavia old Norse poetry was still zealously cultivated. Saemund Sigfusson compiled the Edd.\ in the middle of the eleventh century; and although the Latin, introduced by the service of the church, there likewise was beginning to occupy the domain of science, the native Scalds still appear as the favourite companions and friends, if not as the advisers and ministers, of Scandinavian princes. The Slavonian nations seem to have always had bards whom ‘lsey highly reverenced and employed as heralds or embassadors. Two of them are said to have been sent in the latter capacity to Attila, and to have softened his heart by their lays, but as their medium of communication is not explained, it may be conjectured that he was more touched by their music than by their poetiy. Little is known of early Slavonian literature, though the language appears to compete with German and Welsh, in the claim to priority amongst written living languages. A hymn to the Virgin, habitually sung by the Poles when preparing for battle, the composition of St. Adalbert, the Bohemian missionary, Archbishop of Prague, martyred in 997, is averred still to exist and a ballad upon the loss of Prague by the Poles, a.d. 1004, believed to be nearly contemporaneous with the event it records, has been recently discovered-C1^) The Russian Monk, Nestor of Xiew, who wrote the history of his country up to within a year of his death in 1116, may claim to be the oldest prose historian in any living language. The Servians are ' aid to boast the possession of a version of the Bible, written in the ninth century, in a cognate Pannonian Digiiized by Microsoft®

dialect of the Slavonian, which, however, is now con­sidered by them as a learned rather than a living language. Some old Servian poetry is said to have been recently discovered, certainly belonging to the period of Servian independence, but whether to the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth century may be doubtful.

Amongst the East Romans of Constantinople, to proceed from those less, to those more advanced in civilization than the nations of western Europe, it has been already observed, that letters were still cultivated. Classical Greek was, since the reign of Justinian, their living language; and hence the generally acknowledged superiority of the mediasval Greek writers, over their Latin contemporaries. The simple fact that an Imperial Princess prided herself upon being the biographer of the Emperor her father, Anna Comnena in her Alexiad, sufficiently marks the honour in which literature was there held. And it is no improbable conjecture, that this high appreciation of learning at the pompous as luxurious Constantinopolitan Court, which must have greatly as­tonished the haughtily ignorant Frank princes of the first Crusade, may have had no small share in the general revival of learning, science, and literature, throughout Europe. Like other modern tongues Romaic appears to have been about this epoch stealing into existence; inasmuch as Anna Comnena, in her classical Hellenic work, condescends to quote some lines of a popular song, in what was then the mere jargon, probably, of the vulgar, but has now developed itself into the regular language of a nation.

The real seat of learning in Europe, during the period that has been under consideration, was indisputably Arab- Spain. If the first conquerors of the Spanish Goths, if their sons, from whose yoke Charles Martel, by his memo­rable victory at Poitiers, rescued France, and perhaps the whole continent, were rude as those who are accused of having heated their baths with the choicest treasures of the Alexandrian library,(l 19) no sooner had the Ornmeyade Abderrahman, about the middle of the eighth century, established the independent caliphate of Cordova, than he there introduced the science and literature, already adorning Bagdad.^1?0) Abdemhman's patronage of letters preceded Digitized by Microsoft®

Charlemagne’s—the Caliph dying 787—and was more for­tunate. His successors, son and grandsons, for generations trod in his footsteps; his and their subjects were eager to profit by the opportunities offered them; and in the course of the ninth and tenth centuries, of which the last was the very golden age of Hispano-Arab genius, science, and prosperity, every town in Moslem Spain had its schools and colleges, its public library—that of Cordova collected by Alhakem II., with utter regardlessness of expense, was estimated at the amount, in ante-printing days well-nigh in­credible, of 600,000 volumesC121)—its scientific and literary institutions, or academies. At the Hispano-Arab schools were studied, not the trivium or quadrivium, but all known sciences. There, theology (of course Moslem), history, geography, grammar, metre, rhetoric, mathematics, geo­metry, astronomy, including astrology, medicine, and magic, were taught; and chemistry, including alchemy, is said to have been invented. To these schools repaired English, French, German, and Italians, who really thirsted for knowledge; and Pope Sylvester, as has been seen, carried thence stores, that earned him the reputation of an abhorred, as dreaded, magician. Notwithstanding the con­vulsions consequent upon the conquests of the rude Ahnora- vides, these schools continued to flourish throughout the period embraced in this sketch.

From what has been said of the studies pursued there, it follows, as a matter of course, that the Spanish-Arabs had philosophers, historians, geographers, travellers, scientific as well as mercantile, recording what they had seen in other lands; farther, they are the reputed inventors of historic dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Nevertheless, their litera­ture was chi ;fly poetic. In poetry, academy contended with academy; whilst Caliphs, their Viziers, and the secluded denizens of their harems, as well as all the well- educated amongst their subjects, emulated them and each other. And to these Arab votaries of the Muse, modern poetry was long very generally supposed to owe the use of rhyme, and the substitution of accent for length of syllable, in the construction of metre. This opinion has latterly been rejected ; but the discussion were misplaced in a mere preliminary sketch like this.(i22)

Of the state of learning and literature in the Christian Digitized by Microsoft®

portion of the Peninsula during these early ages, little is known ; probably because there is little to be known. We are indeed told that, in the year 621, a Bishop of Barcelona caused a drama, exemplifying the nonentity of the Heathen Gods, to be acted and that Alphonso III. of Oviedo, who died .a.d. 900, was both a patron of literature, and the author of a still-existing chronicle of his royal predecessors. But there exist thirty lines of Portuguese, which, even dis­regarding the pretension advanced on their behalf bv Lusi- tanian literati to be the composition of Don Roderic, the Last of the Goths, bear intrinsic and extrinsic evidence of an antiquity equal, if not superior, to any other writing in the languages derived from the Latin. In the year 1187, in a Portuguese castle, a MS. was found so mouldy and worm-eaten, that only these thirty lines could be decyphered; and the language of this fragment, though not more unin­telligible to a modern Portuguese than that of Chaucer to us, is not only very decidedly much older than that of a little song written under the reign of Conde Henrique, to whom Alfonso VI. gave the county of Portugal, and who died in 1112, but contains scarcely a word derived from the Arabic, which so speedily stamped its character upon the languages of the Peninsula.fi24) Indeed, although in Christian Spain, as elsewhere, Latin remained the language of science and of letters, Arabic seems to have come into as general familiar use as the vulgar tongue, having even been selected by Juan de Sevilla as the best, in which to expound the Bible to his Christian flock. As the Christian States increased in size and throve, they began to cultivate the science and literature acquired in the Arab schools.

We now come to the lands speaking the Langue (Toe. Of the intellectual condition of the kingdom of Arles, and the other provinces of the South of France, as distinguished from the North, up to the close of the tenth century, there remains very scanty information; but by the end of the eleventh, they assume an important aspect, from their repu­tation of having been the birthplace of modern literature,— of the very idea that a vulgar tongue could be written,— could be susceptible of cultivation. And the vernacular of these provinces, whether denominated Langue doc, Langue Itomane, or Romance, or simply Prorengat, has been deemed not only the eldest, but the only child of the Latin, and the Digitized by Microsoft ®

mother of all others of Latin parentage/125) That these assumptions are disputed by recent critics, the reader, with­out being farther troubled with the controversy, may see, by reference to the few dates that have been, and to those yet to be, given.

Priority amongst iheTroubadours, who pass for the earliest modern authors permitted to enjoy the glory of seeing their effusions calligraphically perpetuated, has been alternately assigned to one Bechada, a Limousin, and to William IX., Earl of Poitou, and in right of his wife, Duke of Aquitaine ; and has since been claimed by Wachsmuth for a trouba­dour, whom he does not name, but whose still extant poem, in praise of Boethius, he affirms to be of the tenth century. If this be so, all dispute amongst the Latin family, save, perhaps, with the Portuguese stanzas, as to actual priority, must be at an end; 12(j) but betw een Beclmda and tne Duke, it is, and must be, difficult to decide. Both were mem­bers of the first Crusade, which both celebrated, inspired, as they well might be, by the magnitude, the imaginative and devoutly impassioned character, of the enterprise in which they were engaged, by the new sphere of existence it had opened to them, and by the vaiieties of mankind with whom it brought them in contact. But Bechada’s poem upon the capture of Jerusalem, with everything else he may have written, has perished ; and only by contempo­raneous mention are his poem and himself known to have existi'd ; whilst if a similar fate befel the 1100 lays, .a which Duke William, .expressing or embodying their date in their number, sang the exploits of his brother crusaders and himself, other poems of his, more accordant with his licentious temperament,(12?) still survive to secure him his station on Parnassus. Troubadours now rapidly multiplied, and their language and their poetry spread over tne South of France and of Germany, over the North of Spain and of Italy. But little has been preserved of any who wrote prior to the middle of the century; for which reason, the Troubadours will more properly lind their place in a later chapter upon the present subjects.

Of science, except amongst the Arabs, it hardly need be said, there was at this epoch little or none. The Arabic numerals, a great help to its progress, appear, however, to have been by this time introduced into Europe. Maps

and globes are mentioned amongst the possessions of the Emperor Henry V., and of Roger II., Earl of Sicily; yet so little was geography advanced, that, late in the eleventh century, Adam of Bremen doubted whether Russia could or could not be approached by sea—Archangel not being yet built—and called Courland and Esthonia islands. The state of surgery may be measured from its practice being committed to barbers; and the only tolerable phy­sicians appear to have been Arabs and Jew's, the small portion of medical skill preserved in cloisters being, it may be presumed, chiefly empirical. Of natural history, little was known, and of natural philosophy less. The Arabs, indeed, were acquainted with the properties of the magnet, Edrisi, an Arab geographer, giving a rather con­fused account of them under the date of 1100 ;028) but it is very doubtful whether the knowledge extended to Christian Europe, until a later period of the century.

The Fine Arts have been usually considered as yet more completely extinct than literature, during the period that intervenes betwixt the fall of classical antiquity and (he eleventh century; that is to say, throughout Western Ei rope, for in the East Roman Empire they are allowed to have been still lingering out a decrepid existence. Moreover, when, in the eleventh century, the dim, grey dawn of a new day, began to recall them from this supposed state of suspended animation, to again incipient life, only Greek artists, it has been asserted, were employed, there being, in fact, no others. And this agrees, in some mea­sure, with Rumohr’s persuasion, that the subjugation of Italy to the East Roman Empire under Justinian, was more injurious to Italian art than her conquest by the Goths. Nevertheless,both opinions are disputed, and the labo­riously careful Tiraboschi holds the second to be sufficiently confuted by the occasional, and only occasional, naming of Greek artists ; whence he argues that, whenever employed, they were named (perhaps in the ordinary vulgar vanity of having been served by a foreigner); and that the unnamed were alwi< vs compatriots, as such held cheap. In fact, the question of extinction may be held one of degree merely, to wit, of the degree of artistic skill indispensable to constitute a work of art. This degree was certainly very low during those early ages, as the wonders of architecture, Digitized by Microsoft®

painting, and sculpture, reported to have adorned the northern Yinetha, may, it is presumed, be safely ascribed to the combined ignorance and exaggeration of their admirers. In a state suc"> as has been surmised, a few words upon cach of the separate Arts will suffice for this sketch; and Architecture, having been the first to revive, must take the lead.

It has been asserted that up to the eleventh century churches were so universally built of wood, that any and every stone church was specifically mentioned, as an object of admiration. The recollection of the many heathen temples converted into churches, at Rome, indeed through­out Italy, of the Basilica St. John Lateran, the very Cathedral of Rome, the Ecclesia ttrbis et orhis mater et caput, of the Basilicas built, and adorned vith Mosaics, as early as the fifth and sixth centuries, especially at Rome and Ravenna ;(129) in England, of the Abbey of St, Albans, founded if not completed by Offa, King of Mercia, and containing tombs of Heptarchy Kings; even of the mention of stone churches in Ireland, in the eighth century; of Charlemagne’s cathedral .at Aix la Chapelle, and some few others,(la0) induces a start at this assertion. Never­theless, these are but the exceptions; Germany east of the Rhine, of which the assertor perhaps chiefly thought, was all but destitute of such, and certainly during the last half of the tenth century no one thought of building or repairing permanent churches, in a world so soon to perish. In the beginning of the eleventh century, when the dreaded epoch was past, and men rejoiced in an indefinite prolongation of existence, the impassioned re­ligious and patriotic feelings of the age, stimulated by gratitude for tbe escape “ of this great globe itself,” and u all that it inherit,” from destruction, took the peculiar turn which gradually decorated so many towns in Italy, Ger­many, France, England, and Spain, with magnificent cathedrals. Even during the period of despondence the Freemasons, it is averred—whether this mystic fraternity were the progeny of the Mysteries of classic Heathenism, or the offspring of the Middle Ages—associated throughout Europe, had carefully preserved their fraternal union and the principles of their art; they' were ready therefore to second and to guide the impulse.C131) In Italy, Venice

began the marvellous St. Mark’s, in the Byzantine ta=fe, imbibed in her constant intercourse with Constantinople; and so energetically was the work carried on that in the first quarter of the ensuing twelfth century this church was consecrated, though the interior decoration was still incomplete. At Bologna arose the venerable dome of St. Peter’s ; at Parma, Modena, and a few more places in tliat part of the peninsula, their res­pective cathedrals, with their cavern-like doorwavs, the front pillars resting upon lions, or nondescript mon­sters, a mysterious emblem according to Mrs. Jameson, not as yet unriddled. But what may be more interesting to the general reader than a list of cathedrals begun, is the account given of the manner in which the construction of one of them was managed. In 1063, Pisa devoted the booty made in a victory over the Sicilian Arabs, to the erection of a cathedral ;(132) to build which she employed an architect, whom Vasari calls a Greek, despite his Italian sounding name of Burchetta, When the booty was exhausted, every family in the city and suburbs, the population of which was then estimated at 34*,()00fla;i) souls, annually contributed a gold piece towards the ex­pense; and so leisurely did it advance,' that nearly a century later the voluntary contribution of the Emperor .Frederic, was required for its completion. In Germany, in the tenth century, Conrad II. built the Cathedral of Spires, Henry III. that of Goslar, Archbishop Adelbert of H remen invited Italian architects to build one at Bremen after the model of that of Benevento, and some others were begun. In Hungary the canonized King, St. Stephen, built the Cathedral at Uaab. In England, Gundulph, a monk of the Abbey of Hec, whom Lanfranco, in 1077, made Bishop of Rochester, and who proved an eminent architect as well as an excellent prelate, built his own cathedral with an adjacent monastery, Rochester Castle, which he gave William Rufus, the abbey churches of Rt-ading and Mailing, and the chapel within the Keep of the Tower of London, nearly bv the end of the eleventh century.i 134) Winchester. Durham, Gloucester, and two or three more were likewise built, as was Westminster Hall, in the first quarter of the twelfth. In Spain Alfonso VI., ex­cited perhaps by the magnificent Mosque of Cordova,

VOL. I.   G

begun by Abderrahman I. in the eighth century, finished by his successors in the ninth, and imitated throughout Moslem Spain, invited a German architect to rebuild the Cathedral of Leon, as did his daughter LTrraca two, a Roman and a Burgund:an, to build one at Avila.

Painting never was so dead that there were not persons, calling themselves artists, who undertook to decorate churches, with pictures of Saints and of Holy Families. These works are still to be seen in some of the very oldest churches, especially in Rome and throughout Italy, as they are in the gallery of the Academy at Florence, and in the Boisseree division of the Pinakotnek at Munich, which supply a history of the graphic Art from its infant attempts, in stiff wooden figures upon golden background, —devoid of all '-lea of drawing, anatomv, perspective, and the like, but not without fife, expression, and even character—through all its stages of progress, to the fullness of its perfection. Many of those early pictures betoken

Eupiis of the Byzantine School, whilst others are, b\ the est Italian judges, held to have been uniufluenced thereby; one certain mark of the Byzantine school being the gold background, and the dark complexion of the Virgin, whom it has been supposed they wished to represent as having risen a mummy from the grave. The characteristic of the nascent Italian school, however faulty, Is expression and susceptibility of development. A Menologium of the tenth century in the Vatican, is said by Rumohr, to contain some excellent (vortrp.ffliche) miniatures. The historical paintings with which TheudelinJa, the Bavarian wife, successively, of the Lombard Kings, Authar and Agilulf, decorated her palace at Monza- Charlemagne his at Ingelheiro (employing, it is said, Italian an.ist;s),(135' and Henry the Fowler the walls of a bancjuetting rouin, may be presumed to have been similar in merit to the above­named sacred pieces. Nor is there any reason to suppose that the pictorial representation of the deeds of Alex antler the Great, which, at the opening of the twelfth century, adorned the apartments of Matilda, Queen of Henry I of England, was superior to its predecessors, or to the .rell-known Bayeux tapestry, wrought by her mother-in- law, William the Conqueror’s Queen Matilda, to celebrate her consort’s achievements. Of the native land of any

of the artists who produced these works, or of their contem­porary brethren, nothing is known, except that Adalbert, Archbishop of Bremen, invited Italian painters to decorate his Italian-built Cathedral, and that in 1070 the Abbot of Montecassino sent for workers in Mosaic from Constan­tinople, to inlay the pavement of his abbey-church ; whence Tiraboschi infers, that Mosaicists were the only foreign artists habitually employed. By the end of the century there appears to have been a Mosaicist school at Home. At Venice, St. Mark’s is believed to have been entirely committed to Greek artists.

The illumination of MSS., which was one of the chief uses of painting in these ages, was principally practised in cloisters by monks and nuns, so that all countries must have produced their own illuminators. Especially would this be the case in Germany, where St. Boniface, a great patron of illumination, had founded schools expressly to preserve, improve, and teach the Art. The early illu­minations display great labour and care, with delicate accuracy of execution, and very brilliant colours, but without disputing Rumohr’s acknowledged taste in regard to the Menologium, it must be admitted that, generally speaking, not until a much later epoch is any sort of artistic merit to be found. The time and skill required thus to complete a volume by illuminating and gilding it, would be one cause of the scarcity and high price of books. A folio volume is calculated to have cost, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a sum equal to twenty pounds sterling.

If any Art could be deemed really dead, it was Sculpture. Except in the form of carving, and that chiefly in wood, it had no existence, and the beautiful wood carving that adorns so many old churches, parti­cularly in Germany, is more than probably of a later date. Notwithstanding contemporaneous admiration, it is likely that the best carving then known was that in yet older churches, which bears a kindred character to the pictures, and at which therefore no one but a professed artistic antiquary now looks. In Italy certainly good carving was born a century later. The German monks in general, and more particularly those of St. Gall, arc said to have excelled in carving ivory, but as the excellence

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nitist be always estimated bv contemporaneous taste and standards, the degree of skill to which they had attained remains doubtful.

Music is spoken of by writers of all ages, but in those now under consideration, seems to have been cultivated and valued chiefly in reference to church service. Its condition as an art throughout these earlier centuries, may be appreciated by the directions that Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, found it necessary, in the first quarter of the twelfth century, to issue to his Clro- risters. They were, that the singers should begin together, pause together, resume together, and that no one should sing faster or slower than the rest. And yet, prior to the issuing of these instructions, had the system of musical notation, practised in the school of music, founded by Abderrahman II., at Cordova in the ninth century, been introduced into Christian Europe by Guido d’Arezzo, whom several German bishops invited to visit their sees in order to improve their church music, and the Venerable Abbot's contemporary, Frank of Cologne, was even then occupied in perfecting that system of notation. The very idea of harmony was unknown, the several singers all singing, and the several instruments all playing, simulta­neously the same notes. Various musical instruments are however mentioned. Charlemagne received a present of an organ from Constantinople, which he placed in the Cathedral of Aix-la Chapelle. Thenceforward frequent mention of organs occurs, and the Germans became re­nowned for skill in their construction. Of the many more ordinary instruments, whether peculiar to different nations, or identical amongst such as could not have borrowed them from each other,(if<) some appear to have been imperfect prototypes of our own, and some are so obsolete that their names call up no idea. Stringed instru­ments, wind instruments, drums, and instruments analogous to cvmbals, are upon divers occasions mentioned. Vet, notwithstanding this abundance of instruments, the dance was seemingly regulated wholly by the voice.

Ere dismissing the Fine Arts it must be recollected that goldsmiths’ work and embroidery were then in­cluded under this title. In the eleventh century, whatever in-ay have been the ear'ier condition of these 1 ranches

contemporary accounts would indicate an advanced state. We read of embossing and inlaying altars with jewellery, as well as with the precious metals, of gold cups thus wrought and jewelled, of gold and silver images for the altar, and the like. Garments and hangings of silk are described as embroidered with figures of all kinds of animals and flowers, even of men and women, and with portions of sacred history, in the style probably of the JBayeux tapestry. In some of these arts England appears to have surpassed the rest of western and Christian Europe, as the gold and silver vessels carried thence to Normandy by William the Conqueror, and the gold em­broidered robes worn by the Anglo-Saxon nobles, who attended him upon his return to his native duchy, are said to have astonished the French Court and

upwards of a century later, some species of gold trim­ming on the dress of English ecclesiatics, will be found to excite the desires of an Italian Pope. The most ad­mired embroidery is however generally called Eastern; and still, the standard by which the taste of the age must have been formed is to be remembered, in reading contemporaneous eulogies.

To proceed to arts of a different character. An art of war there can hardly be said at that time to have been, and mediaeval writers, John of Salisbury one, lament over its decay since the days of the Homans. In fact, essentially military as must be deemed a system, according to which every foot of land was held by military service, and every dispute between fellow-country­men might lawfully be settled by war between the parties, the genius and organization of feudalism were antipathetic alike to foreign conquest, and to an art, or at least to a science, of war. The limited period for which service was due—for landed vassals usually six weeks, whilst townsmen were seldom bound to ac­company an expedition to any distance—rendered such strategy as implies an enlarged scheme of operations impossible; and the attachment and duty of the warriors to their respective lords, rather than to the monarch, was equally obstructive of discipline, as dependent upon subordination. Even a plan of a battle, then perhaps the acme of military skill, was often baulked by the

capricious enterprise, or as capricious sullenness of an inferior leader, every feudal lord acting independently. Presence of mind, quick judgment to see and seize eveiy advantage that might offer, with tact to gain and main­tain an ascendency over vassals and sub-vassals, over “ the soldier’s hardy heart,” seem to have been the principal qualities required in a general; courage, personal prowess, and skill in horsemanship as well as in the use of his weapons, in a knight. These weapons were the spear, the sword, and the battle axe, in the management of which, and of his charger, lord and vassal, knight and esquire, daily exercised themselves in the tilt-vard. When these well-trained horsemen were summoned to the field, a certain number, whether esquires, mounted men-at-arms* or mounttd archers, were expected to attend upon everv knight, forming the complement of what, in reckoning the numbers of an army, was called a lance. Six seems to have been the fall complement, which in Palestine rarely exceeded four. There is an idea that some infantry likewise belonged to the complement of a lance, if so, it was probably in addition to these six or four.(138)

But even in this very fullness of feudal development lurked the seed of reaction, or rather of change. When such a knightly phalanx became the principal force of every state, the infantry fell into disesteem, and now many of the poorer freemen, who could not afford to serve oil horseback, sought to purchase exemption from a despised service; a commutation, in the shape of a species of tax, that would often be equally desirable to shopkeepers and other townsmen.(i39) The feudal superiors, mesne lords and sovereigns, who sanctioned the change, had now to seek substitutes for those whom they hail allowed thus to commute their service for money; and these too the circumstances of the times gradually provided. To turn, n the first instance, some three-quarters of a century back, the army with which the Duke of Normandy had nvaded England was assuredly not a feudal army , but neither was it the army now wanted. The Norman Barons had refused to undertake the enterprise as vassals’ duty; whereupon the Duke, in lieu of hiring soldiers, made separate bargains with his ow'n vassals and with nobles unconnected with him, promising a certain amount of

English booty and English land for a certain amount of assistance; an English bishopric is said to have been bargained for as the price of so many vessels freighted with so many warriors. Even this proceeding seems, when the war was over, to have thrown a pack of unemployed ruffians upon the world, ready to tight for whoever would engage them; they called themselves Brabangons, or Ruptiiarii; and these Henry I. of England found ser­viceable in his wars with his brother, Duke Robert of Normandy. According to Grose, he hired them of the Earl of Flanders, who for four hundred marks of silver a. year, undertook to provide him five hundred Bra­bangons or Ruptuarii, each man having three horses.(i4°) But the crusades opened a supply of a more useful description. In these long, non-feudal, wars, poor knights learned to enter the service of wealthy noblemen and princes, whose vassals they were not; and villeins, en­franchised by their participation in the hallowed enter­prise, were glad to earn their bread as foot soldiers. This change was however only beginning, and still, in the first quarter of the twelfth century, the bulk of the infantry consisted of poor freemen and the poorest vassals. Their arms were the long bow, the cross bow, and the sling. In addition to these various weapons, the Milanese are said to have employed scythe-bearing cars, something, it may be, like those of the ancient Britons; and they, or their ambitious and martial Archbishop Eriberto, enjoy the credit of having, in the eleventh century, invented a sort of rallying point, and stimulant in battle, soon afterward? pretty generally adopted. This was the Carroccio, or city standand, a humble and worldly imi­tation of the Ark of the Jews. It was a waggon, drawn by eight sleek, richly caparisoned oxen; in its centre was fixed a tall pole or mast, terminating in a gilt globe, surmounted by a crucifix, and from which floated two white flags. Upon platforms in the waggon were stationed priests, to pray for victory and confess the dying, medical men, physicians or surgeons, alias barl>ers, indifferently, to dress wounds anu tend the wounded, and musicians to “ rouse the fray.” The defence of the Carroccio was intrusted to a band of select warriors, and its loss estwmed the very lowest depth of ignominy.

The art of the Engineer seems to have been pretty much upon a level with the General's. The fortifications of towns and castles, consisting of a wall or at most a double wall, with a few projecting towers, whence the line of assailants might be taken ;n flank, protected by a deep ditch, and an outwork to the gate called a barbican, could hardly be considered as specimens of science ; ■whilst the machinery for the attack was simply copied, with or without improvement, from what had been employed bv the Homans; such as battering engines, engines for hurling large stones, and moveable towers, from the top of which the besiegers could aim their darts into the interior of the besieged place, and which were provided with a draw-bridge, to be let down on to the top of the walls when sufficiently near. Occasionally, but very rarely? mines for destroying the foundations of walls, or pro­curing access within their circumference, are mentioned. But except Greeks and Arabs few persons were capable of constructing even these engines ; and when constructed so little effective were they, that unless taken by surprise, a town or castle seldom appears to have fallen, save by famine or treachery. The Greek fire was the secret of the Greeks and Arabs, unknown even by its effects to western Europe prior to the twelfth century, and appears to have overpowered the Pisans and Genoese with astonishment, when first used against them by the Greeks, 4.D. 1103.

Success in war was in so great a degree dependent upon the goodness of the weapons employed and of the armour protecting man and horse, that the Armourer appears to have ranked nearly with the Engineer. Old Scandinav ian legends represent kings and heroes as practising his craft, in emulation of the professional artist, and the most dis­tinguished amongst them as often forging each his own, most trusty sword. Though no longer so extravagantly honoured, the armourer’s was still so decidedly the first of mechanical arts, as to be entitled to take its place here, as belonging to, it not a branch of, the art of war; and here likewise the Arabs claim pre-eminence, a blade of Damascus having long been the onlv rival of a Toledo blade.

At sea, war appears to have early assumed a character

somewhat more approaching to scientific than on land, owing, it is likely, to the impossibility of either construct­ing the simplest vessel, or performing the shortest voyage, without some degree of training to the business, or of service at sea being quite as much limited in point of time as on shore. But of the progress in shiji-building, or in navigation, at the opening of the twelfth century, very little is known. Old Chroniclers speak of sailing vessels as well as of galleys with benches of rowers; and of the numerous fleets with which the piratical Scandi­navians bore desolation to every coast; the very numbers carrying conviction to the modern reader of the small size of those Dragons of the sea. They tell of improve­ments in ship-building devised by Alfred, to enable the English vessels the better to contend with those of the invaders; and incidental mention occurs of the commercial navies, first of Amalfi, and after the Norman Conquest, when her spirit of enterprise fell with her liberty, of Venice, Pisa, and last of Genoa, that rendered those cities formidable enemies and efficient allies to mighty sovereigns. But what their ships were like, and whether they guided their course by the stars, crept along the shore, or possessed the mariner’s compass, no one explains. Royal navies appear however to have been furnished, like armies, by feudal service, though, as before observed, the arrange­ments must perforce have been different, and the fisheries, which were duly fostered, may have formed a nursery for sailors. In Scandinavia it is known that, prior to the introduction of feudalism, the peasants, as the rent of, or a tax upon, their land, furnished timber and labour for building ships, and served on board them by turns, the Captain, called the Steersman, being the only permanent member of the crew, and he was remunerated with land. But how merchants manned their barks, which were always their own property, we are quite in the dark— possibly with purchased slaves. Some sort of laws for regulating these matters there clearly were, since Henry IV., in a charter granted Pisa in 1080, speaks of “con- suetudinei quas habent. marlbut what they were is again unexpiained.

The art of the civil Engineer appears to have made rather more progress than that of his military brother,

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mention being found of bridges, of mill* of various descrip* tions, as hors&jniUs, wind-mills, water-mills, of canals pro­jected, and some, if not all, completed. The Arabs, botli Spanish and Oriental, possessed sufficient knowledge of Hydraulics, to construct fountains and canals for that irrigation which, in Spain, is indispensable to agriculture; but how imperfect was even their knowledge appears, in the expensive aqueducts that they laboriously built, as the 01 ly means of conveying water across the valleys. Mines were, and had for ages been, worked in all countries in which metals were known to exist, but very rudely and imperfectly; only in Moslem Spain, where such science as then existed was habitually employed in improving the useful arts, was any skill in this department exhibited ; there, silver and quicksilver were extracted with tolerable success, and some descriptions of precious stones were found. Gold was procured by washing the sand of rivers, in which no one now thinks of seeking it, as the Rhine and the Main. Some degree of engineering skill still lingered at Constantinople; but the Greek civil Engineers were as inferior as the military to their Aiab rivals.

Agriculture, horticulture included, had in the South of Europe, at the opening of the twelfth century, fully recovered the character of an Art. Moslem Spain had bv the industry and the skill of the Arabs attained to .the highest pitch of cultivation. Abderrahman I. had formed a botanic garden, for which he employed travellers to collect plants from all parts of the known world, and the fruit of his care was that, i.hroughout the caliphate, corn and the usual produce of the temperate zone, was intermixed with the sugar cane(141) and such other children of hot Mr regions, as could be there acclimated. Silkworms were carefully reared there. Of the condition of the recovered Christian provinces of the peninsula less is known; but it may be inferred, from the admiration expressed of those in the hands of the Arabs, that the Christian conquerors, even if they were capable of maintaining the previous fertility, which may be doubted, knew not how to repair any damage the land might have suffered whilst the theatre of war. Sicily, which had become a province of Egypt in 827, was equally benefitted with Spain by Arab skill anil

diligence. Irrigation there likewise enhanced the natural fruitfulness of the soil; the sugar cane and the silkworm were added to its indigenous riches, aud even to the present day the oldest olive trees are called Saracens. Italy also, even after the ravages of barbarians, and notwithstanding the almost incessant internal warfare, Mr. Hallam conceives to have resembled a garden—in comparison probably with the rest of Europe—during the middle ages, and her present pest, Malaria, to have been consequently confined within a much more limited range.(142) It appears certain that the productiveness of Lombardy was, early in the twelfth century, very much increased by the system of irrigation, which the Cistertian monks introduced there. To obtain similar results north of the Alps, would have required superior skill and industry, whilst the return they could hope for, was much less. In Germany, with the exception of Lower Lorrain, in many parts of which the fine soil invited tillage, and then as now luxuriantly repaid it, no such agricultural prosperity had ever existed. East of the Rhine husbandry had been in early ages the business of slaves, as it was in later times of villeins, and probably shared the contempt in which those who exercised it were held. A contempt not unlikely to be enhanced by the respect which the hated and despised Slavonians entertained for the art. They practised it zealously if not scien­tifically, and from them the Germans appear to have learned it, judging from the fact that the oldest German or Gothic names for some of its chief implements and products, as plough,(143) loaf, beer, &c. are Slavonian words. Even when the poorer freemen began to pursue this branch of industry, they would rather incur the same contempt than impart respectability t<V their new occupation, to do which could only be the work of time: nevertheless when bread became a material part of the food of the Germans,(1^1) the importance of agriculture was felt, and laws were made for its protection. Amongst these were a prohibition to hunt in corn fields after the corn should have put forth the second leaf; and the denouncing severe punishments against whoever should set on fire, or otherwise injure, orchards or -vineyards, or rob a peasant, of his cattle; Church Councils, apparently Digitized by Microsoft®

with the view of protecting the poor tiller of the soil, forbade the prospective purchase of a growing crop. The very imperfect state of the art in northern Europe may best be estimated from one fact stated by Mr. Ilallain, namely that upwards of 150 years later than the period now under consideration, ten bushels of wheat per acre was in England reckoned an excellent crop. Yet in this state of agriculture, William of Malmesbury speaks of vineyards in the vale of Gloucester, producing wines little inferior to those of France, of course meaning the cheap and acid vin ordinaire.

With respect to manufactures, as early as the ninth and even as the eighth centuries, the Flemings seem to have been celebrated as weavers of woollen cloth ; and at the beginning of the twelfth century divers cities of Lower Lorrain, with Ghent at their head, were striving to monopolize the business. From the Netherlands the art spread into France, where, according to some writers, ior want of liberty, it failed to prosper, and into the Rhenish provinces, where finding cities similarly consti­tuted with those of Lorra n, and fostered by the charters of Henry IYr. and Henry V., it throve. Thence it extended to other parts of Germany, and llatisbon is spoken of as rivalling Ghent In Italy the manufacture for domestic use was universal, and the produce of the looms of Milan, Pisa and Florence, is said to have competed, in fineness and in strength of texture, with those of Ratisbon, though they could not in Roman estimation compare with the woollen cloths of Flanders. The dimensions and fineness of these cloths, as well as the process of dyeing them, were strictly regulated by botli sumptuary laws and the bye-laws of the guilds; the peasantry being forbidden to make in their cottages what they were forbidden to wear, amongst other things to use any dye but black. '1 he linens of Germany appear to have been already, in the eleventh century, highly es­teemed, and such was the value set upon tlax weaving in Lombardy, that Padua prohibited the exportation of linseed, ordering it to be sown upon the town lands. Italy moreover wove cotton, imported from Egypt. Silk-weaving appears to have been hitherto confined, in Europe, to the Constantinopolitan ^ empire and the Arabs of Spain and Digitized by Microsoft®

Sicily; and of the success of these last in the manu­facture a specimen is said still to exist at Nuremburg, where the Emperor Henry VI. deposited a silk Chlamys, or coronation mantle, that he carried away from Palermo, and upon which is embroidered an Arabic inscription, stating that it was wrought at Palermo, by command of King Roger, in the year 112B.(145) In Syria, Egypt, and Arab Spain, silk, linen, and cotton weaving flourished. The art of tanning must have attained to some degree of excellence, since gilt and embossed leather is con­stantly named amongst the costly hangings of state apartments. It is named, together with embroidered silk hangings, in Denizo'-s description of the splendour of the Great Countess. Glass is spoken of as a Venetian manu­facture, but whether for mirrors, dnnking vessels, or windows, is not stated; possibly being a new art, and only used in one way, no explanation was wanted. Paper had long been made of cotton by the Asiatic Arabs, and foreign nations occasionally procured it from them under the name of Charta Damaxc.ena or Charta bom- bycina.i1**0 Montfaucon avers that he had seen charters of the tenth century written upon this Charta Damas- cena; a Papal bull of the ninth, upon the same material, is said to be still extant; and the Hon. Mr. Curzou, in his account of the Levant Monasteries, speaks of a charter written upon this charta bombycina in the sixth century, as extant in the Jesuits’ College at Rome. The Spanish Arabs early invented the substitution of linen rags for cotton, and an Arabic version of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, written upon paper made of linen, bears the date of 1100. The Christians did not imitate this invention till long afterwards, and the supply of paper, whether from Asia or from Spain, must have been scanty, since it did not supersede the abomi­nable practice of erasing ancient writing, in order to commit new matter to the parchment thus rendered a second time blank. That metallurgy was understood, has appeared in what has been said of the manufacture of arms and of goldsmiths’ work. In this, as in other arts, the Arabs took the lead. Their mechanical skill, as early as the eighth and ninth centuries, was equal to pnxlucing the clock, de­scribed as Haroun A1 Raschid’s present to Charlemagne,

in which a ball falling upon a cymbal struck the hour, and horsemen came forth in the proper number.(liG-)

All these manufactures, as well as all kinds of me­chanical labour, were strictly regulated, as well by the bye- laws of the different German G'.ilds and Italian Arti, as by more general legislation. Of the latter, the object was a twofold protection, viz., of the consumer against ex­tortion and of the producer against competition. With regard to the first, e.g., not only was the remunerafion of the miller for grinding, and the relation of the price of bread to that of wheat fixed by law, but in many places the baker was ordered to make bread of materials sent, him, charging a certain sum for the use of bis heated oven and his own labour Butchers were subject to ana­logous regulations, with others guarding against the sale of unwholesome meat. In many’, it not most places, the exportation of corn or other provisions was absolutely prohibited, a few of the most liberal allowing it when the price was low. Prodigious pains were bestowed upon guarding markets against those bugbears of olden times, forestalling and regrating; for instance, no one who intended to retail his purchases, was permitted to make them until a certain length of time had elapsed after the opening of the market, the end of the period of exclusion being announced by ring of bell. In some places traders were forbidden to ask more than a fixed moderate profit upon the cost price of their wares; and in many, holders of corn were, m time of scarcity, compelled to sell it at a very small advance upon the usual price, whatever might be the real value—a compulsion sometimes violently resisted by proprietors of full granaries.

On the other hand, the interests of the producer were as sedulously watched over. Some of the laws for the pro­tection of' the husbandman have already been mentioned. Agricultural states laid a duty upon the importation of grain and other provisions. The official oath of the Parma magistrates bound them, not only to protect native weavers, but to punish the importers of foreign manufactures, and burn their importations. Many towns were protected by their charters against the establishment of certain trades, as bakers, butchers, brewers, &c., within such a distance of their gates, as should allow of competition with the

citizens following those trades. The most incomprehensible of these prohibitions is that of exporting chalk and stone, in addition to oil, from Verona.

The whole business of commerce, the exchange of the produce of distant countries and its distribution when exchanged, was then conducted in a manner very different from that of modern times. The trade of Europe with Asia and Africa had, since the decline of Amalfi, been solely in the hands of Venice, until the Crusade, drawing Pisa and Genoa to Syria, led them to encroach upon the monopoly. Wherever these proud cities habitually traded, at least in the Levant, they had factories, where their merchants, with their clerks and factors, dwelt as in portions of their native land, under a Venetian Bailo, a Pisan or a Genoese Consul, who acted as Envoys of their respective cities, as Judges, save in cases of capital crime, and, virtually, as joint sovereigns of the portion of town comprised within the factory. In these factories the corn, salt, linen, and metals of Europe, and the furs of her northern realms, procured as it should seem at Bruges, then a sea-port town, and the great emporium of those regions, were exchanged for the richer produce of the East, even of India, brought by the Persian Gulph to Bagdad, and thence by caravans to the sea-coast. To this lawful and useful traffic, Venice superadded the odious trade of furnishing both Christian and Moslem countries with slaves, and that regardless as to whether the slaves were Christians or misbelievers. The Christians thus sold into slavery to the Paynim, were chiefly villeins, either purchased of their lords or Kidnapped; and it may be suspected that the last was the more usual mcxle of procuring them, from its being specifically reprobated in some of the Church Council denunciations, against the crime of selling Christians as slaves to Mohammedans.

Their purchases in the East, amongst which sugar and Tyrian glass are named, the Italian merchants seemingly carried home to their native cities, and thither flocked the merchants of the rest of Europe, to obtain their supplies of those Oriental luxuries, with which they repaired to the various fairs, where the business of distribution was completed. Occasionally however this part of the trans­action was varied or extended, by their visiting great towns

upon their way, at some of which they were gladly wel­comed, whilst at others the native dealers were protected by prohibitions and restrictions against such alien inter­lopers. For instance, at Vienna, the passage of Swabian and Ratisbon traders to Hungary was positively forbidden, and travelling merchants in general, were not permitted to sojourn longer than a fortnight; at Cologne, the stay of such strangers was limired to six weeks three times a year, and they might not sell spices to any but shopkeepers; i» some parts of England they were forbidden to deal at all with any other class of persons. Eastern German) seems to have been commercially independent of Italy, carrying on a direct intercourse, by caravans and fairs, with Asia, through the Greek empire, and with Hungary, Poland and Russia.

These fairs, of which, as of markets, mention is made in Flanders as early as the tenth century, and of which, perhaps, those of Leipzig and Frankfort n Germai y, and of Novogorod in Russia, may still offer some faint reflexion, were the grand objects of desire to cities and to their lords, who regularly received a toll upon every article sold in the fair; whilst the more rapacious claimed it upon all the goods brought thither, sold or unsold, and the more liberal strove to invite merchants, by building public warehouses for the secure stowage of their mer­chandize. These fairs were scenes of wealth, splendour and pleasure, but like most institutions and customs of that age, were connected with, and sanctioned by, religion, being usually appointed to begin upon a church holiday, and their opening always preceded by the celebration of mass Their duration was indefinite and various: those of Aix-la-Chapelle, Passau, Ens, Parma and Ferrara each lasted severally a fortnight.

Still less than such pristine fair*- can be compared with the ordinary fairs of the present day, can the travelling merchants who frequented them with their splendid waref, be placed upon any sort of level with our haw­kers und pedlars. Howmuchsoever disdained, they were the most opulent, and, with the exception of professed scholars, seemingly the best informed individuals of the age. They travelled with a train of loaded waggons or sumpter horses, and of servants of all descriptions; and in consideration of the risks to which they were exposed

from the plundering propensities of knights and nobles, not to speak of vulgar banditti, they were allowed to have arms for the defence of their lives and property, though not to wear them like the well-born. The mer­chant’s sword was attached not to his person but to his saddle; thus clearly showing that it was allowed solely for defence upon the road. By the beginning of the twelfth century the plunder to which wayfarers were subject was, in orderly times and by orderly nobles, commuted for a heavy but fixed toll, Scotice, black-mail, upon receiving which the noble insured the traveller’s safety through his territories. From payment of such toll, as of all lawfully imposed, pilgrims, ecclesiastics, and the property of cloisters intended for home con­sumption, were exempt, as being upon religious grounds entitled to general respect and gratuitous protection; so were knights and nobles who protected themselves. It was evidently designed to fall mainly upon traders, to whom it was a welcome compromise; but the guarantee did not extend to those who travelled by night. Still, so great was the danger from disorderly nobles and robbers of all grades, that merchants not only continued to carry arms, but, seeking strength in numbers, frequently tra­velled in large bodies, resembling Oriental caravans. In such associations for mutual protection some modern writers see the origin of guildsand although their probable earlier existence has been shown, that the mer­chants’ own guild arose hence is pretty certain ; and the strength first sought, for security against outrage, speedily gave birth to such arrogance, that no one, not a member of the Merchants’ Guild, was permitted to sell his goods at a fair.

The population of the Holy Roman Empire, it will be recollected, was anything but homogeneous, consisting of Franks, Burgundians, Goths, Saxons, Bavarians, Swa­bians, Slavonians, Lombards, Italians (and if its claim to comprehend the whole of Italy be admitted), Greeks, Arabs and Normans, each race having brought its own laws and customs to co-exist with those of the old Roman Empire. The laws subsequently enacted by the Emperor and Diet likewise rather co-existed with, than superseded, the others; and these new laws were obliged to be made

for every race in its own land, as for the Saxons in Saxony, for the Lombards n Lombardy, for the provinces won from the Greeks in the Exarchate or at ltome,diS) whilst each principality, irj its provincial diet, made laws for tself independently of Emperor and Diet. Moreover, every freeman had a right to choose the code of laws by which he w ould be governed; if he made no choice he was held to be under that of his forefathers. Women had no such choice, but, subject by birth to the law under which their father In ed, passed necessarily upon marriage to their husband’s. Even reigning princesses were not exempt, it should seem, from this obligation.(149)

The chief objects of the laws made and making by the Einperor and Diet in the eleventh and at the opening of the twelfth century, were three: the first, the regulation of the rights und duties of holders of fiefs, and of the relations in which the several members of the political feudal hierarchy—if the familiar modern adaptation of a word, specially and etymologically confined to the priest­hood, be admissible in history— stoiid towards each other; the second, the regulation if not the repression of the incessant private wars or feuds ; and the third, the substitut'on of cor­poral punishments, capital and secondary, inflicted by public authority, for the system of pecuniary compensation and of private revenge, which, being consonant with the dis- posidon of men, in a low state of civilization, to see in crime rather the wrong to the individual than the offence against society, had so long and almost universally pre­vailed. (ifl0) Even the portion of the welPrgeld allotted to the lord or king was assigned him, either as Robertson takes it as the price of protection against pri\ ate revenge, or as compensation for the loss of a vassal, rather than as a penal fine—a view of the matter from which the right of the individual to redress hir own wrongs by waging war against his enemy is a natural, it; might be said a necessary, corollary.

It were superfluous as tedious here to detail the various attempts to accomplish the first object, to regulate the complication of a system in which land was held in vass-ilage, not only, in the ordinary course, of a superior, toot, of an equal, and even by princes of their own ec­clesiastical vassals,—to give stability to the condition of

sub-vassals or vavasours—to secure fiefs from alienation or division, or to guard against the detention of lapsed fiefs by mesne lord or suzerain. The only point that can be historically important is the solution of the constantly occurring difficulty of holding land of two different lords, who might take opposite sides in civil broils, of two monarchs who might go to war with each other. The position was not rare, as, to mention only two, the Earl of Flanders was a Prince of the Empire and a Peer of France, the French Earl of Toulouse was a vassal of the Emperor for his marquisate of Provence, and of the Kings of England and Aragon for divers parts of his im­mense principality ; yet it is not a little remarkable that scarcely any mention occurs of difficulty felt upon the sub­ject, except indeed in the case of Raymond, one of those very Earls of Toulouse who did homage to so many sovereigns, but in the first Crusade refused, it is said, to do homage to the Constantinopolitan Emperor, alleging, according to some writers, as one reason, that it was wrong to have more than one Liege Lord;(151) and of the Comte d’Evreux, who being summoned to do homage to Robert Duke of Normandy and Henry King of England, refused to render it to both upon the same ground.(152) It appears that in the regular service of a common sovereign, the vassal of two mesne lords obeyed in person the first summons he received, and sent to the second the men of the fief, held of this latest summoner; or if the summonses came simultaneously, chose which lord he would attend in person. When the two lords mesne or paramount were at war with each other, he either formally renounced his homage to the one in order to serve tne other, or avoided the necessity of so doing by serving neither, but ■sending to both pecuniary compensation for the personal service of .himself and his men. It might be supposed that such renunciation of homage would have included the sur­render of the fief for which it was due; but it does not appear that any Earl, either of Flanders or of Toulouse, ever thus ceased to hold lands of any of their respective liege lords: and in point of fact it is certain that the Plantaganet Kings of England habitually thus renounced their homage to the Kings of France prior to declaring war against them, v-ithout for an nstant dreaming of the resignation of theii half of France,

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The second object was twofold ; namely, to regulate, and, as far as might be, to repress, the right of private war; for though its exercise was forbidden by Charle­magne, and by several Church Councils, no one seems to have disputed the freeman’s right of redressing his own injuries. To establish this, lawful feuds were distinguished from unlawful, or, in German phraseology, fehdprecht from faustrecht, which may be Englished as feud-right, dis­tinguished from the right of the strong hand. To this end, the causes which could justify piivate war were care­fully specified ; a certain number of days or of weeks were required to intervene between the commission of the offence and the commencement of hostilities, which commencement was again to be preceded and accompanied by certain pre­scribed and inviolable forms. Whatever act of violence infringed upon any of these rules, including, of course, all plunder of peaceable individuals, fell under the description of unlawful faustrecht. For further repression, in the eleventh century, certain periods of the year were appointed, during which, upon religious grounds, all private hostili­ties were ordered to be suspended. These periods of peace ip the South of France, where they originated, were called Treuga Dei, or Truce of God; and in Germany, where they were eagerly adopted, Reichnfriede, or Landfrlp.de, Realm’s peace, or Country peace.O53) Different sovereigns, as they found ;t practicable, lengthened or multiplied these intervals of truce, during which the only exceptions from the prohibition even to bear arms were in the service of the sovereign and at tournaments. In the beginning of the twelfth century the periods of truce were from Ad­vent to Epiphany, both inclusive, fronr Quinquagesima Sunday to Whitsuntide, again both inclusive, festival and fast days, and every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; a pretty considerable portion of the year, had its pacific character been, which it, scarcely need be said it was not, faithfully observed.

To substitute public, corporal punishment for pecuniary compensation ana private vengeance, when this last was the generally acknowledged, and pretty nearly the most valued, right every freeman, was no easy enterprise; nor had it, at the epoch under consideration, made much progress. It was sought to be insinuated rather than inforced, and the choice between the two systems was still left to the

injured party. It is averred that, up to a very late date, if not to the present day, in Persia, a murderer is delivered over to the family of the victim, to be dealt with at their pleasure, and cannot be pardoned without their concur­rence. The sanguinary, the savage, the insulting character of the punishments denounced and inflicted, may be in some measure indicative of the temper of the times, when the physical suffering of an enemy was thought a pleasur­able sight; mediaeval Christians being, in these respects, notwithstanding their chivalrousness, but little more tender­hearted than the Turkman chiefs, who are reported to have had their prisoners of war slaughtered at the door of their tents, as they sat at dinner, with the blood streaming almost to their seats, which Christians are said to have retaliated/154) But in the present instance, the cruelty may have been induced by the wish to allure the injured party to choose the new course of legal punishment. Thus torture was habitually resorted to, in order, by rendering death more painful to the criminal, to enhance the satisfac­tion given the prosecutor ; even clemency rarely extended to sparing humiliation, and mockery seemed to be an essential element of secondary punishment. Death, with or without torture, was the legal punishment of murder,— how mean soever the condition of the person slain—of kid­napping, of pertinacious wrongful imprisonment, of heresy, of witchcraft, of outrage to female chastity. The mode of inflicting it was various. When the female to whom violence was offered was a virgin, the offender was buried alive ; but so strange-do the notions of mediaeval legislators, respect­ing this form of execution, appear, that it is hard to say whether this was, or was not, designed to heighten the doom. It is stated that women, sentenced to suffer death, were invariably buried alive, for the honour of the sex, pro konnre muliehri. Poisoners, heretics, sorcerers, and, in Bologna, false coiners and clippers of coin, were burnt to death; and amongst other devices for enhancing the pain of death, Robert Earl of Flanders, in the year 1112, ordered a Knight, who had robbed a poor woman of her two cows, to be thrown, in full armour, into a coulilron of boiling water. To all these death-dooms, the right of sanctuary in almost every church and chapel offered less

alleviation than might be supposed, inasmuch as the

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Church, that would not suffer the refugee to be torn from the sanctuary she afforded, did not provide for his support there; ana he might lawfully be starved to death in her bosom. Indeed, Charlemagne strictly forbade the giving food to a murderer in sanctuary.

But perhaps the most startling circumstance of, all to modern feelings is, that there appears to have been no public executioner to carry out the frequent and fearful sentence of the law. Mr. Kemble finds, indeed, that Ilardikanutc had an executioner; but this is clearly the exception In general, it should seem that the prosecutor supplied his place—a compensation, possibly, for the right of waging war upon him; and Grimm expressly states, that, in default of the prosecutor, the tribunal bade some qf its officers often the highest, execute its sentence. In some places, it would seem that passing strangers were compelled to perform this revolting office, since specific exemption of pilgrims from such compulsion is extant. And amidst all this barbarism, a Magyar legislator, at the close of the eleventh century, Kalinany, or Kolomon, King of Hungary, is found so much in advance of his age, that, in his code of laws, he pronounces, “ Of w itches, there is nothing to be said, because there are none.”

Corporal punishments, short of death, bore the same character of cruelty, as maiming, whether simply, as i; the case of false coiners, whose usual doom was the loss of a hand or an eye, or, in retaliation, as an eye for an eye, See. And it may well be doubted whether the legislators, n denouncing these latter penalties, had any consciousness of even great severity, ■when the customary treatment of prisoners of war is considered : as, e.g., Marchese Bonifazio of Tuscany, whose piety was such, that he submitted to be scourged as a penance for simony, cut off the ears and noses of some prisoners of war prior to releasing them, and was not the less highly esteemed. Other secondary punishments implied insult and degradation. One of the latter kind was carrying a dog a certain distance, to which the highest nobles were liable, and which, as will be seen in the course of the history, w as sometimes most deeply felt. But tii the case of an ecclesiastic, the dog was changed for what seems the most unaccountable of substitutes with a view to degrading the bearer, namely, a book, most

likely a brev’ary or a bible. Thus, early in the eleventh century, Eriberto, Archbishop of Milan, the inventor of the Carroccio, after vanquishing one of his suffragan bishops and the Marchese di Susa, the prelate’s ally, com-

Eelled the lay prince to carry a dog, and the Bishop a ook, both barefoot, from a certain distant point to his cathedral. Yet, in direct contradiction to this tendency to de­grade, a Graf von Eberstein, is said to have been hanged for robbery, and then honourably buried as beseemed his rank.

This is perhaps the fittest place to mention one or two provisions of the law in different places, as both whimsical, and characteristic of the times. At Freyburg, in Swabia, any person who was wounded, or beaten till he bled, was entitled to ring a certain bell, at the sound of which the twenty-four Schoffen assembled, examined, washed, and dressed his hurts, and cut off the hand of his assailant, if detected and caught; but if he had rung the bell upon too trifling a hurt, if he did not bleed, they cut off his own hand instead. By the laws of Jerusalem, if a Christian died under the care of a physician—probably a Jew or an Arab, for the Knights Hospitalers, or those they deputed to attend their hospitals, could hardly be included—the unsuccessful practitioner was to be scourged through the streets, carrying the implements of his profession, then hanged, and his property confiscated.C155) How a phy­sician, under such responsibility, was induced to undertake the cure of Christian patients in dangerous maladies, is not explained. Again, Church Councils forbade monks to practice surgery, because it was attended by the shedding of blood ! Other Church Councils, indeed, limited the pro­hibition to practising for pay, that they might not be diverted from their proper duties, adding a similar prohi­bition with respect to law. Again, in some places, animals are found subjected to the law; by the Coutcmes be Beau­vais, if a sow killed a child, that sow, or some other sow, was to be hanged.(l56) Upon this same principle, probably, of hanging an innocent sow, if the guilty one could not be found, every solvent merchant was habitually made respon­sible for his insolvent compatriots. But merchants having more power of self-defenee than swine, laws to protect then* against this injustice was passed . it should seem not very efficiently, fo> they were frequently repeated throughout the twelfth and even thr thirteenth century.

Tribunals for administering this Draconian code of criminal law and for deciding civil disputes, were always at hand. Every prince of the empire, every considerable nobleman had his Court of Justice, every town had its own, the question there being whether it should be held bv the feudal lord’s governor, or by the municipal au­thorities. The Emperor wherever he went was attended by his Chief Justice—the Arch-Palsgrave till he became too great a potentate, then by his substitute—who during the imperial stay in any place superseded the local magis­tracy. This imperial tribunal was of course the supreme Court of Justice, and when the Emperor was absent from Germany, appears to have still been presided by the Ithine Palsgrave. Offending Princes of the Empire could be tried only by the Imperial Diet, which, upon conviction, pronounced in succession two degrees of outlawry, termed Acht and Iteichsachf, including con­fiscation of fiefs, and the last even of allodial property, but not it should seem death. That appears to have required a separate sentence, by which the offender was pronounced Vogelftey (bird-free), meaning, according to German antiquaries, not, as might be thought, that he was given up as prey for birds, but that he was free as a bird, and therefore unprotected as a bird, which every man was at liberty to destroy. The vassals of princes were in like manner tried by Provincial Diets, which in all points supplied to their respective principalities the place of Imperial Diets to the Empire Women could in no case appeal to a tribunal save through a husband, or male relation, the reason alleged being, lest they should be frightened into renouncing their rights.

In trials for capital offences no one could be required to bear witness against his lord, his kinsmau or his house­hold officer; in cases where life was not at stake no such reserve was allowed. And t is not unlikely that this indulgence, greatly 'ncreasing the difficulty of proof bv evidence, may have been one reason of the Jong con­tinued practice of trial by wager of battle and by ordeal,(!**> though the compiler of the Assisf.s de Je­rusalem finds a very different motive. He says, without trial by wager of battle all right heirs would be dis­possessed, so easy would it be to bribe witnesses, and hire false witnesses, had thev not to risk their lives in

maintaining the evidence they give. The use of these modes of trial was indeed limited to specific cases, and Henry I. of England forbade the judicial combat when the property in dispute was small; but so numerous were those cases in which it was allowed, that to serve as proxy in a judicial combat began to be a regular pro­fession ; an awkward one indeed, as, probably to guard against collusion between two proxies, the defeated cham­pion forfeited his hand. The efforts of the Church to suppress, as impious, all these self-entitled appeals to the Judgment of God were incessant; but so completely in vain, that the Popes, after all their censures of priests who should in any way participate therein, found it necessary to connive at the religious sanction, implied in the ad.- ministration of the sacrament to those who were about to combat in the lists or to undergo the ordeal. Nay, even the inflexible Hildebrand sanctioned a trial by ordeal in an ecclesiastical question, under the pontificate of Alexander II. The monastery of Vallombrosa having charged the Bishop of Florence with simony; he, supported by the Marquess or Duke of Tuscany, by one hundred bishops, and by the Pope himself, denied the charge. Cardinal Hildebrand stood alone in support of the monas­tery, and with his sanction Father Peter, one of the monks, undertook to prove by ordeal the truth of the accusation. Two piles of wood were arranged with just room to pass between them, and set on fire. He walked slowly along that narrow path betwixt the blazing piles, and came forth unharmed, even his clothes unsinged. Hildebrand, upon ascending the papal throne, rewarded his faith and courage with a bishopric and a cardinal's hat.

There now remains only to collect, and as far as may be to methodize, the little that can be readily found touch­ing the habits of life of the various classes of society, at the opening of the twelfth century. Even in the tenth we learn that Theophano, the Creek wife of Otho II., a talented and accomplished princess, introduced Greek arts and learning into Germany; and managed to sur­round herself with such society, that the erudite Pope Sylvester II., then preceptor to her son Otho III., writes, “ When I met with these genial countenances, “ this Socratic conversation, I forgot all sorrows, and

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“ no longer suffered from the sense of exile.” But this refinement, which never, it may be presumed, extended beyond the imperial court, appears to have died away with the Othos: it would be 1'ttle patronized by the sainted Henry II., and certainly did not co-exist with the disorders of Henry IV.’s reign,

It is known that the nobility, with the exception of such as had been either iuduced or constrained to become citizens of towns, or held offices requiring constant at­tendance upon the Sovereign, resided wholly in their castles, visiting the Court only when summoned to attend a Diet or invited to some especial festival. But their rural life was very unlike that which affords calm and rational occupation and enjoyment to their posterity. The castles were constructed solely with a view to security against external assault, an object little compatible v il1 domestic comfort. The upper story alone was lighted by what could be1 called windows, and these looked into the interior courts, those in the external walls being little more than loopholes, calculated to admit some small portion of light and air, and to allow the garrison to take aim at besiegers, without exposing tlieir own persons. From the same object of security, the upper stories appear to have been those not only inhabited by the family, but contain­ing the state apartments although it is evident that the great hall, named the PalasJ1^) must have been upon the ground floor, since old ballads a.nd romances con­stantly represent knights and damsels as entering it on horseback. Garden, except in the case of the very highest and greatest, there was probably little more than what is to be seen within the cloisters of a monastery.

In these castles all the duties now performed by upper servants, by the denizens of the Steward’s or House­keeper’s room, were then discharged by the sons and daughters of noblemen, whose menial services were repaid by the best education of the day. When this strange custom was first introduced is not apparent, but it maj be conjectured to have been after the contempt entertained for the holders of household offices at Court, i.e. the Ministeria/es, had disappeared.

The Lord of the Castle with his knights, esquires, male visitors, and men-at-arms, passed the day either in

the tilt-yard, amusing and improving themselves amidst all those military exercises which trained man and horse for the battle field, aud for the tournament, or else in the chase. This last was at once their chief delight, and a chief dependence of the Lady of the Castle for the supply of the table; and was everywhere protected by laws of con­siderable severity, though somewhat less cruel than those of the Normans in England. The meals were taken in the great hall, the Lord and his company at the same board with, though separated by a decided line of de­marcation from, the men-at-arms, and even the menial attendants. The evenings appear to have been spent in drinking, and listening to the songs or recitations of any wandering minstrel, whom the good fortune of the inhabitants of the castle might have brought to its gates.

A diligent, if perhaps, like many Germans, somewhat visionary inquirer into historical antiquities, Leo, whose opinion is assuredly entitled to respect, has recently started the very novel idea that, in Germany at least, the Lady of the Castle with her female train, noble and menial, did not habitually grace the table, or share in the amusements afforded by minstrels. He asserts that hospitably welcomed and entertained guests often left the castle without having had a sight of their noble hostess, who, with her daughters and handmaidens, re­mained secluded in her Kemenate, as her separate apart­ments, her Gyneceum or Harem, which last literally means sanctuary,(160) were denominated. At first sight these notions might be supposed applicable to an earlier state of society, prior to the development of chivalry; but Leo expressly assigns this habitual seclusion of women to the whole period, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, both inclusive. He supposes it to have been borrowed, through the Catalonian vassals of the Empire in the Arelat, from the Spanish Arabs, amongst whom the seclusion of women was by no means as strict as in Asia and Africa, and seems to have been almost as much a testimony of respect as of jealousy. That in Germany this seclusion, if it ever existed, was not dictated by feelings of either mistrust or contempt towards the secluded sex, appears from their presence being indis­pensable upon any and every specially festive occasion,

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and might be inferred from the lofty position in which women are during this period occasionally found >n various countries of Europe. As for nstance, in the eleventh century in Spain, Sancha Queen of Leon, and Adelmondis Countess of Barcelona appear conjointly with their husbands presiding over assemblies of nobles, prelates, and judges, conjointly with them influencing the reforms of the laws of the kingdom and county re­spectively, with whicli those assemblies were engaged. Margaret the sister of Edgar Atheling, and wife of Malcolm, King of Scotland, is found arguing a theolo­gical question in an assembly of nobles and prelates, and her husband, translating her Anglo-Saxon speech for the benefit of those Celts who did not understand the language The Great Countess owed to her birth the high station which her abilities dignified, but in the pre­ceding tenth century, the learned Hedwige, niece to the Emperor Otho I., owed a similar station, to which she had no hereditary right, wholly to similar abilif.es and virtues. Her husband, Burkhardt, Duke of Swabia, having committed the government of the duchy to her during a somewhat long absence, she acquitted herself so much to the satisfaction of the vassalage, that upon his death (leaving no children) she was allowed to retain possession of the principality for the remainder of her life; and that,although by Swabian or Alleinan law women were never out of pupillage. To conclude, in Italy wives and daughters of Professors are, throughout the period in quesdon, said to have occasionally supplied the place of their husbands or fathers in the lecture room of a High School, whilst ’n Wales, women voted in the public assemblies, and might divorce a husband for many causes, amongst others for any loathsome diseased161)

To retnrn to the German ladies at the opening of the twelfth century. If the inordinate addiction of their male compatriots of all clashes to drink in those days be Taken into consideration, it may perhaps be thought likely that the seclusion was the desire of the women them»elves. To such a length was this devotion to spirituous liquors carried, that not only did they remain many nights and davs without moving from the scene of their orgies, but they actually had patron Saints of

intoxication ;(162) whilst amongst the Slavonians, now blend­ing gradually with their Teutonic conquerors, during their paganism, sobriety had, upon a certain festival been held sacrilege. From such companions women might well fly to the Kemenate ; and assuredly, when the utter disregard of decency and morality in the earliest prose tales trans­mitted to a more refined age is recollected, it is pleasing to think that female ears were, and desired to be, un­polluted by such narratives, that the noble dame and her maidens were content rather to gossip in simple dull­ness over the distaff, the loom, and the embroidery frame, then the occupation and the pride of the highest of the sex. (163)

Be this as it may, the festive occasions that certainly blended the female with the male portion of the castle household, and assembled visitors of both sexes, were of frequent occurrence. They were sometimes designed to celebrate such incidents of family life as are still usually so celebrated ; the knighting of the eldest son of a prince or great lord, well corresponding to the coming of age of the heir in moderm times. Church festivals, the founding of a new church or abbey, and the like, gave birth to many, in addition to tourna­ments, which indeed were oftener given upon such events than independently. The splendid magnificence, the lavish expenditure characterizing such occasions, leave all modern ideas of extravagance far behind, whilst strangely out of keeping with the absence of what, to modern refinement, seem the commonest decencies and conveniences of life. Not less so with the apparent ex­cessive frugality of every day existence amongst wealthy traders, amongst knights, and even nobles, below the highest rank.

Some especial instances of wanton profusion that have been admiringly recorded, occur later in the century, and will be described in their proper place. Here it may suffice to remind the reader of the splendid hang­ings, plate and jewellery, for the decoration of chapels, oratories, state apartments, and the table, which have been mentioned relatively to the condition of the arts; adding that Countess Matilda’s magnificence in all these. respects is spoken of as actually superlative, and that her

contemporary, San Piero di Damiani, complains bitterly of his brother prelates, who hid then walls behind such pom­pous clothing, i.e. the embroidered silk, or embossed and gilt leather, hangings, and deformed their mitres with profuse jewellery. The banquets given upon all festive occasions are represented as most sumptuous, though it may be suspected that the sumptuosity refers mainly to then profusion, This suspicion rests upon incidental statements, such as, e.g. an account of the foundation of a new abbey, or abbey church, when the business began upon the Sunday, with appropriate religious rites, and lasted with sports of various kinds, through the week. Upon such an occasion, an Abbot of Croyland is said to have sumptuously entertained at dinner five thousand persons of all ranks, from the Earl and Countess down to day labourers, who had assembled to offer contributions to the hallowed work, according to theii means, some grants of land, others gratuitous labour, and to celebrate the laying of the first stone with the usual festivity and pastimes. Again, the wedding banquet of the Great Countess at her second marriage is stated to have lasted twelve hours. And at the most sumptuous of these feasts, the company being di' ided into couples of a lady and a knight, one plate and one cup served each couple, whilst rushes then and long afterwards supplied the place of a carpet. Nor could the rushes really be clean, since the new wore strewed over the old, with whatever refuse and dirt, they might chance to harbour, just as a fresh layer of straw is thrown over a form-yard. More akin to the latter than to the former part of the account, or to the por­traiture of Matilda’s magnificence, is the performance of a dance by women and bears at her wedding banquet. After naming such an exhibition at the nuptial feast of a mighty pri'eess and patroness of letters, it seems scarcely worth adding that a combat between bears and naked men smeared over with honey, rivalled bear-baiting among the recreations that delighted the highest and gravest, ay well as the lowest and rudest, of the male sex.

The progress of chivalry from its birth to its full matur ty, to the complete development, of the high spirit of honour and courtesy, that, scorning the surprise upon which chiefly or solely the crafty barbarian relied,

gave long notice not only of future hostilities, but of time and place, almost of the manner in which it was de­signed to offer battle, would naturally be unnoticed at the time, and now eludes investigation.(163*) In many parts of the world some kind of ceremonial has accompanied the investing the boy with the dignity and responsibility of manhood ; (l®4) and the process by which this rude ceremonial was ultimately converted into the splendidly important solemnity, with all its symbolical and typical rites, by which knighthood was conferred upon the sons of kings, princes, and nobles, would again be too gradual to attract contemporaneous observation. To receiving knighthood in this regular and religious form, noble birth was indis­pensable. The honour might indeed be conferred by the sovereign upon men of humble origin, in recompense of distinguished merit,—cf some brilliant exploit; but it could be thus conferred by none of inferior dignity to the sovereign, was unaccompanied by those rites, and did not place the son of the low born knight upon a level with those of knightly race ; whilst passing over that son, it did, whimsically enough, so exalt his children, the grand­children of the individual knighted ; perhaps as presumed to be born after the dignity was in the family.

The rise and progress of tournaments it is equally diffi­cult to trace. Some sort of mock fight seems at all times and in all places to have been an indispensable element of the amusements of the stronger, the pugnacious sex. It is found in the games that honoured the obsequies of l’atroclus, as in the periodical Olpmpic contests, and in the san­guinary pleasures of the Roman amphitheatre; or, turning from classical antiquity, in the martial sports and exerciser that enlivened the Teutonic forests ;(i65) the development of which afforded the mock fight said to have graced the meeting of the Carlovingian brothers, Lewis the German and Charles the Bald, at Strasburg; whilst the mock tight and military exercises by which Henry the Fowler, in the tenth century, trained his newly-formed cavalry to resist and repel the Magyars, may be considered as the immediate parents of the daily practice in the tilt-yard, which in its turn would as naturally give birth to the idea of repeating that practice in larger companies, and as occasions for festive meetings. 1'pon the continent

tournaments were rapidly increasing in form, splendour and frequency at the opening of the twelfth century, though as yet unknown in England. Banquets and dancing usually closed the day after the contests of the morning. The last day was generally allotted to martial sports and ex­ercises for the lower orders, as cudgel playing, running at the Quintain, contests in archery, wrestling, quoit hurl­ing, running races, and the like; sports that also enlivened fairs, church holidays, &c., at all of which the higher classes were spectators; thus in a manner participating in the pleasures of their inferiors, even as those inferiors were admitted to behold and admire the skill of their Lords -in the jousts. The Church denounced tournaments as a wicked, because wanton, risking of human life, and that the denunciation was by no means groundless will appear in course of this history. But ecclesiastical censures, and those Papal thunders which few monarchs attempted, and fewer were able, to resist, proved impotent when opposed to the spirit of the age.

The Church appears to have been equally impotent against the fashions of the day, ba'Hed in its attack alike upon the social dance, the hired rope dancers, and buffoons, that enlivened every such festive meeting—rope dancing especially was denounced as a deadly sin—and upon the whims that governed dress, all of which, unaccountably enough according to the opinions of a later age, were made topics of religious reprobation. Every reader of history is acquainted with the fruitless zeal of the clergy against the shoes of which the pointed toes were turned up and chained to the knees; the inconvenience of which might have been supposed sufficient to render the fashion short­lived, failing to do so, most likely, only because the attacks upon the troublesome points endeared them to the wearers. A similar reason might, considering the probable state of the floors, have induced the ladies to shorten the trains, that, equally w’.h the turned-up shoes, provoked eccle­siastical ire. A Bishop of Terouanneis reported to have, from the ] Lilpit, thus addressed the obstinate wearers of long trains • “ Women, had God intended you to sweep the streets he would have furnished you with the means of so doing.” That the same argument would apply to the use of every implement, and even to the wearing of clothes, does not

seem to have occurred either to the reverend prelate or to his refractory flock. For refractory the ladies were, and continued to sweep streets and banquet halls. Fqually refractory proved the male wearers of long hair, who were yet more vehemently assailed. A Church Council in 10;)9 commanded all priests, if a long-haired man should enter church during service, to interrupt the holy rite, and admonish the offender, that he entered the sacred edifice in defiance of the will of God, and therefore entered it to his own damnation: further forbidding them even to officiate at the burial of any individual, pertinaciously retaining locks of such sinful lengths.(l<>6) Even the philosophical Archbishop Anselmo is said to have refused his benediction to such atrocious criminals. Whether similar zeal were displayed against another fashion of the day, pretty much confined to the male sex, and chiefly to the portion born in France, to wit, that of artificially changing the colour of the hair, especially dyeing black locks of a flaxen or golden hue, does not appear. Generally the clergy censured the dress of both sexes, and censured in vain; which, with the remark that the offending fashions were most cultivated in France and England, least in Lombardy, and moderately in Germany, may suffice upon this topic.

In Italy, sumptuary laws were made to repress the luxurious expenditure of the citizens, but seem little called for when it is discovered that the very best non- castellated houses in towns were thatched, that a piece of pine-wood supplied their evening light to the wealthiest of this class, who deemed a single joint, or indeed any form of flesh meat, too wanton a pampering of the appetite to be indulged in more than twice a week. Is it worth adding that trusses of straw formed the seats of the stu­dents in the lecture room of colleges ? To lessen the expense of funerals, which, with their banquetings and hired mourners, appear to have resembled Irish wakes, interment was ordered to take place within twenty-four hours after death. Another sumptuary law, if it should not rather be called, a police regulation, of which there were many with sanitary objects, forbade both the fre­quenting of taverns by any except travellers, and gambling generally. But it was powerless as the church effort's to

reform dress; the taverns were thronged, and gambling was universal.

Little more can be gathered as to the habits ai;d condition of the non-noble at this period, but much may be inferred from the immense chasm then separating the different classes. In Germany a middle class did not as yet exist, though in the course of this history it will be seen to arise there, and on bot.h sides of the Alps to make considerable progress.

With respect to general character it may be observed that the feudal system and spirit were peculiarly calculated to correct those vices which had branded, and indeed caused, the degeneracy of the Roman Empire; to wit, falsehood, ingratitude, treachery, and the very exaggera­tion of tyranny. By strongly marking the relative duties of Lord and Vassal, it awoke in the inferior a sense of the dignity of manhood, which, whilst it preserved Europe from Oriental slavery, gave birth to fidelity, and through fidelity to honour. That this honour, even knightly honour, in so far as it implies scrupulous veracity, had not yet attained to the lofty tone of a later age, to which perhaps somewhat more of general enlightenment and re­finement may be indispensable, is apparent, not only from the conduct often related without seeming consciousness of its being objectionable, but from that ascribed to heroes of romance. Equivocation, or at least “paltering :n a double sense, keeping the word to the ear,” not to or in the spirit, it may be remembered, enables the frail as fair Isolda to pass the ordeal unscathed, and of such paltering a whimsical instance occurred about the time at which this history opens. A conspiracy being formed to murder the King of Denmark, the conspirators laid themselves flat upon the giound to arrange their plot and pledge them­selves to each other, in order that, if suspected and questioned, they might conscientiously swear that neither sitting nor standing iad they so conspired.

The especial virtue of the age was charity, which was held to exliiigvish sin, even as water quenches fire One fruit of this charity was the establishment of hospitals for the relief of “all the ills that flesh is heir to.” Scarcely any town was destitute of such institutions, endowed by monarchs, princes., prelates, nobles, or opulent citizens,

often including an eleemosynary inn, also called an hos­pital, where poor wayfarers were lodged, fed, and clothed. These hospitals were for the most part attached to mo­nasteries, that the souls of the patients might be duly cared for as well as their bodies. But Lazarettos, or hospitals for lepers, were founded unconnected with cloisters, and served by a lay confraternity, who lived together monastically, under a Master, or Rector, with an officiating priest attached to them.(if>7)

This preliminary sketch of the state of the Holy Roman Empire at the opening of the present history, cannot perhaps be more fitly terminated, or the character of the age with its ignorance of all refinement, its violence, intense passion, and, notwithstanding some loquacity and uncon­sciousness of bathos, its poetic spirit, better exemplified, than by an illustrative anecdote or two, and a translation of one of the forms of anathematizing the violators of church rights, recognized or assumed.

In the first quarter of the twelfth century died a Mar­grave of Misnia without children, but leaving his wife » i . far advanced in pregnancy. The collateral heir denying

that she was in a state to authorize hopes of a lineal heir, accused her of intending to impose a spurious child upon the vassalage, and claimed the margraviate. The widowed Margravine thereupon assembled the immediate vassals of the principality, presented herself before them upon an elevated platform where she was seen by all, and there dropped her garments sufficiently to display the enlargement of her person, that supported the truth of her assertion. The collateral pretender was immediately rejected, and the birth of her child patiently awaited.

The other anecdote relates to that Archbishop of Cologne who, by craftily stealing the infant monarch, Henry IV., from his mother’s care, possessed himself of the regency. Archbishop Hanno being visited at Easter by the Bishop of Munster, one afternoon ordered his servants to procure a ship in which he and his guest might take an excursion upon the Rhine. The archi- episcopal servants selecting a vessel, the property of a Cologne merchant, that was loaded and ready to sail as soon as the holidays should permit, arrogantly ordered her to be unloaded for the accommodation of the Prince- Archbishop. The owner’s son, x spirited youth, opposed

their proceedings, his friends joined him, and a scuffle ensued, which, the populace taking part with their towns­men, speedily became a serious insurrection. The two prelates fif'd bv a secret passage to the Cathedral, and thence to the house of a favourite Canon, whom Hanno bad permitted to make a private postern in the city walls. By this they escaped, whilst the rioters stormed palace and cathedral, broke the neck of an old pretended pro­phetess by flinging her from the city w'alls, hung an archiepiscopal officer, and the like, for all of which they claimed the Emperor’s thanks, the prelate being his enemy. At the head of his vassals Hanno recovered the city, scourged, blinded and exiled the known or suspected rioters, and cancelled the city charter, whereupon Cologne, robbed of her rights and liberties, became a desert. Upon his death-bed, impelled as he said by a dream, he restored the charter.

Offences against the Church were in those ages of violence very frequent, whenever the sovereign was not strong enough to compel obedience to the law, and in Italy were mostly accompanied with insult and mockery, too gross as well as too blasphemous to be more than alluded to. The denunciation of a Prince-Bishop of Liege against all persons guilty of such offences 1 uns thus. “ Accursed be they within doors, accursed abroad, accursed in every place where they shall stand, or walk, or sit, 01 lie; accursed eating, accursed drinking; accursed be their food and their liquor ; accursed be they sleeping, accursed waking; accursed be the earth they till, accursed their labour, accursed the fruit of their land; accursed be their going in and going out ; accursed be they from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot ! Be their wives widows and childless! May God strike them with indi­gence, hunger, fever, frost, heat, foul air and toothache! Mav God strike them with blindness, idiotcy, and raving madness      May they grope at mid-day as the blrn I

grope in darkness! The Lord persecute them till they perish from the face of the earth ! May the earth swallow them alive like Dathan and Abiram ! May they go down alive into Hell, and there suffer with Judas, the betrayer of our Lord, with Pilate, Herod, and other malefactors, unless they repent, and make satisfaction to the Church. So be it! So be it IW;

BOOK I.

LOTHAK II.—CONRAD III.

CHAPTER T.

Rise of the House of Hohenstaufen.—Loyalty of Frederic of Hohenstaufen to the Emperor Henry IV.—Mar­riage with Princess Agnes.—Duke of Swabia.—Death. —Services of their Sons, Frederic and Conrad, to Henry V. — Frederic's claim to succeed his Uncle, Henry V.—Arts that baffled him.—Election of Lothar.

[1125.]

The origin and early history of the progenitors of the Emperors of the Swabian dynasty, that is to say, of the House of Hohenstaufen, is, if not actually unknown, obscure. It is not even certain what rank they bore; whether that of simple nobles, or the loftier, of belted Earls. ; whether they were immediate or only mediate vassals. During the period of Hohenstaufen sovereignty, the genealogy of the family was traced back, not only to the Carlovingian predecessors of those Emperors, but, as if that were insufficient dignity, to the yet earlier, Merovingian, long-haired Kings of the Franks. The critical investigation of later historians has referred this splendid ancestry to the adulation of court sycophants, and reduced all that can be ascertained upon the subject to the few following particulars.

In the beginning of the eleventh century, the castle of one branch of the Swabian noble family of Staufenecke

and Rechberg stood in, or immediately above, the village of Biiren, or Beuren, as it is sometimes written, theii property, whence the sons of this branch were denominated the Grafen (Earls) or more likely the Herren (Lords) of Biiren. This village is situated at the north-western foot of a lofty hill, that rears its cone-like form abruptly from the plain, and is distinguished from the adjacent southern chain of the Staufenecke and Staufele hills, high above which it towers, as the Hohe Staufe, or high Staufen. About the middle of the century one of this family fell in Henry III.’s Hungarian wars, and his son or nephew, Friedrich von Biiren, who had married Hildegard, the daughter of a noble Alsatian famiiy, removed from his village mansion at the foot of the hill, to a castle which he had built and fortified upon its summit, and at the same time exchanged the title of Lord of Biiren for that of Earl or Lord of Hohenstaufen. It may be observed, in relation to this change of title, that in those days, when surnames were only just coming into general use—they were so rare prior to the crusades as to be almost unknown—titles were not, except in the case of principalities, as invariably fixed as in modern times. The actual title was indeed fixed, a simple Lord could not at his pleasure call himself an Earl, but the one of the Lord’s or the Earl’s possessions, when he had many, by which he was designated, was at his choice, and while the Head of the family commonly called himself Graf or Ilerr, of its original seat, or the birth place of its founder, the younger branches were Graf or Herr each of his own onlj, or favourite, domain. A great difficulty, in tracing genealogies far back. From the epoch of this upward migration, and transformation of the Lords of Biiren into Lords of Hohenstaufen, their history is no longer a matter of question or tradition; but of the castle whence they derived their new desig­nation, a mere insignificant ruin remains^1"*).)

From the battlements of Hohenstaufen castle the eye ranged in almost every direction over a vast extent of fields, meadows, vineyards and woodlands, amidst which were interspersed towns and villages to the number of sixty. The prospcct was closed to the south by the primeval snows of the Alps, gleaming far above and far

beyond the already mentioned chain of Staufenecke and Staufele hills, and to the west terminated in a misty line, marking the Black Forest. Biographers and historians of the Swabian Emperors have imagined that the mag­nificence of this view filled the bosoms of the family with ambitious aspirations. The possibility of such an influence cannot be disputed ; although it may perhaps be admitted as a more reasonable conjecture, that the supposed cause was rather a casual result of its supposed effect; that ambition to increase his power and raise his rank instigated the Lord of Biiren to quit his lowly residence for a position more secure against the attacks of those enemies, whom in the pursuit of the objects of that ambition he must needs provoke, whose subjugation he perchance already meditated. But whichever were cause, whichever effect, certain it is that during the civil wars that distracted Germany, whilst its princes contended for the person and the power of the minor Henry IV., Frederic Lord of Hohenstaufen, the builder of the castle, raised himself to the level of the proudest Swabian earls; and that the next Frederic, the son of him who had soared to the summit of the highest Staufen, attained to a yet more exalfed station.

In the troublous times of Henry IV.’s majority, the second Friedrich von Hohenstaufen was distinguished amongst his compeers for talent, activity, and valour; but yet more, amidst his brother nobles’ general and reckless pursuit of their individual interests, for his unflinching loyalty. In these eminent qualities, he was second only to the Duke of Lower Lorrain, Godfrey of Bouillon, the Crusader; in steady loyalty was well nigh bis only rival. The Emperor Henry IV., who, amidst rebellion and papal persecution, had ever found in this second Lord of Hohenstaufen a staunch and efficient supporter, who had suffered so much evil, and anticipated yet more, from the selfish policy of the Princes of the Emp're, determined to balance, as far as might be, their ascendancy, at the same time that he rewarded the fidelity ot his trusty vassal. To this end, in the year L079, whilst the anti-king Rudolf, who had received the duchy of Swabia as the portion of his wife, the Emperor’s sister, was in arms against his imperial brother-in-law, he

summoned Frederic of Hohenstaufen to Ratisbon, and there, in full Diet, according to the chroniclers,^!) thus addressed him :—“ Frederic of Hohenstaufen, thou right w good Knight, who hast ever been the truest to me, as the “ bravest, thou seest how rebellion rages throughout the “ Roman empire, how faith and loyalty are trampled under “ foot, no lawful authority being obeyed, no oath held “ sacred. Yet is all power, as thou knowest, from God, “ and he who withstands his sovereign withstands God. “ Up then, stalwart hero ! Fight manfully, as heretofore, “ against the empire’s foes and mine, and 1 shall not “ forget thy services. Thou shalt have my only daughter, “ Agnes, to wife; and since my brother-in-law, Rudolf, “ abjuring his honour and the ties of blood, seeks to “ usurp my crown, I will set thee over the duchy of “ Swabia, which he, by his disloyalty, has forfeited.”(*”2) As the Emperor himself had not at this time completed his thirtieth year, it is evident that the promised bride could be but a mere child, the marriage simply pros­pective, and the sole immediate result of the betrothal the investing the future bridegroom with the duchy of Swabia, vacant, according to Alleman or Swabian law, ae forfeited by Duke Rudolfs rebellion. But if Frederic of Hohenstaufen’s power to assist his persecuted monarch was thus increased, the bitterness of the civil war appears to have heen thereby envenomed. The anti-king himself, indeed, soon afterwards fell in battle at Merseburg, where Godfrey of Bouillon, the Imperial standard-bearer, struck off his right hand, the hand, as Rudolf in his last mo­ments remorsefully observed, with which he had pledged to Henry IV. the faifh he had broken.(I'3) But his son Rudolf instantly claimed the duchy as his lawful heritage; and upon his dying without children, Bertoid Duke of Zaringen, who had married his sister, the anti-king Rudolf’s daughter, claimed it in right of his wife; and Bertoid was no insignificant opponent. To his father, Graf ran Breisgau, one of the most powerful of the Swabian earls, Henry IV.’s father, Henry III., just before his death, had promised the then vacant duchy of Swabia. The Empress Agnes, as Regent, unaware of this promise, gave the duchy to the late anti-king Rudolf, as her daugh­ter’s portion; and when informed that she had thus

ignorantly broken her deceased husband’s engagement, offered the Earl in compensation for his disappointment the dukedom of Carinthia, with the margraviate of Verona. The Earl, resolved at any rate to be a duke, accepted what was offered him, but not as compensation ; and it should seem, to mark his dissatisfaction, he changed his title from Duke of Carinthia to Duke of Zaringen. This some writers call translating Carinthia; but as Zaring, a Swiss town, gave its name to his principal county, and was perhaps the original seat of the family, it might rather be termed transferring the locality of his dukedom. The first Duke of Zaringen, though he reconciled and allied himself to the prince who had superseded him, never forgave the Empress for depriving him of the promised national duchy, and his posterity appear to have inherited his resentment, showing themselves the almost invariable enemies of her descendants. His son, Duke Bertold, was the mightiest of those who may be distinguished as secondary Dukes, and was vigorously supported by Welf, Duke of Bavaria, who, regardless of the gratitude he owed the Emperor for the g'lt of his own duchy, was often found in open rebellion against him. The large posses­sions of Duke Welf in Swabia, the native land of his family, rendered him a very important auxiliary to either claimant, and the feud was at last ended by a compromise. The Emperor exempted the Swabian domains of both Welf and Bertold from the ducal authority of Frederic of Hohenstaufen and of all his successors, further satisfying Duke Bertold by some Swiss grants. Duke Bertold, like his father, took what he could get, without forgiving either the donor or the receiver of the duchy that he deemed his by right.

Of the subsequent career of this first Hohenstaufen Duke of Swabia it will be enough to say, that he proved hiniself through life the unfailing and energetic champion of his imperial father-in-law. He appears to have been at his side in every campaign, in every expedition, save when left in Germany to combat rebellion there, whilst Henry mai nained the struggle in Italy. The unfortunate mo­narch in his last and most painful conflict with his unprincipled and unfilial, as able son, Henry V.s had neither this energe”c champion nor the forces of Swabia

to support him. Duke Frederic died a.d. 1106, at the very commencement of the younger Henry’s parricidal rebellion: his heir ■was a minor, and his brother Otho, Bishop of Strasburg, had accompanied the Duke of Lower Lorrain upon his crusade

The marriage of Duke Frederic and Princess Agnes had produced two sons, Frederic and Conrad, who, when they lost their father, had barely completed the fifteenth and the twelfth year of their respective ages. King Henry, the proper title of the rebel son since his coronation as his father’s subordinate colleague and heir, immediately possessed himself of the persons of his v. idowed sister and her children. The mother he at once gave in marriage to Leopold, Margrave of the Bavarian Eastern March (a name preserved in the German Oesterreich, literally eastern realm, but Englished as Austria), whom, by the gift, he lured from his previous fidelity to the Emperor. His nephews he kept under his own care, assuming the guardianship of their persons, together with the adminis­tration of the duchy, during the young Duke’s minority; by which means he turned its forces against the sovereign for whom they had hitherto fought.

When the rebel son’s conduct assumed its most atro­cious character; when by downright treachery and perjury he was enabled, disregarding his too fondly trusting father’s pathetic adjurations, and humble, only too humble, prayers, to imprison that father; to extort from him the abdication of his authority ; the surrender of the regalia, then esteemed almost indispensable to lawful sovereignty; when finally the persecuted father < lied of a broken heart; deep was Margrave Leopold’s remorse for his share in the rebellion. Thenceforward he thought only of atone­ment, and addicted himself to the form of expiation then esteemed the most efficacious; so numerous were the churches and cloisters built and endowed by him, that he thereby earned the surname of the Holy.

Meanwhile, the death of Henry IV. ended the unnatural war before the Hohenstaufen brothers could be called upon to take part against either their grandfather or their uncle. When they attained to man’s estate, that uncle was lawfully king and emperor; he had faithfully discharged his self­assumed office in relation to them, and their path of duty

was clear. And fortunate were they that it was so, for early were they called into action. Henry V., whom the Popes had thought their creature, was no sooner really king and emperor, than, like his father, he was involved in war with such of his vassals, as chose to disguise their own ambition under the mask of devotion to the Church, and with the Popes themselves, whose pretensions he now felt intolerable. In these wars he long found his nephews his zealous and useful assistants. That the sons of the deceased Duke of Swabia inherited the talents, the courage, and what one party called the virtues, the other the faults of their father, seems to be generally admitted, although, as to their rela­tive merits, some discrepancy of opinion appears amongst contemporary chroniclers, the palm of superiority being assigned now to the oldest, now to the youngest, perhaps according as circumstances brought the one brother or the other most conspicuously forward. Both were gallant warriors; and the matrimonial alliance which the young Duke of Swabia early contracted enabled them to render their uncle the more efficient service. He married Jutta, or Judith, daughter to Henry the Black, who had recently succeeded to his childless brother Welf, the second husband of the Great Countess, as Duke of Bavaria. Jutta’s sister was the wife of Conrad, Duke of Zaringen; and Frederic's connexion with these powerful princes both rendered the reduction of all turbulent Swabian vassals to obedience an easy task, and drew over those princes themselves to the Emperor's party.

And invaluable was such an accession of strength to Henry V., who, in addition to the feuds inherited with the crown, had now in his turn to encounter ingratitude, though far less criminal than had been his own. He had, immediately upon his accession, proceeded to recompense his two chief confederates in rebellion, one an ecclesiastic, Graf Adalbert, a younger son of the House of Saarbruck, the other a layman, the powerful Lothar, Graf von Supplin- berg, whose wife, ltichenza, was heiress of all that has since constituted the duchy of Brunswick, and part of the kingdom of Hanover. Tne See or' Mainz chancing to be then vacant, the Emperor named Adalbert Archbishop of Mainz, thus, in fact, making him primate of Germany. He likewise claimed the disposal of the duchy of Saxony,

which he alleged was vacant, as a lapsed fief, in consequence of the death of Duke Magnus, the last lineal male descend­ant of the ducal race of Hermann Billung. Magnus had, 'ndeed, left two daughters, severally married: El_ke, or Eilike, the eldest to Otho the Ascanian, Graf von Anhalt; the youngest, Wulfhilda, to Henry the Black of Bavaria; but no claim had been hitherto even advanced on the part of a female to inherit or transmit a duchy. Otho had, nevertheless, during the recent civil wars, assumed the title of Duke of Saxony in right of his wife, but was unable to maintain it against the imperial power. The Emperors had always sought to restrict the, tolerated rather than acknowledged, right of male heirs to the succession to pri n- cipalities and great fiefs; and of all Emperors, Henry V. was the least likely to suffer any extension of vassal rights, or encroachment upon his prerogative, even if he had not wanted Saxony for his friend Lothar. Treating the pre­tensions of Otho and Elike, therefore, as utterly groundless and absurd, he invested Lothar with the duchy of Saxony, and proceeded to divide the allodial property of the Billung fan., iy between the daughters, as co-hdresses. In this last operation he disappointed the general expectation—Elike, probably to punish her husband’s presumptuous assump­tion of the ducal title, obtained only Aschersleben and Ballenstadt, whilst the far larger portion of the Billung patrimony, with Luneberg, was allotted to her younger sister, Wulfhilda, Duchess of Bavaria.

But it was to the leader of a rebellion, not to the person of the individual, that both Adalbert and Lothar were attached; the churchman to the parti/an of the Pope against the Emperor, the Saxon noble to the enemv of the Franconian monarch, the object both of Saxony s long- cherished resentment against the Frank Carlovingian Em­peror, and her later ill-will to the Franconian dynasty, that occupied the imperial throne, vacated by the extinction of her own iuipjrial race. From the moment that Henry V. became Emperor, he was to Adalbert and I.othar as odious as his father had been; and no sense of gratitude to their benefactor interfered with their uf-ing his gifts to injure the giver. The confederacy of the newly-created Archbishop and Duke was unbroken Henry discovered their plots, seized the ecclesiastical

plotter, imprisoned him, and treated him, as might be anticipated, with vindictive severity. The captive prelate found means to make his hard usage known at Mainz ; the citizens adopted his quarrel, and when the Emperor visited the city, they in arms extorted their prelate’s release. Thenceforward in Adalbert, factious, opposition to the monarch was envenomed by personal revenge.

Against these potent foes the Duke of Swabia and his brother waged active war, now by their uncle’s side, now as his Lieutenants when he was summoned to Italy. Nor did they serve a thankless kinsman. In 1115 Henry, having vanquished the revolted Bishop of Wurzburg, punished his rebellion by depriving his see of the ducal rights that had been attributed to it, since the duchy of Franconia had, upon the accession of the Franconian dynasty to the throne, ceased to exist. The Emperor now reconstructed the duchy, as far as the distribution of many parts since its virtual dissolution might admit, added to it the burgraviate of Nuremberg, and the vogtei or steward­ship of the see of Wurzburg itself, in compensation of irrecoverable losses, and then conferred the revived duchy upon his younger nephew, Conrad.

The new Duke of Franconia employed his uncle’s gift as was expected, the more efficaciously to support the giver’s rights; but of the two brothers, Frederic appears to have been the most active. He is known to history by the surname of the One-eyed ; but whether he were thus disfigured from his birth, or, which is more likely, as the result of a wound, is not stated. It is, however, carefully recorded that he was endowed with the rarest manly ana princely qualities ; that he was blameless in his life, never having done an act that any human being could reprove or challenge; whilst, by his courtesy, he attached to his ser­vice many knights, besides those who were feudally bound to him. Thus reinforced by voluntary followers and allies, in addition to his vassals, the Duke of Swabia waged war upon the rebels who rose against his uncle, the chief scene of his exploits being the banks of the Rhine, where the power of the Archbishop of Mainz was predominant.

But it was not by mere fighting that Frederic sought to weaken that formidable power, to subjugate those rebels. So diligently did he proceed to bridle both actual insur­

gents and all who w ere known to betrav a rebellious or refractory disposition, by building and strongly garrisoning fortresses in every favourable locality, as to give rise to an odd popular saying, that Duke Frederic always rode with a castle at his horse’s tail. Thus fighting, destroying, and building, he followed the course of the llhine from Basle, which appears, upon the present occasion, to have been his starting point, downward as far as Mainz. This city, like­wise, v. 1 ich the Archbishop held against the Emperor; he might, with the forces he brought agauist it, have easily stormed. But he knew that the inhabitants had already repented their late exertions on behalf of their Arehbishop, and were, like all citizens with hardly any exception, loyal at heart, though compelled into rebellion against their will by their prince-prelate. The kindly-disposed Duke shrank from exposing men, who sinned only through weakness, together with their families, their venerable churches, their shrines and holy relics, to the outrageous violence in which the disorderly bands that had followed his banner, swelling his troops into a little army, would hold themselves entitled to indulge, were the town so taken. He accordingly for­bore to use the means in his hands of humbling the Archbishop, and quietly awaited the result of a blockade.

The unapostolic prelate repaid the warrior’s forbearance by an act of treachery which, if momentarily successful, was in its turn rewarded as treachery ever should be. He opened a negotiation with the Duke of Swabia, professed the deepest regret for the past, and the most earnest desire to return to his allegiance, Frederic, himself veracious, believed him, and raised the blockade. Judging the Em­pire to be pacified, and his own task, therefore, accom­plished, by the submission of the principal instigator, the real head of the rebellion, he lent a willing ear to the impa­tience of many of his vassals to go home, permitted his voluntary followers to disband when their services seemed to be no longer needed, and, breaking up his camp, set forward with very reduced numbers pacifically to evacuate the archiepiscop.il territories. When Adalbert had ascer­tained that his too confiding antagonist was enfeebled, hardly more by the disbanding of his troops than by the relaxation of vigilance consequent upon a sense of security, he ordered the gates to be opened, and, bursting forth with

his whole garrison, fell by surprise, with numbers now greatly superior, upon the peaceably retreating little troop. But Frederic and the men who had remained with him were tried warriors. Quickly recovering from the momentary disorder into which the utterly unexpected attack had thrown them, and exasperated by the perfidy of their clerical enemy, they fought with even more than their wonted courage. In the end they defeated their assailants, and drove them back to the gates of Mainz. But these were not found open to receive and shelter them. The loyal burghers, delighted to perceive that they were at liberty to follow their own inclinations, closed them against the fugi­tives, and the Archbishop was excluded from his capital. It was hoped he was thus rendered in some measure in­noxious ; but when in that trust Duke Frederic was recalled from the Rhine district, the Duke of Saxony hastened to the assistance of his confederate, whom he compelled the reluctant men of Mainz again to admit and obey. The civil war raged as before.

That Frederic’s high sense of honour remained un­tainted by the example of unclerical, unchristian falsehood of which he had so nearly been the victim, appeared upon divers subsequent occasions, one of which may not unfitly be here narrated. He had taken post in the loyal city of Worms, when the insurgents advanced in threatening array to the walls; but deeming themselves not of force adequate to a regular siege, proposed to treat. The Duke, desirous to avoid shedding the blood of fellow countrymen, welcomed the proposal, and met the leaders to negotiate in person. Whilst they were thus engaged, the vehemently loyal men of Worms, indignant at the bare idea of making terms with rebels, took Archbishop Adalbert for their model, and bursting forth from the city gates, fell suddenly upon the unprepared enemy, threw him into disorder, and, if supported by the Duke’s warriors, would evidently have completely routed him. But Frederic refused to profit by a breach of faith. Undeterred even by the risk of anenatir.g the over-zealous and too little scrupulous citizens, he kept back his own troops, and continued the negotiation as before, lea\ ing the VVormscrs to avert, as they best could, the danger to which they had, to say the least, wilfully exposed themselves. Unsupported, they

were driven back with loss and shame, whilst the Duke was concluding a truce, as preliminary to a general pacifi­cation. But the repugnance of the Wormsers to treating with rebels, if not their consequent conduct, was speedily justified. The projected peace failed by the evidently predesigned treachery of the insurgents, and the truce was short-lived.

The civil war continued, although at one time the im­perialists were so triumphant that, at the celebration of the Emperors marriage with the Princess Maud of England, the Duke of Saxony was compelled to attend and sue for pardon barefoot. But to detail all the vicissitudes and incidents of the strife were as tedious as it were super­fluous; and it may be as well here, once for all, to state the plan upon which the present history will be written. The enumeration of ever-recurring'analogous and insig­nificant transactions, the endless detail “of feats of broil and battle,” seldom of such importance as should render them politically interesting, and more seldom clearly in­telligible when described by civilians, which usually weary the reader in histories of early ages, will be avoided. What appears either influential in result, or characteristic either of the times or of individuals, will be selected for circumstantial narrative; whilst the rest, whether battle, siege, negotiation, or event of what kind soever, will be as much compressed and condensed as conveniently may be, often the issue only being mentioned.

The civil war in question lasted until the imperious Henry was constrained, in order to leave himself at liberty to prosecute his contest with the Pope in Italy, to purchase peace in Germany by various concessions. Of these none perhaps more deeply mortified him than the restoration to the bishopric of Wurzburg of many of the Franconian fiefs and all the ducal rights with which he had invested his younger nephew, as Duke of Franconia. He endea­voured to make Conrad amends by giving him the mar- quisate of Tuscany, to which he attached the government of all the other territories that had been possessed by the Great Countess, and which conjointly formed the bitterly contested Matildan heritage, further adding Ravenna as "a dukedom. Yet it hardly seems that the creation of a new dukedom was indispensable to Conrad’s retention of his

ducal rank, since he continued to call himself and to be generally called, Duke of Franconia, probably on account of the very superior dignity of that first of the national or provincial duchies.

Conrad accepted the compensation offered him, but evidently considered it unsatisfactory, and did not concur frankly in the transaction. Both brothers appear indeed to have deeply felt, if they did not resent, this sacrifice of the interests and dignity of the junior, in return for their unwearied zeal and exertions in their uncle’s service. They withdrew from the court of the Emperor to devote their time and attention to their own lands and vassals, taking no share in his contest with the Pope in Italy. This forbearance has been ascribed O’4) less to resentment of a private wrong, compulsory upon the Emperor, than to piety, and a conviction that Henry V. carried his enmity to the Pope, and his ideas of the despotic character of imperial sovereignty, to an unreasonable length. Nor is it unlikely that men religious and chivalrous, as Frederic and Conrad of Hohenstaufen appear to have been, must have seen reason to disapprove of much in the conduct of Henry V., who may, with little exaggeration, be called a parricide. But nothing positive is known upon the subject. What is certain is that they never again aided their uncle in his broils with his vassals, Italian or German, and that, upon one occasion, Frederic even assisted the anti-imperialist Bishop of Worms to recover possession of his episcopal citv.            -

Conrad repaired to Tuscany, and seems by his mild government to have greatly endeared himself to his new vassals. He did not however remain very long amongst them. An eclipse of the moon occurred; and whether, infected with the superstition of the age, he really were alarmed by the phenomenon, “ with fear of change perplex­ing monarchs,” really saw in it a manifestation of divine wrath, or took advantage of the popular belief to escape from scenes, in which he was painfully reluctant to parti­cipate in any way, he immediately vowed an expiatorv pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Such pilgrimages then no longer resembled those toilsome and perilous wayfarings, that had exposed the pious devotee to insult and outrage, and thus given birth to a crusade. The pilgrim could vol. i.  x

now be easily as safely transported by sea to the place of his destination, and when he had reached it, the per­formance of his vow implied the welcome duty of fighting “ beneath the Cross of God.” A duty performed, when the devotee was of Conrad’s station in society, at the head of a band of chosen warriors. Upon this military act of de­votion the Duke of Franconia and Ravenna set forward without delay.

During his absence in Palestine, Henry V., in the full vigour of manhood, was seized, in May 1125, with a inaladv, against which the medical skill of the age was speedily found ineffectual. He summoned his nephew Frederic to his deathbed; the call was instantly obeyed; and if any alienation of regard had arisen betwixt the uncle and nephew, a cordial reconciliation took place. The childless, dying Emperor bequeathed the whole of his private, or family property, consisting chiefly of fiefs and allodial estates in Franconia, to h:s two Hohenstaufen nephews. His sister had by her sccond marriage, his own work, given him nineteen nephews and nieces, but none of these could rival his ward’s, the offspring of her first nuptials, in his affection; and what he could, he did, towards securing to the Duke of Swabia the succession to the Empire. Depositing the Imperial insignia, the pos­session of which was then, as has been said, esteemed essential, if not actually indispensable, to the lawful exercise of sovereignty, in the hands of his youthful consort, Maud, he committed her and them to the care and charge of the Duke.

Frederic lost no time in taking possession, for his absent crusader-brother and himself, of their deceased uncle’s bequest, patrimonial fiefs and allodia alike. And it may be worth remarking that this last portion of that bequest, always indisputably heritable by both sexes, was unusually large; the ample possessions of Conrad II prior to his election having been, almost without exception, allodial. The fiefs were mostly subsequent acquisitions.

Frederic was now thirty-five years of age, and, conscious of his lofty position—his power augmented by this im­mense addition to his duchy and his Swabian patrimony, —claiming through his mother a descent by females from Charlemagne,—strong n his high reputation, in the warm

attachment of his Swabians, in the assured support of his stepfather, the Margrave of Austria, of his father-in-law, the Duke of Bavaria, and of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Zaringen,—he almost felt his deceased uncle’s crown as securely his as the family heritage. But he had antagonists of whom he dreamt not, and with whose artful manoeuvres his chivalrous frankness was ill calcu­lated to contend.

Since the Duke had forborne to assist his uncle against the Pope a reconciliation had taken place between himself and the Archbishop of Mainz, which, sincere on his part, he believed to be equally so on that of the prelate, whom he had even, upon more than one occasion, supported against the Emperor. But Adalbert had not forgiven the man whose straight-forward gallantry had foiled his perfidious stratagem, and he knew that the Court- of Home was bent upon excluding from the Imperial throne every scion of the house that had so strenuously resisted its encroachments upon the sovereign authority. He might therefore possibly persuade himself that he was merely doing his duty in promoting the apparent interests of the Church, whilst he was really gratifying his own vindictive feelings.

The means of effecting Frederic’s exclusion, if not easy, Adalbert saw were yet within his reach. He well knew that all the princes of the Empire looked to the election of a monarch as an opportunity for extorting sacrifices from the candidate, and thence inferred that, whilst he might confidently rely upon most of the ecclesiastical half to obey the insinuated wishes of the Papal See, their lay brethren, who had now again seen three sons regularly succeed to their respective fathers upon the Imperial throne, could not but be disinclined to such an extension of the hereditary principle in regard to the crown, as admitting the succession of a nephew to his maternal uncle, the last of those sons, would be. He had moreover a candidate, alike suitable and docile, to oppose to the Duke of Swabia in Lothar Duke of Saxony, his own old confederate in rebellion, both with and against Henry V. Lothar he knew hated Frederic personally, because akin to the friend against whom he had sinned,

i 2

and by whom he had been so cruelly humbled ; besides sharing the general Saxon ill-will to every non-Saxon emperor. He possessed private domains, his wife’s included, equalling, if they did not surpass, those of both the Hohenstaufen brothers; and his duchy, always the most powerful, had latterly been enlarged by the subjection of several Slavonian tribes on the shores of the Baltic, which Henry, King of the Obotrites and vassal of Duke Magnus, had recently compelled to acknowledge his own sovereignty, and through his the Duke of Saxony’s. The prelate could hardly have desired a better candidate. But, however favourable the prospect, it was not by open opposition that the Archbishop trusted to baffle the renowned, the popular, and the powerful Duke of Swabia, holding the all-important ensigns of sovereignty in his custody. His hopes rested upon a projected series of stratagems, to be conducted with profound dissimulation, and upon the unsuspicious temper of the Duke, who harboured no mistrust of a professed friend. To these craftv measures he forthwith had recourse.

The first operations of the prelate were directed to depriving Frederic of the regalia, and transferring them to his own keeping; and this he is said, by a writer of the following thirteenth century,(175) to have effected, by working upon the pride and generosity of ihe man he intended to wrong. lie represented to Frederic his election as actually certain, and urged that it would be far more honourable to him if spontaneous on the part of the electors, than if, by retaining possession of the •rown and sceptre, he appeared to challenge it as his birthright. The argument was plausible, and Frederic, relieving the Archbishop his friend, was deluded. When the politician had thus despoiled ^iim of one of his sources of strength, he proceeded, in the exercise of his undoubted prerogative as Arch-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, to convoke an electoral Diet, appointing his own archiepiscopal city of Mainz as the place of assemblage. The wording of the proclamation by which this Diet was summoned, might have opened Frederic's eyes, had not his own perfect guilelessness rendered him peculiarly obnoxious to deception ; and thus, though the

regalia were irrecoverably gone, might have armed him pgainst future perfidious councils. It contained the following passage, surely indicating the design of a real election, in which to extort concessions from a successful candidate.(!76; “ Especially we exhort you to recollect “ the oppression under which all have hitherto groaned, to “invoke the guidance of Divine Providence, and in “elevating a new sovereign to the throne, so to care for “ Church and State, as that they may be exempt from the “ late yoke and able to assert their rights; and we, with “the people committed to our charge, enjoy temporal “peace.” But Frederic saw in this only the reprobation of those measures of which he himself had disapproved, and still trusted in the Archbishop’s professed friendship.

The 2ith of August 1125 was the day appointed for opening the Diet. The attendance was unusually large, Dukes, Margraves, Earls, mere Nobles, Prelates, all ap­peared with their respective trains, lay and ecclesiastical, and their escorts, to the number of 60,000 men; to which must be added the humbler crowd, attracted thither by the combined wish to enjoy the spectacle, and to profit by ministering to the wants of the congregated multitude. Two Legates sent by Honorius II., who had now succeeded to Calixtus II., expressly to watch over the Papal interests, were likewise present, though never before had an attempt at Papal intervention in the elec­tion of an Emperor been openly made. A yet more extraordinary attendant at the Diet was Suger, Abbot of St. Denis, the able minister of Louis VI., on behalf of his master the King of France; the pretence for whose presence it is hard to conjecture, although its object is abundantly manifest; he was there, invited by the Legates and Archbishop to co-operate in pre­venting the election of a prince alike powerful and energetic, such as the Duke of Swabia, who would consequently be a formidable neighbour to the French King.

The right of suffrage in the election of an emperor, was as yet, it has been already stated, undefined by law in Germany. The princes spiritual and temporal, asserted that it was exclusively vested in themselves, as most

interested, and best versed in state affairs ; whilst the lower nobles and clergy laid claim to it, upon the plea of the reservation or their allegiance to the sovereign, in their oaths of homage and fealty to their immediate su­periors. Upon the present occasion the whole 60.000 are said to have claimed votes ;(!77) and had their claim been admitted, Frederic’s election was certain, the Swabians, Franconians and Bavarians being his partisans, the Lo- tharingians present favourably disposed to him, and only the Saxons, and the prelates of the Papal faction ad­verse. But Adalbert was thoroughly aware of the difficulties with which he had to contend, and was pre­pared for the conflict. He dexterously eluded the question of right.

He took advantage of the self-evident impossibility of such an army of electors finding accommodation within the city of Mainz, and of a precedent offered by the election of Conrad II., the great-great-grandfather of Frederic, to separate the nations, and thus preliminarily obstruct their free intercourse amongst themselves. He induced the Bavarians, and it should seem the Fran­conians, to encamp with the Saxons upon the right bank of the Rhine, whilst Frederic and his Swabians, coming down the left bank from Alsace, needed little persuasion to pitch their tents with the Lotharingians, where they were. He now pointed out the difficulty, not to say im­practicability, of 60)000 electors deliberating in one assembly, and suggested, as a remedy, that each of the four nations, Franconians, Saxons, Bavarians, and Swa­bians, should select from amongst themselves, ten electors, to whom the choice of a sovereign should be ;utrusted Nothing could apparently be fairer; the plan was adopted, and the Archbishop of Mainz, as a matter of course, was President of this Electoral Committee.C1^) Why the Lotharingians did not contribute their quota of ten is not distinctly explained ; but they appear to have lost their character of nationality, either upon being broken into two duchies, or when the title of Duke of Lower Lorrain began to merge in that of Duke of Brabant.

The nomination of candidates, as well as the selection of a king from among those candidates when nominated, was

left to the chosen forty, each ten being expected to propose a prince of their own duchy. The Swabian candidate was naturally Duke Frederic and the Saxon,Duke Lothar; whilst the Bavarian choice fell upon Margrave Leopold, Austria it will be remembered being then part of Bavaria. The Franconians seemed to have been perplexed to find a candidate; having been deprived of their own Duke, Conrad, they preferred his brother Frederic to every other, and him they could not name for two reasons; he was already a candidate, and was not a Franconian. Hence it is supposed, partly to avoid giving Frederic a formidable opponent, partly as a compensatory compli­ment to the Lotharingians for not having the) ten in the committee, they chose to consider Lower Lorrain as still included in Franconia—it had once been part of Western Frankland or Franconia—and nominated, it is said, as their candidate, Charles Earl of Flanders, a Danish prince, who had succeeded to the county of Flanders in right of his mother Ethel, a Flemish princess married to Canute surnamed the Holy, King of Denmark ; upon whose murder in a rebellion, she had fled with her children to Flanders, where Charles had been educated.

The three first-named candidates were present, either as members of the forty, which the Dukes probably were, or among the numerous spectators of their proceedings; but it is not certain that the Earl of Flanders even attended the Diet. Of those present, Margrave Leopold at once frankly and honestly declined the honour pro­posed for him. He had never ceased repenting his participation in the rebellion against his imperial father- in-law, and might well feel that any opposition to the election of that injured monarch’s grandson would be an enhancement of his original offence.(i79) The Earl of Flanders seems not to have been again thought of after his nomination, which indeed few authors even mention; and Frederic and Lothar were now the only rivals. To neutralize the sympathetic effect of Leopold’s resignation, so manifestly in favour of his step-son, the Duke of Saxony, at the Archbishop’s instigation, with hypocriti­cal modesty declined the arduous dignity to which he professed himself unequal. Frederic now stood alone,

the single candidate, and, even if he had ever doubted his success, thought his election certain.

But the adroit Adalbert knew how to colour, how to distort every transaction so as to work upon the jealous irritability of the deputed electors. He contrasted the frank ambition of the Duke of Swabia and of his family for him, with the modesty of the Duke of Saxony. By a series of manoeuvres, that it were tedious to detail, he betrayed Frederic into conduct offensive to the electors, into steps that he represented to them as proofs of his reliance upon his hereditary right and contempt of their authority. Whilst thus misleading Frederic, he was under­hand as actively canvassing in favour of Lothar, in which he was ably assisted by the Legates, who had obtained from this candidate for sovereignty three promises; one, to admit into the oath of allegiance taken by the prelates of the empire the reservation or exception of all eccle­siastical affairs, in which they were to be wholly and solely subject to the Pope; the second, to relinquish the Imperial claim to the Mat:'dan heritage, which Honorius had, immediately upon Henry V.’s death, oc­cupied for his See; and the last, to solicit without delay the Holy Father’s rat.ticarion of his election, as essential to its validity.(18°) To secure the election of so yielding an Emperor, the Legates laboured indefatigably, and they gradually impressed upon those prelates who had been Frederick partisans, the paramount duty of supporting the candidate patronized by the Holy See, who promised such advantages to the Church. Lay princes were won to Lothar’s interest, by pledging him, if elected, to sign a document, thenceforward technically called a Capitu­lation, granting them jointly and severally all manner of concessions. But the master-stroke of Adalbert’s policy, was the seduction of Frederic’s father-in-law from his cause. To achieve this he, in the name of Lothar, offered the Duke of Bavaiia for his eldest son and heir, Henry, afterwards surnamed the Proud, the liand of his, Lothar’s, only child Gertrude, the heiress of the extensive domains of both her parents; to which, in case of her father’s election, .would be added his duchy of Saxony, as her present portion, wiTh the prospect of succeeding to the

Empire at his death. Such an accession of lands and power again proved irresistable, and the Duke of Bavaria, followed of course by all the Bavarian electors, deserted the cause of his daughter’s husband.

The result of all these and more intrigues was the ■levation of Lothar, by what could in the first instance lardly be called an election, to the Imperial throne. Upon the 30th of August, Frederic’s momentary absence was secured by the last of Adalbert’s manoeuvres. As President of the Electoral Diet, he called upon the three candidates—for such, notwithstanding their declining the position, they appear to have remained—to bind themselves by oath to submit to the award of the Committee of Electors. Lothar of course complied with a demand which he knew was designed to advance his interest, and Leopold followed his example. Frederic hesitated, declared, perhaps by the Archbishop’s suggestion, that he could not bind himself by any oath without the con­sent of his friends, and rode off to his own camp to consult them. A murmur was presently raised amongst the forty electors against the arrogance that hesitated by such a pledge to acknowledge their authority. But the murmur was well nigh a work of supererogation. The Duke’s absence had been the object; and no sooner was he gone, than the Duke of Saxony’s partisans amongst the spectators raised a triumphant shout of Lothar ! Lothar! as though he had already been elected. A few of the electors joined in the cry; and the shouters, seizing the candidate whom they were resolved to make successful, raised him upon their shoulders, and carried him about, exhibiting him to the external multitude as their elected sovereign. The supposed election was received with the usual acclamations, echoing those of his bearers. The whole proceeding, a sort of reminiscence of the old form, even in the twelfth century obsolete, of proclaiming the kings of the Merovingian dynasty, seems not a little to have shaken the nerves of Lothar, who was somewhat past the vigour of manhood ; and his reluctance to bear a part in so tumultuary an operation, has by some writers been accepted as proof that he was ignorant as innocent of Adalbert’s intrigues in his behalf, and really wished

i 5

to decline the Empire. If he had, he surely would not have consented to obtain* it by lowering its dignity, the price at which he did purchase the crown.

To the violence that alarmed the Duke of Saxony, the electoral committee presently put an end; but they could not, or would not aisclaim the choice thus forced upon them. By the. constituted electors, Lothar was now sedately and regularly elected, and proclaimed King of Germany, prospectively Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

LOTHAR TI.

Lothar's troubles.— War with the Hohenstaufen brothers. —Conrad anti-king.—External affairs.—Of Denmark. —Of Slavonians.—Missionary labours of St. Otho.— Affairs of Poland.—Of Burgundy.—Of Germany.— Papal Schism.— St. Bernard. — Affairs of Southern Italy. — Coronation Progress.—End of Civil War.— Apulian affairs.—Lothar's second Italian expedition. —Lothar's Death. . . . [1125—1137.]

Lothar thus seated upon the throne of the Carlovingian, the Saxon, and the Franconian Emperors, hastened to fulfil the engagements by which he had purchased his exaltation. He signed grants to divers princes of the Empire of divers concessions, more or less impairing the sovereign authority ; especially confirming to the temporal princes the right of hereditary succession in all immediate fiefs, duchies included—that right which his predecessors had so constantly resisted, always representing the admis­sion of a son as successor to his father as an act of special grace and favour. He at the same time despatched an embassy to Rome to solicit the ratification of his election by the Pope. He at once affianced his daughter to the Duke of Bavaria’s son, deferring the marriage, apparently on account of the youth of Gertrude, for two years. But he did not, as seems to have been promised, transfer the duchy of Saxony at the betrothal to his son-in-law; nor did he perform this part of the contract in the year 1128, when Henry the Proud had succeeded to his father as Duke of Bavaria, and the wedding must, at the latest, have been solemnized, inasmuch as its sole fruit, Henry,

180

LOTHAR’s TROUBLES.

[1125-

surnamed the Lion, was certainly born in September 1129, if nut earlier.

In fact considerable difficulties impeded this transfer. Upon Lothar’s election, Albert surnamed the Bear,(1^1) grandson of Duke Magnus by his eldest daughter Elike, who had now succeeded his father Otho, as Graf von Anhalt, advanced anew his mother’s claim to the duchy. He had submitted, how sullenly soever, to its possession by Loihar, as an arrangement in which his father had perforce concurred; but alleged that, as Lothar could not upon the throne retain a national duchy, his mother’s claim revived, confirmed by Lothar’s own recognition of women’s right of inheriting, or at least transmitting to a husband or son, every principality whatever. Lothar would admit, neither that the duchy was necessarily vacated by his becoming emperor or king, nor Albert’s claim to it through Elike—maintaining whatever right she might have had to be superseded by the act of the late Emperor and Diet in conferring the duchy of Saxony upon himself. He endeavoured however to reconcile Albert to his detention of the duchy, and make him some com­pensation for the previous spoliation of his mother of her due share of the Billung patrimony, by giving him the province of Lusatia, then called tne Eastern March of Saxony, having been made a margraviate by Henry I, when he there vanquished the Slavonian allies of the Magyars. Albert, after some unsuccessful attempts to inforce his right to Saxony, accepted the margraviate, and submitted to the retention of the duchy by Lothar. But it was evident that he was far from satisfied, and would renew his claim whenever what he deemed his birthright should be transferred, as Gertrude’s heritage, to her husband. This was probably Lothar’s reason for so long postponing the fulfilment of his promise.

The new monarch was still less successful in his en­deavours to conciliate his baffled competitor. He offered the Duke of Swabia several vacant fiefs, in addition to investiture for himself and his brother of those bequeathed them by the late Emperor, Henry V. But the Duke too deeply resented the disappointment of his just expect­ations, was too indignant at the deceptions, the artifices by which that disappointment had been effected, to accept

a favour from his triumphant rival. He submitted, indeed, for he saw that further struggle must be unavailing, unless by civil war, from which he appears to have con­scientiously shrunk. He did homage to Lothar, both for his duchy and for the fiefs bequeathed to himself and his brother, and took the oath of allegiance; but he refused to accept the additional fiefs proffered him, and withdrew to Swabia. Lothar looked upon this refusal and withdrawal from his court as acts of contumacy, which he resolved to chastise, and in so doing to weaken and oppress, if he did not actually crush him, whom he still dreaded as a rival, whom he hated, as well for the sake of his uncle Henry V., as because he had unfairly van­quished him. He now demanded the surrender of the late Emperor’s bequest of patrimonial possessions. So complete a sacrifice of family interests to the prevention of civil war, was too much to be expected from the most

Eatriotic, the most pacific disposition ; and it hardly need e said that Frederic positively refused. Lothar there­upon declared him a rebel, and prepared to punish his passive rebellion, if it may be so designated, by depriving both him and his brother of all their possessions, allodia and fiefs, the duch\ of Swabia included. Germany was now again a prey to civil war.

Frederic was well supported. His own Swabians, the Franconian hereditary vassals of his maternal ancestry, and his Lotharingian allies, fought for him with heart and hand. His mainstay, his brother Conrad, with the highly-valued reputation of a Palmer and Crusader, most opportunely returned to assist in the defence of their birthright; and a domestic calamity very materially and beneficially altered his position. This was the death of Jutta, Duchess of Swabia, which can hardly be said to have severed any ties between him and the Dukes of Bavaria and Zaringen, that having been pretty effectually done when they deserted his cause at Mainz ; and though he seems to have been tenderly attached to this wife of his youth, he took advantage of hi-s loss to seek the hand of Countess Agnes of Saarbruck, a niece of Archbishop Adalbert’s. This second marriage converted the prince- prelate into his ally—the name of friend he deserved not.

The war lasted through many years, with occasional

intervals, when the concerns of the Empire diverted Lothar’s attention from what must be considered as his private quarrel. For the Duke of Swabia seems to have had no object beyond the defence of his own and his brother’s possessions, and long forbore to profit by the op­portunities thus offered for aggression. Jts progress and success were fluctuating, but upon the whole cannot be called unfavourable to the brothers. During one of these virtual if not formal suspensions of hostilities, occurred an incident pleasingly characteristic, of Frederic the One-eyed ; and if it should appear less consonant with the qualities ascribed by Bavarian historians to Henry the Proud, it is to be recollected that in the beginning of the twelfth century the craft, habitual to barbarians in war, had not yet been completely superseded by the veneration for truth, which at a later period became the highest dis­tinction of chivalry.

The Duke of Bavaria, with a show of lingering kindness for the husband of his deceased sister, offered to negotiate his reconciliation with Lothar. The Duke of Swabia, gratified by this kind intervention of Jutta’s brother, gladly acccpted the offer; and agreed to meet his brother- in-law at the Abbey of Zwifalten, there to discuss the terms, previous to Henry’s making any overtures upon the subject to his imperial father-in-law. At the Abbey, according to the best Bavarian historians, the brother and the v idower of Jutta met, with every appearance of perfect amity, and held a long conference, in which all differences seemed likely to be adjusted. Night and weariness how­ever surprised them before every difficulty was smoothed down; and they separated to sleep, with the purpose of renew ng the discussion in the morning. In order to this renewal, Frederic, and the few attendants he had brought to a friendly interview, were lodged in the abbeys

In the middle of the night he was aroused and alarmed by suspicious noises in the vicinity of his bed-chamber; and rising to ascertain their nature and cause, found the approaches to it occupied by Bavarian men-at-arms. Per- cehing that he. had fallen into a snare, he diligently sought for means of escape, and at last discovered an unguarded outlet, by which he made his way into the abbey church, and thence into the belfry, where he secreted himself.

There he lay unsuspected, whilst tlie troops of his treache­rous brother-in-law were fruitlessly exploring the abbey and the neighbourhood in search of him. From the loop­holes of his retreat Frederic could command the country, could observe the movements of his enemies, and rejoice in their erroneous pursuit. But he felt that his asylum could not permanently escape suspicion, that safety through con­tinuous concealment was impossible, and, ignorant as he was of the fate of his few attendants, he knew not what chance there was of his position being timely known to his friends. As he gazed in perplexed doubt, of which no courage could neutralize the anxiety, he was suddenly relieved from all personal apprehensions by the sight of a large body of his own troops rapidly approaching. They had been warned of his danger by a fugitive of his train, and were hurrying to his rescue as fast as they could arm and mount.

The advancing Swabians were far more numerous than ihe band, that Henry had judged sufficient to seize his un­suspecting guest: But Frederic, whether in sheer magna­nimity, from regard to the brother of his lost Jutta, or in the hope of conciliating a formidable antagonist, would not use the advantage as fairly his as it had been unfairly Henry’s. He now presented himself upon the belfry-tower, and thus addressed the Duke of Bavaria, “ Against right “ hast thou dealt with me, good Duke, bidding me hither “ in peace, but showing thyself more an enemy than a “ friend. Could neither thine own fair fame, nor honesty, “ nor the tie of affinity that connects us, restrain thee from “ this deed ? But that 1 may not repay evil with evil, I. “ as a friend, faithfully warn thee not to await my trusty “ vassals, whom I see coming on all sides.”(182) Henry took his advice, and made his eseape; but if he were con­ciliated by Frederic’s magnanimity, years elapsed ere the effect was apparent. In fact, his pride must have been mortified at the disgraceful light in which the whole tran­saction placed him.(183)

The only other incident of the civil war in Germany that seems worth recording is the resolute defence of Spires against Lothar by Frederic’s new duchess. For six whole months did Agnes encourage the citizens to hold out against the large besieging army, sharing with them throughout

the siege in every privation, toil, suffering, and danger, habitually exposing herself upon the wall, •w hilst animating its defenders, consoling and tending the wounded. And when, at last, famine, and her husband’s utter inability to raise the siege, compelled her to listen to overtures for a surrender, she obtained by negotiation a most honourable capitulation for the city, whilst for herself she made no terms. All the old rights and privileges, granted to Spires by the charters of the fourth and fifth Henries, which were held to be forfeited by the revolt, were again assured to the citizens, the Duchess herself remaining a prisoner in the hands of the conquerors, But either in consideration of her sex or heroism, or in the hope of thus regaining her able, potent, and dreaded uncle, the Archbishop of Mainz, she was soon afterwards freely released.

About the year 1128, the friends and partisans of the brothers judged it expedient that they should no longer content themselves with merely defending their own possessions. They now urged them to protest against Lothar’s election, as invalid from its tumultuary character, and to claim the crown, either by hereditary right, or by a new, assuredly irregular and illegal, election, by their own party, or more likely hy the two rights combined. The brothers assented; but it is somewhat startling to find the younger the person to assume the kingly title, which the elder certainly had once deemed his birthright. The motives that induced Frederic to renounce this birthright in favour of Conrad are not positively known, and many have been conjectured. Writers hostile to the Swabian dynasty .scribe this self-abnegation to Frederic’s hopelessness of sup- >ort, on account of the offence taken by the friends of tne irothers at his harsh temper and arrogance;—somewhat con- .radictory to the character given him for the more amiable, as well as for the loftier, qualities of chivalry. Of writers of the Swabian party, some explain the cession, not improbably, upon the ground that Frederic, as Duke of Swabia, had the vote of a, nat'onal duchy to give Conrad, who, having been deprived of Franconia, ha<' no such influential sup-

Eort to give Frederic; whilst others assert that he had een too deeply disgusted by the craft and intrigues of which he had been the victim at the last election, again to expose himself to such an encounter. The problem is sus-

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conrad’s struggle in italy.

185

ceptible of still other solutions. If his loss of an eye had befallen Frederic in battle since Lothar’s election, it is very possible that the disfigurement, the defect, might, in those days, when personal prowess was so important, be esteemed a material objection to him. But a very probable conjec­ture seems to be that, having, however reluctantly, sworn allegiance to Lothar, he shrank from violating his oath, —self-defence against nnjust aggression he could not esteem such a violation—whilst Conrad, then absent in the Holy Land, whence he returned only after the civil war had begun, was happily unshackled by such conscientious scruples. To this may be added that the character of a Palmer and Crusader gave the younger brother a sort of hal­lowed dignity, which the partisans of his house might think likely to weigh with the multitude. But whatever the motive that decided either the brothers or the choice of heir party, Conrad was proclaimed King, and as King he lastened to Italy, there to profit by the good-will he had von as Marquess of Tuscany and Imperial Vicar(i84) of the >ther provinces. To the Duke of Swabia was left the care >f advancing his brother’s cause in Germany.

Conrad first visited the mightiest of the Lombard cities, Milan, where he hoped to find the means of establishing himself upon the throne; and he found her well disposed

o      support him. These wealthy and powerful cities, now ree from the oppressive yoke of their mesne lords, and lumbering very many nobles amongst their citizens, were growing every day more ambitious. Gradually they were likewise assuming a more republican form ; this was, however, in mediaeval ideas, as indeed it had formerly been in Rome, perfectly consistent with due subjection to an emperor. But as, in the pride of their self­government, they became every day more impatient of any control by even that imperial authority which, as yet, they dreamt not of disowning, what could be so desirable to the Milanese as an Emperor, who, raised by them to the throne, and dependent for retaining it upon their support, must needs comply with all their wishes? Nor was this state of feeling the only circumstance favour­able to Conrad’s wishes. The interests and views of the Archbishop of Milan, which were in general diametrically opposed to those of the municipality, in the present

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conrad’s struggle in italy.

[1125-

lnstance were perfectly consonant with them. This haughty prelate, like his predecessors, reluctantly bowing to the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, saw n Conrad’s demand of the iron crown of Lombardy, an opportunity of suc­cessfully opposing a monarch who had ascended the throne of Germany and claimed the Empire as the crea­ture of the Roman See; and at the same time asserting the equality of the Earl-Archbishop of Milan in tem­poral rights and privileges, with the Prince-Archbishops of Germany. Eagerly he embraced it, and deciding the question of right by his own sole authority, he, upon the 28th of June, 1128, crowned Conrad as King of Italy at Monza, and again at Milan. Ilonorius, in punishment of his presumption, deposed him from his archiepiscopal dignity. Tuscany declared very generally for her former Marquess, as did many of those parts of Lombardy that had learned to value him as Imperial Vicar.

But the friendship of Milan was not without its coun­tervailing disadvantages. Her successful attempts at subjugating weaker cities had by this time provoked so much enmity, that Lombardy was divided between two factions; of which the one, compulsorily or voluntarily, owned the supremacy of Milan, the other, headed by Pavia, fiercely combated her pretensions.(1*5) Accord­ingly, Milan's adoption of the anti king’s cause determined the Pavian party to oppose him. Something of the same kind was going on in Tuscany; though no Tuscan city as yet emulated Milan, not even Pisa seeking thus to domineer over her neighbours, incessant feuds and broils prevented any permanent combination in one cause. And thus Conrad, who had hoped w ith the combined force of Lombardy and Tuscany to march upon Rome, there to compel Honorius to crown him Emperor, and, having thus forestalled Lothar in the Imperial dignity, to lead an Italian army across the Alps to co-operate with Frederic in Germany, found himself hampered at every step, and involved in all the petty but sanguinary feuds of Northern and Central Italy.

But if Conrad were disappointed ;n his hopes of success, he was yet not defeated; ne maintained himself for the present 1*1 Italy, whilst his brother held his ground in

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EXTERNAL AFFAIRS.

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Germany, and Lothar's attention was occupied by the other concerns of his Empire. In fact such had all along been the claims upon it, that his having voluntarily pro­voked the rebellion of two such princes as the Duke of Swabia and the Duke of Ravenna, if only nominally, of Franconia, excites as much surprise as his being able successfully to resist their enmity. He was no sooner elected than he was called upon, as Lord Paramount, to decide between a claimant of the crown of Denmark and its actual wearer. The dispute had originated earlier, but the vouth of the claimant had prevented the submis­sion of the question to Henry V. Eric King of Denmark had at his death declared his legitimate son Canute, his heir, naming his own illegitimate brother, Niel, regent during the young king’s minority. But in Denmark the succession to the crown had, as before said, usually been regulated rather by age than by degree of relation to the last monarch, whilst little difference was felt between legitimate and illegitimate offspring of the royal family. It can hardly therefore be called usurpation that Niel made himself king instead of regent; nor does any opposition appear to have been made to his assumption of the royal title, until Canute attained to man’s estate. This was now the case, and he applied to the new Em-

Eeror for justice. Lothar summoned the accused uncle efore his tribunal; but Niel offered to pay tribute, besides doing homage for his crown; and Lothar, en­grossed at the moment with his enmity to his defeated competitor, adjudged the crown to the uncle, the duchies of South Jutland and Schleswig to the nephew; who, unable to resist, submitted.

Scarcely was this decision pronounced, when Henry, the vassal Christian King of the Obodrites, and of most of the Slavonian tribes occupying the districts comprised in the duchies of Mecklenburg, was murdered. Thereupon his sons and grandsons contended in arms for his crown, till all were slain in battle. The Slavonians, freed from control, re­nounced both their vassalage to Saxony anti the Christian religion, whilst Canute of South Jutland and Schleswig, whose mother was Khg Henry’s sister, laid claim to his ma­ternal uncle’s kingdom. Again he applied to Lothar, both as mesne lord, as Duke of Saxony, of the principality he

claaned, and Suzerain, as Emperor; and it is said he did not apply empty handed. The Emperor adjudged the Slavonian kingdom to Canute, in vassalage to the duchy of Saxony; and he appears to have been acknowledged by the subjects assigned him.

But Canute did not long enjoy his success. It has been seen that Niel’s possession of the kingdom of Denmark by no means insured it to h's son. Accordingly his eldest son, Magnus, swing a dangerous rival in Canute, caused him to be assassinated, and again was Lothar appealed to. Canute’s illegitimate brother Eric hastened to the foot of the Imperial throne to demand justice upon the murderers of his brother, whilst the Ohod rites seized the opportunity of the slaughter of their new prince, again to throw off the yoke of vassalage. Two Heathen princes, named Niklot and Pribislaff, said to have been also nephews of King Henry, claimed the Slavonian territories that Canute had held. Lothar summoned a feudal army to avenge his Slavonian vassal-king; but the murderer, Prince Magnus, found means to allay his wrath. He offered, in the name of his fathei, performance of the as yet unperformed homage for the crown of Denmark,— in his own, a large sum of money as a fine; and this, the expenses of the civil war and of the impending expedition to Home for his coronation as Emperor, rendered peculiarly acceptable to Lothar. He accordingly pronounced the Imperial justice satisfied by the atonement the offender bad made, and led back his army. He does not appear to have interfered, even as Duke of Saxony, in the dis­posal of the Slavonians feudally dependent upon the auchy, but left Canute’s heir, a posthumous child, after­wards Walueinar the (Treat, Eric, and King Niel, to deal as they best could with Niklot and Pribisfaff. This revolt continued for some time, but in the end these Heathen chieftains agreed to pay tribute to Saxony, in acknow­ledgment of feudal dependence.

The island of Rugen had never owned the Duke of South Jutland as King, and the Pomeranian Slavonians, as far as they admitted any authority beyond that of their native princes, preferred the sovereignty of Poland to that of Denmark or Saxony. Boleslas III. was en­deavouring to profit hv this preference; which he indeed

well deserved, since he had been occupied, even prior to the deaths of the Slavonian King Henry and of the Emperor Henry V., with the conversion of these Heathen tribes to Christianity, and that by instruction rather than by force.

This hallowed office had been undertaken, as far back as the year 1122, by one Bernardo, a Spaniard, who, having been appointed to a bishopric by the Pope, and learning that the Chapter of the See had made choice of another person, refused to be forced upon a reluctant flock, and resolved to dedicate himself to missionary labours. To this end he visited Boleslas, and offered his services in Pomerania, which were thankfully accepted; but Bishop Bernardo would not accept any other assist­ance from the Polish Duke in his holy enterprise, than the acompaniment of an interpreter to translate his preaching. In true apostolic humility he went amongst the Pomeranians, meanly clad, feeding abstemiously, and drinking only water. Thus he visited the great and wealthy citv of Julin, where he began to teach. But the opulent Heathens laughed at the poverty-stricken mis­sionary, pronounced him a beggar, whose sole object was their money, and expelled him, sparing his life partly in contempt, partly because the slaughter of a former missionary, St. Adalbert, had provoked a war with their Christian neighbours.

Boleslas now invited Otho, Bishop of Bamberg, since ca­nonized, to undertake the conversion of the Pomeranians ; and he, a man every way fitted for the task, warned by the failure of Bernardo, prepared himself for the enterprise in a different style. Otho, the son of a Swabian nobleman of very small estate, had sought his fortune in Poland, learned the language of the country, and gained the favour of Duke Vladislas. Him he persuaded to ask the hand of the Queen-dowager of Hungary, sister to Henry IV., when he became her chaplain, and tutor of the young heir of Poland. When the Prince’s education was com­pleted, he obtained the bishopric of Bamberg, probablv through his pupil’s connexion w!th the Emperor.

It was in the year 1124 that Bishop Otho, in episcopal state, attended and assisted by a body of subordinate missionaries, and escorted by a troop of Polish warriors,

had entered upon the task assigned him. His appearance inspired respect, and to his instructions the Pomeranians listened with attention. So successful were his exertions that he actually prevailed upon the Pomeranian prinee, Duke Vratislaff, not only to receive baptism, but to dismiss his well-peopled harem, and live in Christian wedlock with a single wife. The example of the prince gave weight to the prelate’s exhortations; and so numerous were the converts, that it was found necessary to administer the sacrament of baptism wholesale—if the expression may, without irreverence, be used. For this purpose two pits were dug and filled with water, one for each sex ; and as 'he catechumens were to be wholly unclothed upon the occasion, whether as typical of purification, or of infantine simplicity, or merely to avoid the inconvenience of wet garments, each pit was inclosed with a wall of cloth, that perfectly concealed its occupants. Then, when each of these unusual fonts was duly and fully tenanted by converts, the one by men, the other by women, the officiating priests, passing their hands through the !‘nen wall, baptized one party after another in quick succession, till, frnm heat and fatigue, the perspiration is recorded to have streamed down their bodies. According to some authorities a third such font was prepared for the boys, at which the Bishop officiated in person/186)

Delighted with, and perhaps somewhat glorying in, his success, the good Bishop, notwithstanding many and earnest warnings of danger, ventured ‘nto the very strong­hold of Slavonian idolatry, the island of Rugen. But there he altogether failed, and hardly could his armed escort prevent his receiving the crown of martyrdom as the guerdon of his zealous temerity. lie was however brought in safety back to the mainland ; he there founded several monasteries amongst his neophytes, and then re­turned to the duties of his diocese at Bamberg, shortly before the death of Henry V.

Yratislaf proved the sincerity of his conversion by steadily submitting to the restraints of monogamy, often as much as the payment of tithes, a main obstacle to the propagation of Christianity. But his subjects either were more attached to their ancient heathenism, or had been less carefully in­structed. Soon after Otho’s departure they apostatized,

and in 1128 Boleslas again called upon the future saint to take pity upon their blindness. Again the prelate left the comforts of his episcopal palace, the peaceful duties of his see, to encounter the toils and hazards of the missionary office, and again his fatigues and perils were rewarded by success.

The piety that induced Boleslas III. so zealously to pro­mote the conversion of the Pomeranians, could not, in the eyes of Lothar, balance the offence of subjecting those, whom he esteemed vassals of the Empire, to Poland; espe­cially when accompanied by the withholding of both the homage and the tribute that every Emperor held to be his due from the Polish sovereign, whether Duke or King. The civil wars and contest with the Popes, by distracting the late reigns, had offered an opportunity of withholding both, too favourable to be neglected ; both had been, and still were, refused. But Lothar, trusting, perhaps, to Conrad’s absence in Italy, and Frederic’s aversion to aggressive hostilities against the sovereign to whom he had taken the oath of allegiance, now, somewhat rashly, deemed himself in a condition to inforce what he claimed as his due ; and at the head of an army he invaded Poland. His chief supporter in the enterprise was Albert the Bear, who, impelled by interested motives, assisted him strenuously. As long as Lothar retained the duchy of Saxony in his own hands, Albert seems to have cherished a hope of finally obtaining it, and sought- to win the favour of him upon whom the easy realizing of that hope depended; aspiring, moreover, to incorporate Pomerania with his own margra- viate, he looked upon Boleslas as his personal enemy, whom it was his business to weaken. But Lothar had over-esti­mated his force. In the neighbourhood of Kulm he was so completely routed by Boleslas, and fled in such bewildered disoider, that the Margrave, who led the vanguard, and with his characteristic temerity had hurried too far forward, was deserted in the midst of the enemy, and taken prisoner. The Emperor, abandoning, at least for the moment, all attempts at coercing Poland, opened a negotiation, and made peace upon terms almost dictated by Boleslas. The Margrave ransomed himself; but whether merely irritated at ha\ing been thus deserted by Lothar, or judging from his conduct upon this occasion that intimidation was likely

to be more effective with him than wooing his favour, he in 1129 avowed himself dissatisfied with the compensation made him for his maternal birthright, and declaring that he acknowledged Conrad as his King, joined the Duke of Swabia in arms, and married one of the Austrian half-sisters of the Hohenstaufen. Lothar pronounced the Eastern March forfeited by his revolt.

In the south, Earl William, the last direct male heir of Otho, who, when Conrad II. obtained the kingdom of Burgundy, established himself and race as Earl of Bur­gundy, that is to sa* of the Frey Grafschaft of Burgundy, subsequently, as a French province, called Franrhe C'imte, was murdered foon after Lothar’s election, and dying without children, two pretenders were struggling for his heritage. The one, Renault de Chalons, was a col­lateral relation of Earl William’s, descending by females, from the kings of Upper Burgundy. The other, the Duke of Ziiringen, claimed as next of kin to Earl William, whose mother was the Duke’s sister, but was not of the blood of Earl Otho. Had Renault merely claimed his deceased kinsman’s county, of which he seems to have been a vassal,U8?) and applied to Lothar for investiture, there can he little doubt but that, notwithstanding some dislike to foreign vassals, he would at once have received it. But Renau)1 asserted, that the sovereignty of the Em-

Eerors over the whole of Burgundy, had expired with the eirs male of Gisela; and seizing tne county of Burgundy, he professed to hold it as an independent principality. It was evident that if he did not lay claim to tne kingdom as well as to the county, it was solely for want of means. Lothar did not urge against him, that what came through a woman must be heritable by her female heirs, for that would have made the Duke of Swabia King of Burgundy ; but he maintained that Conrad II. having incorporated Burgundy with Germany, he was sovereign of the whole, and, as such, the judge as to who was lawful heir of the county, which could be held only by his giving investiture of itj He laid Renault under the ban of the Empire for seizing the county .n lieu of appealing to him; and committed the execution of the sentence to the Duke of Zaringen, to whom he adjudged the disputed heritage. The contest lasted for some years, but may as well bi

at once disposed of by the statement that Lothar never was able to give effect to his decision, the Duke never being able to possess himself of any district to the west of the Jura, though master of all that lay east of those mountains. In the end the Emperor was glad to com­promise the affair, by investing each with what he held, receiving Renault’s homage for his county,(188) and making Conrad of Zaringen compensation for his unfounded pre­tensions, by given him Zurich and the Thurgau with the hereditary rectorate, or government of Upper Burgundy.

In Thuringia, which was now in great measure, if not altogether severed from the duchy of Saxony, though when or how this severance took place is not very clear, Lothar’s intervention was twice required, the first time, probably, not to his dissatisfaction. Margrave Hermann—who, it is to be inferred, was lord of the eastern extremity that had been the Slavonian frontier—having been convicted of murdering one of his vassals, the Diet pronounced his principality confiscated. Lothar bestowed it upon one of the most considerable Thuringian nobles, Graf Ludwig, (Earl Lewis) who is said to have been related either to himself or to his wife Richenza, and is also said to have been of the family of the late dynasty of Franconian emperors, as indicated by his Latin cognomen, Ludovicus Salius, L e. the Salic. But Lothar did not create Lewis a Mar­grave, perhaps because the Slavonian margraviates of Misnia and Lusatia, now intervened between Thuringia -and the alien Slavonians: inventing, it should seem, a new title for his kinsman he made him Landgrave of Thuringia, and gave him ducal rights over the whole terri­tory bearing that name, which then included the later elec­torate of Hesse. But the Landgrave had not taken warning by the fate of his predecessor. Falling in love with the beautiful wife of the Saxon Palsgrave, he had the husband murdered, and seized the widow. Lothar deposed and imprisoned him, but in lieu of confiscating his landgraviate transferred it to the son, Lewis II. The father escaped from his prison by a leap so extraordinary, that some German historians have conceived his surname of Salius to have been intended to express it, and have designated him Ludwig der Springer, or the Leaper.(!89)

Bohemia, of which Moravia was now a dependent VOL, i. K

province, usually the appanage of » younger branch of the reigning ducal family, was al this period in a state of insurrection, though the movement does not appear to have been concerted with the Hohenstaufen brothers. The Bohemian revolt was against the Empire, not against the individual Emperor. The Dukes of Bohemiu had now for some generations held their duchy as a fief of the Empire; and as Princes of the Empire, though uncon­nected with any of the original five duchies, though Sla­vonians, they had frequently voted at the election of an Emperor. But the weakness or distraction of the Empire during the recent contest with the Popes, and consequent civil wars, had encouraged the Bohemian Czechs—their Slavonian name—to aspire to independence. It may have been observed that they formed no part of the Electoral Diet, whose measures resulted in the elevation of Lothar; and in consonancy with their absence upon that occasion, their Duke, Sobieslas, refused to do homage to the monarch there elected. Him, however, Lothar was able to reduce to submission, and he compelled him to do homage for his duchy. But the unruly Czechs were dissatisfied with such dependence ; dreading most especially, then it should seem as now, incorporation with Germany. To avert this* danger, in a provincial Diet held by Sobieslas, a.d. 1130, at which burgesses are said to have sat and voted with nobles, it was enacted that no German or other foreigner should hold any office, lay or ecclesiastical, in Bohemia, on pain of losing his nose. At the same Diet it was decreed, as a restriction upon the ducal arbitrary authority, that if the Duke should violate the rights of any nobleman, no gift should be granted him, no duty or impost paid him, until he should have either made full satisfaction to the injured party, or taken a solemn oath so to do.

Meanwhile Conrad, though opposed by every enemy of Milan, was making fail-, if slow, progress towards Home, where he hoped to coerce the Pope into crowning him Emperor. He had entered Italy at what seemed an auspicit us moment, when the attention and resources of Honorius, who still opposed and strove to thwart both brothers, with the same zeal with which he had helped to baffle Duke Frederic's hopes and promote the Duke of Saxony’s election, were much engrossed by the more - Digitized by Microsoft® '

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immediate interests of his own See. In 1127 the youthful Duke of Apulia had died childless. He was the last male descendant of Robert Guiscard, by his second marriage with an Apulian princess. The son of his first, divorced wife, Bohemund, had been set aside as illegitimate, because the issue of unlawful nuptials; and at all events Bohe- mund’s posterity, reigning at Antioch, seemed to have forgotten, and were pretty much forgotten by, their Italian connexions. Under these circumstances the son of Robert Guiscard’s younger brother, Roger, Earl of Sicily, claimed his cousin’s heritage, and hastened over to take possession. To Roger II.’s claim there seemed no objection. But he had not submitted his pretensions to the Pope, whom his father, his great uncle, and his cousins had acknowledged as their suzerain, and the indignant Honorius both ex­communicated him, and incited the Prince of Capua and some other great vassals, who regretted the independence of which Robert Guiscard had deprived them, to revolt.

Whilst the struggle lasted the Pope concerned himself little about the German civil war or Conrad’s movements. But in 1129 he had discovered his own inability to resist Earl Roger, and made peace with him, almost upon his own terms. He admitted him to the succession he claimed, gave him investiture as Duca di Puglia and Gran' Conte di Sicilia, and received his homage. He asked and ob­tained his promise to respect the Prince of Capua, but left him to deal with the other Apulian rebels, whom he had encouraged to rise, and for whom he madu no terms, at his pleasure. Ereed from this important concern, Honorius turned his thoughts northward, and excom­municated Conrad.

This formidable weapon of the Church had not then been so lavishly, so desecratingly used in purely temporal concerns as it soon afterwards was, and it therefore now pro\ed effective. All the lukewarm amongst Conrad’s partisans deserted him; but Milan as yet felt his cause

I      ter own, and was not easily scared • whilst he, strong in her support, derived new hope from an event that promised as favourably for him, even beyond relieving !-ir' from sne Important enemy, as in its consequences unfavourably for the tranquillity of Christendom. In February 1130, Honorius II. died; and upon the same

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day a party of Cardinals elected Cardinal Gregorio Paparescni dei Guidoni, a Roman, who took the name of Innocent II. The object of this unseemly haste was to prevent the election of Pietro, Bishop of Porto, the grandson of a converted Jew, to whom Leo IX. had stood sponsor and given his name of Leo at his baptism. The Bishop had long been canvassing for the tiara; and the majority of the Cardinals, supported by the people of Rome, apparently on the same day assembled in St. Mark’s Church, and, professedly ignorant of Innocent’s election, proclaimed Pietro Leone Ilead of the Christian Church by the name of Anaclet II. Internal war broke out, in which the favour of" the Romans secured the possession of the Eternal City to Anaclet; and as the Normans of Apulia and Sicily acknowledged him as Pope, Innocent judged it expedient to cross the Alps in search of adherents. In France his high moral character pro­cured him an able, zealous, and efficient champion in Bernard. (Vbbot of Clairvaux, which very remarkable person it will here be proper formally to introduce to the reader.

Bernard, better known as St. Bernard, was the son of the Sire de Fontaines, head of a noble family of the French duchy of Burgundy. His mother had been intended for a nun, and although she bad not pronouueed the irrevoca­ble vow, she deemed her marriage a sin; as an atonement for which she led, in her character of a wife, as nearly the life of a nun as might be, and uniformly dedicated her children at their birth to the Church. Only her third son Bernard at once accepted this expiatory destiny. His innate piety was deepened by the ascetic practices amidst which he grew up: but even these did not prevent him from diligently cultivating the extraordinary faculties with which he was endowed; being fully convinced that such cultivation must tend to render those faculties more serviceable to the cause of religion. At an early age he announced his intention of entering the Order of Cistertian monks; an Order the extreme severity of which was still so generally repellent of enthusiasm, that its single abbey was very thinly inhabited. Young Bernard exerted his utmost eloquence to prevail upon his kinsmen and friends to adopt his views; whilst to Digitized by Microsoft

guard against the possible disgrace, should any novice find the privations and hardships, which in a fit of enthusiasm he had rasldv taken upon himself, too much for his fortitude, of his recoiling from the binding vow, he at the same time formed for his party a sort of preparatory school in which the future monk might try his powers of Cistertian endurance. In this pre-noviciate seclusion he induced one by one his father, uncle, and five brothers, all gallant and highly es­teemed warriors of the Duke of Burgundy’s, to join him. And they were followed by so many kinsmen and friends that, at the expiration of a six months’ experiment, he presented him­self to the Abbot of the Cistertians with thirty companions, all tried and approved candidates for the cowl. Several of the thirty were married men, and took this step in concert with their wives; for whose reception the first Cis­tertian nunnery was erected. And in this nunnery, after a long and arduous battle against her love of the pleasures and vanities of the world, Bernard finally prevailed upon even his fair and light-hearted sister—his mother the Dame de Fontaines was dead—to take the veil.

The reputation of the new monk spread rapidly; his enthusiastic devotion seemed contagious; and such were the numbers who applied for admission as Cistertian novices, that, shortly after Bernard had pronounced his vows, it was found necessary to build a second monastery of this so lately dreaded, and unpopular as unpopulous, Order. For the site of this second house, Hugues, Comte de Champagne, gave a sullen, darksome valley, that had been a den of robbers, and was usually called the Valley of Wormwood. Here a cloister was speedily constructed, and the Superior of the Cistertians, an Englishman named Stephen Harding, ap­pointed Bernard, though but four>-and-twenty years of age, and a monk of only two years’ standing, Abbot of the new Abbey, which, irradiated, together with the dark valley, by the fame of the youthful Superior’s sanctity, was now de­nominated Clara vallis, Clairvaux. Bernard himself called it his Jerusalem, and refused bishoprics and archbishoprics that he might devote himself heart and soul to the govern­ment of the little flock specially committed to his charge.

But he was not thus to give up to a narrow sphere “ what was meant for mankind.” His health, always delicate, sank under the exaggeration of Cistertian austerities, privations,

and penances, that won for him unbounded and universal contemporaneous admiration; and the medical skill of the day pronounced their continued observance incompatible with the prolongation of his existence. His Superior, the Cistertian Abbot of Abbots, therefore commanded him to abstain, as from suicide, not only from these refinements upon the Cistertian Rule, but even from ordinary monastic duties; and, whilst still governing his monks, to live sepa­rate from them. Bernard obeyed reluctantly; but the use he made of the leisure thus forced upon him enabled him to become, as he Will be seen to be, the most efficient agent of successive popes in their most important affairs, spiritual and temporal, and, as a powerless monk, to exercise by his words irresistible influence over princes and kings. The effect of his eloquence is said to have been heightened by the appearance of his attenuated frame, through which the “ fiery soul’' really seemed to be “ eating out its way,” but without impairing his great personal beauty; whilst the lofty courtesy of his demeanour, his habitual cheerfulness, and universal benevolence, offered a pleasing as striking contrast to the austerity of hi*- life.

In truth, St. Bernard's religion was wholly a religion of love; the love of God was the one great doctnne that he preached,—dread of the presumption of human reason, the one great principle that he inculcated. From these may be deduced all that is told of his character and conduct; his willing subjugation of his powerful mind to the autho­rity of his spi-itual superiors, his aversion to the subtleties of scholasticism, his tendency to mysticism—which was, however, merely a participation in the spirit of the age—his reluctance to argue with heresiarchs, whom he simply re­ferred to the papal tribunal, and the gentleness, tempering zeal, with which he preached to, and concerning, heretics, who should, he always asserted, be converted, not perse­cuted ; even as Mohammedans and Heathen, like the Jews, should be prayed for, not massacred. And, equally, thence is to be derived the implicit obedience, with which, notwith­standing these opinions, he at the Pope's command preached a Crusade. His general protection and advocacy of the oppressed extended even to the brute creation, his delight being to rescue a hare from the hounds, or a dove from the swooping hawk, vhich he is reported to have sometimes

effected by a miracle. For the most ticklish point in the history of the canonized Abbot must not be evaded. He was believed to work miracles, to heal the sick, the lame, the blind, by his touch, to expel devils, and once to have recalled the dead to life;—must it be added, once by his prayers to have prevented the down-pouring- rain from damaging his own writings, which were in his hand. This last absurd story, being recorded, could not with propriety be omitted, but may assuredly be ascribed to the exaggerating fanaticism of some of his silly idolaters. As to the excellent Abbot himself, it seems to have req uired all the asseveration of his worshippers to persuade him that he was so gifted. He always averred a perfect unconsciousness of working a miracle, and seems even to have entertained some vague suspicion of fraud, to judge from one anecdote related of him. It is, that once, as he entered a church dedicated to the Virgin, her image audibly addressed a welcome to him, when he, in the words of St. Paul, roughly rebuked the presumption of a woman speaking in a church

That fraud there was is manifest, though assuredly not on the part of the good and pious Abbot, who evidently believed the wonders he was told that he worked, only through his confidence in the reporters, and his distrust of human reason, when employed upon any sacred question ; which, with his tendency to mysticism, would render him peculiarly open to delusion. Neither need we impute the whole to monastic fraud. Many of the supposed miraculous cures may have been the fruit of the excited imaginations of the patients; when it is natural to suppose that the admirers and the flock of the Saint would lavish such attentions and gifts upon the living proofs of his transcendent sanctity, as might tempt impostors to feign disease and infirmity in order to be miraculously cured. But it must be owned likely that amongst the Cistertians there were men who, when such an idea had been suggested, would not scruple at direct fraud to gain their own ends by exalting their Abbot’s fame.(190)

A few of St. Bernard’s opinions, elucidative of his character, may be added. He required the most austere simplicity in churches. That he objected to mosaic repre­sentations of Saints in the church pavement, where the inevitable trampling upon them must needs impair the

veneration felt for them, is less remarkable than that any one should have differed from him in opinion upon the sub­ject. But these were not the only embellishments which he condemned. He objected to carvings and paintings, even to anything ornamental in church music, that could in any degree divert the attention of the congregation from their devotion. These refined scruples involved him in a quarrel with Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, whose Order, it will be remembered, was distinguished for the splendour of its churches, and its culthation of the arts and of literature. And it is not a little to the credit of both these eminent abbots, that they were not only reconciled, but, despite their conflicting opinions, became cordial friends. But neither the asceticism which these scruples indicate, nor his own devotion to a monastic life, had so narrow ed St, Ber­nard’s mind as to prevent his seeing that there were higher duties in the Church than those of a monk. A Danish prelate, Eskil, Bishop of Lund, in a paroxysm of ascetic devotion, was about to resign his see, and take the cowl in a Cistertian monastery. But St. Bernard remonstrated with him, urging that he had no right to seek his own salvation in the safe seclusion of a cell, to the neglect of the duties which he had undertaken when he accepted his spirituai dignity; to wit, in the position of his diocese, those, amongst others, of diffusing Christianity amongst the neighbouring Heathen, and of protecting his flock against the oppression of turbulent kings and nobles. Eskil was convinced, and remained Bishop of Lund for forty years: at; the end of which he sought and obtained, from Pope Alexander III., permission to exchange his mitre for the cowl in the Abbey of Clairvaux.

Such was the man to whom the superior purity of the moral character of Innocent II. covered the illegality of his uncanonical election. He decided upon acknowledging him as the true Pope; and having so decided, he exerted himself with unwearied zeal, and rarely failing success, in his cause. He conducted this chosen Head of the Church to the respective Courts of Lewis VI. of France and of Henry I. of England, and induced both monarchy to acknowledge Innocent as Pope; in token of which each separately, walking by his bridle-rein, led the palfrey of the pontiff, whose existence as such really depended upon t heir

favour or disfavour. From his interviews with these potent partisans, St. Bernard attended Innocent to Liege, there to meet Lothar. And upon him he prevailed, not only to acknowledge the exiled and wandering claimant of the papal crown, as the successor of St. Peter, but to leave the civil war, in which he himself was involved, to be managed by deputy and with diminished forces, whilst he in person should lead an army over the Alps, to escort this true and lawful Pope to Rome, instal him in the Lateran, expelling the anti-pope Anaclet, and receive in return the Imperial crown at his hands.

Lothar, obedient to the Abbot’s word, proceeded at once to prepare for this Italian expedition ; and his first measure was to commit the government of Germany and the conduct of the civil war to his son-in-law. The letter by which he announced this determination, and Henry the Proud’s answer, are both extant in the Vienna archives, and are so characteristic of the men and the times, as to excite the wish rather to give extracts from Pfister’s translation of them, than merely in a few words to state their purport. Lothar wrote: “I consider thee as my son. Therefore will I “ commit to thy faith the protection of my dominions, that “ thou mayest defend them strongly against thy kinsman, “ Duke Frederic, who is so inimical to me, although he “ has often, as I may not conceal from thee, addressed “ prayers for peace and alliance to me, through the Arch- “ bishops of Mainz and Cologne, the Bishops of Spires and “ Iiatisbon, and others of my faithful vassals. Do thou “ beat him down, in order that thou, as heir of my love, “ mayest be heir of my Empire. Moreover, come to me at “ the Whitsuntide festival, when I think to take counsel “ with the Princes touching my Coronation Progress.”(l91)

In the Duke’s reply to this letter appear the following symptoms of reviving regard for his brother-in-law. “ Reverently and promptly will I obey any commands of “thine. But I think it too hard to be enjoined to wage “ war against the Duke of Swabia, who has ever loved “ me as a brother. Therefore I pray thee to make peace

11     with him prior to thy Coronation Progress, so it may “ consist with thine and the Empire’s honour. Should a this prove impossible I will fulfil thy orders, will fight “against him, and so guard the realm from hitn that

K 5

“thou shalt not, at thy return, find its condition “deteriorated But I pray thee to make friends of, and “show kindness to, the Duke of Bohemia and the sons of u Margrave Leopold’' (the offspring of the second marriage of Princess Agnes, one of whose daughters had married the Duke of Bohemia), “of whom Frederic thinks more “ than of any one. On the appointed day I will, if alive, “ attend thee, with my brother- and the pious and faithful “Archbishop of Salzburg. Further I pray thee not to “ open thy whole heart to the Archbishop of Mainz, yet “ to show as if thou lovedst him best of all; for he “speaks crafty words of peace to thee, but his mind is “estranged. Head this letter in private, and when read “ burn it.”(192J

In compliance with the first request, it would seem an attempt at conciliation was made and failed ; either because Lothar made it insincerely, proposing terms that could not be accepted, or because Conrad was not yet willing to abandon, even temporarily, his pretensions to the crown Certain it is that the civil war lasted three years longer, during which Henry took and destroyed one of the most important of Frederic’s cities, Ulm. But it is not unlikely that these overtures, however unsatisfactory to the prin­cipal parties, afforded the opportunity of drawing ofl Albert the Bear from Conrad, and with some additional grants persuading him to acknowledge Henry the Proud as Duke of Saxony . It is certain that he attended Lothar upon this Coronation Progress, and proved one of his most valuable warriors.

But if Conrad were, as he has been accused of being, the obstacle to internal peace, he acted very unwisely. The broils in which Milan had entangled him, had prevented his reaping the expected advantage from the schism. Lothar, notwithstanding the civil war, had assembled a very respectable army for this double ex­pedition, if it may be so designated, the Duke of Bohemia for the first time seemingly, and it is likely as the result of Duke Henry’s judicious adv ice, forming part of the feudal array upon the Coronation Progress. "When it was announced that, at the head of such an army, Lothai had crossed the Alps, Mi an, perceiving that her anti-king; in lieu of being useful, was likely to be inconveniently

burthensome to her, at once deserted him; and Conrad, not daring with his small body of faithful Italian followers to encounter the German army, abandoned the field to his rival. He recrossed the Alps to join and co-operate with his brother.    .

Lothar, relieved by Conrad’s retreat from all the dangers he had apprehended upon this expedition, easily accomplished his chief objects. In Lombardy, occu­pied with intestine broils, he happily avoided any hostile collision; and leaving St. Bernard there, by his elo­quence to gain Innocent adherents, he himself conducted the pontiff' safely through northern and central Italy to Home. There he expelled Anaclet from the Lateran, from the Capitol, from all perhaps that should then be properly called the city, driving the anti-pope across the Tiber, into the Leonine city (so called because a suburb first enclosed within the walls of Rome by Leo IV.), to seek refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo, whilst Innocent established himself in the Lateran, and Lothar in the Capitol, amongst the unruly, but for the moment acqui­escent, Romans. St. Bernard during the time had obtained the adhesion of place after place to the triumphant Pope.

Lothar was now to receive the Imperial crown, and his services, as he ventured to hope, to be rewarded by the restoration of some of the rights relative to the election of prelates, that he had, as the price of his election, been obliged to relinquish. But it was now Innocent who had to grant: and though he withheld not the crown, he not only refused the guerdon solicited, supported in the refusal by St. Bernard, a zealous champion of papal rights, but he further obliged his benefactor to purchase even his crown by yet more concessions to the popedom, than Honorius had extorted from the candidate. The Hohenstaufen brothers were still in arms, and Lothar still felt papal support indispensable to him ; as before, he submitted to everything. He admitted Innocent's interpretation of the Calixtine Concordat, according to which consecration must precede investiture with the temporalities of the see, thus rendering rejection by the monarch impossible; he swore never to interfere, even by his presence or that of a represertalive, with the. election of prelates. In the matter of the Matildan

heritage he proved equally yielding with respect to the Imperial right, obtaining in return the personal advantage of this large addition to his private domains. He accepted a grant from the Pope of the territories and suzerainties of the great Countess, to be held in vassalage of the Holy See, for which he was to pay an annual tribute of one hundred marks; thus not only acknow­ledging the lands in question to be the Pope’s, but actually making the Emperor the Pope’s vassal, or, in the language of the day, his man. And yet further, he accepted the grant upon the express condition, that every vassal of the principa ■ ty should always swear allegiance and do homage to the reigning pope, and that the whole should at his own death revert to the Roman See. Exactly what possessions or mere suzerainties Matilda herself had in Lombardy, does not seem clear, and they are not even alluded to in this grant. The Lombard cities had so well freed themselves from all intermediate feudal superiors between themselves and the emperor, that Innocent probably wished not to advance pretensions to such a hornet’s nest, and Lothar’s sovereignty they did not dispute.

All these Papal claims and Imperial concessions being thus arranged and solemnly confirmed, the coronation followed. But St. Peter’s, with the Castle cf St. Angelo and the whole Leonine city, was still in Anaclet’s hands, therefore the ceremony could not be performed in the usual Basilica. It was in St. John’s Lateran that Innocent, in the year 1133, placed the Imperial crown upon the head of Lothar, as he knelt, rather at the Pope’s feet than at the altar. The triumph which the Pope had gained upon this occasion was commemorated by a picture, 'n which the Emperor is portrayed so kneeling, with folded hands. And lest this should not be sufficiently intelligible, the following explanatory distich was inscribed beneath the figures:

Bex vemt ante foras, jurans prius Urbis honores,

Post homo fit Papse, sumit quo dante coronam.

The Norman princes and nobles, whom Roger’s tyranny was dnving to revolt, thought this a favourable oppor­tunity to obtain protection; and a deputation from them hastened to Rome to appeal to Pope and Emperor. But

Innocent probably felt himself as yet too weak to in­terfere, and Lothar had affairs of too much importance pending in Germany to prolong his absence unnecessarily; The only material act of sovereignty he upon this occasion performed in Italy, was dividing Corsica between Genoa and Pisa, or rather confirming its previous division(i93) by Calixtus II., which had superseded Urban II.’s assign­ment of the island to the archiepiscopal See of Pi*a. Whether he performed this act as Emperor, or as vassal Marquess of Tuscany, is not stated, and was, it may be conjectured, purposely left uncertain, to avoid either offending the l’ope or renouncing another pretension. Lothar is indeed said, further, before quitting Italy, to have remunerated the services of Albert the Bear upon this expedition, with the northern Saxon March in lieu of the eastern, which he had forfeited by his re­bellion, and of which Lothar had otherwise disposed; but with this wholly temporal transalpine grant Innocent could not well interfere. The Pope himself proceeded indirectly to inflict additional punishment upon Milan and her Archbishop, who had presumed to crown an anti-king rejected by Rome. To this end he deprived him of several of his suffragan prelates, raising one, the Bishop of Genoa, to the rank of a Metropolitan, and assigning some of the suffragans to this new province, others to that of Pisa.

The Emperor now returned in all haste to Germany, to prosecute the war against his personal enemies. For two years more it desolated the country At length, in 1135, the Swabian domains of the Dukes of Bavaria and Zaringen being as completely devastated, as Frederic’s and Conrad’s there and in Franconia, all parties, except Lothar, appear to have been alike weary of such unpro­fitable hostilities. The Duke of Swabia had long sighed for peace; the anti-king was by this time convinced of the hopelessness of the struggle in which he was engaged for the crown; and the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria could desire nothing more, than to enjoy his vast posses­sions undisturbed by civil war, with leisure to endeavour to secure his future election as Emperor. Lothar alone, ■nfluenced more by temper, seemingly, than by policy, was bent upon prosecuting the war; urging that the

nephews of the late Emperor and their faction must be crushed, when their spoils would afford ample compen­sation to his son-in-law, the Duke of Zaringen, and his other adherents, for the ravage of their territories, of which he deemed them unreasonably impatient. Against this unyielding disposition of the Emperor all combined. The Prince of Capua and his friends, some deprived of their possesions and exiled by Roger, others, groaning under his tyranny, implored the Emperor’s protection and presence in Southern Italy. Innocent, who again wanted transalpine support, as well against the turbulent Romans as ayamst Anaclet and his Norman partisans, earnestly exhorted him to pacify Germany by a frank reconciliation with the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia. The Empress Richenza, a woman of masculine intellect and energy, whose advice Lothar habitually sought and generally followed, and whose kind intervention Frederic is said to have solicited, warmlv inforced the papal exhortation ; whilst the Archbishop of Mainz, to whom he could not but feel that he owed his crown, and other princely ecclesiastics, proffered their services as mediators. All prayed, urged, remonstrated in vain; until, I)1 Innocent's desire, the Abbot of Clairvaux visited the Emperor, to instil into him, if possible, sentiments more beseeming a Christian monarch. His eloquence, as usual, proved .•'re­sistible ; Lothar was vanquished, and the conditions of peace were arranged by the disinterested mediator.

At a Diet held at Bamberg in the month of March, the Duke of Swabia, according to agreement, presented himself. But even here disappointment seemed to await the friends of peace. Frederic’s tngh spirit revolted against the humiliation required of him; whilst Lothar was more inclined to run back from, than to increase, his previous concessions. Fortunately, however, St. Bernard, as if conscious that his task was not yet complettd, had repaired to Bamberg, either to secure or to enjoy his work. Again he interposed, and again his eloquence, inspired by truly Christian benevolence, was victorious, triumphing alike o\er reluctant pride and over an un­forgiving temper. The Duke of Swabia, upon bended knee, made his submission, and renewed his oath of allegiance to the Emperor; who, on his part, relieved

him from the ban of the empire, under which he lay, and confirmed to him his duchy and other possessions. Conrad still held back: but at the Michaelmas Diet he followed his brother’s example; further surrendering his share of his uncle’s Franconian heritage, which the Emperor immediately granted him in fief; and while con­firming the ducal rights in Franconia to the Bishop of Wurzburg, authorized Conrad to resume the title lie had formerly borne, of Duke of Franconia. He did not, however, deem it necessary to restore to the Duke of Franconia either the burgraviate of Nuremberg, which, when he despoiled the brothers, he had conferred upon Henry the Proud, or the Marquisate of Tuscany, then in his own hands.

From this time to the end of Lothar’s reign little is heard of the gallant Duke of Swabia, who appears again to have mainly devoted himself to the government of his duchy. But the Duke of Franconia, who had no duchy to occupy his hours and thoughts, attached himself more to the Imperial Court, where he speedily became a prime favourite. His triumphant, reconciled antagonist loaded him with wealth and honours, named him Standard-bearer of the Holy Roman Empire, and gave him precedence of all other Dukes.U94)

This same year Boleslas III. of Poland having proved unsuccessful in the ever-recurring war between Poland and Hungary, for sovereignty over the adjacent independent Heathen Slavonians, solicited the intervention of Lothar; who mediated for h’m a very fair peace, and in return received his homage for Pomerania and Rugen(195); but for Poland't was still withheld. This business concluded, the Emperor prepared to lead another army to the assist­ance of the Pope, who, though he had succeeded in expelling the anti-pope from St. Angelo, had long been in urgent need of imperial aid.

Whilst Lothar’s preparations were in progress—and, requiring the concurrence of the princes to be effective, they advanced but slowly—the Abbot of Clairvaux was again traversing Italy, to gain Innocent adherents. In Lombardy, by the joint influence of his eloquence, his piety, and his virtue, he was very successful. He prevailed upon the Milanese to mark their adhesion by

deposing their excommunicated Archbishop; when they implored Bernard himself to accept the vacant see. He rejected it, as he had before rejected the Pope's offer of the archbishopric of Genoa; and, notwithstanding this resist­ance to their wishes, he induced them not only to remove all paintings and other ornaments from their churches, but, subduing their vindictive passions, to release all pri­soners of war in their hands. He even mediated a peace between Milan and Pavia, though between Milan and Cremona he failed to accomplish this object.

Anaclet, meanwhile, upon his expulsion from the Castle of St. Angelo, had sought the protection of the Norman sovereign; whose friendship he had recently secured, by sending the Cardinal di Sant’ Eusebio to crown him King of Sicily. And to the court of the new King did the dauntless Bernard, confident in the justice of his cause, now repair, to argue before him the question of which wa!s the least uncanonical of the two papal elections ; whether he who had conferred the regal title upon him, had authority so to do. Anaclet, claiming to be the Head of the Church, could not stoop to argue in person with the advocate of his rival; but he committed his cause to the ablest of his staunch partisans, Cardinal Pino. Upon this occasion the Abbot’s efforts were only in part suc­cessful. He did not pre\ail upon Anaclet to abdicate, or upon Roger, who called himself King of Sicily and Italy, to reno 1 ’ ’* ’ confessing that he who

his immediate antagonist of the fallacy of the pretensions he was maintaining, that his Eminence returned with Bernard to Rome, there to acknowledge Innocent as Pope, implore pardon for his previous adherence to the anti pope, and obtain absolution.

Whilst IiOthar had been occupied in Germany, Roger was engaged in quelling a rebellion that his own harsh and violent conduct had provoked. In the act tliat caused the immediate outbreak, it may be questionable whether he were or were not altogether in the wrong lie accused his brother-in-law, Rainulfo Conte di Airolo e Avellino, of ill-treating his princess-wile; and attacking his castles whilst he, Rainulfo, was absent in public service, carried off his own siste^ and Rainulfo’s brother. The prisoner

gave it was

thoroughly convinced

speaking somewhat boldly in behalf of his brother, Roger doomed him to lose his nose and eyes. The Prince of Capua with Sergio Duke of Naples, which was not yet fully sub­jugated, now joined Rainulfo, many lesser princely nobles rising at their instigation; and when disappointed by the delays of the succours they had hoped for from the Pope and Emperor, they sought the alliance of Pisa. It is said that Pisa would not move unless in concert with Genoa and Venice; and that a league of these three great cities with the Apulian insurgents, against Roger, was concluded at Pisa, with the full approbation and sanction, even in the presence, of Innocent.Certainly the Pisans attacked the Apulian dominions of Roger, and in this invasion it was that they took and sacked Amalfi, and, according to a prevalent report, found there the forgotten and supposed lost Pandects of Justinian. If such were the league against Roger, its failure is evidence of the strength of this Norman Prince. The rebels fought well, the better for the exasperation produced by his inhuman treatment of the vanquished. In captured towns he burnt houses and churches, massacring men women and children, without distinction: those whom he did not massacre he savagely mutilated; and having taken two noblemen, Tancredi di Conversano and Ruggiero di Flenco prisoners, he compelled the former to redeem his own life by acting as the executioner of his comrade. Yet, despite his own barbarity and the coalition against him, Roger triumphed. Rebel after rebel was taken, or sued for reconciliation : and he was besieging Naples, which almost alone held out, when the Emperor’s preparations were at length complete.

It was in 1137 that Lothar crossed the Alps for the second time. He was now at the head of a formidable army, the efficient command of which was given to the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and he was accompanied by the Duke of Franconia as Standard-bearer. In the Tyrol he defeated a body of rebels who opposed his passage, and executed the ringleaders. Lombardy was at this time in a very disturbed state from the preaching of Arnold of Brescia, a pupil of Abelard’s, who, imbued with all his master’s heterodox opinions, but, differently tempered, not line him submitting them to the papal tribunal, had

retumed to his native city to disseminate them. He there pronounced his vows as a monk, but these vows put no check upon his tongue. He is said to have preached against Infant Baptism, the Mass, the Eucharist, and pravers for the dead, and to have entertained some here­tical ideas concerning the Trinity/19?) But his heresies are problematical, and excited little interest in his hearers; that by which he aroused the laity and alarmed the Church was his preaching against the wealth, the luxurious living, and yet more against the temporal power of ecclesiastics, who, he alleged, ought to imitate the contented poverty and humility of the Apostles. High and low listened eagerly to doctrines, that gratified the jealousy of the first, and flattered the cupidity of the last; and the Bishop of Brescia complained vehemently to the Pope. But Lom­bardy was not therefore in open rebellion; and Lothar, after taking and tranquillizing some towns that appeared disposed to insurrection, avoided further 'nterference in rhe'r quarrels. He secured the aid of a Pisan fleet against his o»- the Pope's refractory Sicilian vassal, and hastened to Rome.

The Romans had by this time been appeased, and were just then loyal; so that the Pope and Emperor uro- ceedtd without delay to invade Apulia. There they speedily arrested King Roger’s victorious career, obliged him to rai.se the siege of Naples, and, it should seem, drove him off to Sicily. St. Bernard, who, if a zealous advocate of what he deemed papal rights, was a determined opponent of papal encroachment, now advised Lothar to depose Roger, not tor his adherence to the anti-pope, but as an usurper, inasmuch as he professed to hold his dominions of the Papacy not of the Empire. But Lothar was too much a creature of the Pope to follow such counsels, as bold as wise in everything he acted with Innocent and under his dictation. Jointly they adopted Honorius II.’s leniatl of Roger’s right to succeed to his kinsman,, Duke William; and leaving him Gran’ Conte di Sicilia, they invested his brother-in-law, Rainulfo with the duchy of Apulia, re-installing Robert of Capua, anil the other prnces or nobles not of the Hauteville race, in the possessions of m hich they had been despoiled.

Innocent rewarded this submissive behaviour perhaps

as much as the services of the imperial army, when he permitted the Emperor, conjointly with himself, to give the investiture of, and revive the homage due for, the duchy and principalities. He further rewarded him with permission to transfer the marquisate of Tuscany, nominally including the whole Matildan heritage, to his son-in-law, as heir to Matilda’s second husband, Welf, to be held of course as it was to have been held by Welf, and was actually held by Lothar, in vassalage of the Roman See. This grant the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria had earned by quelling an insurrection in Tuscany, and reinstating the Imperial Vicar, whom the rebels had expelled, ip his post; but whether his guerdon were to be immediately enjoyed, the Emperor retaining simply a mesne sovereignty, or were reversionary, only taking effect at Lothar’s death, is a question still in dispute amongst German and Italian historians.

This prolongation of the grant of the marquisate of Tuscanv in vassalage may seem a very inadequate return for Lotliar’s services. But Innocent regarded those services as the mere payment of a debt, and of a debt doubly due, since to the Roman Church Lothar owed his attainment of the dignity, which made the protection of that Church .his official bounden duty. Moreover the grant acquired additional value, as implying the disregard, or the sacrifice, of the hatred that Henry the Proud had incurred from all classes of Italians, from pope, prelates, nobles, citizens and peasants; from those, by his intolerable arrogance, from these, by his barbarous mutilation of his prisoners. Their good-will was lavished with one accord upon the Standard-bearer, who was gallant in the field, lenient in victory, devout, respectful to the clergy, doubly so to the Pope, and courteous to all. He is described by historians as a pattern to the army, alike in prowess and in endurance, although no especial feats are upon this occasion mentioned as performed by him. Indeed, every opportunity of acquiring fame or commanding admiration was monopolized by the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, a!1 powerful both as Generalissimo, and as the husband of tne Emperor’K only child.

The Imperial authority being now in some sort acknow­ledged both in Lombardy and Apulia, Lothar deemed

bis work done; and being perhaps somewhat disgusted at

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the papal encroachments upon his rights, as well as urged by his vassals, whose period of service had expired, and who were impatient to escape from the heats, to them uncongenial, of Italy, set form for Germany. Forgetting, or unable, to make any provision for the support of the Apulians whom he had installed in opposition to Roger, he left them wholly to their own resources and the Pope’s protection. He retraced his steps, to return by the road by which he had come; and upon reaching the beautiful lake of Garda, added the town of the same name to the Italian possessions of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria.

Lothar’s anxiety to reach Germany was increased by tidings of the excesses and outrages committed in his absence by the robber-knights, one band of whom had plundered and burnt the wealthy church of St. Goar upon the Rhine. But to restore order was not allotted to him. Whilst traversing the Tyrol at the head of his victorious army, the Emperor was suddenly taken ill. Speedily it became impossible to transport him further; and at a small Tyrolese village, upon the 3rd of December, 1137, after having carefully delivered the ensigns of sovereignty into the hands of his daughter’s husband, Lothar II. expired, His death was one of those ascribed to poison, although the usually chief ground of such accusations, to wit, its being premature, was here wanting. Lothar, who was spoken of as being past his prime v hen raised to the throne, which he occupied upwards of twelve years, must now have been at least an elderly man. In one respect only could it lie thought untimely, and that is, that to himself it was apparently unexpected. He had as yet taken no step towards securing the crown to his son-in-law; and he had probably hoped that this triumphant expedition, and the laurels gathered by this candidate for Empire, would facilitate his election as colleague and suc­cessor to himself. The person accused by hostile his­torians of administering the poison is the Duke of Fran­conia; but to say nothing of his character, there then appeared far too little chance of carrying his election as successor to Lothar, in opposition to the Duke of Saxony and Bavariu, Marquess of Tuscany, and Lord of the remainder of the Matildan dominions, to tempt even a recklessly ambitious man, far less the chivalrous palmer. Conrad, to perpetrate an atrocious crime.

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CONRAD III.

Election Mancevres.—Conrad elected.—Dissensions with Henry the Proud.—Death of Henry.—Rise of the terms Guelph and Ghibeline.—The Women of Weins- berg.—Compromise with the Welfs.—Other German Affairs.—External Affairs. —Italian Affairs.—End of Schism.—Roger’s Conquest of Apulia, and government. —Dissensions of the Popes and the Romans.

[1138—1145.]

At the death of Lothar the question as to the right of suc­cession to the crown assumed an aspect analogous, with one material exception, to that which it had presented at the de­cease of his predecessor, Henry V. This exception was, that the admission of the right of females, if not to inherit, yet to transmit the inheritance of the Empire, would not now, as then, have been decisive in favour of him who claimed upon such grounds. On the contrary, it might be urged, as a necessary corollary from the admission, that the eldest nephew of Henry V. was the lawful as well as natural heir of his childless uncle; wherefore the late Emperor Lothar, an usurper, who had held the empire illegally, neither had nor could have any right to bequeath either to son or to daughter’s husband.

But independently of the question of female birthright, the opinions and inclinations of the Princes of the Empire were much divided, even the same individual prince being often diversely influenced by conflicting interests and appre­hensions. Competitors for the crown there could be only two; namely, the son-in-law of the last Emperor, and one of the nephews of his predecessor. If, in 1125, Duke Frederic’s power had been thought formidable to the rights. Or at least to the desires, of the Great Vassals, how much Digitized by Microsoft®

more so in 1138 was Duke Henry's—a power resting upon an unprecedented accumulation of duchies, principalities, and domains, extending from the German Ocean to tne Me­diterranean Sea. A prince who, uniting two provincial duchies, was at once Duke of Saxony and of Bavaria; Marquess of Tuscany, such as the marquesate then was; Burgrave of Nuremberg; Lord of the Welf patrimony in Bavaria and Swabia; in Saxony, of vastly the largest half of the Billung property, in right of his mother, Wulfhilda; and of the possessions of the Earls of Supplinberg in right of his wife, Gertrude, the acknowledged heiress of those far more considerable of the Empress Richenza; might well seem an objectionable monarch to ambitious princes, eager for virtual if not nominal independence. Nor was the disinclination to give themselves a real master ’n so for­midably potent an Emperor lessened by the character of the man. By the arrogance to which he owed his surname of the I’roud, and which his w armest partisans a re, therefore, unable to deny, though they endeavour to soften or explain it away, he had alienated the German princes and nobles as well as the Italians; whilst even the good qualities that counterbalanced his faults, seem rather to have increased than diminished the number of his enemies. His inflexible and impartial, as severe, administration of justice ‘n his principalities, repressing robber-knights, rigorously p mish- ing all crime without regard to the rank of the offender, had provoked enmity amongst his own vassals, and that enmity was embittered by l.is offensive demeanour.

But the terrors awakened by his power told iri opposite directions. Whilst rendering the j>rinces most averse to give the formidable Duke authority over themselves as their sovereign, it made opposing him a service of danger, from which many shrank ; and upon this timid hesitation, Henry and hift strenuous supporters very much relied for carrying the election. These supporters were his mother'in-law, the w idowed Empress—a per­sonage of great weight, both as a potent Prince of the Empire, and as having been the late Emperor’s partner quite as much in the government of his dominions as in his domestic life—and Henry's brother iu-law, the Duke of Zaringen. In addition to their nfluence, and to the fpar entertained of opposing such a preponderance of power, Digitized by Microsoft®     ’

the regalia were in Henry’s custody; a most influential circumstance, while the material crown was still regarded with so strange a degree of mystic veneration.

On the other hand, the power of the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, based upon the former duchy itself, upon the Hohenstaufen patrimony within the duchy, upon the patrimony of the Franconian Emperors, and upon Henry V.’s grants to Conrad, of which he had been but partially despoiled, if too small when compared to Henry’s either to alarm or to encourage, was nevertheless con­siderable, and far superior to that of any other prince of the Em]lire. The brothers were, moreover, actively patronized by the Court of Rome; the natural papal aversion to the principle of hereditary succession in the Empire rendering the influence that had been so inimical to Frederic’s claim upon the last occasion, as much so to Henry's upon this; whilst these motives of general policy were vivified by others of a more personal nature. Innocent had himself, when dependent upon the Emperor for support, suffered mortification from the haughty superciliousness of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and he had not forgotten the offence, which he might well think prognosticated no agreeable Protector or Steward of the Roman See.

The difficulty that might have seemed to threaten disturbance of unanimity amongst the friends of the House of Hohenstaufen, and even in the house itself, namely, the selection of the candidate for the dignity to which both brothers had at different times aspired, was obviated by the self-denial of the elder, who at once renounced the prerogative of primogeniture. Again the Duke of Swabia’s inducement to resign his birthright has been curiously canvassed, and various reasons, honourable to his character or the reverse, or at least depreciatory of the high estimation in which he was held, have been assigned. But it is surely sufficient to recollect that he had previously, upon whatsoever grounds, allowed Conrad to assume the regal Title, at a moment when the assumption was fraught with peril, to show that he must have felt himself thereby pledged never, at a more propitious mo­ment, to contest it with him. Such a feeling could scarcely need to be invigorated by the idea that the favour of

the Pope might be personal to the pious crusader, who during Lothar’s last Italian campaign had won Innocent’s especial good-will.

Amongst the great princes of the Empire, the only cor­dial partisans of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria were those already named, to wit, his brother-in-law, the Duke of Zaringen, and his mother-in-law, the Empress: of the main bodv by far the greater number disliked and feared him. The Duke of Franconia, on the contrary, could reckon upon many personal friends, independently of his brother, the Duke of Swabia, as well as upon many political par­tisans ; as the Archbishops of Treves—who had conceived an affection for him in Italy—and of Cologne; (Mainz was then vacant)—his half-brother Leopold Margrave of Austria, who, although only the third son, had been selected, with Lothar’s approbation, as more highly en­dowed, morally and intellectually, than his elder brothers, to succeed to his deceased father ; his half sister’s husband, Albert Margrave of the North March, rendered by his own interests an active and therefore most useful ally-:—for he, the Bear, seeing in the interregnum and the necessary absorption of Henry the Proud’s forces and thoughts in the contest for the crown, an opportunity, to be clutched by the forelock, of recovering his maternal birthright, raised his vassals without a moment’s loss of time, and invaded Saxony. These were the principal and not to pursue the inquiry into tedious detail, it may suffice to say that the less important immediate vassals, spiritual and temporal, were much divided, and mostly disposed to attach themselves to whichever party seemed, likely to succeed. The Papal Legate was Cardinal Thietwin, bj birth a Swabian, and therefore selected by Innocent, as likely to be more actively zealous in behalf of a Swabian prince, than an Italian cardinal, actuated solely by the Pope’s wishes and instructions, might have been.

Innocent had expressly directed his Legate to secure Conrad’s election, by previous negociation, if possible, that it might Le at last conducted with such regular observance of all established forms, as should preclude subsequent .disputes. The Swabian party in German} fully appreciated the wisdom of this course, and in order to afford rime for such negociation, the Archbishop of

Treves, who, acting as substitute for the non-existing Archbishop of Mainz, summoned the Electoral Diet, de­ferred its sitting as long as be judged consistent with pro­priety, appointing a period as late as Whitsuntide, 1138. The Empress, well versed in state affairs and political intrigue, and mistrustful of the prelate’s inclinations, perceived the injury this delay vvas calculated to do her son-in-law's prospects, and sought to counteract it. She invited the princes, ecclesiastical and lay, attached to the deceased Emperor and to the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, to meet in her city of Quedlinburg, at Candlemas of this same year, 1138. She purposed that this carefully selected, as unlawfully congregated assembly, should surreptitiously assume the title of an Electoral Diet, and as such proclaim, rather than elect, Henry the Proud King of Germany, when the ceremony of his coronation, the proper regalia, being in their possession, should immediately follow, the chief prelate present, whoever he might be, officiating. If this could be accomplished as proposed, Richenza doubted not but that the great body of the Empire, to avoid the evils attending a double election, would acknowledge Henry as King.

This well devised scheme was bafHed by the rapidity of Margrave Albert’s movements. He had already in­vaded Saxony, and in the first instance so successfully, that, carrying his arms into the patrimonial domains of this mighty princess, he had before Candlemas made him­self master of Quedlinburg, thus excluding the Empress herself, as well as her faction, from her own city.

The Swabian party, taking advantage of the inevitable consequent delay of her operations, hastened to forestall any future manoeuvres; justifying their own deviation from established forms, by the preceding, craftily planned as illegal, scheme of action. The two Archbishops of Treves and Cologne, the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, the Margrave of Austria, and their friends amongst the Princes, instead of waiting for the appointed Whitsun­tide Electoral Diet at Mainz, assembled upon the 22nd of February at Coblentz, and were met by Cardinal Thietwin. They at once elected Conrad, whom, on the 6th of March, the Legate crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle; if the original seat of Frank empire, of the Cathedial in which

VOL. I.   L

alone the indispensable coronation of a German monarch could be lawfully solemnized, should not, in narrating German History, be designated rather by its vernacular, though unmusical, name of Achen, than by its French appellation, however generally adopted. The open inter­vention of a papal I.cgate at Lothar’s election was noticed as an unprecedented ;nnovation. So of course was this officious superseding of all the German prelates present at the coronation. The plea upon the present occasion was the default of an Archbishop of Mainz, which, though sufficient to authorize the assumption of his office of con­voking the Electoral Diet, by the Archbishop of Treves, could hardly be similarly accepted in the case of the Legate, the two metropolitans next in dignity to the Mainzer being present, especially the Archbishop of Cologne, in whose province Achen is situated. But to make manifest the approbation of the Pope, the habitual opponent of those emperors from whom Conrad derived his claim, was under existing circumstances held to lie an object so important as to outweigh all other considerations. Nor was want of due authority in the officiating prelate the only irregularity in Conrad’s coronation, since the regalia being still ir his antagonist’s possession., some substitute, ungifted with the mystic, consecrating virtue, ascribed by the nation to the genFiine crown, must have been employed.

But whatever might be the general sense of these irre­gularities anil .informalities, Henry and Richenza could not allege that they .nvali lated Conrad’s election, without at the same time vitiating Lothar’s, which had been effected amidst and by irregularities, if of a different description. As the bare suspicion of any defect in the late Emperor's title must have tended to invalidate all the acts of his reign, including the accumulation of duchies and princi­palities upon his sop-in-law’s head, at which the Duke's compeers, no longer checked by imperial authority, were beginning loudly to murmur; 'iis was a risk to be sedu­lously shunned. Accordingly the Duke and Empress appear to have been altogether disconcerted by the promj)- tiiuile of the transaction; and whilst they' paused and hesitated, the Legate announced Conrad's recognition as King and future Emperor, by the Pope, the Romans, and

all Italy; and in Germany the monarch thus recognised had gained an important accession of strengtli by the elevation of another Graf von Saarbruck, the brother-in-law of the Duke of Swabia, to the predominant archi-episcopal See of Mainz.

At Whitsuntide, the period originally fixed for the

election, Conrad III. held a Diet at Bamberg, which was

very numerously attended. The immediate vassals flocked

thither to take the oath of allegiance and do homage for 1 • ■

their fiefs; even the widowed Empress and the Duke of Zaringen attending for this purpose, when the Duke actually distinguished himself by the fervour of his new­born loyalty. Thinking that lie noticed a lingering antipathy to the Swabian dynasty in the Archbishop of Salzburg, he so vehemently exhorted that prelate to take the oath and do homage, so officiously pressed his media­tion upon him, in case he feared Conrad’s resentment of past enmity, as to draw upon himself the whimsical and not very courtly retort, “ Why of a surety, my Lord “Duke,” quoth the Archbishop, “if your Grace were a “ waggon you would run before the oxen. What need of “ you between my Liege Lord the King and ir.e ?” He did homage, swore allegiance frankly, and kept his oath, which his zealous monitor, as will presently be seen, did not. For the moment, however, the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria appears to have been the solitary exception to the unanimity of the princes.

But this solitary exception was too important to be disregarded; since even if Henry were weakened by the submission of his staunchest friends, and by his feud with Albert the Bear, he still had possession of the regalia, without which ensigns of royalty Conrad, in the eyes of the nation, was scarcely King. Negotiations were opened for their surrender, and it is to be feared that, notwithstanding the piety of Conrad and the chivalrous honour of his brother, in these negotiations recourse was had to equi­vocation, if not to direct falsehood, for the attainment of objects so essential. Even Otho Bishop of Freising, one of Conrad’® half-brothers by his mother’s second marriage, in his chronicle says, that "the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria was induced by promises to deliver up the regaliaX198) What the promises were he does not explain; neither do

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those chroniclers of the adverse party, who most broadly accuse Conrad of duplicity, state in what the duplicity consisted : whence it may perhaps be inferred to have gone no further than vague assurances of favour in his quarrel with the Margrave, implying the retention of his mass of principalities, which he well knew provoked the envy and ill will of the other princes.

At another Diet, which Conrad held in the autumn of the year at Augsburg, Henry the Proud, whether lured by promises or alarmed by the Bear’s progress in Saxony, attended to surrender the highly-prized regalia, and to do homage for his various fiefs. But he presented himself at the head of forces so superior to those brought by any of the other princes or even by the King, that, although he did surrender the crown, sceptre, and other ensigns of sovereignty, Conrad looked upon his presence as a menace, and was alarmed for his own safety. Henry’s motive for this formidable display has never been clearly ascertained. Bavarian historians, even the latest, adopting or reasoning from the assertions of their predecessors,(199) aver that he had received intimations of its being the purpose of Conrad and the Diet to despoil him of, some at least, of his princi­palities ; that he had already been called upon to surrender the marquesate of Tuscany, with its dependencies. These last advocates of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria must be held to acquit Conrad of deluding him with large pro­mises ; but their assertions seem irreconcileable with the known facts. To demand the surrender of the marquesate of Tuscany, would, in Conrad, have been a demonstration of hostility towards his friend the Pope, so injudicious, to say the least, :<i his position, that it were id'o to suspect him of such imprudence. A yet stronger argument against it is, that Italian affairs were not discussed at German Diets, but regularly referred to the Diet, held by every Emperor at his entrance into Italy, upon the Boncaglia plain, near Piacenza; so that Conrad must have gone out of his way to oTend a potentate from whom he was trying to obtain an important service. Neither can it be supposed that Henry would have given up the regalia had he had any notice of hostile intentions towards himself. But Conrad had been his rival, he knew that his brother princes maintained the illegality of the union of two of the national duchies; he

might conclude the subject would be mooted at the Diet; and think poss’bly at once to intimidate and conciliate, by exhibiting forces designed to resist Margrave Albert, whilst he delivered up to the new monarch the insignia of his dignity^           ...     .

Notwithstanding this martial demonstration, the Diet discussed both the questions in which the Duke was interested; to wit, whether one man could lawfully hold two national duchies, and whether the eldest daughter of Duke Magnus had or had not been entitled to inherit her father’s duchy. Henry alleged that the union of two duchies was neither unlawful nor unprecedented; that no daughter ever had inherited a duchy prior to Lothar’s law granting that privilege; but that, as this law, in virtue of which Gertrude had brought him Saxony, could have no retrospective action upon the then baseless pretensions of Elike, Saxony had, upon the failure of the direct male line of the Billung Dukes, lapsed to the crown, as had been adjudged by Conrad’s uncle, the Emperor Henry V.; and finally, that he himself, therefore, lawfully held it, both as husband of the daughter of the last Duke, now legally his heiress, and as individually invested therewith by the late Emperor. The Diet, whether influenced by policy or justice, decided that Henry’s arguments were of no weight; that’ the union of national duchies was illegal; that in default of male heirs, a‘daughter had always been entitled to inherit, or at least to transmit, a duchy like another fief; and that Albert the Ascanian, grandson of Duke Magnus by his eldest daughter Elike, was therefore the rightful Duke of Saxony.

Conrad pronounced sentence in conformity with the de­cision of the Diet; but as Henry’s armament was of more force than his logic, the monarch deemed it prudent to remove out of his reach. He accordingly withdrew, or in plain English escaped by night from Augsburg, repair­ing to Wurzburg, whither he invited the Diet to follow him. The members complied ; and at Wurzburg, in full Diet, the sentence was again pronounced and published; and Henry, Duke of Bavaria, was summoned to attend, in order to surrender the unlawfully held duchy of Saxony. This summons the Duke, of course, utterly disregarded ; whereupon, with a precipitation unusual in the proceedings

of Diets towards princes of his rank and dignity, he was declared contumacious, and laid under the ban of the Em­pire/200) At a third Diet, held at Christmas, at Goslar ia Saxony, Conrad, with somewhat unseemly, but perfectly lawful haste, formally conferred the Saxon duchy upon Elite’s son, Albert.

The newly-invested Duke hastened back to his army, and his success, now that he was supported by the verdict of his peers, confirmed by his sovereign, was yet more rapid than befote. Despite the utmost exertions of Kichenza, whom the attack upon her daughter’s rights had driven into rebellion, and to whom, as more powerful and more popular than himself 'n Saxony, Henry committed the defence of his matrimonial duchy, Albert was speedily master of the northern and western districts, including part of her own domains, and Luneberg, said to have been the original seat of the Billung ancestry of both competitors. Meanwhile Ilenry himself, in conjunction with the Duke of Zaringen, who, like the Empress dowager, had already revolted from the King, to whom he had sworn allegiance, sought to relieve her by a diversion, to which en^l they invaded Swabia.

This move was unfortunate for the Duke of Zaringen, without benefiting lliclienza. The gallant Duke of Swabia, who was not in arms, and might perhaps have shrunk from an active part ia humbling, however justly, the brother of bis dead wite, was roused by this aggression upon himself. He now took the field at the head of his vassals and accompanied by his eldest son, afterwards the renowned Frederick Rarbarossa, then a mere youth, although this was not his first campaign. He had already been intrusted with the command of his father’s troops in u private feud, and this at so early an age that his adversary, the Bavarian Earl of Wolfartsliausen, would not, it is said, even when he saw the Swabians advancing upon him, believe that a serious engagement could be risked under so boyish a leader, unt’l the boy's onslaught, and his own defeat, convinced him of his mistake; when the juvenile victor equally distinguished himself by his liberality, releasing his prisoners witfiout exacting any ransom. Throughout this, his second campaign, the younger Frederic yet further raised his military reputation by his

valour and spirit of enterprise. The father and son not only expelled the invaders, but conquered the greater part of the Duke of Ziiringen’s Swabian and Burgundian possessions, Zurich and Zaring itself included. These last triumphs, which compelled the rebel Duke to sue to Conrad for peace, were mainly attributed to the son.

Whilst the Duke of Swabia was defending the family patrimony, Conrad, somewhat too eager perhaps to retaliate the wrongs he snd his brother had suffered from Lothar and Henry, pronounced—whether or not in concurrence with another Diet seems doubtful—certainly according to law, that the Duke of Bavaria, by his contumacy and rebellious resistance to the sentence of the Augsburg, Wurzburg, and Goslar Diets, had incurred the forfeiture of all his fiefs, the duchy of Bavaria included ; and he conferred this hereditary Welf duchy upon his own half­brother, Leopold of Austria. The new Duke, supported by Frederic, hastened to take possession of his duchy; but notwithstanding the apparent accession of strength to the granter, this was as unfortunate a move for the mover, as the Duke of Zaringen’s had been. The Princes of the Empire, who judged Henry sufficiently weakened by the loss of Saxony, and were far more jealous of an Epiperor, and of every member of his family, than of any prepotency in one who was still only a member of their own body, declared this transfer of Bavaria to Margrave Leopold an unjustifiable, as tyrannical, act of inordinate rapacity ; and almost all those who had hitherto professed neutrality, now took part with Henry. No Imperial army inforced the ban of the Empire.

Thus strengthened, the Duke repaired to the chief scene of action, Saxony ; and leaving his brother Welf to defend Bavaria against Leopold and Frederic, joined llichenza. Their combined powers ere long drove Albert out of the duchy. But whichever party preponderated immediately awakened the jealousy of the princes. Fears of Henry the Proud’s power, and hatred of his arrogance now reviving, so recruited Conrad's ranks, ■ as encouraged him to lead his arm}- into Saxony, trusting there to reinstal his Duke, who, it will be recollected, was the husband of one of his Austrian half-sisters. But he bad been misinformed touching Henry’s force, and when

the two armies met at Hersefeldt, found himself no match for his adversary. A battle seemed inevitable; and such was the superiority of numbers on the side of the Duke, that a victory which might have transferred the crown itself to his brow, and by the immensity of the possessions it would have restored him, have rendered the sovereignty probably both despotic and indisputably hereditary, seemed all but certain. This catastrophe was averted by the intervention of Conrad’s trusty friend the Archbishop of Treves, who now appeared upon the field in an unwonted, and if not exactly apostolic, yet pacific style. He presented himself in the interval of space still separating the hostile troops, followed by a long line of carts laden with pipes of wine, the contents of which he distributed with strict impartiality to both armies. Both drank, tiil both lay in a state of insensible intoxication upon the ground they had thought to drench with each other’s blood.'201) The monarch and the rebel, without warriors, listened perforce to the prelate’s exhor­tations ; and if he could not effect a peace, he at least prevailed upon them to conclude a truce for a year, during which to negotiate respecting all clashing interests ; and to submit the question of the union of duchies, to re-examination at the Whitsuntide Diet.

But in a very few months the whole aspect of affairs was changed by the death of Henry the Proud, who, at the early age of thirty-seven, upon the 20th of October, 1139, expired at Quedlinburg. His death is, by writers hostile to the Swabian Emperors,(202) of course imputed to poison administered at Conrad's instigation, and, although without any sort of evidence, ov, it may be hoped, grounds, with more show of plausibility as to motive, than in the case of his father-in-law. Chroniclers less, oi otherwise prejudiced, ascribe it to illness,(203) which illness one of them distinctly derives from grief ;(20O and well might such be the effect of disappointment and mortification upon an irascible as haughty tem­perament: whilst others again merely state the fact of the Duke’s death without assigning any cause.!205) Ne one appears to have laid the supposed crime to the charge of either of those who were most likely to benefit by his removal, namely, the dead man's kinsman and

competitor, Albert the Bear, whose surname would seem to indicate some deficiency in the milk of human kind­ness, or the new Duke of Bavaria, Margrave Leopold.

Whether it were nature or guilt that had relieved him from a formidable rival, the new Duke of Saxony hastened to take advantage of the circumstance. As if the truce had been personal to Henry the Proud, he again invaded the duchy, and again successfully. So completely did he now consider himself as Duke, that he summoned a provincial Diet to meet at Bremen, there conjointly with him to regulate the affairs of Saxony, and allay all remaining troubles. But these confident hopes were to be disappointed ; the death of his rival proved rather a misfortune than an advantage to Albert.

The apprehensions and the resentments excited by the ambition and the arrogance of Henry the Proud, had died with him. The helpless innocence of his son, a boy scarcely ten years old, the grandchild of an Emperor, despoiled for his father’s offences not only of that father’s patrimony, but even of his maternal heritage, awoke as well general sympathy among his brother princes, as the compassionately respectful loyalty of the vassals of his family. And well did his mother and grandmother, Gertrude and Richenza, both Saxon princesses, revered and beloved by their compatriots and their vassals, know how to turn these sentiments to account in their own country. The energetic Empress-dowager so effectually roused Saxony against the intrusive Duke, that at Bremen he found himself in a position far worse than hers had been when excluded from Quedlinburg. He was there surrounded, not as he had hoped by a Diet of loyal vassals, but by hostile troops, from whom he with difficulty effected his escape. She soon afterwards drove him completely out of the duchy ; and as a fugitive Albert appeared at Conrad’s court, whilst Richenza and Gertrude remaining in possession of Saxony, governed it in the name of young Henry.

In Bavaria a similar change of feeling had taken place. The great vassals, who had hated Henry the Proud even more for the arrogance, which they felt a personal insult, than for the stern exercise of authority

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by which he had curbed their tyranny, and the equally dissatisfied inferior nobles, whose plundering propensities he had steadily repressed and punished, all forgot their resentment, against the dead father in pity for the orphan child, the oppressed descendant of their natural princes. Hence Welf found it easy to raise them against their new Austrian Duke. He gained battles, he took towns, he forced the imperialists to raise the siege they had laid to others, and in the course of the year (140, reduced Leopold to great straits, despite the cordial support Tic received from Duke Frederic. Welf now deemed him­self master of the duchy; but he had fought and con­quered, not, as the Bavarians had supposed, for his fatherless nephew, the lawful heir, but for himself, and he now assumed the title of Duke of Bavaria.

Conrad had hitherto been variously prevented from taking an activ e part in the Bavarian war; but in the month of December of 1110, finding himself more at liberty, he led an armv to the assistance of his brothers, Frederic and Leopold. Upon this occasion occurred two incidents of the character that renders a particular military operation worth selecting from the mass. One of these incidents is the first rise of those battle cries which became the distinguishing watchword, or more properly the names, of the factions, that for centuries dis­tracted Italy yet more than Germany : the second, ranks among those gratifying traits of humanity occasionally recorded by history, as a relief to the crimes that defile her pages; soothing the reader with a view of our common nature more pleasing than that afforded by the intrigues of statesmen, the reckless ambition of demagogues and conquerors, the aimless ferocity of multitudes, or the vin­dictive cruelty of princes.

Conrad found his brothers driven from Bavaria, and turning their arms against the Swabian possessions of the Welf family. One of these was Weinsberg, a town situated near the banks of the Neckar, as its name implies, upon a vine-clad hill. This the three brothers besieged; Welf hastening to its relief, attacked the besiegers, and a desperate battle ensued. It was in this battle that the anta­gonist cries of Hie Waiblingen! and Ilie Welf! were first ‘.card. The latter cry, Welf, the reader already knows to have Digitized by Microsoft®

been in a manner the patronymic of the Dukes of Bavaria, as well as the individual name of the leader of one of the armies then engaged; its use therefore upon the pre­sent occasion needs no explanation ; and is only remarkable from its having been thenceforward adopted as the de­nomination of all enemies of the Swabian dynasty, in the first instance, and subsequently of the enemies of all Emperors whatsoever. As such, being Italianized into Guelpho, it was adopted bv the papal party in Italy, some little influenced, perhaps, by the circumstance of that party being usually headed by the Marched dEste, the kinsmen of the Welfs. The other, Waiblingen, is not quite so self-evident. It was the name of more than one castle belonging to the Hohenstaufen brothers, as part either of their patrimony, or of Henry V.’s bequest; but why it should have been used as the battle cry rather than the name of the Emperor,(206) or of either of his brothers then present in the field, it were hard to say. So used, however it was, and like the antagonist cry of Welf, both adopted as the name of the party that raised ’t, and, after being Latinized into Guibelinga, Italianized into Ghibellino.

The battle which gave birth to these cries was ob­stinately contested, but the victory was at length Conrad’s, and its immediate consequence was the surrender of Weinsberg. The besieged, so long as they could hope for relief, had defended themselves resolutely, even when reduced to extremities. Now such hope had become an impossibility, and they offered to capitulate. But Conrad, well aware that their means of resistance were exhausted, required a surrender at discretion; and the only alleviation of the hardship of such a surrender they could obtain, was permission for the women to escape, by quilting the town ere the victors should enter it, the outrages they dreaded from the licence of a soldiery, at once exaspe­rated at the long resistance they had encountered, and intoxicated with their recent hard-fought victory, wifli further permission to take with them, for their future support, as much of their property as each could carry on her back.

The victorious army was drawn up in battle array, . reluctantly awaiting the impending diminution of their

228             this Women of weinsbehct.                         [1188-

aatici parted booty in the departure of the weaker portion of the inhabitants with their treasure, ere they were to be allowed to enter, sack the town, and probably avenge their fallen comrades by the butchery of the men who had so pertinaciously withstood them. The Emperor, the Duke of Swabia, and the new Duke of Bavaria, were at the head of their troops, to see that the indulgence granted to the now defenceless women was not infringed. The gates were thrown open and the female procession came forth. But what was the amazement of the triumphant besiegers when every woman appeared, not loaded with jewels, raiment or money, but staggering under the burthen of her husband, her son, her father or her brother.

Frederic, who, as some writers affirm, was “made of sterner stuff” than his brother, and who might be incensed by the devastation of Swabia, considered this attempt to rescue the men from the vengeance of the conquerors, as a virtual infraction of the terms granted. He therefore pressed Conrad to insist upon the women’s returning to their homes, taking, as had been intended, the means of their future subsistence, and leaving the men to their fate. And even this, he argued would be a new' favour, since in strict justice, by their attempted violation of the spirit of the indulgence granted them, they had forfeited all claim thereto, and ought to remain, like the men, at the mercy of the victors. But Conrad, whom his enemies have dared to accuse of two murders, showed himself more clement or more chivalrous. His heart was touched by the self-devotion of the women of Weinsberg, and he replied to Frederic’s arguments, that under no circumstances must the plighted word of a monarch be broken or evaded. Not only did he sanction the pious feminine abuse of his concession, but bidding them set down their living burthens, whom he dismissed unharmed, he sent them back to reload themselves with the valuables he had intended to bestow upon them, and which they, at the impulse of virtuous affection, had disdained, ere he suffered his troops to seek solace in plunder and intoxication for the disappointment of their other irregular appetites, whether vindictive or licentious.

in commemoration of this transaction, the name of

the town was changed by the citizens from Weinsberg to Weibertreue, literally Women’s-faith. It has since fallen into decay, but as lately as in the year 1820, the Wurtembergers, incited as aided by their Queen, erected upon the hill a monument more consonant to the act it was designed to rescue from oblivion than a magnificent « * ■_ n temple might have been. It is an endowed edifice for the abode and maintenance of such indigent women as may have distinguished themselves by self-sacrificing; fidelity.(-07)

In the course of the following year, 1141, a possibility of effecting by compromise the pacification of this sanguinary feud appeared, and was eagerly embraced by the Duke of Swabia, who, however resentful towards the 7-avagers of his duchy, reluctantly acted as an enemy to the kindred of the wife of his youth. The energetic and unyielding Itichenza died; and the softer tempered Gertrude, who inherited neither the intellect nor the character of her mother, who is even accused of selling conquered provinces, as, e.g. Wagria, wrested from the Earl of Holstein, to her favourite, Heinrich von Bade- wide, remained sole guardian of her son. With her a negotiation was opened. Conrad offered her Saxony, somewhat reduced in magnitude and power, for her son, on condition of his renouncing all pretensions to Bavaria; and to alleviate the mortification of this sacrifice, he offered her Bavaria as a wedding portion for herself, provided she gave it with her hand to his half-brother, Margrave Henry of Austria, who had just succeeded to his childless brother Leopold. Gertrude accepted the proposals, to which, under her influence, her son consented ; and with her and her party peace was restored.

The main difficulty seemed now to lie in reconciling Albert the Bear to the loss of the duchy, his hereditary right to which had been publicly recognised, and of which he had once actually had possession, though he had sub­sequently lost it. But the Margrave, since his second expulsion, may have begun to despair of his power of maintaining that acknowledged right against the will of so large a portion of the vassalage; and he might thence be the less indisposed to listen to the compensation offered, him. This was, a considerable increase of territory, the

incorporation of the whole, his Sla\onian acquisitions

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included, with his margraviate; the complete severance of the margraviate thus consolidated, from the dochy of Saxony, of which it hitherto formed part, and the office of Arch-Chamberlain of the Empire, previously held by the Duke of Swabia,('2°8) inseparably attached to it. To this proposed compensation the Margrave at last agreed; and—the town of Brandenburg with the large district belonging to it, recently bequeathed him by the deceased Slavonian Prince Pribislaff, named Henrv at his baptism^209) being his most considerable province—the name of the principality was changed from the North Saxon March to the Margra\iate of Brandenburg.

These various arrangements were appointed to be per­fected in the Whitsuntide Diet, held at Frankfort in 1142. At this Diet the boy Henry formally renounced all claim to Bavaria, and was as formally invested with the duchy of Saxony. Margrave Albert with the like formalities renounced his right to Saxony, and was invested with his newlv-construeted margraviate of Brandenburg. The nuptials of Henry of Austria, who bore the singular cognomen of Jasomir, or Jasomirgott, from his incessant use of the form of asseveration, Ja, so mir Gott helfe (Yes, so God help me), with Gertrude, were solemnized with great magnificence in presence of the assembled princes, and the bridegroom was then formally invested with the duchy of Bavaria.

Fully* restored, indeed, peace was not even now; as Welf, who claimed Bavaria for himself, not his nephew, naturally refused to acknowledge that nephew’s right to renounce it. He continued to assert his own pretensions to the duchy, and, assisted bv all the enemies of the German sovereign, by Roger King of Sicily with money, and by the Hungarian regents for the minor Geisa, who had lately succeeded to his father Bela II., with troops, he kept up a harassing civil war against Duke Henry ; but Conrad, considering his two brothers, the Dukes of Swabia and Ba\aria, quite equal to the struggle with a pretender destitute of a shadow of right—since the duchy must be either his nephew’s, or forfeited, and therefore vacant at the Emperor's disposal—now treated the contest as Henry Jasomir s private feud, and devottd his attention to the general concerns of the empire.

But so much had the great question touching Saxony

and Bavaria superseded all more private feuds, that upon its settlement Germany appeared, except in Bavaria, to be pacified. In the north, Margrave Albert and Adolf, Earl of Holstein, who, dispossessed during the late civil war of his country with its Slavonian dependencies, was now reinstated, were employed in confirming the Christianity of their Slavonians, in civilizing them, and in improving the country. Both invited German colonists to settle in their Slavonian districts upon the most advantageous conditions, especially Flemings, Hollanders, Zealanders and Fries- landers, who understood the art of draining morasses, and of reclaiming and protecting from the sea, low, often inundated, lands. For these colonists they built new towns, or enlarged mere hamlets into towns, thus to intro­duce manufacturing industry and other peaceful pursuits. So Earl Adolph, when visiting Wagria which, despite the young Duke of Saxony’s guardians, he had recovered from its purchaser, Badewide, being struck with the fa­vourable position for foreign trade of the locality now occupied by Lubeck, if he did not actually found, con­verted a mere fishing village into that thriving seaport town, peopled from the maritime districts of Lower Lorrain. Some of his new towns, Margrave Albert, hoping to attract settlers by indulging their provincialism rather than patriotism,(210) named after Flemish towns, with the modification required by the Saxon dialect, as Kemberg for Cambrai, Briicke for Brugge or Bruges, &c.

But such pacific policy was in Germany the exception not the rule; and some few of the feuds that, in addition to Welf’s continued struggle for Bavaria, then, as usual, prevented anything like perfect tranquillity throughout the country, must be mentioned, or the reader knows not what the empire was that Conrad had to govern. One of the principal related to what may now be called the remnant of the duchy of Lower Lorrain. The Duke to whom Henry V. had given it, had very naturally supported the nephews of hi> benefactor, the Dukes of Swabia and Franconia, which act of gratitude Lothar had punished by confiscation, trans­ferring the confiscated duchy to his own active partisan, Waleram, Duke or Earl of Limburg. Soon after Conrad’s accession Duke Waleram djed, when the new monarch restored Lower Lorrain to Godfrey of Louvain, to whose son he gave a sister of his own Empress, in marriage,

permiting the Earls of Limburg to retain the ducal title as Dukes of Limburg. But the empty title, which did not, it is to be observed, give the extensive ducal rights belonging to the national duchies, was unsatisfactory to Duke Waleram’s son Henry; and upon the death of Duke Godfrey, who did not long survive the recovery of his duchy, he endeavoured by force of arms to regain Lower Lorrain. When Conrad was at leisure to interpose, lie quickly vanquished the Duke of Limburg, and con­firmed Lower Lorrain to his brother-in-law.

This was not the only feud in the west, for there the Archbishop of Treves and the Earl of Namur were waging fierce war upon each other, while a little further south the Duke of Zaringen, dissatisfied with Lothar’s decision in his quarrel with Renault de Chalons for Burgundy, was still endeavouring to wrest the county of that name from him ; but the disorders in the east more directly concerned the monarch. There, the Czechs had thought the civil war, that immediately followed Conrad’s election, a favourable opportunity for freeing Bohemia from German sovereignty ; and the Duke was not withheld, by his wife’s being one of Conrad's half-sisters, from endeavouring to profit by it. A Bohemian Diet confirmed this assumption of independence, by enacting several fundamental laws ; amongst others, some regulating the election of the Dukes, some giving great power therein to the Burgomaster of Prague, and some curtailing the ducal authority. So long as the contest for Saxony lasted, Bohemian independence flourished; but when the settlement of that dispute left Conrad at liberty to turn his attention to other insurgents, he speedily compelled Duke Vladislas to acknowledge him as his suzerain. Professedly without prejudice to the laws passed by his Diet, he now did homage to his imperial brother-in-law for his duchy.

With respect to those states whose dependent connexion with Germany was of a more doubtful character, Denmark was as usual distracted with the strife of the princes of the royal family for the crown, and the murder of those who wore it, a little sooner or a little later after placing :t upon their heads; with which incessant revolts neither writer nor reader need be troubled, save when the Emperor, as suzerain, interposed his authority.

In Poland the powerful Boleslas [II., who, though he

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had done homage to Lothar for Pomerania and Riigen, had asserted and maintained the perfect independence of Poland, died in 1139* and with his life ended the tran­quillity as well as the greatness of Poland. Notwith­standing his own experience of the evils consequent upon the division of the kingdom — he himself had warred against and despoiled his brother—blinded by parental affection, he shrank from what seemed sacrificing his younger sons to the eldest, and divided the realm amongst his four elder sons, leaving only the youngest, Kasimir, a subject. As the sole privilege of primogeniture, he assigned to the eldest, Vladislas, with the principality of Cracow, comprising Silesia, a sort of supremacy or suzerainty over his brothers, denoted by the title of Grand-Duke, not to be hereditary in his posterity, but always in­herited by the oldest of the whole royal race. The arrangement, as might have been anticipated, proved displeasing to all parties:—to Vladislas, who expected and had taught his haughty wife, another daughter of Princess Agnes, to expect that he was to inherit his father's sovereignty over Poland; and to his brothers, who were, perhaps, as envious of this modified supremacy as they might have been of his reigning over the whole duchy. Civil war broke out; and the four younger brothers uniting against the suzerain eldest, naturally overpowered him. Vladislas fled to Germany, where he appealed to Conrad, not only as his wife’s brother, for aid, but as Emperor, and as such Lord Paramount of Poland, for redress against both the rebellion of his brothers and the injustice of his father’s will, which divided what should in its entirety have been his. Conrad pronounced in his favour, and he thereupon did homage for the whole duchy of Poland. The Emperor led an army into Poland to seat his vassal brother-in-law upon the throne of his father. But in the difficulties of the country, in the want of roads and of provisions, he found obstacles more invincible than hostile troops; and a short experience of these induced him to permit the Margraves of Brandenburg and Misnia to mediate a peace for himself and Vladislas with the three brothers, who some­what dreaded the Imperial power. To the mediators four weak princes were infinitely more desirable neighbours

than one powerful king or duke; and, accordingly, the\ were fa*- from seeking to overthrow the will of Boles'las III. The peace they arranged under the circumstances so fai satisfied the Emperor, who felt that he had really failed, and knew that his presence was wanted in Italy, that all the brothers thereby acknowledged him as their sovereign, paid the expenses of the war, and referred their fraternal quarrel to the Imperial Diet, pledging themselves to attend and submit to its decision.

In Hungary likewise a pretender to the crown appealed to Conrad, acknowledging his sovereignty as Emperor, in order to gain his support. This was Boris, the son of King Kohunan or Kalmeny, by a Russian princess, Euphemia or Predslawa,l2H) different writers giving her different names, daughter to the powerful Grand-Frince, Vladimir Monomach. The Hungarian monarch had married her in his old age, and, whether justly or unjustly, distrusting her conjugai fidelity, repudiated her when ii> a state of pregnancy. Euphemia retired to her father’s ct.urt, where her son, Boris, was born and educated. When he attained to man’s estate, he of course asserted his mother’s innocence and hi& own legitimacy, in virtue of which he now claimed the crown of Hungary. Stephen II., Koloman’s eldest son and heir, appears to have treated him as a member of his family, and concurrcd with Boleslas III. of Poland, who gave Boris his daughter in marriage, in obtaining for him the Russian principality of Ilalirsh, probably on the strength of his descent from Vladimir Monomach, but of which Halitsh Boris was deprived by the family that had previously reigned there. At one time Stephen, haring no children, contemplated making Boris his heir; but he was induced to think the preference due, as a species of compensation, to his cousin Bela, who, id resentment of the treason of his father Alinus, had in infancy been blinded, by order of Koloman, a deed—believed to have been that sovereign’s only crime— which he had bitterly repented, his remorse being even thought to have shortened his life (*12) Accordingly upon Stephen’s death, the blind Bela had succeeded, and his Servian wife Helena, in an assembly of the States, demanded vengeance upon all concerned in robbing her royal lord of his eyes. Tumults and insurrections, in

which Boris was said to be implicated, ensued, and con­tinued after Bela’s death had left the throne to his little child Geisa. At length they were quelled, Boris fled, and sought shelter at Conrad’s court.

To the regents who governed for the minor, Geisa, and assisted Welf in his struggle for Bavaria, Conrad bore no good-will; and urged by the yet more resentful Henry Jasomir, who proffered vigorous support, he invaded Hungary on behalf of Boris. The result of the expedition is differently told by different historians, whose seemingly conflicting statements are not, however, absolutely irreconcileable. According to Hungarian writers the Emperor found it impossible to effect anything, and Henry Jasomir was in imminent danger in a defeat. According to German narratives the Emperor defeated the Hungarians, ravaged the country, and only withdrew upon receiving Geisa’s homage and oath of allegiance. Now it is very possible that Conrad may have had thus much success, and yet have found that to substitute Boris for Geisa was out of the question ; and if, by receiving the homage of the King he came to depose, he acknow­ledged him, he must needs be said to have been foiled in his object, although inforcing the often refused homage was assuredly gaining one material object. Whether Henry Jasomir’s defeat and danger occurred upon this expedition, or upon some other occasion during the ever-renewed ■war in which Hungarian support of Welf, and his own consequent support of Boris, embroiled him for some years with Geisa, is not clear.

Italy was in a more disturbed condition than Germany, and Innocent again wanted Imperial aid. Both nobles and cities north of Rome were, as usual, at war with each other, and the imperial officers rather took part in their feuds, than sought to repress them; in fact to suppress them was impossible. To wage private war under some circumstances, was, according to the feudal system, the indefeasible right of every noble, if not of every free man; O413) and all that monarchs the most sensible of the evils and inconveniences flowing from that right could do, was to regulate, and by steadily increasing strictness, confine it within narrower and narrower limits. That the cities, as soon as they felt themselves sufficiently

powerful, should claim and cxercise this right of the envied and detested nobility, a right so inherent in feudalism, was to be expected. Their doing so was in fact more offensive to the nobles than to the Emperors, who, as has been seen, favoured them everywhere, until in Lombardy their refractory temper rendered them for­midable, which as yet it had not; this direction of urban ambition being no symptom of aspiiing to republican independence. Arnold of Brescia is indeed said to have been at this time, in this his native place, organizing a federal republic in Lombardy; and that Arnold was ii? the end a republican demagogue, there is no doubt; but at Brescia it was chiefly against the wealth of the clergy that he seems to have declaimed, against the clergy that he excited both the nobles and the lower orders, who alike envied that wealth; and no traces of republican federation as yet appear.

In one point Innocent’s prospects appeared to brighten ; and this was that Anaclet died in the same year in which Conrad was elected , but the schism died not vith him, though the schismatic Cardinals, by the privacy with which they buried him, seemed almost willing that it should. But a Pope, his creature, was essential to the views of Iioger of Sicily, and, stimulated by him, those Cardinals immediately elected another anti-pope, who called himself Victor IV. Innocent, however, gained over the brothers of his deceased rival, and at Home opposition temporarily ceased. But if the Romans now acknowledged him as Pope, tractable tu his will they were ndt. They had renewed the war waged, with only brief interruptions, for centuries against Tivoli, the virulence of which the Holy Father vainly endeavoured to temper. That virulence was now justified upon the plea of Tivoli’s schismatic adherence to the anti-pope. Despite his earnest admonitions, the pontiff-sovereign still, upon every slight success, heard them (reviving, mutatis mutandis, the old cry of Delenda est Carthago) clamor­ously insist that the walls of Tivoli must be razed, the inhabitants expelled, and the town itself demolished; but. it had to be taker first, and taken as yet it was not.

In the mids.t of these troubles Innocent had convoked a General Council, which in 113‘J assembled in the

Vatican, and was numerously attended. Before this Council, which acknowledged Innocent II. as the true Head of the Church, anathematizing his rival as a matter of course, the Bishop of Brescia laid his complaint of the heretical doctrines proclaimed by Arnold of Brescia, anil of his exciting the laity against the clergy. Arnold was cited before the Fathers of the Church, convicted of all the offences laid to his charge, enjoined silence for the future, and banished from Italy. He obeyed half the sentence, withdrawing to Zurich, where, however, he preached as before.

The first real relief to Innocent II. was the close of the schism; and for this he and the whole Church were in­debted, not to the (Ecumenic Council that had been con­voked to afford it, but to St. Bernard. Ever indefatigable in his exertions for what he esteemed the cause of religion, the holy Abbot in person sought the new Anti-pope amidst his Norman partisans. The arguments he employed have not been transmitted to posterity; all that is known is, that his zeal was genuine as it was fervent, and that such seal, acting upon a powerful intellect, is the natural parent of persuasive eloquence. Accordingly, Abbot Bernard actually convinced Victor that his election was null and? void, Innocent II. being true and lawful Pope; and further prevailed upon him both to resign his unreal papacy, and to allow himself to be conducted to the feet of him whose title he had usurped, there to make his submission, and solicit his pardon: a victory over the strongest passions of the mighty, which “ fought and won with the arms of charity, honesty, self-command, and eloquence,” a German historian, Raumer, thinks a more incredible miracle than those upon the strength of which the Abbot was canonized.

But if Victor were accessible to argumentative proof of his having no right to the high dignity to which he had been raised, his Norman supporter was not equally willing to resign, at a monk’s bidding, either his kingly title or his pretensions to Apulia, though the last were then nothing more; nearly all the princes, Norman or Lombard, and the Greek towns, still asserting their independence. But Rainulfo, who had made a goon fight for the duchy somewhat unjustly given him, had not long survived Lothar and Anaclet; and upon his death Roger, regardless of the Digitized by Microsoft®

238  innocent ? contests with bogek. [1188-

remonstrances as of the threats of Innocent, his Lord Paramount, as well as Pope, prepared both to inforce his right to Duke William’s heritage by arms, and to enlarge his duchy by reducing to subjection the yet unconquered Greek districts of Magna Grecia. His first measures were directed against the Norman princes, descendants of the fellow-adventurers of the IlauteviUes, professed vassals of the Holy See, and opponents of his succession to liis kins­man’s duchy. Vehemently Innocent remonstrated ; v.hilsl again Roger, unmoved, pursued his career of conquest. At length, when Robert Prince of Capua, was thus robbed of his principality, the Pope, exasperated beyond all bounds of prudence, marched at the head of an army to repress what he called usurpation, and reinstal his faithful vassal. But the sovereignty of Home was nsuilicient to inspire military skill, and his Holiness proved a bail general; he was defeated, and upon the 10th of July, 1139, taken prisoner with his whole Council of war, com­posed of attendant cardinals.

To the Norman conquerors, it has been already observed, a pope was a welcome suzerain. His interest alone had attached Roger to the anti-popes, and that quick perception of whatever could conduce to their advantage, which had inspired his father’s and his uncle’s treatment of the captive Leo IX., showed him how to turn his triumph to the best account. The universally acknowledged, the now sole Pope was a helpless prisoner in his hands, and he thought only of conciliating his conquered foe. He treated !us captive with the profoundest reverence; he strove in every imaginable way, except by releasing him, or renouncing his claim to Apulia, or his regal title, to prove his devotion, spiritual and temporal, to the papacy.

For a little while Innocents resentment withstood all Roger’s demonstrations and attempts at conciliation. But at length the entreaties and representations of his impatient fcllow-pritoners, the cardinals, prevailed, and he agreed to negotiate Between adversaries so circumstanced, it was not difficult to arrange a treaty, in which each should consult solely his own individual interest. Innocent—dis­regarding alike the Emperor’s right to, at least, the joint sovereignty that he had himself conceded to Lothar,!214) and the claims of his own v assal, Robert of Capua, to Digitized by Microsoft®

redress whose wrongs he had professedly armed—on the 7th of August, as sole and undisputed sovereign, in con­sideration of an annual tribute and of the cession of the principality of Benevento to the Papal See, confirmed to Roger the royal title granted him by Anaclet, and invested him with the whole of Magna Grecia as the duchy of Apulia; that is to say in addition to the duchy, as held by Duke William, with the other Norman and Lom­bard principalities, and the remaining few dependencies of the Greek Empire. Nay, he actually invested Roger’s second son, Anfuso, with the principality of Capua, and further conferred upon Roger himself and his successors the legatine authority in Sicily and Apulia. But if he acted without regard to imperial rights, Innocent was not indifferent as to the light in which Conrad might see his proceedings, and he sent him an apologetic explanation. It is somewhat startling to find that he prevailed upon the Abbot of Clairvaux, who in his advice to Lothar had treated the papal claim to sovereignty over the Sicilies on either side of the Straits as usurpation, to convey this explanation to the Emperor, and it can only be conjectured that, either in those days of mystic veneration for the visible and tangible ensigns of sovereignty, Conrad’s not having received the Imperial crown placed him in a posi­tion inferior to Lothar’s in respect to Imperial rights, or that the Abbot deemed those rights absolutely forfeited by Lot.bar's sufferance of their usurpation.(215) Conrad ap­pears to have, at least tacitly, admitted the explanation ; possibly because not then feeling himself in a position to quit Germany in order to assert his rights in Italy.

By force and fraud combined, the newly confirmed King speedily-gave full effect to the Papal donation; and it is hard to "say whether the rapacity and atrocious cruelty that marked, as they had his previous, his final subjugation of continental Sicily, or the revolting baseness to which terror drove some of the vanquished, be most degrading to human nature The whole, relieved only by the happily con­trasted nobleness of his son, Prince Roger, is too sickening to be dwelt upon An instance or two must be given, indeed, to characterize the Norman monarch and his Greco- Italian subjects, but just to characterize them will suffice. And further to reconcile the reader to the perusal of loath- Digitized by Microsoft®

some deeds it may be observed that even here some little progress towards the humaner feelings of civilization is perceptible. Roger’s cruelty seemed so far beyond the savage habits of the age, that his contemporaries compared him to a Turk or Saracen, the objects of their horror; whilst his uncle Humphrey, the third of the Hauteville brothers, in the preceding century had mutilated, and then buried alive, one of the ringleaders of the confederacy against the Normans, which was headed by Pope Leo IX., without provoking censure for excessive or vindictive punishment.

Roger’s wholesale massacres have been already spoken of, and were not discontinued. But to advert to more individual proceedings, amongst which his abandoning the nuns, at the capture of Capua, to the brutality of the troops, excited peculiar abhorrence; Bari refused to acknow­ledge him as its king; was besieged by him, and defended itself resolutely until compelled by famine to capitulate; when, upon the king’s plighted word for secuiity of life and property, the gates were opened. After possession had been fully taken a soldier blind of one eye, who had been a prisoner of war there,(216) presented himself before the monarch and, collusively, it was generally believed, as falsely, accused Prince Giaquinto, the former Commandant of Bari, of having, in a fit of causeless anger, torn out his lost eye. Roger, who chose to give his worst actions a colour of legality, summoned Judges from Troja and Trani to consult with those of Bari upon the question to which the unproved accusation gave birth; to wit; w hether such an act of wanton cruelty had not rendered the Commandanl and his Council incompetent to bent-fit by the capitulation The lawyers well knew the answer they were expected to give, ana would not risk Roger s dis­pleasure for the sake of justice or humanity. Thev decided that the capitulation, quoad the barbarians, the Commandant and his Council, was invalid, and they, consequently were the king’s forfeits. Upon the strength of this verdict ten of these unfortunates were hanged, ten were blinded and otherwise mutilated; the rest were thrown nco prison, and the property of all was confiscated —the main, if not the sole object of the whole transaction. On the other hand the inhabitants of Troja, emulating

their lawyers’ eagerness to court their new master's favour, and understanding that the King had said he would not enter a town containing an enemy or rebel, actually dug up the putrefying corse of Rainulfo, that king’s brother- in-law, their own mesne lord and earl as well as Innocent’s duke, who was there buried, dragged it through the streets and out of the town, to fling it into a cess-pool. Prince Roger, disgusted by such adulation, flew to his father, im­plored and obtained permission to obey the impulses of his own loftier nature, and then hastening to Troja re-interred Rainulfo, as Conte di Airola e Avellino, with every mark of honour.

When his continental dominions were completely mas­tered Roeer committed the government of them to his sons, as his Lieutenants or Viceroys, and withdrew to Sicily, evidently his favourite residence. There this king, who has hitherto appeared as a mere reckless, ruthless con­queror and crafty politician, busied himself in organizing the administration of that portion of his realms; for which purpose he convoked an assembly of Sicilian Barons and Prelates. With their concurrence he regulated his Court and Cabinet, then identical, and passed several laws for the protection of his subjects; as, e.g., one to prevent the kidnapping of free-born Christians, men, women, or children, and selling them into slavery; another to punish violence offered to females, and the like; whilst one, of a novel description, excluded from military service all men of inferior condition who could not reckon a soldier amongst their progenitors. For the regulation of the naval concerns of Sicily, a maritime code is said to have been compiled from the various laws and customs severally in force at Venice, Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa and Barcelona.

His court Roger constituted upon the Byzantine rather than upon the Frank model, the allotting specific depart­ments of government to different officers being as yet little known in western Europe, where the King and his Chan­cellor usually despatched all business of state. He ordered that there must always be in Sicily a Grand-Constable to regulate all military affairs, a Grand-Admiral in like manner to order everything naval, a Grand-Chancellor to preside over the administration of justice, a Grand- Chainberlain, or in other words Lord High Treasurer,

VOL. I.   M

to manage the revenue, a Grand-Seneschal as controller of the royal household and the several royal palaces, and a Protonotario, First or Chief Notary, notaries having everywhere been originally the clerks or officers of the Chancellor’s court. This Protonotario seems to have been the representative of the Byzantine Froto-Logothetea, and was in fact Secretary of State.(21?)

Whether Roger were actuated in this orderly division of the labours of government by a perception of its utility, or by admiration of the pomp that such an array of courtly offices exhibited, may be questionable. The occupants of the several posts he selected indiscrin.i lately from Normans, Italians, and Saracens, from Christians and Mohammedans ; amongst the latter occasionally employing even those guardians of the Oriental Harem, who were unknown to Christian, or at least to Western Europe ;(218) nor even confined himself to his own subjects, or to his ancestral countrymen, the Normans, whom, as the bravest of warriors, he invited, extending his invitation to the French in general, to enter his service and settle in either Sicily, receiving adequate fiefs there. His first Grand- .Admiral was a famous mariner of Antioch named George, the second a Sicilian Saracen, and an Englishman named Robert is found amongst his Grand-Chancellors. Of this English Grand-Chancellor of Sicily an anecdote, showing that Gregory VII. had by no means succeeded in extir­pating the heresy, as it was then termed, of simony, is recorded, which may find its place here. An abbot, a royal chaplain, and an archdeacon severally applied to the Grand-Chancellor for a vacant bishopric which each offered to purchase. With each he bargained hard, and when he had ascertained the utmost that each was willing to give, he assembled the clergy of the kingdom, in the presence of all their brethren taxed each of the three applicants with his attempted simoniacal offence, and then, by virtue of the King’s legatine authority appointed to the see, or in the royal name recommended for election, a poor monk of blameless conduct.

These pacific cares and duties did not engross the King to the neglect of his former pursuits—those of an intriguing politician and an ambitious conqueror. But his successes in either capacity, and indeed the rest of liis Digiiizsd by Microsoft®

reign—Sicily and Apulia not being as yet immediately connected either with the Holy Roman empire, or with the Swabian dynasty—may be fittingly despatched in few words, massing the whole without regard to chronology. Roger conquered the island of Malta, and the African provinces of Tunis and Tripoli, which he rendered tributary to Sicily; he maintained an active correspondence with Duke Welf, to whom he transmitted frequent pecuniary succours, in order, by his armed assertion of his alleged claims, to keep Conrad so fully occupied in Germany as should prevent his visiting Italy, where he dreaded the Imperial presence; and he was for ever embroiled with the Eastern Emperor, upon whose dominions lie evidently gaml with longing eyes; though the quarrel is said to have originated in Manuel’s refusing the hand of his daughter to Roger, when for the second or third time a widower.

Innocent II., upon his reconciliation with Roger, and consequent release, returned to Rome, but found there neither peace nor repose. The Romans were discon­tented. During the schism, the Great Council had pretty much assumed the government of the city, especially the decision of all judicial questions: Arnold of Brescia’s doctrines, touching the unfitness of clerical hands to wield a temporal sceptre, had reached them, and found willing hearers ; wherefore Innocent’s resumption of the sovereign authority was beheld with scarcely disguised irritation. Upon this dormant discontent an open cause of dissension supervened. The war with Tivoli still raged, if so large an expression may be applied to a feud between neigh­bouring towns, upon the strength of one of the parties being the Eternal City, the former mistress of the known world._ Victory at length declared for the Romans; and now, in the exultation of triumph, they insisted upon the execution of their often repeated threat, the demolition of the hated town, and the expulsion of its inhabitants. The Pope, in a more Christian temper, opposed this violent proceeding, and made peace with the Tivolitans upon equitable conditions; one being that they, as former partisans of the anti-pope, should take a special oath of obedience to the Church.

1 .iis act of papal sovereignty in opposition to their . inclinations exasperated the Romans, and the spirits

and the hopes of all disciples of the expatriated Arnold revived. They caught at the opportunity offered by this offensive clemency, to declaim against ecclesiastical rulers; whilst the turbulent nobles harangued the equally tur­bulent populace upon the liberties and glories of their ancestors, as contrasted with their actual degradation under priestly usurpation and priestly cowardice. To excite the restless and discontented to revolt was easy. The triumph­ant demagogues, noble and plebeian, led the way to the Capitol; where, at the head, and with the concurrence, of a crowd, intoxicated with anger, ambition, and vague ex­pectation, they proclaimed the republic and re-established the authority of the Senate. But where was the Senate to be found ? So completely had it been destroyed, a.d. 553, by the Ostrogoth Teja, that, although some relics appear to have been extant in the days of Charle­magne, not a single Senator was now forthcoming to exer­cise this restored authority. A new Senate was instantly elected by, and from, the Roman nobility.

Innocent meanwhile endeavoured to negotiate with the successful insurgents. His overtures were rejected; and to the mortification that the whole transaction caused him, is ascribed the malady which shortly afterwards, upon the 23rd of September, 1143, terminated his career. His successor, Guidone da Castello, as Pope, Celestin II., had been a disciple of Abelard, a fellow pupil with Arnold of Brescia, and appears to have been popularly raised to St. Peter’s Chair by the people and lower clergy, without regard to the exclusive right of election that had now, for half a century, been vested in the Cardinals. This Pope would probably not have been indisposed to some moderate reforms, in consonance with Arnold’s views; and however great the difficulty of satisfying the revolutionary appetite for change, that grows keener by feeding,v219) it is not impossible that he might have effected some conciliatory compromise. But Celestin II. died within six months from his election, and was suc­ceeded by Geiardo Caccianemico of Bologna, Cardinal di Santa Croce, who took the name of Lucius II. This pontiff cannot have been without talent, since Innocent made him Chancellor of the Roman See on account of bis abilities; but nothing of the kind appears in his Digitized by Microsoft®

conduct as Pope. He foresaw not the result of what was passing around him, He offered no opposition to the revolutionary measures of the people, so long as they were occupied in arranging their republican constitution. Put when they reckoned their work done, and proceeded to put what they had organized in action, lie was at once startled and irritated at the fruit of his own inertness. When the Romans elected Giordano Leone, a brother of the deceased Anri-pope Anaclet, Patrician, with supreme authority, to the utter rejection of the Prefect (at this time really a Papal officer, although the Emperors claimed, and as often as they had the means, exercised the right of appointing him) ; when they required the Pope to resign the revenues as well as the powers of sovereignty, and maintain himself and his ecclesiastical court upon the tithes, and the voluntary gifts of the laity; then Lucius, aroused to resistance, positively refused to allow their innovations, or comply with their demands.

Both parties now appealed to Conrad, both invited him .to Italy'. The Pope implored his aid to quell popular insurrection and restore peace, pressing him at the same time to receive the Imperial crown from his hand. The Pope’s refractory flock besought the Emperor to repair to Rome, in order to sanction and confirm all they had done for the re-establishmont of the Republic; and to thank them for recovering from pontifical usurpation those imperial rights and dues, which they desired to surrender into his hands, and to see him enjoy and exercise. It trill be recollected that the veriest tyrants among the old Roman Cassars called themselves Emperors of the Republic, and it appears as if such a republic was the utmost to which Italian votaries of liberty, whether Roman or Milanese, as yet aspired.(220)

Conrad, engrossed by the internal disorders of Germany, did not at that moment deem it convenient to cross the Alps, and deferred accepting either invitation until some future day. Lucius, thus abandoned to his own resources, endeavoured to put down the insurrection with the assistance of his own Roman loyalists. Broils and affrays in the streets necessarily ensued, in one of which the Pope was struck on the head by a stone. Of this wound a few days afterwards, upon the 25th of February, 1145, he died. Digitized by Microsoft®

Upon the 27th, after two days cf inter-papacy, a suc­cessor was given to the slain Pope, in the person of the Abbot of St. Anastasius, a Cistertian monastery, founded at Rome by Innocent II. The new pontiff, who took the name of Eugenius III., was by birth a Florentine, and had proved the purity of his devotion by resign­ing a lucrative ecclesiastical office in his native city, to enrol himself in the austere Cistertian Order. He pronounced his vows at Clairvaux ; and so gained the good opinion of his superior and teacher, St. Rernard, as to be recommended by him to the Holy Father for the government of the new Roman monastery of his Order. As Abbot, Eugenius had been held in rather slight esteem as a well meaning but weak man. As Pope, he showed himself gifted with great good sense, if not with brilliant abilities, by submitting his conduct as far as possible to the guidance of the universally revered Abbot of Clairvaux; whilst he displayed a degree of fortitude and efficiency wholly unexpected. Upon his election, the Romans required him to bind himself by oath to ratify all the changes they had made in the institutions of Rome. This he refused to do, unless with some modification of those changes, such as the acknowledgment of his Prefect as Governor of the city. The red-hot republicans rejected all modification whatever; the gates of Rome were closed against the sovereign pontiff, and he was obliged to be consecrated without the walls of his metropo'is. After some further attempts at negotiation, Eugenius retired to Viterbo, or it should seem to Lucca. In the course of the year he succeeded in compelling the refractory republicans to submit to his terms, and returned to Rome, but was again expelled the following year; and he then withdrew to France, where he. was nearer to his chief counsellor the Abbot of Clairvaux. At the pressing in­vitation of the Romans, Arnold of Rrescia now repaired to Rome, to assist in perfecting the new republican con­stitution. Without office or dignity he there exercised extraordinary authority; and by his eloquence stimulated all those yearir'ngs of his hearers, after the power and fame of their classical ancestors, that awoke such horror of priestly sovereignty. Yet republican and demagogue as Arnold was, it was with his concurrence that the Romans again Digitized by Microsoft®

invited or rather summoned Conrad to Rome, there to sanction their revolution. They assured him that, in all they had done, they had been actuated by respect for the Imperial sovereignty, of which the Popes, in league with the Normans, were the worst enemies; they required him to fix his residence in the Eternal City, thence, like his predecessors of old, again to rule the world. Again it was impossible for Conrad, whatever might be his wishes, to comply with their desires. The attention of Europe was again forcibly called to the East.

CH APT Eli IV.

End of Baldwin IPs Reign.—Accession of Fulk and Melisenda,—Rise of Zenghi.—Fulk's Policy and Death. — Melisenda and Baldwin III. — Internal Dissensions and Intrigues. — Relations with the Mohammedans.—Fall of Edessa.—Zenghis Death. —Preparations for the Crvsade.

[1125—1146.]

To explain the unavoidable diversion of Conrad’s thoughts from Rome and Italy, it will be necessary to take a re­trospective survey of the history of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

The reign of Baldwin II. had been one of incessant warfare; in which he had gradually enlarged his dominions until they embraced nearly the whole of Palestine, little more than Ascalon remaining there to the Fatemite Caliphs of Egypt. He has indeed been accused by some modern writers^1) of having frequently, if not habitually, under­taken his expeditions rather xvith a view, to plunder, or to the slaughter of misbelievers, than to the aggrandizement or security of his kingdom. No doabt he did so; and in one of these inroads, being taken prisoner by the Saracens, was obliged to ransom himself by the surrender, actual or promised, of some strong castles. When free, he did not fulfil his promise, anil the Pope sanctioned bis retention of the castles not yet delivered over. But to censure Baldwin for acts of this kind, is to judge him by the opinions of the nineteenth, not of the twelfth century. In his time, to keep faith with misbelievers was held to betray such lukewarmness in religion, as almost

incurred the suspicion of infidelity, on the other hand, to slaughter them in battle, or even in cold blood, to obtain the opportunity of so doing by deceiving them, was esteemed not merely meritorious, but conduct so pleasing to God as to expiate sin—to earn Heaven. It is even averred that the monastic knights paid a fixed price for slain Mohammedans, either by the head or in the lump. Again, Baldwin had to carry on his wars, to defend as well as to extend his kingdom, chiefly through the armed pilgrims who resorted to the Holy Land to fight those whom as God's enemies they abhorred, and to enrich themselves with their spoils. Had he disappointed the hopes of such a band, merely because policy or his plighted word required him just then to be at peace with his Moslem neighbours, he would have incurred universal contempt, and must have feared to check the affluence of crusaders, upon which he relied in war.

Baldwin II’s marriage with an Armenian princess pro­duced only daughters; and in selecting a son-in-law to wear his ever precarious crown, he looked out for one who should be capable of defending a kingdom that might be said to exist only in and by the opinions and feelings of Christendom. His choice fell upon a French prince, Foulque, Comte d’ Anjou, the paternal grandfather of Henry II. of England ; who, some years before, had visited the Holy Land at the head of a small body of crusaders; had joined the Templars as a lay knight,(222) an(J distinguished himself by his prowess, leaving a brilliant reputation behind him. Whether he were or were not at that time a married man, is a point upon which contemporary authorities differ; and no argument can be drawn from his manner of joining the Templars, as he was too much a little potentate completely to merge his individuality in the Order. But whatever he might be then, he was now a widower of considerably advanced age. This last circumstance Baldwin II. regarded as immaterial, and offered him the hand of his eldest daughter, Melisenda, with the prospect of the crown of Jerusalem as her portion. Fulk promptly accepted the offer, made over Anjou to his son, whose marriage with the dowager Empress, Maud of England, had been recently celebrated; and hastened to Jerusalem, where he was immediately united to

ji 5

the Crown Princess, if she may, as acknowledged heir, be so entitled. His second daughter, Alice, Baldwin about the same time gave to Bohemund II of Antioch; and in 1131 he died, leaving his kingdom to "Fulk and Melisenda jointly.

And jointly they reigned for twelve years; Fulk allow­ing his consort to participate to a very unusual degree in the business of administration. He was therefore

___   l r ,     _     was actuated

partly by the consciousness that the crown was more her’s than his; partly by finding in her the talents and energies befitting and necessary to a sovereign, which she is allowed to have possessed ;(223) and yet more by feeling that, as he could have little chance of living until his son by Melisenda should attain to man’s estate, it was meet to train her for the regency she would in all likelihood be called upon to exercise.

During these twelve years Fulk governed, according to modern estimation, well and wisely, though upon a system held by contemporaries to prove him in his dotage. He waged war only when he ‘udged it advantageous to the kingdom so to do. He provided for the defence of the country by repairing aiid strengthening divers half-ruined fortresses, and he faithfully observed his treaties with his Moslem neighbours; whilst he adopted—or should it be said devised?—the then hardly-imagined policy of dividing his enemies, and tacitly opposing the more formidable, by supporting the weaker against them. The occasion for putting this scheme of policy in action was offered, if the scheme ’tself were not suggested, by the alarming progress of Emadeddin Zenghi, Atabeg of Mousul.C224)

Zenghi, whose name the old Chroniclers improve into Sanguin, and hold to be descriptive of his character, was the lirst of the series of three mighty Moslem warriors and statesmen, who eventually overthrew the kingdom of Jeru­salem. He is generally believed to have been the son of Margravine Ida of Austria, who, accompanying as a pilgrim the reinforcement of crusaders that was routed and, so to speak, annihilated in 1101, was taken prisoner, and placed in her captor’s harem. Other accounts, indeed, make Zenghi her captor and Noureddin her son ; but this

But it may

idea is controverted by the date; though both father and son may easily have had Christian mothers in captured pilgrims, Ida being one. But the fate of the Margravine is doubted,(225) and another eminent German orientalist, Hammer-Purgstall, asserts Zenghi’s mother to have been a Negro slave from Zanguebar, whence his name. How­ever this may be, he was handsome, valiant, able, ambitious, charitable to excess, and equally to excess a bigoted hater of Christians; Christian writers add that truth and honesty were strangers to his bosom. The modern his­torian who, upon their authority, thus depicts Zenghi,(226) forgets to qualify the censure by confining it to his intercourse with those he deemed infidels, towards whom Moslem like Christian held truth and honesty rather sins than virtues. But even towards vanquished Christians Zenghi does not appear to have been extra­ordinarily cruel. Upon one occasion he will be seen to stop the butchery of Christians; and the only massacre imputed to him, took place at the capture of Asarib; when, a favourite of his having been slain during the siege, he slaughtered all the Christian inhabitants upon that slain favourite’s grave. Towards his Mohammedan subjects, old and new, he was an excellent ruler; he repressed the arrogance of the great, protected the poor and lowly, and introduced order and impartiality alike into the administration of justice and into the manage­ment of his finances, as the levying of taxes, tolls, &c. Equally as a patriot and as a zealous Moslem, he made the expulsion of the Frank conquerors from Syria the grand object of his life; but he saw that this was not an object to be accomplished by a mere Atabeg of Mousul, under the Sultan of Persia. His first measure, therefore, was td strengthen himself by reducing all neighbouring Emirs and Atabegs to subjection; whilst he lulled the Christians into security by carefully abstaining from any hostile demonstration towards them.

He began his operations with the conquest of Moslem Aleppo, which, situated as it was in the midst of the Frank states, separating the northern from the southern, must, it was evident, in enterprising hands, become a source of serious apprehensions. Nevertheless most of those states looked on with indifference, if they did not

rejoice at wars amongst the Mohammedans, by which thest were destroying each other; whilst they held the trium­phant Atabeg’s forbearance towards themselves, and hi? bribes, if it be true that he did purchase the neutrality of any—Courtenay of Edessa has been suspected of so selling his neutrality—as indicative of his consciousness that they were his superiors in strength and prowess.

Fulk however was not to be so lulled by the illusions of short-sighted vanity. He saw the perils with which Zenghi’s success teemed, and endeavoured to obstruct his progress. When the conqueror of Aleppo prepared, by overthrowing the feeble Anar, Emir of Damascus,C22?) to possess himself of, and incorporate with his dominions, that potent principality, always deemed the most menacing to the safety, the existence, of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the King warned Anar of his danger, and offered to form a defensive alliance with him against Zenghi, upon con­dition of Anar’s paying twenty thousand gold pieces towards the expenses of the war, and ceding the strong and important city of l’aneas to him, in case it should be taken by their combined forces. Anar gladly closed with the proposal; Fulk earned the promised guerdon by vigorously supporting the Moslem he did not fear, against him whom he dreaded. Zenghi was for the moment baffled ; Anar remained Lord of Damascus, and Paneas became a bulwark of Palestine.

A charge of sacrificing policy to temper has been recently brought against this king, which would cer­tainly lie no offence in the eyes of his subjects. It is that through jealousy of the Greeks he neglected the opportunity offered him by the good-will of the warlike Greek Emperor, Kalo-Johannes Comnenus, of subduing the Moslem principalities between the Syro-Franks and the new Constantinopolitan frontier. To the modern historian it appears self-evident that only as an outwork of the Eastern Empire could the Syro-Frank States hope for permanence; that as such they were invaluable to this empire; whence the closest alliance was the necessary interest of both Constantinople and Jerusalem. But in those days of fanaticism not only were schismatics nearly as much hated as Jews and Mohammedans, jealousy of the schismatic Greeks was so prevalent a sentiment both

in Palestine and in Western Europe, that even a judicious monarch might be influenced by it. Besides which, Kalo- Johannes’ inforcement of liis suzerainty over Antioch by arms, and his evident desire to extend it over the other Syro-Frank States, may surely be urged on behalf of that jealousy. A conquering Greek might well be a startling phenomenon. It is also averred that Zenghi craftily as skilfully stimulated the mutual distrust of Con­stantinople and Jerusalem.(228)

This jealousy of the Greek Emperor was the only point upon which Fulk and his subjects felt, together. His pacific policy was deemed the timidity of old age; his war in support of Anar, though profitable in the acquisi­tion of Paneas, a sacrilegious confederacy with God’s enemies; and his concession of authority to his Queen, the very culminating point, if not rather the nadir of a driveller’s weakness. The indignant contempt, provoked by this last offence, probably led to the twisting and improving an incident connected with the conjugal relation of the royal pair, and of which it is difficult now to understand all the bearings, into a story calculated to cover both King and Queen with infamy.

The story as related is this:—Ilugues de Puiset, Earl of Joppa, having married a widow, was accused by her son of treason, in the shape of double adultery with Queen Melisenda. The feudal tribunal ordered the charge to be investigated by judicial combat; and upon the ap­pointed day the accused, whatever might be his motive, did not appear in the lists. His default was considered as a confession of, not cowardice but, guilt, and he was condemned. To avoid the consequent punishment, he revolted ; then negotiated a compromise, and was banished from 'Palestine for three years—an inconceivably light punishment of the crime, if believed. Hugues prepared to obey by quitting Palestine in a vessel about to sail; but whilst awaiting his summons to embark, and, to pass the time, playing at dice in what is called a merchant’s booth, he was stabbed by a knight of Brittany. The woilnd (Ld not prove mortal; he recovered, left Palestine pursuant to his sentence, and died in exile. The assassin was seized, tried and executed; and upon the scaffold declared his act to have been spontaneous, although he

had expected to be rewarded rather than punished for it. Some chroniclers add that the original accusation was made at Fulk’s instigation;(a29) and the dying words of the knightly assassin certainly imply his belief that he was obliging the king in murdering nib rival.

Now how much of this is truth, how much exaggeration if not falsehood, who, at this distance of time, may venture to say ? Not only did no trial of the Queen follow upon that tacit confession of guilt by the accused, hi.s non­appearance in the lists, not only did no sort of disgrace fall upon her, it is explicitly stated, in proof of the old King’s weak uxoriousness, that she thenceforward des­potically governed her dotard consort. Not very consistent with the idea of his having instigated the accusation. It must be added that no other imputation was ever east upon Melisenda’s chastity. She is said to have subse­quently persecuted the enemies of the Lord of Joppa, which, as they were equally accusers of herself, is not surprising, and, if punished might be substituted for per­secuted, could hardly be deemed an unreasonably vindictive measure.

In the year 1143 Fulk was killed by a fall from his horse, and left a son of thirteen, Baldwin III ., as his heir, who was immediately crowned conjointly with his mother. Melisenda of course assumed the government; and, although she appears to have done so rather as here­ditary sovereign than as Regent during her son's minority, her proceedings were, if not actually uncensured, yet exempt from open and direct opposition.

Nevertheless, those who had murmured at the power exercised by the Queen cor ohitly with, and checked by, a veteran warrior and experienced ruler, could not be expected long to submit quietly to her sole sway. Moreover, she had imbibed her deceased consort's maxims of govern­ment ; and ic may be supposed, that a woman who, not leading her armies in person, would he unbiassed by man’s disinterested love of war and fighting, might somewhat exaggerate maxims as just as they were pacific. But whether she did or not, and the judicious Wilken asserts that she governed with wisdom and energy, the Barons, and yet more the two Orders, to whom war with the infidels was the very condition of their existence, were indisposed to

endure from her the restraint upon their Moslem-killing propensities, which they had hardly borne from her husband. They looked impatiently forward to the reign of a high- spirited boy, as promising not only adventurous enterprise and licence, but likewise to throw into their hands much of the power she firmly kept in her own. They accord­ingly in every imaginable way stimulated the son to regard his mother’s authority as an unjustifiable usurpation, under which he was wrongfully suffering. Nor was this a difficult task. Ambition, love of the excitement of war, and thirst of fame, are qualities of quicker growth than the judgment, which, at a later period, is said in Baldwin III. to have tempered these active appetites: hence, whilst the lower classes blessed the mild, just and pacific government of their Queen, the court became a scene of intrigue and strife for power.

These intrigues were assisted by the result of an ex­pedition which young Baldwin made in the first year of his mother’s regency, and to which she could not object, even if she wished to prevent it. A Mohammedan had, by the treacherously effected massacre of the garrison, possessed himself of a castle and town appertaining to the kingdom of Jerusalem, although situate beyond the frontiers. The boy King, the Barons, and the monastic Knights, hastened to recover it. They succeeded, not so much by fighting, as by cutting down the olive trees that were .the sole support of the inhabitants, whom dread of future destitution induced or compelled to surrender.

So much authority was the ambitious boy thus enabled to extort from his mother, that a couple of years later he was able, breaking the treaty concluded by his father with Anar of Damascus, to embrace the cause, and accept the proposals of one Tuntash, a Damascene rebel, whom the Emir had banished, and who offered to put Baldwin in possession of Bostra, of which he was Governor, as the price of his assistance. Enchanted with the prospect, Baldwin, despite the strenuous opposi.ion of Melisenda, instantly declared war against Anar, and led an army into the territories of Damascus. The enterprise was as injudiciously conducted as it was wrongfully conceived. It is said that Baldwin, after entering the territory of Damascus, suffered Anar so to delude him with negotiations,

as to keep him inactive whilst collecting troops, and inviting succours from his neighbours. When thus re­inforced, Anar broke off the negotiations, and the Christians attempteil to advance, but found themselves surrounded and harassed at every step: meanwhile, Tuntash’s wife, taking fright at Anar’s numbers, opened the gates of Bostra to him, and the expected prize was lost. Baldwin— his hopes of the promised co-operation, and therefore of success in the object of the expedition baffled—was com­pelled to retreat amidst such swarms of enemies, as allowed him not an opportunity of attempting to strike a blow; and such were the sufferings of his army upon that retreat, incessantly harassed by the light Saracen cavalry, amidst the heat of a Syrian summer, the thirst of the desert, and the smoke of bushes purposely fired by the enemy, that the most sanguinary battle could hardly have equalled its destructive results. Tuntash, having disappointed the hopes he had raised, does not appear to have been en­couraged to remain in Palestine; and rashly, even if relying upon the terms his wife might have made, returned to Damascus. His eyes were put out by Anar’s orders, and he died a beggar.

But prior to this unfortunate inroad, the first heavy and worse-boding blow had already fallen upon the Syro- Franks. Zeughi was now master of the greater part of Mesopotamia and Syria, and though Damascus still eluded his grasp, judged himself equal to beginning his great work, the expulsion of the Christian intruders from Moslem territories. He directed his first attack against the most detached, and therefore, however considerable in itself, the weakest of the Syro-Frank principalities. This was the county of Edessa, weak also in the character of its lord. The Joscelin de Courtenay, to whom Baldwin II., upon succeeding to the throne of Jerusalem, transferred his county, was no more; and his son, Joscelin II., had not inherited his: father’s abilities with his principality, if he had his valour. Enterprising enough he was, when what he thought a favourable opportunity of aggrandize­ment offered, whether at the cost of Christian or Moslem; and he had thus alienated his powerful neighbour, the Prince of Antioch. This principality, like the Kingdom of Jerusalem, had devolved to a female, Constantia,

grand daughter of the founder, Bohemimd, and niece to Melisenda. She, with the consent of her vassals, and the approbation of Fulk and Melisenda, had married Raymond Comte de Poitou, a gallant warrior, of strength and prowess almost incredible, a younger brother of the father of Elinor, Queen of France, and nephew to King Fulk. Prince Raymond, as he was entitled upon his marriage, co-operated with his uncle in endeavouring to evade the authority of the Emperor Kalo-Johannes, but had in the end been obliged to submit, and do homage to him for Antioch. He was, from his chivalrous temper, often engaged in expeditions against the Turks ; and whilst he was absent with his best troops upon one of these, Joscelin had perfidiously invaded the principality. He had gained nothing by the marauding attempt that could, even to an unscrupulous man, compensate its injustice; and in his general conduct he abandoned himself so completely to licentious pleasures, as to offend even his own, tolerably licentious, subjects. He was deemed regardless alike of religion and honour, and was strongly suspected of defraying the expenses of his orgies with money received from Zenghi, as the price of his neutrality, if not occasionally of his assistance.

Joscelin, whether or not a previously purchased ally, was, as before said, the Christian Prince whom Zenghi determined first to attack. The Earl was sojourning at the castle of Tellbascher—situated in a fair and fertile district west of the Euphrates, and consequently remote from the Mohammedan foe—the usual scene of his orgies, when the Emir, skilfully inducing him to suppose that he was absorbed in the subjugation of Kurd strongholds, and thus deluding him as to his real intentions, rapidly overran the eastern portion of the country, and sat down before Edessa itself. The city though inhabited chiefly by Armenian traders, amongst whom were scantily inter­spersed some Latin citizens, garrisoned but by a few mercenaries, and governed in the Earl’s absence by its Archbishop, made a gallant defence, and with timely succours, even if but small, might have finally repulsed the Desiegers. But the Prince of Antioch, who alone could have supplied such timely aid, actuated more by resentment than by policy or enlarged patriotism, upon Digitized by Microsoft®

a clearly false plea of inability, positively refused to move. Melisenda has been accused of sacrificing- her powerful vassal either to her pacific system, or to the jealousy too often reasonably entertained by feudal sovereigns of such powerful vassals. But the accusation was unfounded. With the utmost possible despatch she appears to have sent an army under her Constable Manasse, to the relief of Edessa; but from the neglect of Joscelin, and the ill-will of Kaj mond, the town could not hold out the time requisite to receive relief from Palestine.

The accounts of the siege differ. Its length is variously stated at seventeen and at twenty-eight days,(230) during which the garrison, aided by the citizens, repelled their assail­ants ; then Edessa fell, but how, is also very doubtful. Some chroniclers relate, that upon the night of Christmas day, 114-1, although the walls were undermined and partially breached, the Edeisans, neglecting all defensive measures, were absorbed in the usual festivities of the season,C231) when an Armenian, whose daughter had fallen a reluctant and struggling victim to the Earl’s lawless passion?, treacherously opened a gate to the enemy.(232) All Arab authorities^3) agree that the town was stormed, whether the breach were defended or not ; and modern writers impute the disaster solely to the avarice and cowardice of the immoderately wealthy Archbishop ;(234) or rather the avarice solely, if he refused to advance money to pay the dissatisfied mercenaries their arrears.(235) But m whatever way taken, the town was given up to be sacked; and the slaughter of the weak, the helpless, and the aged, as well as of fighting men, is described as so unprecedentedly horrible, that Zenghi upon entering was shocked at the scene of carnage before him, put a stop to both massacre and plunder, and restored such booty as could be collected to the owners. He is said to have rescued the Archbishop from gross :ll-usage, and having- done so, to have reproached him for his obstinate defence of the place. The prelate calndy replied, “ I can now1 look my master in the face, for I have kept my oath.” The Moslem conqueror was touched, and changed his upbnidings into eulogies of his fidelity. It is to be hoped this is the true account, and not that the prelate was slain in attempting to escape w ith his hoarded treasures. i236>

Slain he certainly was, probably having received mortal hurts before Zenghi rescued him; as was the historian, Matthew of Edessa.

Zenghi having garrisoned Edessa was proceeding to conquer the yet unsubdued districts of the country east of the Euphrates, when he was recalled to Mousul by the rebellion of one of his deputies. Whilst so occupied his career was, in less than two years, suddenly brought to a close; and the apprehensions too tardily conceived by the Syro-Franks were temporarily relieved. In Sep­tember 1146, Zenghi was besieging a Kurd castle, when a slave, whom for some fault he had threatened with severe punishment, assassinated him in his tent. Two of bis sons, Saifeddin and Noureddin, were grown up, and in their eagerness to divide, and to secure each to himself as much as possible of their father’s dominions, raised the siege, and apparently forgot, for the moment at least, all his mighty projects.

The use attempted to be made of this suspension of hostilities proved unfortunate. The troops of Jerusalem, upon finding themselves too late to prevent the fall of Edessa, appear to have returned home; the numbers that could thus, upon the spur of the moment, be raised to reinforce a garrison, being probably inadequate to acting in the open field against Zenghi. But to the Lord as to the Christian inhabitants of the captured town, the time seemed propitious for its recovery. Joscelin, at the invitation of his former vassals, hastened with a small troop of warriors to his lost capital, was admitted by the citizens, and with their help regained possession of the town ; the castle, to which the Turkish garrison retreated, proved too strong for his means. He nevertheless triumphed in his exploit, as though his success had been complete. But Noureddin, to whose share Aleppo and the western provinces, including Edessa, had fallen, was not the man to let his father’s conquests slip through his fingers. At the head of an armv he flew to the relief of the castle of Edessa, and in co-operation with the troops there remaining, again besieged the town. It seems since its capture bv Zenghi to have remained half dismantled, some proof that, whether taken by force or by fraud, the walls had been largely breached. Joscelir, Digitized by Mir osoft®

judging it impossible to stand a siege in the actual condition of the place, at once derided to withdraw the garrison under shelter of the night, leaving the inhabitants to make the best terms they could but they, dreading Noureddin's vengeance for their preference of their Christian Lord, determined to accompany him. Both were unfortunate resolutions; the only effect of the last was to compel the small band of warriors to share the fate of the helpless ; whilst a capitulation, hail the Earl proposed one, might have saved the lives of all. At the head of—it vsas computed—46,000 persons, warriors and citizens, men, women and children, Joscelin quitted the city at night, endeavouring if possible, to elude the notice of the enemy—an idle dream with such a fol­lowing—and when discovered, to fight his way through their ranks. The second attempt proved as impossible as the first might have been prejudged. The troops in the castle observing the movement, fell upon the rear of the flying mass, whilst the front ranks were engaged with the besiegers; and the slaughter was yet more horrible than during the sack, when Zenghi had taken Edessa. The greater part both of troops and of inhabitants, perished in this desperate attempt; even those who did cut their way through the camp, being, for the most part, singly slain during their subsequent flight. Joscelin himself, after gallant and honourable exertions to save his people, and keeping up a running fight for some distance, escaped with great difficulty, and reached Samosata, the nearest Christian town, almost alone. Noureddin, in resentment of this insurrection against his authority, razed the fortifications, demolished the churches, which had been grossly desecrated in the previous sack ; and scarcely more than a relic remained of Edessa, that erst renowned bulwark of the Syro-Frank States against Mousul and Bagdad.

The evils apprehended from the loss of Edessa, so revered for its legendary holy honours,('^7) so valued militarily and politically, did not immediately follow. Zenghi s sons were still engrossed n securing each his share of the provinces the father had agglomerated; and Noureddin, who inherited that father’s talents and views, felt that the inferiority of' his position, master of a part only

instead of the whole of those provinces, must oblige him to defer for years any plan for expelling the Franks from Syria. Momentarily therefore all remained there in the usual state.

Not so in Europe. Since the annihilation in Asia- Minor of the subsidiary Crusade, which, excited by the triumphs of the first, was hurrying to share in its glory, to defend the holy places—once again Christian property— nothing in the nature of a general Crusade had been thought of. Bands of crusaders indeed, as before said, were constantly repairing to Palestine, the most zealous or most penitent becoming Knights Templars, or Hos­pitalers ; but it required something that should excite the public mind, either to exultation, like Godfrey’s conquest of Jerusalem, or to horror and terror of the Saracens, like this loss of Edessa, to produce the outpouring of the West upon the East. The exciting calamity had now befallen the Holy Land, and the appeal to Europe for protection from imminent, utter ruin was energetically answered. Eugeni us III., in his French exile, instantly postponing his own need of imperial and royal support, directed St. Bernard to preach a crusade. He at the same time promulgated a bull, not only announcing that the families of crusaders would, during their absence, be under the special guardianship of the Holy See, but, in direct contradiction to all feudal principle, authorizing vavassours, if their lords should refuse them the pecuniary assistance needful to prepare them for their hallowed expedition, to raise the requisite sum by pledging their fiefs without the Lord’s consent.

The Abbot of Clairvaux, it has been already said, preferred the conversion to the slaughter of misbelievers ; he considered war as a crime, justifiable only when unavoidable, when indispensable to self-defence. In Palestine he believed this to be now the case; and even if he had not, would hardly have permitted himself to question a papal decision, or to liesitate in obeying a papal command. He had for many months been, he still was, lving upon a sick bed, as he firmly believed his death-Led; from which he instantly arose to obey this mandate, and in the first instance employed his eloquence upon his own countrymen. Here he found the soil ready

prepared for the seed he was to sow.

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Lewis VII. had succeeded to the French throne, and his conscience was troubled by remorse for a crime, which, as well as its cause, is illustrative of the habits and feelings of the age. His Queen, Elinor Duchess of Aquitaine, had at least connived at, if she had not formally permitted, the nuptials of her younger sister, Petronella, with a married man, the Comte de Vermandois, whose wife, his equal by birth and apparently of irre­proachable conduct, was divorced solely to make room for a successor. The Comte de Champagne, indignant at such treatment of his sister, applied to the Pope to redress her wrongs, and the :nsults offered an illustrious family. The Queen resenting the brother’s interposition on behalf of his sister, in contravention of what she had authorized, instigated the King to war against his pre­sumptuous vassal.(238) In the course of this war, waged with the fierceness of the times, Lewis, irritated by the pertinacious resistance of Vitry to his arms, had jpon its capture ordered a church, in which 1300 persons, vassals of Champagne, had taken refuge, to be set on fire. It was burnt to the ground, and in it 1300 human beings. The deed done, the King was horror-stricken, but more at the sacrilegious manner in which the massacre had been perpetrated, than at its magnitude or atrocity. He would at once have undertaken s military pilgrimage in expiation of his crime, had not his, as his father’s, minister, the Abbe Suger, a wise if some­what despotic statesman, authoritatively kspt him to the duties of ins high station at home.

Bernard, like Suger, held that sovereigns had other duties, generally more important, more urgent, than taking the cross to tight in Palestine. Aiid not sovereigns alone; he habitually discouraged abbots and monks from leaving their cloisters for that purpose. But he also thought there were occasions, the present — when the Pope called upon Christendom to preserve the Holy Sepulchre from Paynim pollution—being one, in which that duty became paramount. Lewis, with conscience as yet unrelieved, gladly listened to this doctrine. He convoked an assembly of the Estates of the Kingdom to meet at Vezela’ at Easter, 1145, to hear the Abbot of Clairvaux preach the crusade. There, he himself upon his knees, received the Cross from the saintly Abbot's Digitized by Microsoft®

hands. Elinor followed his example; but rather as Duchess of Aquitaine, independently expiating her re­moter share in the sacrilegious massacre, as having been the instigator of the war, than as a Queen consort, submissively obeying her Lord and husband’s will. As Duchess of Aquitaine, she headed the Aquitaine and Poitou crusaders.t239) The example of the royal pair aiding the eloquence of the preacher, which needed not adventitious aid, the cry of Dieoc le volt! or Deus Vult I rang to the sky as before; and such numbers asked for the cross, that long ere the demand could be supplied, large as had been the stock provided, it was quite ex­hausted, and Bernard tore up his garment to furnish more. The eager assembly would fain have induced the Abbot to undertake the guidance of the army his word had raised ; but he answered, “ To order battles is not “ my business, even had I the requisite skilland the command remained with the King. Pons, Abbot of Yezelai, built a church upon the spot in honour of this triumph of holy as enthusiastic eloquence; and in it the rostrum, rather than pulpit, from which the Saint had spoken, was long preserved.

England was at this f',tne a prey to civil war, owing to the contest for the crown, between the Empress Maud, widow of Henry V. of Germany, daughter and acknow­ledged heir of Henry I., and his nephew by a sister, Stephen Earl of Blois. In this contest David King of Scotland took part on behalf of his niece Maud, and therefore from no part of Britain could co-operation be hoped. In Sicily the strange repudiation and robbery of Roger’s mother, the dowager Grand-Countess, by Baldwin I., was still too keenly resented to allow of any chance of success in that quarter: and the Abbot of Clairvaux dedicated his further exertions solely to Germany.

He had already addressed a hortatory epistle upon the subject to the Hierarchy and the Deople at large.(240) But Conrad, who deemed his crusading duties long since discharged, declined to desert his monarchial duties for a distant expedition, not especially incumbent upon him. His lukewarmness appeared to infect the nation; and the Abbot was preparing to inforce his admonitions in

person, when by a partial and unwelcome success his movements were unexpectedly accelerated, and their direction for the moment somewhat changed.

He learned that a monk belonging to some monastery upon the Rhine, a weak and ignorant bigot, named lladulf. had by his epistle been excited to volunteer the office of crusade preaching; that he had succeeded in raising a tumultuary host; and had pointed out the Jews as, like the Paynim, enemies of God, upon whom, being at, hand, it would be proper preliminarily to vent their pious wrath, and flesh their as yet untried swords. The wealth of the Jews, combined with their religion, had rendered them objects alike of envy and of hatred. An idea so gratifying to both sentiments as ltadulfs was eagerly adopted; and the massacre of Jews in all the opulent commercial cities upon the banks of the Rhine, from Strasburg down to Cologne, was frightful. The prelates interposed for their protection, most of them in a genuine Christian spirit, a few perhaps in judicious policy ; though some unhappily sold their beneficent intervention, or made conversion—in other words apostacy, for what else is com­pulsory conversion ?—the condition of affording it. In vain Conrad, -whilst he ordered the horrible accusations brought against the Jews to be duly investigated, invited the persecuted victims to seek an asylum in his Franconian domains. Nothing could stop the butchery, till St. Bernard himself repaired to the theatre of bloodshed. Upon reaching Mainz he interposed, at great personal risk, between some Jews and their murderers, and by his invincible energy rescued both them and himself. lie sought the instigator and his followers. To the monk he represented that his duty was to weep and pray, not pre­suming to preach without express permission, and to con­sider cities as Purgatory, solitude as Paradise. Upon the misled multitude he inculcated that their duty was to pray for the conversion of the Jews, not to slaughter them whilst they were doing Christians no injury. Raduif was con­vinced, and retired to his cell;(241) but the tempest he had evoked was not so easily allayed. So strong was the Juda?- icidal appetite, that e\on St. Bernard’s eloquence, supported as it was by his saintly reputation, and by imperial authority and influence, is said to have proved inadequate

to checking the popular excesses, until the miraculous cures he wrought, those of which Bishop Otho speaks, struck the infuriated rabble with an awe that compelled obedience to his precepts.

This task accomplished, the Abbot repaired to Frank­fort, where Conrad then was, in order to overcome his reluctance to engage in a crusade. That well-founded reluctance was earnestly encouraged by the Duke of Swabia, who deemed an exclusive devotion to the care of his people to be alike the duty and the interest of a sovereign ; and it did not yield to a first or a second attack. Again and again the Abbot preached upon this topic; and whenever he did so, though few if any took the Cross, the throngs that crowded into the church were terrific. Upon one such occasion the zealous preacher, enfeebled, as well by his previous austerities and privations, as by the malady under which he had so long been labour­ing when Eugenius imposed this arduous task upon him, completely overpowered by the heat and exertion, fainted ; and the monarch in his own arms carried him out into the open air. But still Conrad did not take the Cross

St. Bernard, in order to promote the success of his mission, had solicited the assistance of another of the remarkable personages of those times. This was Hilde- gard, like himself canonized after death, Abbess of a con­vent situate upon a hill above Bingen, and overlooking the valleys of the Rhine and the Nahe, which, with some assistance from the feudal Superior, Graf Meinhard, she had herself founded. Hildegard was of noble birth, very pious, very learned, the author of various profound treatises, and, although an habitual seer of visions, endowed with an intellect so acute and so powerful, that princes and pre­lates, monarchs and popes, sought her counsels; and she addressed home-truths to them, sparing the sins neither of laity nor clergy. Her visions she herself long distrusted, even whilst irresistibly impelled by them to prophecy, both verbally and in writing. She feared that they might be delusions, the offspring, not of disease, but of the direct intervention of Satan.C2*2.) To satisfy her conscience, Eugenius III., who, like the holy Abbot, diligently studied her writings and highly revered her, sent a commission of learned priests to investigate the nature and history of

VOL. I.   N

her case; and upon their report he pronounced them to be direct inspirations from God. Thenceforward she prophecied boldly. Conrad often consulted her; and St, Bernard implored her help in influencing him to the desired step ; which help she is said to have afforded in a rather peculiar and indirect manner.

She crossed the Rhine, and is reported to have knelt in prayer, with uplifted hands, upon the Feldberg,(2*3) the loftiest mountain of the Taunus range, whilst St. Bernard preached. Upon this occasion he abruptly interrupted the Alass he was celebrating, to impress upon the congregation, with even unwonted earnestness, the dangers of Jerusalem— the imperative duty of guarding the Holy Sepulchre from misbelievers. Then, addressing himself directly to Conrad, he so forcibly reproached him for his ingratitude to his Saviour, who had showered such blessings upon him, had elevated him to such dignity, that the Emperor was at last vanquished. With the words, “I acknowledge the will, the Grace of God, nor shall he find me an ingrate,” he at once, in the church, publicly received the Cross from the hands of the triumphant preacher. His example was immediately followed by his nephew, the already men­tioned young Duke Frederic of Swabia, by the Dukes of Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Lorrain, and Zaringen, the Margraves of Styria and Carinthia,(244) the Archbishop of Bremen, and the Bishops of Passau, llatisbon, Freising, and Zeitz, amongst the Princes of the Empire; to whom must be added Welf, the pretender to Bavaria (who now appeared to have abandoned the idle claim he was unable to maintain, submitting to the decision of the Diet), with nobles immediate and mediate, and clergy in vast numbers. So extraordinary was the amount of enthusiasm at length awakened for the preservation of the kingdom of Jerusalem by the crusade-preacher’s exertions in Germany, that thieves and courtesans are said to have thronged to receive the cross, and join in the enterprise. The conversion of such profligate characters is reckoned amongst the Saint’s miracles. (2ij)

The enthusiasm thus produced was not, however, in all as permanent as it was vehement. Some of the Abbot’s lower convertites appear, blending gainful crime with expiation, to have made the crusade itself an opportunity of

\

exercising their former illicit trades. And amongst the nobler crusaders the zeal of the Duke of Saxony so far cooled while the expedition was yet in course of preparation, that he refused to join the armament for the remote Holy Land, declaring that he would fulfil his vow upon the Heathen Slavonians beyond the Elbe—a change of locality, could the Pope be induced to sanction it, equally convenient and advantageous to this somewhat wilful selector of his own duties. Not only did he spare himself the fatigue and expense of a tedious inarch on a dis­tant, and, save in a spiritual sense, utterly unprofitable enterprise ; but, by the forcible conversion of these Slavonian tribes he would really subject them to his duchy. By such an increase of his power, Henry, surnamed the Lion, hoped to augment his means and improve his chance of ultimately recovering Bavaria from his step-father; to whom—his mother having died within a year from the transaction without leaving offspring by her second marriage—he no longer felt bound by any ties, and whom he was disinclined to acknowledge by any title but Margrave of Austria. The Duke of Ziiringen concurred with his wife’s nephew in transferring the theatre of his crusade from Palestine to northern Germany. The Archbishop of Bremen, with most of the Saxon crusaders, also joined the seceding party.

That Conrad must have been both annoyed and alarmed by the defalcation of such important members of the enterprise, and yet more at the determination of the Duke of Saxony, who had already betrayed his restless ambition, to remain at home during his own absence, is certain. But he had neither power nor right to compel a reluctant vassal to fulfil a voluntary engagement, unconnected with feudal duties, in fact an engagement rather to the Pope than to himself: therefore without interfering with this change of purpose of the two Dukes, he proceeded with his own preparations. He procured the election of his eldest son Henry, as King, had him duly crowned, and caused him to receive the oaths of allegiance and the homage of all the immediate vassals. The sovereign authority was thus naturally his in the Emperor’s absence; and on account of his youthful inexperience the Arch­bishop of Mainz, and Wibald, Abbot of Corvey (a daughter abbey of the French abbey of Corvey), situated on the

n 2

Weser, were assigned him as his counsellors. Conrad then enjoined the strict observance of the Lundfriede, or realm’s peace—which was such an extension of the Truce of God as made it include the whole duration of the Crusade— in corroboration of, and addition to, the Papal injunction, to respect the property of absent Crusaders on pain of excommunication. This injunction was, upon the present occasion, made unusually comprehensive and stringent, insuring crusaders even against legal process for debt during their absence upon the service of God.

Conrad’s chief apprehension of disturbance to his son's government arose from the lawless ambition Henry the Lion had betrayed in a recent occurrence. The childlcss Earl of Stade and Ditmarsen had been murdered, and his only brother and heir, Hartwig Dean of Bremen, announced his intention, being the last male of the line of Stade, of giving both counties to the archiepi-^copal see, Ditmarsen at once, Stade, which was a fief of the see, at his own death. Archbishop Adalbero accord­ingly gave Hartwig investiture of Stade, and Conrad consigned the Stade banner to the Saxon Palsgrave Frederic, a son of the Dean’s sister, that he might act for his uncle in the administration of the county. But the young Duke of Saxony, alleging some contingent promise made by the Dean to Duchess Gertrude, laid claim as her heir to the county of Stade, if not to a yet larger part of the heritage, inforcing his pretensions with great violence. Conrad decided against him; but Henry, making both Archbishop and Dean prisoners, had compelled them to ransom themselves by surrender­ing Stade to him. Conrau feared that neither papal nor imperial laws would restrain this rapacious prince from taking advantage of the crusade to possess himself of Bavaria by force, during his own and Henry Jasomir’s absence. He therefore required and obtained from him an oath to defer moving in that matter until their return.

Having thus, as he best could, provided for the safety of his dominions during his hallowed expedition, Conrad turned his thoughts to the means of averting the evils that had obstructed the operations of the previous Cru­sades. To this end he opened negotiations with the .sovereigns through whose realms he had to pass, the King

of Hungary and the Emperor of the East-Romans. Geisa, who feared Conrad might again adopt the cause of his rival Boris, promptly agreed, not only to insure the crusading army an unmolested passage through Hungary, but likewise both to feed it whilst upon his territories, and to contribute a sum of money towards subsequent expenses, as his share of the Crusade.

Conrad might have anticipated that an amicable arrange­ment would be at least as easily made with the Court of Constantinople, which had so vital an interest in the maintenance of the Syro-Frank States. Negotiations had previously been carried on in the most friendly spirit between him and Kalo-Johannes, touching an alliance against their common enemy, the King of Sicily; and although this object had not been accomplished, had led to the marriage of Manuel Comnenes, who had now succeeded to his father, Kalo-Johannes, with Bertha von Sulzbach, sister to the German Empress. The connexion did not, as Conrad had hoped, promote his views. The influence of the personal charms of his sister-in-law (as Greek Empress new-christened Irene), was neutralized by the simple goodness of her—in Greek estimation—barbarian Frank nature, so utterly uncongenial to the East Romans. She was a mere nullity at the Constantinopolitan court; and Manuel, though brave even to temerity when he saw any advantage to be gained by war, had no idea of the chi­valrous passion for feats of arms, then dominant in western Europe. Like his grandfather Alexius, whom he much resembled, he was too thoroughly Oriental in character to conceive the undertaking a toilsome and costly enter­prise, such as a crusade, from motives untainted with self-interest. He distrusted both his brother-in-law and the French King. Further, he doubted whether, even supposing the professed, to be the real, purpose of the crusaders, their presence in Syria were to him desirable, as a dyke against the progress of the Turks, or objec­tionable, as impeding his own schemes for establishing at least his suzerainty over all the Latin States there. He could not decently, however, and therefore did not, refuse the Champions of the Cross a free passage, provided they bound themselves to a peaceable demeanour during their transit.

Such demeanour was equally requisite in Hungary ; and to insure it Conrad put forth a code of excellent laws, inforcing the discipline of the army, and regulating all transactions and intercourse with the inhabitants of the countries to be traversed. Though very imperfectly obeyed, they were not altogether inefficient to the end in view. The Emperor appointed Ratisbon as the place, and Easter 1147 as the time, for the assembling of the German crusaders; while the King of France selected Metz in the German duchy of Upper Lorrain, perhaps to mark the perfect co-operation of the two monarchs, for the rendezvous of the French crusaders, at the later date of Whitsuntide, that the two armies might not, upon their march, interfere with each other. It appears to have been arranged, probably in consequence of Lewis's selection of Metz, that the Lorrain division of German crusaders should accompany the French army.

CONRAD ITT.

The Second Crusade.—March of the German Crusaders. —Passage through Hungary.—Through the Greek Empire.—Intercourse with Constantinople.—March of the French Crusaders.—Disasters of the Crusaders in Asia Minor.—Crusaders in Palestine.—Siege of Damascus.—Of Ascalon.— Unsatisfactory end of the Crusade       [1147—1148.]

The German Crusaders assembled, as had been pre-ordained, at Ratisbon; Conrad took his station at their head, and soon after Easter 1147, the march began in the direction of Hungary. Geisa fulfilled his engagements; the Cru­saders conformed to Conrad’s laws, and the kingdom was happily traversed. During this operation, the Emperor, in proof of his satisfaction, and in token of his abandoning the cause of Boris, affianced his son, the young king, to a sister of Geisa’s, although the marriage does not appear to have proceeded further.(246)

Upon reaching the frontiers of the Eastern Empire the scene changed. Constantinopolitan Envoys there met the army, to insist upon Conrad’s swearing, in their presence, to keep the peace during his passage ; the object apparently being thus to render any act of aggression the more sinful. Conrad was deeply offended, both at the suspicion which this precaution more than implied, and at the insult to his dignity; the coronation oath being apparently the last taken by monarchs in person. Some excuse for his ex­cessive mistrust, Manuel might plead in the fact, that Roger was even then waging fierce war against him,' upon the matrimonial quarrel before mentiofied; Corfu

had surrendered to Lis Grand-Admiral, George of Antioch, and Normans were overrunning Corinth, Thebes, and Athens; whence Manuel might naturally enough fear some concert among the three western potentates; though Conrad, knowing Roger his own enemy, would hardly understand the apprehension. But however offended, as a Crusader lie had no choice, and took the oath required ; whereupon a convention was made, regulating the supply of provisions by sale to the army, and of vessels in which to cross the Bosphorus. At the passage of the Danube the Greek Envoys are reported to have attempted to count the host, giving it up in despair when they had got to 1300,000, which number it has been sought to reduce to 90,000.(2*7) But when the numbers of armed followers of every knight, and of non-combatants who attached themselves to a crusade, are recollected, one number seems nearly as inconsistent as the other with the 70,000 knights,(2*8) assigned by William of Tyre,— may it not be presumed reckoning their men-at-arms with the knights themselves ? — to the German and to the French armies respectively.

No sooner had the Crusaders entered the Eastern Empire than complaints, accusations, and recriminations on both sides were heard, on both probably but too well founded. The Germans complained of the exorbitant price demanded by the Greeks for their provisions; the Greeks of plunder and ill-treatment by the Germans. And while it must be supposed that the inhabitants would be well disposed to make the most of a casual and extraordinary demand for their produce; it is self-evident that the passage of such a host as Conrad’s, depending for its daily bread upon the country traversed, must—unless magazines had been purposely prepared, or the country were in the habit of exporting corn and cattle—have very speedily completely consumed the stock of food on hand; when scarcity, and scarcity prices, would naturally ensue. On the other hand, unquestionably those of the Crusaders who had not where­withal to purchase bread—and of these there were many independently of the converted robbers—wrould be pretty certain to seize with the strong hand upon the necessaries of life, at least; and but too likely to maltreat such as should attempt to defend their property. Conrad severely

punished all convicted offenders. But his authority over the volunteer host was imperfect, and more would escape than could be convicted.

The wants, and with them the violence of the Crusaders, and the exasperation of the Greeks increased from day to day; and at Philippopolis, upon a provocation too absurd to be mentioned consistently with the dignity of history, were it not illustrative of the intellectual con­dition of the age, broke out into actual hostilities. In a tavern where some Germans were refreshing themselves, a juggler, either to amuse or to astound the barbarians, exhi­bited, amongst his sleight-of-hand tricks, some of the usual feats of oriental snake-charmers with serpents. Astounded the Germans were; but in their superstitious ignorance ascribed such familiarity with, such command over, venomous reptiles, to the Black Art; whence inferring that to kill the disciple and votary of Satan, would be to labour diligently in their vocation as Crusaders, thej slew the juggler. His countrymen resented his death, and an affray ensued. The Bishop of Philippopolis, however, interfered to allay the irritation, and repress the vindictive fury of the Greeks ; whilst Conrad and the German Princes similarly exerted themselves to quiet the excited Crusaders; and by their joint efforts the con­flicting parties were at length separated, and apparently pacified. The march was then prosecuted something more tranquilly; although the troops sent from Con­stantinople under Prosuch—a Turcoman there educated and converted—to protect the natives, and repress the disorders of the Crusaders, sought to effect that object by putting all stragglers from the main body to death. In relation to a phenomenon so startling as a Turcoman general of a Christian king, it is to be remarked that, Scandinavia having ceased to recruit the ranks of the foreign mercenaries, upon whom the Eastern Empire had long depended for every military movement, with Waran- gians, their place had perforce been very much supplied from the wild Turcoman hordes. The employment of such troops as a guard against Christians, was in the eyes of the Crusaders demonstration of Manuel’s sacrilegious connexion with the enemies of God, and perfidious in­tentions towards themselves.

The efforts of the Commanders had however produced such an appearance of concord, that, when the army passed through Adrianople, a nobleman, reported to have been a relation of Conrad’s, being too ill to proceed with comfort, remained there, to await his recovery in a monas­tery, or a lodging dependent upon one. The tempting opportunity for vindictive retaliation w as not overlooked by the angry Greeks, and he was presently assassinated, it was said, by Constantinopolitan soldiers, who seized the property of their victim. But they had neither done their work completely, nor had patience to wait till the flagitious deed could be perpetrated with more chance of impunity. Some of the murdered man’s attendants effected their escape, and carried the tidings of his fate to the army. Conrad immediately ordered a halt, and commissioned his nephew to return to Adrianople, in force sufficient to punish so flagrant a crime. Duke Frederic, who had Kept his division of the arm} in far better order than the rest, hastened to obey. He led back a body of troops, overpowered the resistance offered by Prosuch, seized and hung the murderers, recovered the plundered property, and burnt the monastery to which his kinsman’s lodging had belonged. Then, having satisfied his desire for retributive justice, he listened to the remonstrances of his vanquished opponent, Prosuch, against punishing the innocent together with the guilty,(*249) and rejoined his uncle.

The army resumed its march; but from this moment the mutual exasperation of Crusaders and Greeks knew no bounds. Prosuch would fain have sought a favourable position in which to give battle; but this, Manuel, who, however mistrustful oi his unwelcome guests, wished not to quarrel with them if they really entertained no aggres­sive designs against himself, positively forbade. A pro­hibition for which he deserves the more credit, inasmuch as the elements themselves appeared to have confederated with the Greeks, for the chastisement of the multifarious acts of violence imputed to the Crusaders, and certainly offered Prosuch strong temptation to attack such trou­blesome visitors.

Upon a fair and cloudless September afternoon the crusading army encamped between two streams, with the

purpose of spending the next day in so convenient a situation, promising a satisfactory supply of clear water; there, in devout repose, to celebrate the nativity of the Blessed Virgin. But the period of equinoxial tempests was at hand. In the night a storm arose; a deluge of rain fell in the mountains, converting every rill and brook into a torrent. Overfed by these torrents both streams swelled, overflowed their banks, and before dawn swept away tents, baggage, cattle, and men, in undistinguished ruin. The camp of Duke Frederic, for which he had wisely selected a more elevated position, alone escaped the general devastation ; and thither fled Conrad with his half-brother Otho, Bishop of Freising, the historian, and all who were roused from sleep in time to escape from the flood. The loss of all kinds was immense; but the numerical strength of the army was in some measure recruited by the speedy arrival of the Lorrain division of Crusaders, who had not chosen lo wait for the French.

The host now approached Constantinople, and it has been supposed that difficulties of etiquette alone prevented an interview between the Imperial brothers-in-law ; of whom Manuel acknowledged no equal—no Roman Emperor but himself; the other, Conrad—who, although, for want of leisure to visit Italy, not yet crowned at Rome by the l’ope, entitled himself Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire— successor of Cfesarand Augustulus,(25o) could acknowledge no superior. Assuredly the common forms of courtesy and hospitality would seem to have required, that the sovereign of the country should receive and entertain as his guest a brother sovereign, closely connected moreover with his own consort, who was traversing his dominions. But, from the tone of their correspondence, both Emperors appear to have sympathized too keenly with the reciprocal exasperation of their respective subjects, to render an in­terview either agreeable or advantageous. A short extract from that correspondence, showing as well the temper that had much to do with the unfortunate course of the im­mediately ensuing operations, as the style of diplomatic intercourse in the twelfth century, may not unaptly be here given.

Conrad, not his minister for foreign affairs, but the Emperor himself, or at least a private secretary in his

narae, wrote to Manuel: “He who judges by the event, “ without regard to causes and to objects in view, will “neither praise wisely nor censure upon just grounds, “ will run the risk of confounding friend with foe, r. if the “ one be the author of a casual evil, the other of as casual “ a benefit. If stragglers from our innumerable host, “ incited either by curiosity or by want, have trespassed, “ have done mischief, consider the impossibility of prevent- “ ing disorder in such multitudes, and blame not us.” To this apologetic missive the sarcastic and crafty as valiant Manuel replied, “ We, though well aware of the difficulty “ of controlling multitudes, took measures when you “ entered our Empire, calculated to protect you from “ injury, ourself from the reproach of ill-treating heredi- “ tary claimants upon our hospitality. But as you, an “ astute and experienced ruler, have proved that such “ matters can never be imputed to the leaders, we thank “ you for the lesson, and pray you not to suffer individuals “ to straggle, since it will be no fault of ours if such as “ do, suffer violence from the multitude.”

A correspondence conducted n such a tone was not likely to conciliate suspicious tempers, or to alleviate the difficulties created by etiquette of sovereignty between rival emperors. Although the Crusaders were now' en­camped in the immediate vicinity of Constantinople, all thoughts of an interview were abandoned, and Conrad merely requested the use of Greek vessels, as pre­viously arranged, to transport his army across the Bos­phorus. Manuel was at all events desirous of removing those whom he dreaded as enemies and hardly valued as friends, if such they were, to a distance from his capital, before they should be reinforced by the arrival of their allies ; and readily supplied ships to carry them away. Conrad and his division of the Crusade passed over at once to Asia Minor.

Meanwhile the French portion of this same Crusade was on its way. The King and Queen of France had been joined at Metz by the Earls of Flanders, Toulouse, Dreux, Soissons, Ponthieu, Nevers and Maurier.ne—the last, a Burgundian vassal, probably joining them for convenience or relationship, being the maternal uncle of Lewis VII.— as also by a son of the lately vanquished Earl of Cham­

pagne, and by an English band of crusaders under the Earl of Warwick and Lord Roger de Mowbray. Lewis began his march at the head of 70,000 knights or lances, whichever be meant, besides infantry. It had been pre-arranged that he should cross the Rhine at Worms, where he was both well received, and found vessels prepared for conveying his troops to the right bank of the river. Hut the insolence of some of the rabble, then seemingly inseparable from a crusading army, pro­duced quarrels with the German boatmen employed in ferrying them over; some of which became so iierce, that the passengers, being the more numerous body, flung the boatmen overboard. The citizens, indignant at this ungrateful usage of their fellow townsmen, flew to arms, and much tumultuary fighting ensued, costing many idly lost lives on both sides. The city itself was with some difficulty preserved from destruction by fire at the hands of its pseudo-devout guests, who were at length transferred to the eastern side of the river. The French army next reached llatisbon, where they found the vessels that had conveyed the baggage, &c., of the Germans down the Danube, sent back for their use; and as no mention occurs of disorders similar to those that took place at Worms, it is to be hoped that the French had learned not again to offend or quarrel with those, whose services were indispensable to them.

Upon leaving Ratisbon the French King followed the Emperor’s line of march, everywhere profiting by the bridges he had constructed or the vessels he had collected for the passage of rivers. He traversed Hungary, as Conrad had done, by convention with Geisa touching the supply of provisions (which the French it should seem were to purchase), and the observance of strict dis­cipline. One incident, however, threatened to disturb this amicable arrangement. Boris, who had not, because de­serted by Conrad, deserted himself, or renounced his hopes of inforcing his right to the crown, secretly repaired to the French camp, and besought the aid of Lewis in accomplish­ing his object. Lewis refused to interrupt his hallowed enterprise in order to wage war upon a Christian prince, even if he were an usurper. But if he declined coin-. pliance with the prayer of Boris, he equally rejected the

demand of Geisa; who, learning the suspicious presence of his riva) in the French camp where a Hungarian Greek had recognized him, claimed from the K;ng of France the surrender of that rival’s person. Lewis, instead of complying, warned Boris of his danger, giving him his own horse on which to fly in disguise; and Geisa, satisfied with his deliverance from what had seemed an imminent danger, accepted Lewis’s excuses. As Boris will not re­appear in these pages it may be here briefly stated, that he safely effected his escape, and, repairing to Constantinople, entered Manuel’s service, in which he thenceforward lived and ultimately died.

Upon entering the Greek Empire the French found difficulties as to food, fully equal to those the Germans had encountered. They suffered, probably, both from the previous drain and from the exasperation of the Greeks against their crusading predecessors, whilst the French, from their mercurial temperament, were yet more intolerant than Germans of such annoyances. They unan­imously imputed tergiversation if not actual treachery to the Greek Emperor; and Lewis, oblivious in his own cause of the scruples that had prevented his interfering in behalf of Boris, is said to have seriously discussed wii his chief counsellors the expediency of taking Constanti­nople prior to crossing the Bosphorus. The reasons urged for the attempt were, that the negligence of the Byzantine Court, which had originally suffered the Holy Sepulchre to fall into Paynim hands, ought to be punished ; and that these perfidious, schismatic Greeks appea-ed to be the main impediment to that habitual intercourse between Western Europe and the Syro-Frank States, necessary to the support of the latter. Upon mature deliberation, however, it was decided that the capture of a Christian, though schismatic, city, could not be esteemed the fuliil- ment of a vow to fight the Mohammedans in defence of the kingdom of Jerusalem, even if conducive to that defence; and the proposal was rejected.

As the K ing of France advanced no pretensions to imperial rank, no difficulties of etiquette opposed an interview between the two monarchs, and Lewis repaired to Constantinople. Manuel, whether he were or were not apprised that Lewis really had contemplated the seizure of Constantinople,

seemed anxious to conciliate him. He received his royal visitor with Oriental politeness; with magnificent hospital­ity, intermingled with blandishments and professions of friendship, seemingly calculated to show that if Conrad had been differently treated, the fault must have lain with himself, not with the courteous Byzantine. But amidst all these amicable demonstrations the Emperor so thoroughly maintained his own superior dignity, that French vanity was rather wounded than flattered ;(2°l) while the army neither fared better, nor behaved better, than their German predecessors. The poorer crusaders were half starved, and the marauders of the host plundered the vicinity of the metropolis.

Lewis—charmed after the annoyances of his march with the pleasures of a court, luxurious beyond his previous imaginings—was disposed to Lnger at Constantinople, not­withstanding the dissatisfaction of his nobles and the sufferings of his troops. Elinor—who with her company of amazons had, from their appearing in public, been con­sidered by the Greeks, accustomed to Oriental seclusion of women, as a troop of courtesans, and insulted accordingly— was, in spite of these insults, no less so. Manuel, on the contrary, was most anxious to get rid of his much-distrusted visitors, and studied to expedite their departure. To this end he caused reports of great victories gained by the Ger­mans over the Turks of Asia Minor to be circulated. And now the French army—already impatient of the privations they were still enduring whilst their royal commander was indulging and recreating himself after his—feared that all the glory of the enterprise would be forestalled by their allies, as the vanguard of the Crusade, and became clamorous to proceed. Lewis could no longer close his ears to the general urgency, and requested means of trans­port over the Bosphorus. With these Manuel joyfully furnished him ; and the French followed the Germans to Asia Minor.

Scarcely had they landed ere new dissensions occurred. Some wealthy traders visited the camp; and whilst the leaders were dealing with them for their wares, the poorer pilgrims plundered their travelling-shops. The owners, obtaining no redress from the King, as little able as the Emperor, probably, to control his host of Crusaders, fled to

Constantinople, to lay their complaints before Manuel. He judged it proper to pass over in person, in order to insist upon the observance of better discipline, so long as the army should remain upon his territories; and the resentment he expressed at the treatment of his peaceful subjects, could only be appeased by Lewis’s submitting to his demand, that the French nobles should do homage to him, pros­pectively, for all conquests to be made in Asia. His and Conrad’s refusals to allow of such homage had been one ground of Manuel’s distrust and ill-will; and it is to be re­membered that, however humiliating the demand may seem, the conquests hoped for were all of provinces torn from the Eastern Empire. Still his whole conduct relative to the Crusaders, whom Greek writers allowC252) that he all along disliked and betrayed, seems inexplicable in a brave an ! able ruler. All these difficulties materially retarded the progress of the French, eager as they were to overtake their German precursors.

It was indeed high time that Lewis should overtake Conrad, although not in order to prevent those German precursors from monopolizing triumph and glory. In Asia Minor Conrad had found all the evils he had experi­enced in Itoumelia—i.e. deficiency and reported adulteration of food, with exorbitant prices, and the murder of strag­glers from his ranks, as much by the Greek troops escorting him, as by the peasantry—enhanced by the apparent absence of administrative authorities to which to appeal. Under such circumstances, the suspicions previously con­ceived of the Greek Emperor revived, and led to new calamities.

When the choice between two roads to Syria—the one long, through the dominions of Manuel, the other short, through those of the naturally inimical Seljuk Sultan of Ieonium—was submitted to Conrad, he and his Council differed in opinion, Numbers thought the covert enmity of the Greeks, however noxious, less important, because less likely to obstruct and delay the advance of the army, than actual w arfare with Turks, who, not being the assail­ants of the Syro-Franks, were not the especial misbelievers whom they were pledged to combat. Others, with Conrad and his nephew Frederic at their head, judged it better to fight their way through avowed foes by the shortest road,

than to remain for any length of time exposed to the covert hostility of false friends. But, as before observed, at the head of a host of voluntary crusaders, the imperfect authority of a feudal sovereign was yet further reduced; and the Emperor had no power to compel obedience to his decision. The Crusaders did the worst thing possible; they divided. Those who preferred the longer coast-road, a large body, electing the Bishop of Freising their leader, set forward upon their protracted and weary march, during which they suffered, in a yet increased degree, all the annoyances and privations, often amounting to famine, that they had previously endured, and which the majority now pronounced intolerable.

Conrad, on his part, ordered the guides, furnished him by Manuel, to conduct him with his reduced force by the direct road across the Seljuk dominions. They so far obeyed that they did conduct him into those dominions ; but they had been either charged by Manuel, or bribed by the Sultan, to mislead the Crusaders. By tedious as arduous paths they brought them into a desert, affording neither food nor water; and being threatened with the chastisement they merited, disappeared under cover of the night. The dawn discovered the Turkish host, in count­less multitudes, menacing the Christian army upon all sides.

The Crusaders, as before observed, |had no desire for battles in Asia Minor, and endeavoured to prosecute their inarch. They were harassed at every step by the light Turkish cavalry, which, whilst inflicting upon such an encumbered mass disasters and losses insupportable, eluded, by the peculiar tactics adapted to its character, alike the regular engagement it seemed to provoke, and the charge or the pursuit of the heavily-armed German knights. These incessant skirmishes, in which only the Germans suffered, lasted many days. Conrad himself was twice wounded by the arrows of the Turks; and without a battle, without an opportunity of retaliation, it is averred that this army—which, after all his disasters, and its division, must have comprised at least 70,000 fighting men—was reduced to 7,000. Of women, children, and even male pilgrims, if unarmed, no account was taken.

In this distressful condition, Conrad learned that the

French division of the Crusade had reached Asia Minor, accompanied by a body of Templars under their Grand Master. Already the estates bestowed upon the two military Orders had diverted many of the brethren from their main duty, by requiring their presence, in their European establishments, save when recalled by some special emergency to Palestine; and those so recalled had now joined the King of France. Conrad at once resolved to fall back, with the poor remains of his army, upon his allies. Frederic carried the tidings of their disasters and intentions to the French camp; and Lewis, all jealous fears relieved, expressed the warmest sympathy for the suf­ferings of his brother Crusaders. The two monarchs met near Nicrea; and Lewis, warned by the calamities that had befallen the Emperor, resolved to take the longer way, through what he believed a friendly country, but not that

Eursued bv Bishop Otho and his division. Upon the road e had selected—if for awhile he avoided the Turkish arrows, which, with faithful guides and the Templars’ experience in Turkish warfare, an undivided army hardly need have shunned—he encountered all the evils that Conrad had apprehended from Greek animosity, whether encouraged or not by Manuel.

The German Emperor did not long accompany his ally. Mortified at appearing through his losses in a position inferior to that of the French King, irritated by French presumption, that taunted the Germans with their disasters, as with the obligations under which they lay to their allies, and suffering in health both from his w ounds, and from those hardships and privations that had prevented the tendance they required, he accepted the invitation which Manuel, now no longer fearing his army, but still anxious to prevent the union of the two crusading sovereigns, pressed upon him, to seek medical aid and repose in his Court. In the vicinity of Ephesus he embarked with his princes and chief nobles for Constantinople; flattering himself, perhaps, that, in his brother Emperor’s more conciliatory mood, ne might obtain from him the cordial assistance of whii'h the Crusaders were so much in want. But Manuel, if relieved from h's immediate apprehensions, still disliked the pre­sence of the Crusaders in Syria, and strove, with the most refined address, to evade Conrad’s requests, whilst

he courted, amused, and detained him at Constantinople, studying bv all means to alienate and sever, both morally and physically, the Emperor and the French King from each other.

This policy in so far answered the Greek Emperor’s purpose, that of the body of Germans remaining as auxiliaries with the French army, many—disheartened by the absence of their Emperor, in addition to their past hardships and privations—persuaded themselves that they had done and suffered enough to discharge their vow, and were now free. They deserted to return home, or rather to attempt returning; for few indeed thus uncon­nectedly succeeded in so doing. Their loss was, however, ere long, made good, and the ranks of the braver spirits recruited, by the junction of the Dukes of Poland and Bohemia with their bands.

Meanwhile, amidst difficulties, annoyances, and priva­tions, such as have already been described, Lewis marched on, sharing, in proof of his devout penitence, all the hard­ships endured by the poorest pilgrim, and performing all the military duties incumbent upon the poorest knight, in his army. But the sufferings he had preferred to the necessity of fighting his way to the scene of action, did not permanently exempt him from the hostilities he was en­deavouring to avoid. The Turks, elated by their recent success, entered the Greek territories, to meet the new army of Crusaders, and oppose its passage of the Meander. For­tunately for the French this same spirit of elation impelled their enemies to abandon the system of warfare that had en­abled them really to defeat the Germans without ever giving battle, and they engaged in close combat with their fresh antagonists. They, much as they too had suffered from want and hardships, were in a very different condition from their unfortunate predecessors; and having the advantage of coming to close quarters with their enemies, defeated them with great slaughter, amply avenging their allies.

But here ended the success of King Lewis and his army. The ili-will of the Greeks, and the repugnance with which their Emperor viewed the Crusade, were 110 longer dis­sembled. The Greek towns, professing distrust of the good faith of the French, closed their gates against them, whilst opening them to the fugitive Turks. Manuel sent Lewis

information that, having just concluded a truce for twelve years with the Sultan of Iconium, he must preserve a strict neutrality between them. But that the supply of pro­visions, always scanty, was thenceforward altogether withheld, must still be chiefly imputed to the timid suspicions, as well as to the disinclination of the inferior magistracy, and to the hatred borne by the whole Greek population to Latin Schismatics.

Not long afterwards the want of discipline, the self-villed imprudence prevalent in the French army, brought upon it a calamity, singly as overwhelming as had been the many undergone by the Germans. The vanguard had been ordered to encamp upon a height, commanding the road by which the army was to advance ; but perceiving a delight­fully fruitful valley beyond this height, the troops, heed­less of the consequences to the main body, deserted the inconvenient, allotted post, and eagerly hurried down to enjoy the refreshment there inviting them. The Turkish troops, that still hung upon the line of march, observing this important eminence unoccupied, hastened to seize it; an-l the French main body unexpectedly found enemies advantageously placed to oppose their progress, in the very position whence they had confidently expected protection during their passage. They were thus surprised in some disorder, and, though they made a gallant resistance, were in a short time nearly cut to pieces. The King, with difficulty swinging himself up, by the help of the branch of a tree, on to an insulated rock, there defended himself, until a party coming to his relief enabled him to escape, and join his vanguard. That, having taken no share in the battle, was still complete; and with it he at length reached A Italia, upon the sea-coast, in not much better plight than the German Emperor had joined him.

At Attalia the Greek authorities, professing friendship, proposed to furnish him ships, in which to transport the remnant of his army to Antioch. Lewis gladly accepted the offer. But the authorities demanded an exorbitant price for the use of their vessels. Lewis resisted; and, between naggling and the necessity of waiting for a fair wind, to which the royal Crusader seems tohave thought him­self entitled, several weeks were lost. In the end, the French King, whether from ill-will or the poverty of the place,

obtained barely vessels enough to convey himself and the higher classes of the Crusaders. With these he embarked, leaving all the humbler Crusaders—warriors, invalids, women, and children — to make their way bv land, under the conduct of the Earls of Flanders and Archambaud de Bourbon, with the promised protection of an escort of Greek troops. To defray the expense of this escort, as also of nursing his sick, the King placed a sum of money in the hands of the Attalian authorities. The money was taken, but the sick received no tendance, and the promised escort never appeared.

Unescorted, therefore, the appointed chiefs found them­selves obliged to set forth with only a small body of drooping infantry, and the half-helpless, and now more than half-defenceless band committed to their guidance. But the attacks of the Turks were incessant, and, under such circumstances, sanguinarily successful; and the Earls, despairing of the possibility of executing the task assigned them, ere long deserted their charge. Escaping by sea with as many as could procure means of embarkation, they rejoined the King at Antioch. Of those who remained behind, struggling on by land, to the computed number again of 7,000, the majority were destroyed by the Turks, and obtained the crown of martyrdom in lieu of the palm- branch, indicative of a consummated pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The survivors were plundered, otherwise ill- used, and enslaved by the Greeks: the sick left at Attalia were massacred. The Turks, on the other hand, after their victory, showed humanity ; and the consequence was, that some S3,000 Christians, preferring Turkish to Greek slavery, took refuge with their former enemies. Of these, very many are believed to have apostatized.

Of all the divisions of these two hosts of Crusaders, Bishop Otho’s alone reached Antioch in martial array, although not unscathed in numbers and condition. They had never been admitted into towns, and had with great difficulty procured, at exorbitant prices, iood sufficient to support them under their toils. Still they reached Antioch in warrior guise; and were there joined by such German arid Italian Crusaders as had preferred a sea-voyage to a land-inarch. The Earl of Toulouse, who, if he had joined Lewis at Metz, had not accompanied him, but returned to

his principality to proceed, with his body of Crusaders, by sea, was of the number. Thus something like an army was again assembled.

The Prince and Princess of Antioch received their royal French relations—Raymond, it may be recollected, was Elinor’s uncle—with a splendid hospitality that, after the sufferings of the march through Asia Minor, proved yet more irresistible to their guests than had been the magnifi­cence of Constantinople. Raymond was anxious to employ the warriors of the Cross in furthering his own schemes, and, as a step that way, to detain them at Antioch. To this end he sought in every way to please his nit-ce, and render her residence there delightful to her. And in this he suc­ceeded. Declaring herself too completely worn out with what she had undergone to prosecute her pilgrimage further, Elinor announced her intention of sojourning at Antioch, until the King should be ready to conduct her home. In this preference of her still youthful uncle’s society to his, Lewis’s jealousy, and the dissensions of the roval pair, so disastrous in their consequences to France, are generally said to have originated ; though some histo­rians aliirm that his jealous\ alone had compelled his Queen to take the Cross. The King, nevertheless, postponing to the performance of his devotions at the Iloly Sepulchre all other considerations, even his dissatisfaction w’th his wife’s conduct, and the necessary deliberations concerning the best employment of the crusading army, proceeded with merely an escort, it should seem, to Jerusa'em.

There Conrad and the German princes, brought by Greek vessels from Constantinople to Ptolemais, or Akkon, since called Acre, or St. Jean d’Acre, joined him. The royal and noble pilgrims duly performed all the customary religious rites appertaining to a pilgrimage; and then re­paired to Acre, if it may be allowable at once to adopt the later and more familiar form, there to meet Baldwin with his chief princes anti nobles, as also the two Grand Masters, in order, resuming their more knightly character, to consult upon and concert a plan of operations. To Acre, more­over, those leaders, who had been left in charge of the troops remaining at Antioch to recover from their fatigues and sufferings, brought the forces, now recruited in health and strength, if but little in numbers.

At the Council there held, various proposals were made and discussed. The Emperor was bent upon the enterprise for which the crusade had been expressly undertaken, namely, the recovery of Edessa; and Prince Raymond earnestly supported his opinion. But Raymond desired to recover Edessa, not to restore it to its rightful though un­worthy Lord, who was manifestly unable to defend it, but to incorporate it with his own, i. e. his wife’s principality; and the King and Barons of Jerusalem, unwilling to augment the power of Antioch, of which they were already jealous, urged that the city, dismantled as it was, could not be a valuable bulwark to the kingdom, or indeed securely held, without either a great expenditure of time and money in fortifying it anew, or the possession of all the Moslem strongholds in its vicinity. Raymond then proposed the conquest of Aleppo, and the other Moslem states that separated Antioch from Jerusalem, and weakened both, by obstructing their inter­course and power of co-operation. Baldwin and the Jerusa­lemites might have preferred the conquest of Aleppo to the recovery of the more remote Edessa ; but Aleppo, if taken, must from its locality have fallen to the share of Antioch ; and the same jealousy induced the rejection of this plan. The two Grand Masters, warmly supported by the young King, then unfolded their scheme ; it was the acquisition of Damascus. They represented that Damascus, both in strength and in geographical position, was a far more formidable enemy to the kingdom of Jerusalem, and, if acquired, would be a far more satisfactory bulwark against the Mohammedans, than Aleppo, Edessa, or any other place that could be named. They brought forward another Damascene rebel, the Emir of two towns appertaining to that principality, who vehemently pressed the subjugation of his former Lord, and asserted his own power of giving assistance to the invaders. The wishes of the monarch, boy as he was, whom they had come to aid, and the opinion of leaders so experienced in Syrian warfare as the Heads of the real champions of Christendom, naturally prevailed, and it was resolved to besiege that stronghold of Islam. Accordingly, in the month of June 1148, the German and French Crusaders, how cruelly soever reduced in numbers once more a respectable army, uniting with the troeps of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and with the Knight Templars

and Hospitalers, amounting altogether to 20,000 horse and 60,000 foot,(253) marched for Damascus.

The situation of Damascus is described by all travellers as most beautiful; and relatively to the science of attack and defence, as understood in the twelfth century, the town was very strong; being defended by double walls, thick set with towers, and washed on one side by the river Barady, which afforded irrigation and fertility to the gardens, orchards, and vineyards, of the numerous villas adorning that side. Beyond them lay the plain spreading out widely till it became the desert.(254) To the north-west the ground rises gradually to the foot or the Lebanon range of mountains.

Little deliberation was needful to decide, that only upon the villa side could Damascus, with any prospect of success, be attacked, because only here could the besieging army find the necessary supply of water; the Emir having compelled the inhabitants of all the villages within con­venient reach to fill up their wells and remove, carrying their cattle and stock of provisions with them. The villas had been kept as outworks, and of these the allies pre­pared, as their first operation, to make themselves masters. Baldwin, as the principal in the war, and the two Grand Wasters, as a prerogative inherent in the character of the Orders of Knights Templars and Hospitalers, claimed the post of honour and of danger, the van, as their right. Lewis and his French Crusaders, reluctantly yielding to a claim so incontestable, formed the second battle as it was then called; and Conrad, whether on account of inferior numbers, of the protection and assistance he had, when in danger and d'.stress, received from the French in their then unbroken strength, or yielding to avert dissensions, was obliged, notwithstanding his superior rank, to be content with the third.(255;

Between the walls and hedges, a wide road led across the river to one of the city gates, whilst on either hand narrow paths wound amidst the inclosures. Along the wide road the besiegers moved to the attack; but the hedges and loopholed walls were li.ied with Turks, and flights of arrows met the assailants as they advanced. They turned from the main road to seek their invisible enemies by the narrow paths; but here again walls and

hedges bristling with spears or pouring forth fresh flights of arrows, opposed their progress. Their array fell into no little disorder. But Baldwin’s impetuosity, the never failing valiancy of the Monk-Knights, and the ardour of the Crusaders, in the end proved irresistible. They forced the enclosures, drove out the Turks, and pursued their victorious course to the bank of the river.

Here they had hoped to quench the intolerable thirst produced by hard fighting under a southern sun; but the Mohammedans had rallied, and occupied this important position in great strength. Here, therefore, the strug­gle was renewed, and here the Emperor was to find some compensation for the many mortifications he had endured. The victory was obstinately contested ; twice the Jerusalemites, Templars and Hospitalers included, despite their utmost efforts, were repulsed; and the second battle was kept inactive, with no impugnment of French courage, by the sheer difficulties of the ground. But Conrad was not so to be baffled. His German knights possessed an advantage over their rivals in being trained to fight on foot as well as in the saddle,(356) and to this he had recourse. He bade them dismount, setting them the example, and on foot, at their head, he broke through the stationary ranks of French Cavalry before him, through the disordered ranks of the Palestine cavalry, before them, and fell, sword in hand, upon the enemy. When thus brought into action, Conrad is said to have displayed ex­traordinary personal prowess, and even to have performed a feat, similar to one recorded of Godfrey of Bouillon ; to wit, the slicing off, with a single stroke of his sword, the head and shoulder of a gigantic Turk, clad in complete armour; a feat yet more surprising when thus performed on foot than from the height of a horse’s back. His nephew Frederic upon this, as upon every occasion, vigorously seconded him; and by their joint exertions, duly supported by their small but stalwart band, they afforded their allies time to rally and return to the charge. Again victory declared for the Christians. The river was mastered ; the Mohammedans retreated within the city walls; and the victors encamped upon the theatre of abundance that their valour had won.

Amongst the most distinguished v, arriors on the Moslem

side in this battle was the Kurd Nodshmeddin Eyub, the father of the celebrated Saladin, and fouuder of the Eyubite dynasty. He was then in the service of Noureddin, and, having been sent by him upon some mission to Anar, whose daughter Noureddin had married, took an active part in the defence of Damascus. His eldest son was among the slain, and young Saladin, although not more than eleven years old, is said to have been upon the field. Anar, who had commanded in person, was wholly dis­couraged by his defeat- Noureddin and Saifeddin, whose assistance he had solicited, though upon their march to his relief, were still far distant, and inferior in numbers to the united forces of the three Christian sovereigns. On both sides the early fall of the besieged city was anticipated.

But selfish ambition, petty interests, weakness, or trea­son, interfered to render the loss of life by which this advantage had been purchased, unavailing. Many are the reports as to the mode in which these noxious causes wrought their noxious effects. It is said that the apologue of selling the lion’s skin whilst planning the chase, was here for the thousandth time enacted, the princes quarrel­ling about the disposal of the expected conquest. Accord­ing to this tale, Theodore Earl of Flanders, husband of Baldwin’s half-sister, Syhi 11a of Anjou, upon the plea of this being his second expedition in defence of the Holy Land, laid claim to Damascus, of course in vassalage to Jerusalem. The Earl was so warmly supported by the King of France as to offend the German Emperor; and whatever might be Baldwin's individual inclination, the Jerusalem Baronage did not choose to resign so valuable a prize to an European intruder, while the Templars, whose right it ever was to lead when a place was to be stormed, wanted the principality for their Order.(2^7) Thus, through the very intensity of the desire for its pos­session, the disposition to conquer Damascus is supposed to have died away, it) all but the Crusaders. Another report is that Baldvin, his Barons, and the Grand Masters wished not such a remote acquisition, and were very anxious to conciliate the potent protectors of Anar, Noureddin, and Saifeddhi. A story refuted in respect to the your.g King by his character, brave even to rashness, and his age tar too boyish for prudential consideration; Digitized by Microsoft®

to the Grand Masters, by the fact that they were the very persons who selected Damascus as the object of the enter­prise; though as regards the Barons, it is by no means unlikely that they might both be growing weary of the overbearing arrogance of the Crusaders, and think con­ciliating the foes they dreaded the safest course. A third report, resting upon very general Arab authority, is that Anar sent a threatening message to Baldwin and his Jerusa­lemites, intimating that if the siege were not immediately raised, he would deliver up the city to Noureddin, who was rapidly advancing at the bead of an immense army; thus so augmenting the power of that already formidable prince, as must insure bis speedy subjugation of Palestine. That very exaggerated rumours of the numerical strength of the approaching brothers were sedulously circulated, seems cer­tain ; and if the receipt and the effect of the message be confined to Haldwin’s-courtiers and counsellors, who might easily delude an inexperienced youth as to the purpose and probable result of the measures they advised, this is upon the whole the most probable explanation of the strange proceedings, to be narrated when the fourth report, the most irksome of all to believe, unless it also were limited to the courtiers and counsellors who fostered and stimulated the boy-king’s faults, alienating him from his sagacious mother, shall have been disposed of. This report is, that Anar offered enormous pecuniary bribes, either to Baldwin, or to the Barons, or to the Templars, or to the Hospitalers, or to any two, or three, or all of them, if they would either procure the raising of the siege by scaring away the Franks through rumours of the over­whelming numbers hastening to his relief, or baffle its apparently certain success, by inducing some ruinous change in the plan of attack. The story goes on to say, that when the work was done and the price to be received, the briber cheated the bribed; sent the mercenary traitors barrels apparently full of gold, but the contents of which, upon examination, proved to be brass, under a layer of gold.(258) This disgraceful account is the one most generally adopted by European historians, because a letter still extant, addressed by Conrad to his habitual corres­pondent, the Abbot of Corvey, seems to give it confirmation. In this letter he says, “ We have suffered from treason ■ o 2

“ where it was least to be feared, through the avarice of “ the Jerusalemites and some princes.” It is however to be considered, in weighing the Emperor’s evidence, without in the least questioning his veracity, that he might be likely to impute to treason and bribery, what was simply the offspring of a dread of Noureddin’s power, which he would be incompetent to appreciate; and that even if bribery there were, he would hardly know where to fix the guilt.

But whatever were the cause, the hopes which the recent victory awakened were disappointed by the following inex­plicable proceeding. The Jerusalemites, upon the plea that the city walls were weaker on the other side, persuaded the crusading monarchs to remove their camp from the excel­lent position so hardly won, and pitch it in the situation previously rejected. The consequence is said to have been that, the walls being equally strong, still all assaults upon the town were repulsed, and the besiegers languished with­out water, almost without food. In this suffering and depressing condition the Crusaders were easily alarmed by the rumours in circulation of the imminent arrival of Noureddin, and of the innumerable myriads he was bringing to the relief of Damascus. The siege was raised.

Conrad and Lewis, however mortified at this result of their exertions, however disgusted at the general conduct of affairs in Palestine, had not quite renounced the hope of strengthening by enlarging, or rather consolidating, the kingdom of Jerusalem. They therefore agreed to co­operate in the siege of Ascalon, a strong town, just within the southern frontier of the Holy Land ; the possession of which, as a defence against Egypt, seemed more important to its security than that of Damascus. They led the Crusaders thither and sat down before the place. But again their well digested schemes were foiled by the fault of those whom they were labouring to benefit. No Syro- Frank army, not even the Templars and Hospitalers, joined them at the appointed time; and in another letter from the Emperor to Abbot Wibald, appears the following passage:—“Faithful to our engagement we came to “ Ascalon, but found no Syro-Latin Christians there. “ After waiting for them eight days, we turned back, for “ the second time deceh ed by them.”

And now, finally and thoroughly disgusted with their allies, and disappointed of the success, the merit, the glory they had anticipated, the two crusading sovereigns began to recollect the claims of their own realms and subjects, as also of their own individual interests, upon their time and care. Conrad, with the poor remnant of his German host, embarked at Acre, upon the 8th of September of this same year 1148; and Lewis a little later followed his example. This last monarch upon his return was taken by some Greek vessels, whether pirates or in the Emperor’s service is not clear; but they were carrying him off a prisoner, when the Sicilian Admiral, in his triumphant cruize en­countering them, released the King of France from their clutches.

The Earl of Toulouse had not lived to take part in these operations; and as he was the eldest son of the Earl who conquered Tripoli, his death was ascribed to poison given him by his kinsman of the younger line, the Earl of Tripoli, fearing that he would claim the county. But as the deceased was accom­panied by his son, who survived to inherit his preten­sions, there seems to be no adequate motive to so flagitious a deed.(259l

This crusade is estimated to have cost Europe 180,000 lives, including non-combatants; surely a moderate compu­tation, but which even if allowed to b^ below the mark, fully extinguishes the Greek enumeration of 900,000 Germans at the passage of the Danube. One of the one hundred and eighty thousand may deserve specification, although for a claim upon our gratitude of which he himself was unconscious. Cacciaguida, the great-grandfather of Dante, made known to us by the poet as a censurer of modern luxury,(2<>o) that is to say, of the progress towards luxury made since this second Crusade, received, upon this expedition, knighthood from the hand of the Emperor, and the crown of martyrdom from that of a Turk.

CONRAD III.

Conrad at Constantinople. — King Henry's Govern­ment.—Relations with the Pope.—Henry the Lion's Crusade.—Conrad's Return. — Rebellion of Welf.— Ilenry the Lion.—Death of King Henry.—Of Conrad. —Of St. Bernard —Stale of Europe and Palestine.

[1117—1152.]

In Europe the failure of this, the second Crusade, provoked universal wrath. The Abbot of Claiivanx, who of all the disappointed must have been the most deeply grieved ai:d wounded, was now severely blamed for having preached it. He pleaded, in his justification, the express commands of the Pope, which he was bound implicitly to obey ; and lie attributed the failure to the sins of the Crusaders, who had, he averred, shown themselves unworthy to be champions of the Cross. He further sought alleviation to his own profound disappointment and affliction, as also to the general mortification, in two considerations. The one, the firm belief that the expedition had, at all events, wrought the salvation of the souls of those who had fallen in so holy a cause;—and what imperilled souls, to say the least, he knew many of them to be ! The other, that misfortunes, of whatever kind—however bewildering to human reason—could only befall their victims by the appointment of God, in his inscrutable wisdom.

Conrad landed at Constantinople, and there committed his army to the charge of his nephew, with instructions to lead it home, with all convenient despatch, by the same road by which they had come forth. He himself, the mutual dis­trust that had originally alienated the two Emperors having now given place to cordial confidence, remained for some little

time at the Greek Court; professedly to recruit his health, which was seriously impaired by the fatigues, hardships, and vexations of his Syrian campaign. His real motive for lingering appears to have been to concert offensive and defensive measures against the King of Sicily, then still at war with Manuel. Roger’s constantly increasing power, combined with his scarcely dissembled hostility to Conrad, the Head of the Holy Roman Empire, who as such claimed his homage, required constant vigilance; and Conrad’s ap­prehensions had been aroused anew by a recent visit of Duke Welf’s to Palermo. Welf, it will be remembered, had ver­bally renounced his pretensions to Bavaria, and joined in the crusade. But when the rites of pilgrimage had been per­formed at Jerusalem, he refused to take part in the siege of Damascus; and, as though he had gone forth solely as a pilgrim, not as a crusader, embarked at Acre for Europe; but deviated from his course to make a long halt at the Sicilian Court in his way to Germany. He had since re­turned thence to put the schemes concerted with Roger in execution. Conrad could not doubt but that the object of this visit was to concoct some hostile design against himself and his brother Henry Jasomir. To counteract their league it was desirable to draw closer the union of the two empires ; to which end, and to secure Constantino- politan support to the Duke of Bavaria, Conrad had asked and obtained for his brother a promise of the hand of Manuel’s sister or niece, Theodora. To expedite and complete the marriage, Henry had remained behind with Conrad ; and when all these arrangements were perfected, the Western Emperor was conveyed, together with his brother and new sister-in-law, in Greek vessels, to the head of the Adriatic, upon the road home. Conrad’s course was, in the first instance, rather to Lombardy, whence he was to co-operate in arms with the forces of the Eastern Empire against the Normans. But he presently found it expedient to visit Germany, prior to taking active measures in Italy.

The young King’s government during his father’s absence had, with the exception of some of those usual feuds and disorders which no Truce of God, or Realm's-peace, unless inforced by irresistible power, could effectually restrain, been reasonably tranquil. At Rome, Eugenius III. had re-established himself, reducing his republican flock to

tolerablc order. He had compelled the Senators to receive their appointment from him conjointly, at least, with the people ; had recovered the often contested royalties, and hiid abolished the office of Patrician, restoring that of Imperial Prefect; which he had restored as a papal, not an imperial office. If this encroachment upon imperial rights was not quite what might have been expected from the Pope towards an Emperor, who was at that very moment sacrificing his own interests to those of Christendom, the Holy Father’s conduct was otherwise unobjectionable; he professed, and probably felt, friendly sentiments towards King Henry, and readily afforded him whatever support he required.

During Henry’s reign as vicegerent for his absent father, only two events of material importance appear to have occurred. One was the death of Frederic the One-eyed. Duke of Swabia. He was ill when his brother and his son, despite his earnest remonstrances, took the Cross ; and, notwithstanding the consolations and pious admonitions of St. Bernard, vexation at their resolution, and anxiety as to the issue of their enterprise, so aggravated his malady, that it baffled his physician’s skill cyid speedily carried him off'. Duke Frederic, upon reaching Germany, at the head of the surviving Crusaders in April, 1149, found his father in the tomb, and Welf in Swabia, eagerly attacking the Hohenstaufen patrimony. The rightful heir immediately assumed the title of Duke of Swabia, and proceeded to restore peace in his duchy, by recovering his possessions from his maternal uncle, punishing such vassals as had, since his father’s death—whether by joining Welf or in private feuds—violated the Truce of God, enjoined during the continuance of the Crusade. His appearance seems to have broken the schemes of the confederates ; Welf retired, for the moment at least, to his own fiefs, and all was temporarily quiet.

The other event was one of more extensive interest, being the substitute Crusade against the Slavonians of Germany, which some of the vowed champions of the Holy Sepulchre chose to deem the equivalent of an expedition to Palestine. Yet was this substitute crusade scarcely viewed with a favour­able eye by the most powerful of the princes, who had made it an excuse for remaining at home, namely, the Duke of Saxony, and his former ri\ al, but now reconciled, kinsman

and neighbour, the Margrave of Brandenburg. But these princes are said to have been gii'ted with a dexterity in adapting themselves to circumstances not very consonant with their surnames of the Lion and the Bear. The Heathen Slavonians, for whose forcible conversion the crusade was projected, had long paid tribute to both princes; who contemplated annexing, at no distant day, the tributary lands to their own respective dominions. Whether the Lion might not look prospectively to a lion’s share may be questionable ; but for the moment they acted in concert, and were little inclined to see their management of the war interfered with, or the, to them profitable, state of tribute- paying peace interrupted. By the menace of a crusade they might hope to frighten those tributaries into vassalage, but evidently desired nothing more from it, certainly nothing through the intervention of their brother princes ; to avoid which they endeavoured to procrastinate the opening of the crusade. A third Saxon chief, the Archbishop (late Dean) of Bremen, was differently circumstanced. The bishops to whom—when these tribes professed Christianity—their spiritual concerns had been committed, were his suffragans; and his duty, as their Metropolitan, as well as his temporal interest, demanded their re-instalment. He, therefore, was impatient to see the crusade in action, but wanted power to urge his confederates onward. Nor could any cordiality exist between him and the Duke of Saxony, who had plundered him of half his patrimony ; although, when he had secured his booty, the Duke had sought to conciliate him by under­taking the punishment of his murdered brother’s assassins.

The manoeuvres of the Lion and the Bear, for a while deferred the commencement of hostilities, which were at length begun by the Slavonians themselves, impatient of the ever impending and ever postponed storm. One tribe broke into the territories of the Earl of Holstein, the pro­fessed friend and ally of Niklot, Prince of the Obodrites, and other western Slavonians. The irruption was so unexpected that they surprised, seized, and plundered Earl Adolf’s new city of Lubeck, before he could muster forces to defend it, or even to oppose their further progress. Thus provoked, the Duke and Margrave could procrastinate no- longer, and the former set up the standard of the Cross.!261) The Saxon Crusaders—joined by the Duke of Zaringen, with *■  o 5

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his Swabian and Burgundian vassals, mostly Alsatians and Swiss; by the alienated kinsmen, who, competitors for the crown of Denmark, suspended their almost fraternal war, to engage in a crusade that might add a province to the contested kingdom; and by a Polish prince—crossed the Elbe and laid siege to Dubin.

But if thus forced into action, the inclinations of Henry and Albert were unchanged. They were quite deten.iined not to see the land, they already deemed their own, divided amongst their Danish, Polish, and German allies, nor even amongst their own vassals; not to cede, for instance, so considerable an island as Rugen to Abbot Wibald, whose vassals fought in the crusading army, and who claimed it for his abbey of Corvey. It is said the Damascus game, or one bearing close analogy to it, was played at Dubin. In various ways the Lion and the Bear baffled the designs of their allies, fairly wearying them out; and, finally, by prevailing upon the alarmed Slavonians again to receive baptism, which left no pretence for a Crusade, and to release the Danish prisoners taken in their recent piratical in­cursions, which left the Danes no political quarrel, they put an end to the war. The belligerent missionaries withdrew triumphant to their homes; when the Slavonians, regardless of their baptism, but paying tribute as before to Saxony and Brandenburg, relapsed into their pristine idolatry, and their habitual piracy. The chief result of this crusade seems to have heen the marriage of the Duke of Saxony to his cousin dementia, daughter of the Duke of Zaringen, settled during its continuance. It was, perhaps, upon the strength of his thus redoubled alliance with Zaringen, that Henry now, without awaiting either the further

(proceedings of an Imperial Diet, cr—as he was not only >ound by all laws concerning crusaders, but pledged by oath to do—the return of his crusading sovereign, entitled himself Duke cf Saxony and Bavaria.

This assertion of a claim, disallowed by the Diet and formally renounced by himself, was not the only annoying a flair that greeted Conrad at his return. Although Welfs invasion of Swabia appears to have been a rashly spontaneous attempt to profit by his brother-in-law’s death and his nephew’s absence, the suspicions, that his visit to Roger had awakened, were fully justified. The King of

Sicily, eager to excite disturbances in Germany, had not only promised Welf ample supplies of money to support liis empty pretensions to Bavaria, but sought through him to open a correspondence with the other pretender to that duchy, Welf’s nephew; whose co-operation could be expected only upon the plan of two rivals joining to wrest from a third the prize, to be afterwards battled for between themsehes. Ghibeline writers accuse Eugenius III. of concurrence in these designs of his vassal-king, which, when they became apparent, he strongly condemned.(26'2) But proof of such duplicity does not appear ; nor without it should the pupil of St. Bernard be suspected of conduct so repugnant to his principles.

The rebellion thus planned not having been organized in time to profit by the absence of the Emperor, broke out soon after his return. Welf and his unfailing ally, the Duke of Ziiringen, again invaded Bavaria; assisted by Hungarian troops, paid, in all likelihood, with Sicilian gold, whom Geisa, notwithstanding his friendly professions to the Emperor, sent to support his rebel; whilst Henry the Lion, whether in concert with his uncle or not, armed in Saxony. It is to be observed that some uncertainty touching the frontier of the Austrian march—Bavaria having once extended to the Raab if not to the Theiss, and Hungary since to the Ens—kept up constant ill-blood between Hungary and Bavaria. Thus aided, Welf was enabled to possess himself, not indeed of Bavaria, which Henry would hardly have suffered him to seize,(263) but of some Hohenstaufen castles, and to carry the civil war, with its devastations and misery, across the Rhine, and even into Lorrain. Tidings of these troubles no sooner reached the Pope than, through the Abbot of Clairvaux, he transmitted to the Imperial Crusader the strongest assurances that from him the rebels neither had, nor should have, support or countenance ; and that St. Bernard firmly believed the assurances he conveyed, there can be no doubt. Whether trusting them or not, Conrad diligently occupied himself with all necessary measures for extinguishing the rebellion. The' command of the army raised for that purpose he entrusted to his son, and in February of the following year, 1150, King Henry completely routed the insurgents. The Duke of Swabia then solicited and

obtained permission to mediate a cessation of hostilities, so painful to his feelings, between his paternal and maternal relations. He prevailed upon Welf to abandon his groundless pretensions to Bavaria, in consideration of being invested by the Emperor with several valuable fiefs; upon Conrad to grant this compensation; and enjoyed the high gratification of reconciling his two beloved uncles.

But only partial was this restoration of peace; and still was Conrad obliged to defer both his coronation progress to Rome, and the expedition against the King of Sicily, concerted with Manuel. If the uncle had abandoned an utterly unfounded pretension, the nephew only the more vehemently advanced his claim to Bavaria; a claim that was undeniable, save as invalidated by his father's rebellion and subsequent contumacy, the sentence of the Diet, and his own formal renunciation upon compromise. Henry the Lion asserted that his patrimonial duchy, of which he had already assumed the title, had been unjustly confiscated from his father ; and he protested against his own renunciation upon two grounds—the first, that it had been surreptitiously extorted from a minor, incompetent thus to surrender liis own rights, much more those of his pos­terity ; the second, that the surrender was solely in favour of his mother, and, therefore, when she died, leaving no child but himself, her duchy came to him as her sole heir. Conrad referred the question to a Diet, as the only tribunal authorized to decide one of such magnitude, and summoned a Diet to assemble for this express purpose at Ulm.

But the Duke of Saxony, notwithstanding the general displeasure that Conrad’s transfer of Bavaria to Henry Jasomir had excited, feared the indisposition of his brother princes to see any individual of their body acquire so immense a preponderance as must result from the union of two of the original duchies ; and chose to rely rather upon his own arms than their decision. He did not attend tha Diet, but appeared in arms upon the frontier of Bavaria and Swabia. Albert’s hopes revived upon the rebellion of his rival, which superseded the reference to a Diet; and Conrad, at his entreaty, invaded Saxony in concert with him, leaving the defence of Bavaria to the Dukes of Bavaria and Swabia.

This invasion recalled the Lion to defend the duchy of

which he had possession, yet it should seem recalled him singly. He is said to have left his army to take care of itself,(2G4) (of course appointing a leader, but the accounts are little circumstantial and somewhat confused) making his way in disguise into Saxony, there to raise another army to oppose the invaders. But a heavy private mis­fortune that befel the Emperor interfered with the pro­secution of these operations, relieved the Duke from all immediate apprehensions, and occasioned a further delay of the projected expedition to Italy.

In the year 1151 Conrad lost his son Henry, his already elected and crowned colleague and successor. It was not to indulge his parental grief that he postponed his important avocations. The new arrangements, requisite in a matter so important as the succession, were now in his opinion his most urgent business, more urgent even than the re­pression of Henry the Lion’s ambition; and necessarily to be completed before he should either risk his own person in battle, or again quit Germany ; whether to receive the Imperial crown in llome, to arbitrate between the Pope and the Bomans, who were again calling upon him to undertake that office, or to co-operate with Manuel. His only remaining soil had barely completed his seventh year; and under existing circumstances Conrad would not suffer paternal affection to supersede the dictates of patriotic policy. He made no attempt to substitute the boy Frederic for the promising young man he and the empire had lost in King Henry; but recommended his nephew, Frederic Duke of Swabia, to the princes as his successor, upon the several grounds of his being then in the full vigour of rranbood; distinguished alike for the highest intel­lectual qualities, as for energy, valour, and personal prowess; and of his blood relationship to the Welfs, which would tend to allay the chief feud that had distracted Germany during his own reign. For his infant son he merely requested that he might, when of man’s estate, be invested with the family duchy of Swabia, and the Fran­conian patrimony of his grandmother, the Princess Agnes.

These preparatory arrangements were only in progress; no Diet had as yet elected the subordinate colleague and future successor to the Emperor—at a later perii.d. entitled King of the ltomans, and regularly so elected; nor is it

certain even that any summonses for the purpose had been issued. A Diet was indeed upon the point of assembling at Bamberg, not a usual place for the sitting of Electoral Diets, and there was probably no present intention of taking any step beyond consulting the Princes of the Empire upon these plans, upon the chastisement of the contumacious Duke of Saxony, and the coronation expe­dition, when Conrad was seized with a sudden malady, with which the leechcraft of the age proved inadequate to grapple. Upon the 15th of February, 1152, after committing the regalia to the hands of the Duke of Swabia, Conrad expired, in the fifty-eighth year of his age. He was at the time supposed to have been poisoned by his Italian physician, a pupil of the highly reputed medical school of Salerno, at the instigation, according to some writers, of his constant enemy Roger,(265) according to others, of Eugenius III., who was believed to dread his appearance in Italy, lest the repeated Invitations of the Romans might have so stimulated his ambition, or so biassed his judgment in their favour, as to endanger the temporal sovereignty of the Popes. There is not only no proof of this crime, but no adequate motive alleged, the Duke of Saxony’s rebellion being certain to occupy the Emperor for some time at least in Germany; and consequently no rational ground for suspicion, beyond Conrad’s death being somewhat premature; but he, in answer to that, is said never to have thoroughly recovered from the hardships and the sufferings, physical and mental, undergone in Asia Minor. A modern writer has to contend with a strong desire to omit, either as wearisome or as absurd, this ever recurring accusation of poisoning, which would be ludicrous, were it not a revolting indication of the state of moral feeling. As such, the conscientious historian has no choice but to record i'c.

Conrad was a brave, upright, sensible, and pious man, a well inteniioned and energetic monarch; but the em­barrassments caused him by the enmity of the Welfs, and the consequent exhaustion of his resources, together with the consumption of money, time, and human life by his crusade, not a little hampered and impaired the beneficial vigour of his government. If his reign gave

birth to no new encroachments, papal or episcopal, upon the imperial authority, he was unable to recover any of the rights and privileges ceded by Lothar, to correct any of the abuses that had crept into the Church—and the extent of these may be inferred from the single fact, that in 1145 the Chapter of Liege, freed from monastic restraint, consisted, not of poor scholars, but of nine sons of kings, fourteen sons of dukes, thirty sons of earls, and seven of barons and knights—(2 36) or to reduce the great vassals to reasonable subjection. To judge by an anecdote which a modern Italian writer has extracted from an old chronicler, he was at least an admirer of learning. The recent compatriot biographer of Italy’s great poet relates that Conrad, being entangled bv a pro­fessed dialectician in a net of logic, uttered a regretful reflection upon the happiness of those who could devote their hours to such studies.(-e7)

To avoid interrupting the history of the next reign with matter irrelevant thereto, the death of Conrad’s revered contemporary, the Abbot of Clairvaux, which took place the following year 1153, preceded by such characteristic incidents, relative to this extraordinary man, as have not hitherto found a fitting place, may be here, though some­what prematurely, inserted. St. Bernard’s dread of the presumption of human reason, rather than any doubt of its capacity to grapple with doctrinal questions, and his consequent mistrust of every deviation, even from esta­blished forms of speech upon religious topics, are strikingly exemplified in his intercourse with Abelard. The Abbot selected from the works of that erudite, as astute, dialec­tician, a number of propositions, which he denounced to a French Synod as heretical.(268) The Synod summoned the accused teacher, who was then Abbot of St. Gildas in Britanny (having resigned the Paraclete, as a nunnery, to Eloisa, who is stated to have there held a school of theology, Greek and Hebrew),(269) to answer to the accusa­tion, and Abelard, promptly obeying, prepared to defend the assailed propositions, by proving them orthodox. But the Abbot of Clairvaux positively refused to risk his own orthodoxy by listening to arguments that might bewilder him, that he might be unable to refute whilst knowing them to be heretical, and insisted upon their

being simply submitted to the Pope. The most remarka­ble part of the story perhaps, is that the arrogant, as able, Abelard, agreed so to submit his opinions, and when the Pope pronounced them heterodox, at once recanted them. St. Bernard, charmed by such humility united to such abilities, became thenceforward one of his staunchest friends; the other being Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Clugny, in whose abbey the accused had awaited the papal decision, and after receiving it passed the remainder of his life. While speaking of Abelard, it may be added that two letters, both addressed to Eloisa, yet exist, which go far to prove his submission and recantation honest; the one written in full confidence by himself, and con­taining his perfectly orthodox profession of faith ; the other from the pen of Peter the Venerable, condoling with the Abbess of the Paraclete, upon the death of her friend, and giving a very touching account of the perfect piety that gilded the latter years, and the closing scene of his life.

When commanded by the Pope to put down heresy, not by disputation, but by simply preaching to heretics, our Abbot’s conduct was different. A monk, named Henry, whether French, Swiss/2'0; or Italian,(2n) seems doubtful, impelled either by strong doctrinal opinions, or by impatience of the monotony of conventual duties, fled from his cloister; and leading an apparently vagabond life, as a missionary, by the fame of his ’earning and his ascetic habits, such as walking barefoot, eating the poorest food, and the like, collected in the south of France a number 'of disciples, who called themselves Henricians. What were the specific doctrines, beyond the rejection of infant baptism/2?2) that he taught, is again not clear; Whilst endeavouring to steer clear between contemporary Romanist bigotry that imputed every absurdity and every vice to every heretic, and the Protestant bigotry of later times, that regards every dissenter from the Church of Rome as a philosopher and a saint, it must be constantly borne in mind, that all extant information concerning early heretics is derived from their adversaries. Henry has been called a Manichean, then a favourite designation for a heretic; and it is known, that like Arnold of Brescia, he declaimed against the wealth of the Church, the luxury

of prelates, the dissolute lives of monks and nuns, and the general unapostolic conduct of the clergy. But to oppose this, St- Bernard, the known steady censor of all such offences, though addressing his censures only to the offenders, not disturbing the minds of the laity with them, would scarcely have been selected. Some dogmas contrary to those of the Church of Rome he must have taught; and a suspicion that they might be licentious, arises from a letter of the Abbot of Clairvaux, which declares the heresiarch’s life to be so. In it he expressly states that Henry, after preaching all day, usually passed the night either with courtesans or with the wives of some of his flock. And even the admirers of Henry, who speak of him as rigid in his life, and famed for sanctity as well as learning, are said to admit the truth of this charge of libertinism.(273)

Against, or rather to these Henricians, Eugenius III. ordered Abbot Bernard to preach; and he, in obedience to the mandate, journeyed from his abbey to the county of Toulouse, where they chiefly abounded. His success in recalling them to the bosom of the Church was great; and is believed to have been chiefly due to his meekness, and to the evidence borne by his personal appearance to his own abstinence from the luxurious indulgences which his hearers so reprobated in the clergy, and which really seem to have been the main cause of their dissent from the Romish Church. In proof of this, it is related that, as he, one day at Toulouse, remounted his palfrey, after preaching to a congregation of Henricians, one of the heretics tauntingly cried, “ Sir Abbot, your master did not ride so fat a horse!’’—“That I know, friend,” Bernard quietly an­swered : “ but it is the nature of beasts to feed and grow fat. We shall be judged, not by our cattle but—ourselves.” As he spoke he opened his garment, showing his emaciated, fleshless neck and breast. The scoffer was silenced, and the greater part of the crowd converted.

But Abbot Bernard’s horror of heresy was not confined to such as were the offspring of bold or of astute human reason. His mysticism could not betray him into sanction­ing or conniving at mystic innovations. The Canons of Lyons having, in 1136, put forth the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, he, though

professing especial devotion to the Virgin, sharply rebuked them for advancing a dangerous novelty, which must be offensive to the Blessed Virgin herself, who possessed more than a sufficiency of certain merits.

Proceeding to thedeath-bed of the zealous Abbot, we find it a scene of activity, for, lying upon it, he finished his trea­tise, De Consideratioxe stti, addressed to Eugemus III. In this work he expresses, almost as strongly as could Arnold of Brescia, or the monk Henry, his disapprobation of the exercise of temporal power by ecclesiastics, even by the Pope, and also of the actual pomp, state, troops, dress, &c. &c. of the supreme pontiff', as unseemly in the successor of the fisherman, St. Peter. To a work of a different kind he was called as he still lay on his dying-bed, from which he rose to undertake it. The Archbishop of Treves re­quested him to effect a reconciliation between the citizens of Metz and a neighbouring nobleman, whose feud he him­self, though both parties were of his flock, found it impos­sible to appease. The Abbot, indefatigable in all good offices, regardless of suffering and of debility, repaired to Metz, with considerable difficulty, accomplished his mission of charity, and returned to Clairvaux to die amongst his monks, of whom he is said to have had ultimately seven hundred in his own abbey. He himself had founded seventy-two Cistertian monasteries in different countries, whilst such was the influence of his reputation upon that of his Order, that before his death the number of Cisteriian cloisters is estimated at five hundred.'271) He was canonized within twenty years after his death.

It were surely superfluous to add any character of Abbot Bernard, or to vindicate him from the sneers of philosophers, or ever, from the charge of ambition and of red-hot fury against heretics. A mystic and fanaac he might be, but mysticism and fanaticism were integral elements of the spirit of the age, and without them he could hardly have influenced his contemporaries. He seems the very -imper­sonation of the purest religious feeling of the twelfth century.

With respect to the state of the known world at Conrad’s death, a few words, after what has been already stated, will suffice. Of the countries most connected with, and often dependent upon, the Holy lloman Empire, Hungary, it

has been seen, was then quietly governed by Geisa, whilst in Poland the brother Dukes were still strusrjjling for, and

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successively obtaining, supremacy. In Denmark Eric had not, like Canute, submitted to Lothar’s decision. He had continued the civil war ; and bothNiel and Magnus having fallen in battle, had possessed himself of the crown, with as little regard to his nephew Waldemar’s right, as Niel had shown to that of his nephew and Eric’s brother, Canute. But Eric himself was now in the tomb, and his son Swayn was struggling for the succession against Magnus’s son, Canute, both being legitimate heirs of illegitimate kings; whilst Waldemar, in modern acceptation from the first the only rightful heir, claiming notlr’ng beyond his father’s duchy, witli which he was invested, zealously supported the son of his father’s avenger against the son of his father’s murderer. To enter into these broils farther than is neces­sary to explain the intervention of the German sovereigns, were superfluous ; but one Danish achievement of this epoch is illustrative of the social condition of the times. Such were the evils inflicted on the Danish shores by Slavonian piracy, that a citizen of Itoeskilde founded a Gilde, under the name of the ltoeskilde Brotherhood, for repressing it: —a proper instance of the Scandinavian sense of the word gilde. So dangerous was the service esteemed to which this brotherhood devoted itself, that they never embarked to prosecute their object without preparing themselves by Confession, Absolution, and receiving the Sacrament. The rules of the gilde were the equal division of all booty, and the release of all Christian slaves found in the hands of the pirates, if Danes, gratuitously; if strangers, upon paying a moderate ransom. What pecuniary assistance they might require to equip their vessels—they took nothing to sea with them but their arms—was repaid by a propor- rionate share of the booty.

With regard to unconnected and clearly independent countries, in the western peninsula, Countess Teresa, de­throned and imprisoned by her son, was dead ; that son, Alfonso Henriques, having reconquered the greater part of Portugal from the Arabs, had received primarily from his triumphant army, and afterwards from the first Portuguese Cortes, celebrated as the Constituent Cortes of Lamego, the title of King. Castile and Leon were again dissevered.

Alfonso VII. having divided them between his two sons. Navarre in like manner was again dissevered from Aragon, with which, on the other hand, the county of Barcelona, i. e. Catalonia, was indissolubly united. And here occurred one of those instances of disinterested virtue and genuine piety, whether perfectly judicious or not, with which the inclination to refresh the mind of both writer and reader amidst so much perfidy, intrigue, inordinate am­bition, and wanton cruelty, is irresistible. Happily it has not yet been reasoned away, though both overlooked and ridiculed it has been. When the bellicose consort of Queen Urraca, Alfonso of Aragon and Navarre, died without children, both those kingdoms were at a loss for a king. He, his only brother, Ramiro, being a monk, had bequeathed both to the Templars, but to this disposition neither would submit. Navarre proclaimed a remote scion of her own original royal race King; as Aragon did Ramiro, imploring the Pope to grant him a dispensation from his vows, that he might reign, marry, and save the royal line from extinction. It was granted; the monk ascended the throne, and mar­ried. Within the year his Queen bore him a daughter; when, esteeming the object for which the dispensation had been granted attained, he required the Cortes to acknow­ledge and swear allegiance to the infant Petronilla as their Queen; he married her in her cradle to Raymond V., Earl of Barcelona, committed the regency, till the baby Queen should be of age to govern, to him, and returned to his cell. In Moslem Spain, the Almoravide tyranny was at an end. A moslem sect, called the Almohades, or A1 Mowa- hidin,(295) had risen against it in Morocco; and this division of the Almoravide forces had enabled the Spanish Arabs to throw off a yoke long impatiently borne. The Almohades, not having as yet emerged from Africa, Mos­lem Spain, temporarily emancipated, broke into almost as many small states as it contained large towns; many of which, during this period of Mohammedan weakness there, the Christian princes, especially Alfonso the Battler and Alfonso Henriques, conquered.

The state of France was unchanged. The dissensions of the King and Queen ran high, but had not yet severed Aquitaine and Poitou from the crown. Elinor laughed at the monarch, who, ixi obedience to priestly injunctions,

had cut off the long flowing locks which, however un­manly in modern eyes, had long been the mark of royal dignity, and still denoted high birth and chivalry, scornfully complaining that she had married a monk in lieu of a king. Lewis on his part doubted her fidelity, but too well knew the value of her Aquitaine and Poitou principalities to repudiate their sovereign, at least until she should have brought him a son to unite them indissolubly with the crown of France.

In England, Stephen was now in tranquil possession of the crown, upon the understanding that the Empress Maud’s son, Henry Earl of Anjou, should succeed him; to which, upon the loss of his own only son, he readily assented. Scotland, like Ireland, was scarcely known in European politics.

Northern Scand’navia remained pretty much in the condition already described ; but an incident of its recent history may be worth recording, as illustrative of manners. A Norwegian King, who died a.d. 1136, having left two sons, of the respective ages of five and three years, a col­lateral heir claimed the kingdom; when the champions of the joint minor kings deemed their heading their army so indispensable, that they carried the babies to the post they should have occupied as men ; where one of them was crippled for life by the wounds he received in the arms of his warrior-nurse. The state of the church in both Sweden and Norway, being reported as alike disorderly and unsatis­factory, Eugenius III. sent Cardinal Nicholas Breakspeare, an Englishman, of whom more hereafter, to reform it. He endeavoured to inforce in both kingdoms the celibacy of the clergy and the payment of tithes; but was more suc­cessful in establishing a regular hierarchy in Norway, an Archbishop of Drontheim, or Nidaros, with his suffragan bishops in Iceland, the Faroe, the Shetland, and the Orkney islands.

In Russia the sovereignty had, long before the middle of this century, made one step towards the regular heredi­tary principle. The Grand Prince Vladimir, surnamed Monomach (probably after the Byzantine Emperor, Con­stantine Monoinachus), an able and ambitious monarch, had achieved limitation to his own descendants, of the suc­cession still by eldership, not degree of relationship, to the Digitized by Microsoft®

dignity of grand-prince, thus excluding his innumerable kin of vassal princes.(276) About this time Kiew had ceded to Vladimir the title of grand-principality; but Moscow, though not yet elevated to supremacy, was no longer unknown. The Grand-Prince George Vladimirowitz, Vladimir Monmach’s son, passing through it whilst yet a village, was at once charmed with its situation, and, offended by some deficiency in its Lord’s marks of reverence; whereupon he put the disrespectful Lord to death, carried off the children of his victim, the sons as prisoners, the daughter for the wife of his own eldest son; and seizing the village, enlarged and raised it to the rank of a city, inviting, it is said, the most civilized of the Slavonians to people it.

The Greek Empire, it has been seen, was still, in an interval of tolerable prosperity, under the able, if not chivalrously honourable, Manuel Comnenus. It was at that moment engaged in an often-recurring war with Hungary for Servia, which resolutely asserted its independ­ence of both realms.

In Syria, intolerance of a woman’s reign had, when Melisenda made an European kinsman, named Manasse, Constable, been inflamed to the utmost. The disgraceful end of the siege of Damascus, wheresoever the fault lay, hail exasperated all discontents. Baldwin, who had long been impatient of his subjection to his mother, was easily stimulated to wrest the government from her by force of arms. He first compelled her to divide the kingdom with him ; and presently, hungering now for the whole as before for a pait, forcibly reduced her to the single town of Neapolis. But if he unfi’ially indulged his ambition, it was not in a mere spirit of boyish vanity, or as the puppet of the courtiers and politicians, who had urged hitn on. The Archbishop of Tyre asserts that the disappointments and mortifications of his campaign with the Crusaders completely roused him from the vices and follies of youth, to undertake, with a strong sense of their reality, the cares of manhood and sovereignty. And although he still, more chivalrously than regally, indulged in some idly marauding incursions upon Moslem lands, when no longer irritated by Melisenda's authority, he learned to value her wisdom, and seek her advice.

Whilst this was passing in the kingdom of Jerusalem, Noureddin was prosecuting the hostilities his father had begun against the northern Syro-Frank States. Earl Joscelin, who had been spurred to active exertion by the loss of Edessa, was taken prisoner, and never released. His Countess prepared vigorously to defend the remnant of her children’s heritage, but was utterly unable, single­handed, to offer any resistance to the Moslem arms. The pre-eminently chivalrous Prince ilaymond fell in battle. The widowed Princess of Antioch, Constance, was totally unfit to supply the place of her lost consort ; but the Patriarch, who in this emergency seized the reins of govern­ment, made every preparation for defending the capital, against which Noureddin advanced. His measures and the natural strength of Antioch deterred the Moslem conqueror from a siege, to which he as yet deemed himself hardly equal. He passed under the walls, terrifying the Princess and the inhabitants with the display of his forces, performed the ablutions prescribed by his religion, in the sea, in token of having triumphantly reached its shore, and retired to devastate the less defended parts of the two principalities.

Baldwin now came to the assistance of the menaced ladies. But experience had taught him the value of his mother’s policy ; and, instead of rushing into war with the powerful Noureddin, he made overtures to him on their behalf. The triumphant invader, wishing to increase his power for the final struggle by subjugating the still inde­pendent Mohammedan potentates within reach, prior to attacking the whole of the Christian States, agreed to a truce, pledging himself during its continuance to abstain from any inroad upon the remaining territories of Antioch and Edessa, provided the Princess, her son, and the Countess, renounced all pretension to what he had con­quered. For Constance this was sufficient; but it was so clear that the poor remainder of the county of Edessa could not repel invasion whenever the war should be renewed, that Baldwiu advised the Countess to close with the pro­posal of the Emperor Manuel, who offered her a liberal pension for herself and her children upon condition of her surrendering the remainder of the county to him. She did so; and a Greek army, then in Cilicia, was sent to occupy and defend it.    •

Baldwin had an ulterior object in this advice, which was the increase of the Syro-Frank population of his own more especial dominions. All Edessans of this description, the Countess and her family included, upon the transfer of the district to the Byzantine Empire, migrated southwards, and escorted by Baldwin and his troops reached Palestine in safety. Manuel was the least gainer by the transaction; for Noureddin, holding the truce to be void in respect to the county when the Countess with whom it was made ceased to be a party concerned, immediately attacked the terri­tory she had resigned. Constantinopolitan troops fought well only under their Emperor’s own eye, and Manuel was not in Syria; the whole province was finally lost to the Chris­tians within the year, increasing the force of their most formidable enemy. Another incident that about this time tended to weaken the Syro-Frank States was the murder of the Earl of Tripoli. Although his having been suspected of poisoning the Earl of Toulouse may show him not a very estimable character, his death was an evil; being imputed to the native Syrians, it exasperated all of European origin against them, besides leaving Tripoli to a minor. Baldwin immediately committed the regency to the young. Earl’s mother, Countess Hodierna, Melisenda’s youngest sister; and thus both Antioch and Tripoli were ruled by women and children, and the kingdom of Jerusalem, or rather the Syro-Frank States were, for the first time, seriously threatened. For the southern frontier no apprehensions were entertained; the Fatemite Caliphs of Egypt having already sunk deep into the degeneracy, the lethargy oi voluptuous indolence, that seems to be the inevitable lot of every Oriental dynasty.

BOOK II.

♦

CHAPTER I.

Election of the Duke of Swabia.—His character.— Affairs of Germany.—Contention for Danish Crown. —Ecclesiastical Disputes.—Henry the Lion.—His Quarrels and Claims.—Lodesans at the Diet of Constance.—Affairs of Italy.—Preparations for the Coronation Progress.—Actual State of Italy.

[1152—1154.

The circumstances under which Frederic Duke of Swabia presented himself as a candidate for the crown were seem­ingly little different from those under which his father, Duke Frederic the One-eyed, had twenty seven years before been supplanted by the Duke of Saxony; but what dif­ference there was, told in favour of the son. To the high reputation for military skill and prowess which, like his father, he had earned, he superadded the fame of a Crusader, to which perhaps his uncle Conrad had been materially indebted for his election. Like his father, he had enjoyed opportunities of displaying the gentler virtues of chivalry, as well as its valiancy, having in early youth proved his liberality by the dismissal of prisoners, who fell to his private share, unransomed. His prudence and indomitable constancy had appeared upon divers occa­sions, especially during the late unfortunate Crusade; his

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conciliatory spirit and love of peace, 111 his efforts to reconcile his maternal uncle, the discontented Welf, with his pro­bably more highly valued paternal uncles, Conrad and Henry Jasomir. Finally, like his father, he had been designated by an imperial uncle as his successor, and as such intrusted with the ensigns of sovereignty.

But, more fortunate than his father, there was, really as well as apparently, neither rival candidate to oppose, nor crafty hostile faction to circumvent him. The only possible rival would again have been the Duke of Saxony; who, besides that he could at best offer but the promise of what the Duke of Swabia already was, had shocked the feelings of his contemporaries and offended the clergy, by refusing to follow Conrad to the defence of the Holy Land, upon the plea of a home crusade against the heathen Slavonians, which, far from actively performing and promoting, he had rather counteracted than aided ; and if he had contributed towards producing a nominal conversion of those Slavo­nians, he had, with apparent indifference, seen them relapse into their original idolatry. And if nevertheless an adverse partv there were who might think of bringing Henry the Lion forward, a fortuitous combination of circumstances, coinciding with the enlightenment of Frederic and his friends by the knowledge of the artifices practised to disap­point his father, would have sufficed to prevent a similar mortifying result.

But in fact the position of affairs allowed no time for manoeuvring. Many of the members of the Diet convoked by Conrad were still on their way to Bamberg, when the sovereign whom they went to meet, was removed from the busy scene. The princes appear thereupon, in concurrence with the official convoker of electoral diets, to have imme­diately transferred their place of sitting to Frankfurt-on- the-Main ; and there, where they seem to have been joined by numbers, constituting themselves an Electoral Diet, to have proceeded to the business of supplying the place of the deceased Emperor. No delay seems to have been caused by deliberation or hesitation as to the choice of a successor; for in little more than a fortnight after Conrad’s death, upon the 5th of March, 1152, Frederic, Duke of Swabia, was by all the princes of the empire present, and large was the number, acclaimed—to borrow the expressive Fortu-

guese word for such impetuously unanimous proclamation —King of Germany and future Emperor.

It may be observed bv the way that it was from the epoch of Frederic’s election that Frankfurt superseded Mainz as the regular locality for the sitting of Electoral Diets, as far as actual regularity can then be said to have existed.(-7But what more importantly characterizes this Electoral Diet is, that it was the first in which deputies from cities took part.(2?8) The words “took part” must however be understood in a qualified sense. As there was no contest, there could be no voting ; and it cannot be inferred from the deputies of cities having joined in the acclamation, that the princes would have allowed them a right of suf­frage in the Diet:(2"9) still it was a forward step in the political caveer of the German cities, and a step never retraced ; as it is certain that Frederic I. habitually sum­moned such deputies to his diets. It is likewise said that Italian nobles from Lombardy and Tuscany joined in proclaiming Frederic.(28°) But if this were so, it is self- evident that their presence must have been accidental (that is to say, with reference to the Electoral Diet; they might have brought petitions for redress, appeals against ill-usage, to Bamberg), and their acclamations a merely spontaneous acknowledgment of the new monarch on the part of Italy. Italy, though so integral a part of the Holy Roman Em­pire, had been treated hy the Othos and their successors as a conquered country, had been deprived of the electoral rights she possessed, far from being allowed a voice in the election of the Emperors, her future sovereigns ;—a principal cause possibly of her alienation from her German Emperors. And even if she had been allowed a vote, as no Italians could have been summoned to the purely German Diet convoked to meet at Bamberg—the affairs of Italy being regularly transacted in Italian Diets—there would not have been time to bring them across the Alps, obstructed by the winter’s snow, when, removing to Frankfurt, the Diet changed its character.

The election carried, no delay was suffered to occur in the performance of all the rites and ceremonies requisite to secure to Frederic the throne of his deceased uncle, and of his, as well as that uncle’s, maternal ancestry, traced back to Charlemagne. Five days after his proclamation at

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Frankfurt, he 'was crowned at Achen, in what is believed to have been the chapel of his mighty progenitor.

The new monarch was, at the period of his election, in the very prime of manhood—to wit, in the thirty-second year of' his age. He was of middle stature, well made, with curly, fair hair and beard, of a reddish hue—whence the Germans surnamed him Rotkbart, and the Italians Barbarossa, which, in the Latin Chronicles of the day, becomes iEnobarbus,—with agreeable features and blue eyes, whose serene yet penetrat’ng look seemed to read the soul of all upon whom it dwelt. His carriage was firm and dignified ; and in all the bodily exercises of the tilt-yard, as in the hunter’s craft—both important accom­plishments in the middle ages—he was unrivalled. His dress was neither studied nor neglccted ; and his cheerfulness enlivened the banquet, where he never per­mitted conviviality to degenerate into excess. These qualities, together with the strength and keenness of his understanding, the general snperiority of his intellectual powers, the peculiar, unfailing memory — an especial attribute seemingly of princes—which never suffers name or face to escape, and the winning graciousness of his manners, are generally admitted : but with regard to proficiency in scholarship and to moral character, few historical personages have been more contradictorily described.

Writers of the Guelph party assert that Frederic could not read ; those of the Ghibeline, that he could not only both read and write, but was a good Latinist, and delighted in the perusal of the classics. Both parties agree, however, as to his devotion to the study of history—whether he read it himself or employed his chaplains to read it to him— he esteemed a knowledge of the past indispensable to the just appreciation of the present and prevision of the future. That he understood Latin, as well as some li\ ing languages, sufficiently for all useful purposes, will appear in the course of this narrative; and there still exist verses composed by him in the Romance language of trouba­dours, which (easy, if not aiming at poetry) attest his being something of a l’nguist.(-8l) In regard to his moral character, Gi - lphs describe him as of inordinate ambition, of unbridled passions—whether meaning thereby appetites,

or simply ambition, seems doubtful—which he gratified reckless of all obstacles, of obstinacy invincible by reason : as the wantonly lawless assailant of free republics—meaning the Lombard cities, as easily provoked to hatred, ever un­appeasable; and so inveterately jealous of his kinsman, Henry the Lion, as to have caught at an insufficient, if not absolutely false, plea, to despoil him of his patrimony. Ghibeline writers, on the other hand, represent Frederic Barbarossa as the first of chivalrous heroes, yet waging war only when he saw in victory the best means to insure the stability of peace; stern indeed and terrible to those whom he deemed transgressors of the law, but ever placable towards the penitent ; and never, either in prosperity or adversity, losing his self-possession or the perfect command of his passions ; thoroughly religious, and moral even to austerity.

In fact, it is even now difficult to Write the history of this reign with perfect impartiality. The accusations, brought by the partisans of the Popes and the Lombard cities against the unflinching assertor of Imperial rights, have, down to the present day (with few exceptions) been adopted by all lovers of iiberty — all philoso­phic contemners of the lust of conquest: influenced by the sympathy which cannot but be felt with Italian struggles for independence of a foreign, although legal, sovereignty, and not unfrequently perhaps by imperfect knowledge, less of facts than of the ideas then attached to words. Later writers have taken the word republic in its classical and modern, rather than its mediaeval sense; when, as has been seen, it was perfectly compatible with loyalty, if not with much obedience, to an emperor. On the other hand, the conservative, who shrinks from the revolutionary horrors with which the last sixty years have teemed, must sympathize with the con­servative and royalist energies of the chivalric Emperor— must recollect the ephemeral character of the liberty at which the Lombards aimed. But, without adopting the extreme opinions of either Guelph or Ghibeline, it is presumed that che history of his actions will show that Frederic’s ruling principle was justice—justice always strictly impartial, and if sometimes too inexorably rigid, sometimes, to the feelings of a milder age, severe, even to

barbarity; yet even in this severity tempered with a then unusual degree of leniency, since it was very seldom sanguinary—an opinion in which two of the exceptions amongst liberal historians, above slluded to, Wolfgang Menzel(282) and Simonde de Sismondi, concur. It was thiy

!)assion for justice, if it may be so termed, that instigated lis pertinacious determination not to suffer the Imperial dignity, inherited from the Othos and Charlemagne, to be impaired in his hands by the success of the Lombard insurrection. Italy, he deemed, as, indeed, it deemed itself, still an integral part of the Empire, of which the Pope was primate, supreme in iis spiritual concerns, as in those of the whole of Christendom.

An instance of this inflexible justice occurred even at the coronation of the newly-proclaimed monarch. As, returning from the altar, he passed along the nave of the old Cathedral, a servant, whom, for some flagrant offence, he had dismissed, threw himself at his feet, in full confidence that the joy of the moment would insure him the pardon he implored. But with calm sternness Frederic answered, “Justice, not dislike, caused thy dismissal; and I see no grounds for revoking it.”—Did the princes who heard these words feel that they had raised to the throne a monarch who w ould curb their arbitrary despotism ?

Frederic’s first measure was to despatch an embassy to Rome, announcing his election to the Pope, and professing his devotion to the Church, together with all the zeal of his deceased uncle for the defence of the Koly Sepulchre. But neither did he solicit, nor Eugenius III. intimate expectation that he should, any papal ratification of his election. rl he I’ope and the Komans, opposed as they were to each other, united, unconsciously it may be presumed, in pressing the new sovereign to hasten to Rome for his coronation; each hoping, through his co-oTiei'ation, to triumph. But Frederic judged it necessary to pacify Germany, and her dependencies north of the Alps, ere he should cross the mountain-barrier, and tojch the tangled skein of Italian affairs, which he, nevertheless, acknowledged it to be his duty, as Emperor, to disentangle.

The feuds and points in dispute chiefly demanding his immediate attention in this northern portion of the empire, were,—the contest for the crown of Denmark, one of the

pretenders to which instantly appealed to him ;—the affairs of Henry the Lion, as well his quarrels in Saxony, as his claim to Bavaria;—and some questions of ecclesiastical rights.

In Denmark, Sweyn, supported by the Zealanders, and Duke Waldemar, had thoroughly defeated Canute, pos­sessing himself of the kingdom. Canute, after vainly seeking assistance from the connexions of his mother—her second husband, the King of Sweden, and her Polish kindred—and from his German neighbours—the Duke of Saxony and the Archbishop of Bremen—repaired to Merseburg, where Frederic was then holding his first Diet, and besought him, as suzerain, to adjudge his grandfather’s crown to him. Frederic, who neglected no opportunity of inforcing the rights of imperial sovereignty, invited Sweyn to his court, that he might investigate and decide between the claims of the rival kinsmen; adding to this grave motive of the invitation, a courteous wish to renew his acquaintance witli a comrade of his youth.—Sweyn had received knighthood from Conrad III., and passed some years in that Emperor’s court and camp. Accepting the invitation, he had every reason to be satisfied with the friendliness of his reception, as be should have been with the proposed scheme of adjustment. The Emperor and Diet, after investigating the pretensions of the parties, appear to have considered the title of the last king as legalized by the obedience rendered him; and therefore decided that Sweyn, as his son, should retain the kingdom, granting Zealand, as a vassal principality, to Canute. Waldemar, who had accompanied his cousin Sweyn to Merseburg, approved of the sentence; and Canute, at that moment absolutely despoiled and helpless, willingly submitted to it; but Sweyn, who was in pos­session of the whole, saw no reason for ceding to his adversary the very province to whose attachment and exertions he was indebted for the crown. In all likelihood, however, it was this very attachment of Zealand to Sweyn, that induced treueric to select, and Waldemar to approve of it, for Canute’s principality, as being the province in which he would find it most difficult to excite a rebellion Be this as it may, Sweyn was speedily convinced that at Merseburg to resist Frederic’s will, confirmed by that of

the Diet, was out of the question. He submitted therefore to the decision; did homage for his kingdom, and, upon Whitsunday, the King of Denmark, in royal array, his crown upon his head, bore the sword of state in procession before his liege Lord. But scarcely had he set foot in Denmark upon his return, ere he declared the convention null, as having been extorted by force, and positively refused to give Canute investiture of Zealand. Waldemar, who had in some measure guaranteed the execution of the Diet’s decree, now interfered. With considerable diffi­culty, and it is supposed not without the menace, at least, of compulsion, he at length prevailed upon the king—not to cede his favourite province, but—to grant his rival, in compensation for Zealand, several fiefs, collectively of nearly equal pecuniary and military value; but which, from their widely disseminated localities, could not alf'ord him dangerous political power. Frederic appears to have taken no notice of this infraction of the arrangement he had ordered, probably being engrossed with more important affairs; for although in the then existing deficiency, if such a verbal contradiction be admissible, of the present means of rapid communication, he would not be as imme­diately :nformed of the violation, as if the date of the transaction had been the nineteenth century, it cannot be supposed that the injured party would neglect to lay his complaint before his imperial protector.

Henry the Lion was one of the first applicants to the Merseburg Diet for redress. But as his grand affair, his claim to Bavaria, was not decided at this Diet, and of his Saxon quarrels, that were, the principal related to ecclesiastical rights, it will be more convenient to speak first of those ecclesiastical questions which were named as the third of the points occupying the new monarch and his Diet. The especial concerns of the Duke of Saxony will find their proper place afterwards.

These ecclesiastical question* again related to episcopal election and episcopal investiture. Utrecht, partly in the arrogaree of wealth, partly in devotion to the Papal See, had resisted Conrad’s decision in a double election ; the Imperial right to which, even Lothar’s submissive interpre­tation of the Calixtine Concordat, confirmed. Frederic’s first care was to compel obedience to that decision ; and

upon leaving Aix-la-Chapelle, prior even to the assembling of the Merseburg Diet, he had visited Utrecht, installed the Bishop preferred by the deceased Emperor, and imposed a heavy fine upon the Chapter as the penalty of its con­tumacy. A similar contest had taken place in the archi- episcopal see of Magdeburg, where the Dean was chosen by one half the Chapter, the Provost—a high office in German Cathedral Chapters, to which there appears to be nothing analogous in the English hierarchy — by the other; and neither party would give way. Frederic of course in­terposed ; but instead of pronouncing in favour of either candidate, brought forward a third of his own; this was Wichmann, Bishop of Zeitz, who is said to have bribed the Canons, whilst Frederic prevailed upon the Dean to resign his pretensions in favour of this prelate; who was then elected by a large majority. Frederic, without wait­ing for papal sanction or consecration, immediately invested him with the temporalities, and the new metropolitan at once took possession of his archbishopric. The rejected Provost made his complaints to the Pope, who not only refused to sanction the third election, but addressed a severe reprimand to those German prelates who had solicited the archiepiscopal pall for Wichmann. He re­proached them for their concurrence in the translation of a bishop, an act which only the most urgent necessity could justify, or excuse, and for their disregard of the absence of spiritual sanction to the transaction; finally commanding them to obtain from his beloved son Frederic, perfect freedom in the election of prelates, and abstinence from every thing contrary to the will of God, the laws of the Church, and his own royal engagements.

But the lofty language of this admonition to the German prelates, Eugenius III. was not prepared to sustain. Em­broiled as usual with the Romans, of whom he repeatedly complained to Frederic, imploring his aid against them, and at enmity with his Norman vassals, he was in no condition to risk the loss of the future Emperor’s friend­ship ; and the Magdeburg election was not the only question of the kind then before the papal tribunal, calculated to produce that loss. Henry, Archbishop of Mainz, he whom Conrad III. had selected as his son’s Counsellor, whom his friends admired for his ascetic

p 5

piety, ami eulogized as the very type of an apostolic prelate, had, by a part of his Chapter, that had originally and factiously opposed his election, been accused to the Pope of the most unapostolic, the most unclerical conduct, —of well nigh every vice, and especially of simony. The Archbishop sent Arnold von Selenhoven, a Mainz Patri­cian whom he had made Provost of" his Chapter, to Rome, to vindicate him from these charges before the Supreme Pontiff. Whether they were true or false, which remains problematical, this trusted and deeply indebted friend,

Eroved a traitor. In lieu of refuting, he rather corro- orated the accusation, solicited the see for himself, and, it is said, bribed those in the Pope’s confidence high. Eugenius did not hold himself sufficiently informed to decide and act in so nice a question ; and commissioned his Legate in Germany to inquire further into the matter.

Under these circumstances the Pope instructed the same Legate to negotiate as he best could the settlement of these disputes with the Emperor; who on his part, independently of any religious feelings, had too much upon his hands, and in view, not to be very desirous of avoiding a quarrel with Rome. Hence early in the year 1153, whilst a Diet was sifting at Constance, a convention to the following effect was concluded. Frederic engaged to defend the honour, the rights, and the possessions of the Papal See against every.one; to make no treaty with either the insurgent Romans or the King of Sicily, without the l'ope’s concurrence; to prevent the Greek Emperor from effecting any establishment in Italy, and to co-operate ir. subjecting the Romans to the papal sceptre, as of yore. Eugenius, in return, engaged to crown the King as Emperor without delay, and in every way to promote and favour the lawful, imperial rights, even excommunicating, if needful, whoever should deny him due obedience.

It is somewhat remarkable that, of the point in dispute, episcopal election, no mention is made. Roth parties alike shrinking from a rupture, this question—that is to say, the right reading of the existing Concordat, upon which ’t*was hardly possible they should agree—was, probably by tacit consent, reserved for future discussion, when each might hope to be more advantageously situated. The Pope silently suffered Wichmann to retain his archbishopric;

and in the course of the year this prelate, really of the Emperor’s appointing, received his pall, not indeed from Eugenius III., who did not long survive his friend, St. Ber­nard, but from his successor, Anastasius IV. On the other hand, the Legate, whether influenced by proof or by bribes, (283) affirming the truth of the charges against Archbishop Henry, Frederic, without interfering, saw him deposed, and Arnold substituted in his see, by papal authority. Pie similarly suffered, or connived at, the further proceedings of the Legate, who deposed some other prelates, these for conduct unbefitting churchmen, those as superannuated.

The disputes and complaints brought before the Diet by Henry the Lion and his antagonists are next to be related; and so important is the part played throughout the reign of Frederic and some years of his successor’s by this prince— another ancestor of those Hanoverian princes, whom mar­riage with a granddaughter of the Stuarts called to the British throne—that a few words concerning him, his character, and his supposed views, will not be here mis­placed. Henry, at this period two-and-twenty years of age, was a remarkably handsome man, an accomplished knight, an able and a daring warrior—in these, and in many other points, as morality and stern resolution, very like, if not quite equal to, Frederic Barbarossa. But he was, upon the showing of the Guelphs themselves, as ambitious, haughty, uncontrollable in his passions, impetuously bent upon attaining his object, and reckless of all interposing obstacles, as his surname of the Lion would seem to indicate, and as those same Guelphs have painted Frederic. That he really repaid with some affection the warm attachment which his imperial kinsman, despite all allegations to the contrary, evidently bore him—since he long proved it by his actions—there seems no reason to doubt; but whether that affection were sufficient permanently to reconcile him to his own subordinate though exalted station, to their reciprocal relations as vassal and Liege Lord, is to say the least problematic. As an independent sovereign, he would in all likelihood have remained Frederic's faithful and efficient friend, as at his accession he was his faithful and efficient friend and vassal. As yet, however, Henry was in no condition to even dream of shaking off his alle­giance ; and his ambition probably soared not beyond

the position of the first and greatest Prince of the Empire, holding in his hand the balance between Emperor and vassalage.

Henry was at this epoch Duke of Saxony, and, in right of his mother and of his paternal grandmother, lord of im­mense domains, allodia and fiefs, within the duchy. The locality of his dominions had constituted him the advanced guard of Christian Germany against Heathen Slavonia; whence conquered tribes generally became his vassals, and thus, through him, members of the Empire. Ilis only pos­sible rivals with respect to them were the King of Denmark, the Polish Dukes, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. Of these possible rivals, the attention and resources of two, the Dane and the Poles, were, if not engrossed, yet habitually diverted from foreign conquest, by intestine broils, and the third was so inferior to him in power, that in every joint conquest of Slavonian provinces, the Lion got the lion’s share. And this mighty, this ambitious prince, deemed himself wronged, unjustly defrauded of his patrimony, the duchy of Bavaria.

But Henry’s first appearance before the Diet was to be as accused, not as claimant. He was involved in serious quarrels with neighbours and vassals, sp;ritual and tem­poral, one of them of some standing. Upon the promise of the Slavonians to receive baptism, which had put an end to the recent Slavonian crusade, the Archbishop of Bremen, announcing the restoration of the Slavonian bishoprics— suffragan sees of Bremen—proceeded, without even com­municating his design to the Duke of Saxony—with whom, it will be remembered, he was not upon very friendly terms— to confer the see of Altenburg upon Vicelin. A better, a more appropriate choice could not have been made. Vicelin, now an old man, had in his youth studied at Paris; but finding the subtleties of scholasticism repugnant to his simple piety, he withdrew from the arena of worldly learning, to devote himself to the diffusion of Gospel light amongst the Heathen. As a missionary he had been successful with these same Slavonians, having, by his heroic constancy, his meekness, and other Christian virtues, aided by his ascetic character—e. //., he wore haircloth next his skin, never tasted animal food, to the idolaters impressive proofs of his sincerity—wrought many conversions. It was not

the selection of Vicelin, but the manner of his elevation to his see, that was the stumbling block. The Duke, when informed of this act of his former enemy, the Arch­bishop, had angrily exclaimed that, although fully sensible of the merits of Vicelin, he would not, until he himself invested him with the see, suffer him to be acknowledged as Bishop of Altenburg. Vicelin, perplexed by this unex­pected difficulty, applied to his Metropolitan for direction as to his conduct; and the Archbishop pronounced, that of laymen, to the Emperor only, as highest amongst the sons of men, was the right of investing ecclesiastics con­ceded. The Emperor had earned it by his own acts and those of his predecessors, in endowing the Church with lands and principalities, with wealth and power, and to him the Church might, without degradation, bow. But the bishops, should they stoop to receive investiture of vassal princes, would soon be the servants of those princes whose lords thev now were; and he, Vicelin, owed it to his age, and the dignity of his pure life, not to be the first to bring such obloquy upon the House of God. Obeying his eccle­siastical superior, Vicelin repaired to his diocese, and, without paying any regard to the authority of the feudal Lord of the country, Duke Henry, assumed his episcopal dignity and duties. But the revenues of his see were withheld by the Duke’s order; and the stubborn Slavonians proved unmanageable by influence merely spiritual. The prelate was soon convinced that without the temporal sup­port of the Duke he could not so govern his flock as to keep it in the right path, and to do this was, he felt, the one imperative duty to which all other considerations must give way. In this conviction he repaired to Liineville, where Henry then resided, to solicit such support. Henry professed the utmost veneration for him individually, but persisted in his claim. Vicelin then observed, “ In the ser- “ vice of Him who humbled Himself for our sake, I would “ yield me as a thrall to the meanest of thy people; then “ why not to thee, whom the Lord has placed so high “ amongst princes ? ” Upon these grounds the prelate submitted, received investiture of his bishopric from the Duke, and thenceforward, supported by him, had been able, more satisfactorily to himself, to discharge his episcopal functions.

This had been the state of the affair during the last few months of Conrad’s reign, when the Archbishop, who meant not to submit to any ducal usurpation, might naturally expect redress from the army assembling to chastise the Duke’s contumacy toward the Diet and the Emperor. Disappointed by the altered course of events con­sequent upon the demise of the crown, he now appealed to the Merseburg Diet against such ducal usurpation, bringing the wrongfully invested prelate with him. He urged, in addition to the reasons previously given to Vicelin, that the blood, freely shed in the late crusade, had been shed, not to enrich princes, but to diffuse Christianity, the performance of which great duty must not be suffered to depend upon the caprice of any layman; and finally, he accused the Duke of conduct doubly criminal, as tending both to bind the Church in degrading fetters, and to break the whole­some bonds knitting himself to the Emperor.

The Duke replied, that a very few only of the Slavo­nians were really converted ; and these, but for the terror inspired by his arms, would apostatize or 'oe murdered; wherefore, in a district won and preserved to the Church at the price of his own and his vassals’ blood, he claimed the rights and the authority held by princes in all old Christian countries.

Hard seemed the task assigned the new monarch of settling this dispute without alienating either party, his haughty prelacy or his potent kinsman, and without sacrificing any of the prerogatives of sovereignty. And well did he accomplish it, evading the difficulty. In con­currence- with the Diet he pronounced, “ The Duke of “ Saxony, in all those lands north of the Elbe, which he “ enjoys through our imperial favour, shall, in our name, {< found and endow bishoprics, and give investiture of their “ temporalities, as though the act were our own.” Thus the dignity of the Church was saved by the Duke’s acting solely as the Emperor’s representative; and the incorporation of the conquered Slavonian provinces with Germany was affirmed and recognised, whilst Henry got the exercise of the power he claimed, his right to it, if not admitted, bc-ing at least, not denied. He appeared to be satisfied, an I Frederic hoped that he was so.(284)

The next of the Duke of Saxony’s quarrels to be decided

was with his Saxon old hereditary enemy and cousin, Margrave Albert. The two noble Saxon families of Plotzkau and Winzenburg were extinct, by the death of the last of each line, and the Duke and the Margrave were at variance for the fiefs that had in consequence lapsed to the feudal superiors. This dispute Frederic settled more easily, by a compromise, assigning to each the domains of one of the extinct families.

But all this was of inferior moment in the eyes of the Lion, whose great object was the- recovery of Bavaria. To this duchy lie now formally renewed the claim, advanced under Conrad, upon the grounds then alleged. Frederic evidently felt so vital a dispute between two princes, both nearly related to him, the one his uncle, the other his cousin-german, peculiarly irksome and embarrassing. He neither would nor could pronounce against either—despoil either. Neither would he allow it to be decided out of hand by the Diet then sitting, but referred it to another Diet to be soon held at Wurzburg, thus hoping, perhaps, to gain time for negotiation.

To this Wurzburg Diet the Dukes of Saxony and of Bavaria were of course summoned, and Henry the Lion promptly obeyed the call. But Ilenry Jasomir, aware of the attack to be made upon him, and mistrustful probably of his nephew’s predilection for his younger kinsman, upon the plea of some informality in the summons sent him, took no further notice of it, than to allege the inviolability of the act, in Diet, of a deceased monarch, as sufficient answer to his rival’s pretensions. Again and again, to Diet after Diet was the summons to Henry Jasomir repeated, again and again to be by him contumaciously neglected. Whereupon the last of the series, the Easter Diet of 1154, which sat at Goslar, without entering into the question either of Henry the Welf’s hereditary right or of the validity of Conrad’s grant to the Babenbergers, Leopold and Henry, pronounced the duchy of Bavaria forfeited by the contumacy of Henry, Margrave of Austria, and there­fore adjudged it to Henry, Duke of Saxony.

But Frederic took no immediate steps to give effect to this decree of the Goslar Diet, for even whilst the question was pending had his attention been forcibly called to Italy: As early as during the Wurzburg Diet of 1152 had he

been urged, as before intimated, by the letters and legates of Eugenius III. to visit Rome, in order to receive the Imperial crown from his hand, aud to support the Papal authority against the turbulent Romans, amongst whom the Supreme Pontiff was really living upon sufferance; whilst they still called the Eternal Citv a republic, and, under the exciting influence of Arnold of Brescia, daily became more unruly as a flock, more dangerous as subjects, and even as fellow-citi?.ens. Thither too had Apulian exiles, 1 leaded by Robert, the despoiled Prince of Capua,(285) brought their complaints of their King’s oppressive govern­ment, their claim to protection by the Emperor, as Lord Paramount, and their prayers for aid to recover their property from the tyrant Roger. Frederic promised all that was asked, but observed to his petitioners that he must needs settle the affairs of Germany prior to crossing the Alps, which he could scarcely hope to accomplish in less than two years. He accordingly appointed September 1154 for his coronation progress.

But more urgently yet was the imperial presence in Italy to be implored. In the month of March of the intervening year 1153, during the Diet held at Constance, two citizens of Lodi, named Uomobuono and Albernando,(286) chancing to be prerent, were so deeply impressed by the thoughtful­ness, judgment and strict justice regulating Frederic’s every decision, every measure, that they conceived a sudden lively hope of rescuing through his potent inter­position their native city from the .ibyss of misery into which it was plunged. They hurried to a church where each grasped a mighty crucifix, bearing which they pre­sented themselves before the monarch in full Diet, and fell, bathed in tears, at his feet. The action excited general surprise; they were raised up, and Albernatido then ad­dressed Frederic in German. He called upon him to redress the wrongs long since inflicted upon Lodi by the rapacious as ambitious Milanese, who were endeavouring gradually to enslave the whole of Lombardy; who, envious of the commercial prosperity of the Lodesans, had overpowered them by superior numbers, demolished their town, and driven the inhabitants even from the ruins, forcing them to dwell in six villages, built in the vicinity. Nay, not content with this degree of oppression, Milan,

finding that the Tuesday market, which had long been the chief source of that object of their envy—Lodi’s commercial prosperity—still continued to flourish in one of the six villages, had now required its transfer to remote open fields, “ where,” as the orator sadly observed in the con­cluding words of his complaint, “ no one resides, no one buys or sells.”

Alike to Frederic’s veneration for justice, and to his lofty sense of the rights and duties of sovereignty, was this tyrannous oppression, this lawless destruction of one of his cities by another, revolting. The words and tears of the Lodesans excited general sympathy in the Diet, and in him provoked a burst of wrath, productive of measures injudi­ciously precipitate. He promised the petitioners redress for the past and protection for the future, and promised both so eagerly, that he forgot his want of means, until he should be in Lombardy at the head of an army, to afford either. He forthwith addressed a letter to the Milanese, rebuking them for their criminal conduct, threatening retribution, and commanding them instantly to repair the injuries they had unlawfully inflicted upon Lodi. With this letter he despatched Schwicker von Aspremont to Milan, bidding him take his way round by the ruins of Lodi, to cheer the dispersed citizens with the tidings of imperial protection.(287)

These tidings the Lodesans had already received, and deemed them the very reverse of cheering. Glorying in what they had achieved for their suffering country, Alber- nando and Uomobuono had hurried home to proclaim their spontaneous patriotic effort and its success, to reap, as they hoped, their reward, in the grateful admiration and joy of their suffering fellow-citizens. Painfully had they been disappointed. At first, no credence being given to their report, they were scoffed at as vain boasters. But when the arrival of Schwicker left no room for doubt, conviction produced only consternation and terror. The promised imperial protection, even if no longer the nullity it had long appeared, was still beyond the Alps, and to have sought it would assuredly provoke the vengeful rage of the implacable tyrant close at hand. The Consuls—the municipal forms seeming to have been retained as a protest against such dispersion—earnestly represented to Digitized by Microsoft®

the imperial commissioner that the appeal of Albernando and Uomobuono had been wholly unauthorized, and im­plored him both to forbear visiting Milan, and to leave the imperial missive in their custody, to be delivered when the Emperor should be upon his march. The most phi­losophic of the modern historical patrons of Milan and Lombardy allow that this excessive terror of the Lodesans gees far towards satisfying the impartial inquirer that the enmity of Frederic to Milan was the natural fruit of her aggressive ambition and tyranny.(288) The prayers in­spired by that terror were unavailing. Already Frederic’s officers knew that it was not for them to examine the expediency or inexpediency of obeying his command ; and Seliwicker proceeded to Milan.

Sixteen years had now elapsed since an emperor had been seen in Italy, or had actively interfered in the concerns of this portion of the Empire. During so long an interval of virtual self-government, Milan, though stiil esteeming herself part of the Empire, still professing allegiance to the successor of Charlemagne and the Othos, had, in the pride of her wealth and power, well-nigh forgotten that allegiance implied any restriction upon her independence or her arbitrary proceedings. Her Consuls, anxious probably to secure popular concurrence and support In whatever course they should, in an affair so momentous, adopt, convened the Great Council: there, in presence of the assembled citizens, received the messenger of their acknowledged sovereign, opened his letter, and read it aloud. The burst of democratic fury provoked by its contents may be imagined. The offensive despatch was torn piecemeal and trampled under foot ; whilst the bearer —its tenor having been made known to the whole population —was assailed with the reckless brutality of mob-violence, and in imminent danger of a similar fate. Protected, however, as far as safely might be, by the more cautious constituted authorities, he effected his escape, and bore back to the monarch, whose life was dedicated to the maintenance of justice and the rights of the crown, his report of Milanese rebellious insolence.

Frederic needed not this stimulus to quicken his preparations for his coronation-progress or expedition. It 13 stated that he was actively negotiating with the great

vassals, urging them to meet him in force at the appointed time upon the Lech. Hence it must be inferred that he had from the first designed to assert and re-establish the Imperial sovereign authority in Lombardy, since, for the coronation-progress, neither urging nor negotiation, unless as to the proper time for undertaking it, could be needful. All who claimed right of suffrage at the election —which then, it has been seen, included most of, if not all, the Great Vassals and Princes of the Empire—were bound to attend the newly-elected monarch to Rome, and attest his identity to the Pope, lest his Holiness should inadvertently be deluded into placing the Imperial crown upon an usurper’s head. For this purpose the ecclesiastical Princes were, upon this occasion—naturally a progress of pomp and splendour, not an expedition with warlike intentions— bound to head their vassals in person, not Vicariously through their Stewards.

In proof that Frederic now sought from the German Princes something beyond the feudal service, so strictly due that its refusal incurred the ban of the Empire, it appears that he was obliged to purchase the assent of the Duke of Zaringen by a promise of favour in respect of his pre­tensions to the county of Burgundy, now the most considerable of the fragments into which the Burgundian kingdom was broken up. It will be recollected that Lothar had, rather as an act of favour than of justice, adjudged that county to Conrad Duke of Zaringen, who having been unable to maintain it against the rightful collateral heir, the homage of Renault de Chalons for it had at length been admitted. But Duke Conrad had never acquiesced in the admission, and hostilities had been well- nigh continuous between him and the Earl during their joint lives. Both were now dead ; the Duke’s son renewed the claim against the only child of the deceased Earl, Countess Beatrice. To gain Frederic’s favour in this feud, Duke Berthold promised efficient succours upon the present occasion. The final decision between the claimants appears to have been deferred until after the Italian expedition, during which the tranquillity of the Truce of God, or of the Realm's Peace, was to prevail throughout Germany, under pain of the degrading sentence of carrying a dog for Us violation

Amongst other preparations, Frederic endeavoured to secure Greek co-operation against the Normans—a step in' perfect consonance with the treaty between the Emperors Conrad and Manuel, if not equally so with that between himself and Eugenius III. But it will be seen that, under existing circumstances, the Pope would hardly object to a Greek alliance. To this end he despatched ambassadors to Constantinople, to announce his accession and approaching departure for Italy, to demand the execution of the treaty, and, in order yet further to strengthen the bonds of friendship and relationship between the imperial houses, to ask the hand of a Greek Princess for the German Emperor. Frederic had been enabled thus to assume the part of a wooer, by a divorce from his first wife, Adelheid, daughter of the Margrave of Vohburg, pronounced by the Legates of Eugenius III. at the Constance Diet. Little is known of this lady, or of the time during which she had been Frederic’s consort, and not much more touching the grounds of the divorce. Bishop Otho names the fact without assigning any cause ; some writers accuse Adelheid of the habitual violation of her nuptial vow; (289) others allege consanguinity—which, whatever the motive, is almost the only plea upon which a Roman Catholic marriage can be dissolved,(290) or rather declared to have been originally invalid—a true plea in the present case, Frederic and Adelheid being sixth cousins; and those of the Guelph inclining insinuate that the Emperor was merely tired of her. The question is of no moment save as it affects the character of a great man ; and in the absence of all means of ascertaining the facts, the judgment must needs be influenced by what is known concerning the parties. In Frederic’s whole life nothing like levity or self-indulgence appears, while it is something against the lady, that very soon after her repudiation she gave her hand to an officer of the household. What is certain is that Frederic had no children b\ Adelheid, and that, in a political point of view, sterility is a serious fault in a royal consort. The negotiation with Constantinople was still pending, when Frederic was at length able to set forward for Italy.

At the appointed time the feudal army of Germany assembled upon the banks of the Lech. The Duke of Saxony presented himself, prepared to support the Emperor’s

views with the energy that was to be expected from an attached kinsman, indebted to him for much favour, and looking for more. But Frederic must have had extraordi­nary reliance upon the ties of blood, or have been strangely blinded by affection for Henry, if, when he saw him join the army at the head of forces nearly equal to those lie could call especially his own,(®l) he felt no misgivings as to the policy of adding a second national duchy to the Lion’s actual possessions.

As the coronation-progress appears to have been the most regular of all feudal operations in Germany, it may be worth while here to insert the description of the organi­zation of the Imperial army for this occasion, as given by Raumer, as far at least as it is intelligible. It is said to have been composed of seven Heerschildeti—a word meaning, literally, army-shields ;(2lJ2) but which, as it seems to distinguish classes of leaders, or finally of warriors, might perhaps more analogously be rendered in English by Standards. The first Heerschilde was the Sovereign’s own ; the second, that of the ecclesiastical princes, who could be liegemen—or perhaps min'isteriales, e. g. Chancellor—of the Sovereign alone ; the third, that of the temporal Princes, who might be liegemen, or min'isteriales, of the ecclesiastical Princes ; the fourth, that of the Earls, who, though their equals by birth, may be liegemen, or ministeriales, of the temporal Princes; the fifth, of the highest subvassals or vavassors, nobles inferior to the preceding in birth, but who, nevertheless, had knights and nobles in their service; the sixth, that of the Imperial Chivalry, nobles equal in birth to the last, but having neither noble vassal nor knight in their service; and the seventh, that of all legitimate free men, Anglice free­holders, whether Franklins or Yeomen. But prior to accompanying the army thus constituted over the Alps, it may be well to take a survey of the state of the country which Frederic was preparing to set in order.

Rome was still a self-governed Republic, though Eugenius

III.   had effected a compromise with the republican authorities that enabled him to reside there, at least as spiritual pastor. He had not long benefited by this com­promise, dying the 8th July, 1153; and a very few days after his decease the Conclave raised a Roman Cardinal to the papal throne, as Anastasius IV. As their country- Digitized by Microsoft ®

man, Anastasius was likely to be upon better terms with the Homans than his predecessor; but a Pope, who was mot master of Rome, could hardly feel himself secure there, or strong enough, unless a counterpart of Gregory VII., to volunteer the assertion of the new papal pretensions against a powerful monarch. Accordingly Anastasius had proved, by his above-mentioned indulgence in the affair of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, his disinclination to quarrel with Frederic, whilst he endeavoured to conciliate the Romans by forbearing to advance any pretensions at variance with their republican liberty.

In Southern Italy, Roger, King of both Sicilies, insular and continental, Sovereign of Tunis and Tripoli in Africa —powerful at home by the degree of subjection to which he had reduced his baronage, and ever the enemy of both eastern and western Emperors, likewise disappeared from the scene. Upon the 2(;th of February, 1154, he died, having outlived four able and energetic sons, all un­married, and left the kingdom that he had so boldly, vigorously, and ruthlessly put together, to his feeble-minded youngest son, William. The new King was no more disposed than his father had been to reinstate anv of the despoiled nobles in their possessions; but his want of capacity rendered hi.n of little account in the general affairs of the peninsula. He abolished, or suffered the nobles to abolish, many of h,-s father’s institutions, and dismissed most of his Counsellors. But if he had inherited none of his father’s great qualities, he had succeeded fully to his taste for Oriental magnificence and Oriental forms, and occupied himself chiefly with his court, to which he gave a yet more Oriental aspect than it had previously borne. In this he was probably encouraged by his Queen, a Princess of Navarre, who, like all Spaniards, would bo knbued with the Oriental ideas and feelings of their rivals and adversaries, the Spanish Moors. He created a second Grand-Chamberlain, who held the really household office belonging, in modern acceptation, to that functionary, with the title, somewhat varied- from the original Graii'-Ciam- bellano, of Gran"1-Camera! io. This office he bestowed, in the first instance, upon a Saracen, through whom he introduced into the interior of his Christian palace the usual guardians cf a Mohammedan harem.(293)

The only one of his father’s officers whom William did retain, offers a very remarkable instance of the apparently entire change of character that may be wrought by change of position. Giorgio Maione, the son of an oil manufac­turer at Bari, by his extraordinary talents and eloquence had, even in that humble station, attracted the attention of King Roger. He took him into his service, employed him first in inferior legal posts, then, being satisfied with his conduct in these, in matters of greater consequence, and gradually trusted him with the most important affairs of his government. In all Maione acquitted himself with such consummate ability and judgment, such thorough devotion to his benefactor’s interests, and apparently such unimpeach­able integrity, that he had finally obtained the office of Vice-Chancellor. But unfortnately to his great and useful

Dualities Maione added their too frequent associate, inor- inate ambition, in bis case never restrained by principle, and no longer, after Roger's death, by respect for, or fear of, his master. He quickly insinuated hnnsilf into the favour of the young King; into the Queen’s so absolutely that he was generally reputed her paramour ; thus pos­sessing himself of the whole royal authority. And now he, who to an able monarch had been an excellent minister, as the omnipotent favourite of a weak and indolent volup­tuary, displayed rather than betrayed, all the vices usually imputed to upstart minions. William, instigated by him, had already begun the course of violence and oppression, by which he gradually alienated all his nearest connexions, all his highest nobility, and ultimately earned the surname of the Bad.

In northern Italy only the Trevisan march was quietly loyal, and retained its thoroughly feudal character. There the nobles, whose strong castles were planted upon the pro­jecting roots of the mountains, were enabled to preserve their old superiority over their lowlier neighbours; and these nobles were generally more loyal than their German brethren, partly out of enmity to the as generally Guelph aspiring cities, partly because the habitual absence of the German Emperor from Italy insured to them much of the freedom from lawful control which was the usual object of their ambition. In the plain of Lombardy it was different.

There the spirit of insubordination—which perhaps origi­nated in Matilda’s seeking, in behalf of the papacy, to excite the cities aga’nst their own bishops, who were attached to Henry IV.—had made such progress during the civil wars, followed by Lothar’s mutilated authority, and Conrad’s absorption in other affairs, that most of the nobles were by this time reduced to the condition of dependent allies, or citizens of the towns. In this last character, indeed, their fortified mansions enabled them to maintain some degree of independence, even of the municipal magistracy, composed, at least principally, of members of their own bouv, whilst they overawed the plebeian citizens, who as yet took no part in their private feuds. They enjoyed considerable power in the adminis­tration of the cities, being as yet suffered pretty nearly, if not quite, to monopolize all administrative offices; and far from restraining, appear to have not only fully shared, but to have taken the lead, in the republican aspirations of the other citizens. The bishops, where they remained feudal lords of their city, were engaged in constant strug­gles for authority with civil magistrates, resembling, though not actually identical with, the contests then carrying on betwixt the Pope and the Romans. The cities themselves, not content with the tranquil enjoyment of the self-government they had usurped or assumed, were at war amongst themselves. The stronger everywhere endeavouring to inthrall the weaker, and Milan, wl ich at this time could, it is averred, send forth an army of sixty thousand fighting men, all Milanese townsmen (surely her villages and even villeins must be includeded);294) to domineer over all. A reckless lust of conquest 01 domination, that might be supposed somewhat to cool the ardent sympathy of philosophers and philanthropists with her struggles to obtain for herself that liberty which she denied to others. But even this ambitious and haughty city did not as yet lay claim to absolute and avowed autocrasy. She had not presumed to visit upon Lodi the indiscreet patriotism of Albernando and I'omobuono; and even since the insult offered to the imperial messenger and despatches, hoping perhaps to pass that off as a mere ebullition of popular violence, had sent a deputation to

Germany, to congratulate the monarch upon his accession, and present the free-will gifts, customary upon such occasions, as tokens of acknowledging his authority. Her two chief rivals, Pavia and Cremona, had already sent similar deputations, but had annexed to their congratula­tions and offerings a prayer for imperial protection against the overbearing and aggressive ambition of Milan. These were public and authorized appeals, not to be overlooked like the officious zeal of Uomobuono and Albernando; and Milan, forgetful or reckless in her anger of the deliberate insult she was thus offering to the imperial sovereignty she was acknowledging and endeavouring to propitiate, attacked the offending cities. The war, or more properly the feud, was raging fiercely when Frederic began his march.

FKEDEKTC I.

Coronation-Progress. — Roneaglia Diet.— Transactions in Lombardy.—Siege of Tortona.—Adrian IV Pope.— Adrian, the Romans, and Arnold of Brescia.— Adrian and Frederic.—Frederic at Rome.—Capture of Spoleto.—Return.—Guelph Snares.      [1154-5]

Frederic took his way to Italy through the Tyrol, and even here his troubles began. A well-appointed Comi ns- sariat formed in those days no part of the equipment of an army; and even in later times might have seemed super­fluous with respect to a coronation-progress, upon which occasion no one dreamt of disputing the imperial right to free quarters. Nevertheless during the arduous passage of the Alps, provisions, although apparently furnished as due, ran short, and the troops supplied their wants by force, not sparing even the property of the Church. To prevent these disorders seems to have been beyond the monarch’s power; bat when the passage was accomplished, and the army encamped upon the magnificent Lake of Garda, he called upon the several leaders for a voluntary contribution to compensate the damage done ; and, addi g, it may be pre­sumed, his own share, sent the sum thus collected to the Bishops of Trent and Brixen, to be by them distributed in just proportions to the plundered cloisters and priests. A remarkable proceeding, if considered in connexiou with the imperial right to gratuitous supplies, which it was by no means intended to supersede. Two conjectures upon the subject present themselves; the one, that specific exemp tions might be enjoyed by some individual cloisters or churches of these bishoprics, and have been violently

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disregarded; but the probability seems to be that, having furnished their regular proportion, they had been plundered to make good the deficiencies caused by misma­nagement and waste.

From the Garda lake, Frederic marched to the plain of Roncaglia, more correctly designated the Roncaglia meadows (prati di Roncaglia) upon the territories of Piacenza, the long-established locality of the Imperial Diet for the regulation of Italian affairs. Thither therefore Frederic had summoned all Italian vassals, and there, in the month of November 1154, he prepared to hold his first Diet in Italy. Some of the forms observed upon encamping here, and even the fashion of the encampment, are said to have been peculiar to the coronation-progress, and the especial Diet there held upon that occasion; for which reason they are worth recording, as appertaining to the character of the age.

The camp was pitched upon the banks of the Po; the tents of the Germans upon the one, those of the Italians upon the other bank, with a temporary bridge for com­munication. A magnificent tent for the Emperor occupied the centre, encircled by the tents of the princes, prelates, and nobles ;(295) whose relative rank was marked by the degree of proximity of their respective canvass dwellings to the canvass palace of their Liege Lord. The tents of their troops followed in regular order, traversed by straight streets from one extremity to the other. The whole was surrounded by a wall, without which were situated, after the manner of suburbs, the encampments of the various traders, attracted by the concourse of people in whom they hoped to find customers, and the markets to which the peasantry brought their produce; for sale—if the right to free quarters were suspended, as seems likely, during this occasionally much prolonged interruption of the inarch.

The camp duly arranged, the royal shield was aflixed to a pole, and set up on high, visible to all, as a symbol of the protection, which it was the sovereign’s prerogative, as well as his duty and his purpose, to extend to all his subjects. A herald then proclaimed aloud the names of all the imme­diate vassals, ecclesiastic as well as secular, whom.he thus, summoned to guard their sovereign during the ensuing night, even the spiritual princes being bound to discharge this duty in person, probably because bomd to be present.

Q 2

The heralds of the several princes similarly summoned their respective immediate vassals, and these again theirs, for the like duty. So that it should seem that, with the exception of the monarch, who might sleep in safety so guarded, and perhaps of the seventh Heemchilde of freemen who had no lords to summon them—unless their military service included, as it not improbably might, the duty of guarding the person of their sovereign in the field, and so they were not excepted—the whole army must have been on foot throughout the night, all intermediate classes guardingtheir immediate superiors,and guarded by theirown immediate vassals, down to the lowest vavasours and knights who, unguarded themselves, simply guarded their mesne lords. Nor was this summoning a mere form. The vassal, spiritual or temporal, German or Italian, who, being twice so summoned, failed to appear, not having obtained leave of absence, forfeited his fief ipso facto, the lay defaulter permanently, the clerical for life only, the Church recovering it at the offender’s death. Upon the present occasion, both ecclesiastical and secular vassals are mentioned as having incurred such for­feiture ; amongst the former Henry the Lion’s old enemy, Hartwig, Archbishop of Bremen. Many had leave of absence, as the Margrave of Brandenburg, who was on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; Bishop Otho, probably left at home to watch over his imperial nephew’s interests; Henry Jasomir, angry at the impending loss of Bava.ia, and willingly excused by Frederic, not to irritate his uncle yet more ; w ith others on such or such-like pleas.

To the Roncaglia Diet thus constituted, repaired, in addition to the Italian vassals and prelates who formed part of t, Consuls of cities, and deputies from cities; the higher classes came to do homage to the new sovereign, almost all brought complaints of wrongs suffered, and appeals to his justice for redress; all, disputes and differences to be decided by him. Even the Marquess of Montferrat—de­scended, it is said, from Otho the Great, through a daugh­ter whom he gave it; marriage to an early Marquess—hus­band of one of the Emperor’s numerous Austrian aunts, and one of the few Italian immediate vassals still inde- pendent'of the cities, had to complain of city aggression. Two strong towns, Cliieri and Asti, because he refused to become their dependent ally, were attacking, plun- Digitized by Microsoft®

deriog, and ill-using bis smaller vassals; to which the Bishop of Asti, who accompanied him, added his com­plaint, that his townsmen had expelled him from his episcopal residence, and from most of his diocese. To both Frederic promised redress, and orders consonant with this promise were issued to the offending cities.

The Consuls of Lodi—who took courage upon the appear­ance of the sovereign leading a powerful German army— of Como, Cremona, and Pavia, complained of Milanese aggression and tyranny. Conjointly thev stated that, even as the Emperor knew Milan to have destroyed Lodi, so had she crushed Como, demolished her fortifications, restricted and taxed her commerce, driven her citizens out of their native town into open villages; and they repre­sented that, should the daily-increasing power and despotism of this ambitious and overbearing city remain unchecked, she would shortly be mistress of Lombardy; and, as many an audacious act foretokened, pay no more respect to the rights of the Lombard King, however she professed allegi­ance to Frederic by that title, than she did to those of his meanest vassal. The Milanese Consuls endeavoured to rebut the charge of aggression by retaliatory complaints of the constant hostility of these ruined cities to Milan, that had, they alleged, provoked the war in which they fell; and they offered Frederic four thousand marks of silver, in compensation of any transgression of his rights in the con­duct of that war ; the sum was in those days large, and they evidently designed it to purchase his sanction to their domination over Lodi and Como.C2^6) He resented the offer as an insulting attempt to bribe him, but for the moment merely rejected it,(29?) and deferred giving judg­ment between Milan and the aggrieved cities until he should reach Novara. Meanwhile he enjoined the immediate cessation of hostilities between Milan and Pavia, together with the surrender of all prisoners of war, on both sides, into his hands; and he required the Milanese Consuls to undertake the guidance and victualling of his army across the Milanese territory to Novara. This requisition, it will be remembered, was simply the exercise of a prescriptive right, which not even Milan as yet had tried to dispute, at least upon the occasion of a coronation-progress. His ob- j eat in deferring his decision could only be to avoid such

involvement in the civil war of Lombardy as must retard his advance towards Rome, where it was, upon every account, urgent that he should arrive "'ith the least, possible loss of time. The slightest recollection of the mystic im­portance attached, during the middle ages, to the ceremony of the coronation of a sovereign, shows that Frederic must have been impatient for its celebration ; must have felt that, to have received the imperial crown would, in Italy especially, prodigiously sanction his assertion of imperial rights; and, thus facilitating the inforcement of them, give weight to the decisiun he should pronounce; to say nothing of the repeated pressing solicitations for immediate assistance from the Pope.

The only other transaction at this Roncaglia Diet of sufficient political importance to be worth particular men­tion is, that Henry the Lion appears then and there to have terminated a dispute which had long divided the elder and younger branches of the house of Este. The Welfs, as the elder, laid claim, hitherto unavailingly, to the Italian possessions of their family ; these the Duke of Saxony now granted to the representative of the younger line, to hold of him, merely requiring that the Marquesses of Este should do homage to him for all these Italian dominions. (298) With this condition they seem to have complied, pro­bably designing to observe it as long as the power of that elder branch should be formidable.

From the breaking up of the Roncaglia Diet, the accounts of Frederic’s operations and of the conduct of the Milanese become most contradictory. It is only from com­paring Ghibeline with Guelph accounts that the probable truth can be elicited, though it may be seldom necessary to trouble the reader w ith the process. A letter addressed by Frederic himself to his uncle and biographer, Bishop Otho,— giving a very concise summary of his coronation-progress, of his acts, from his coronation up to its date, the end of this expedition,as a guide to the Bishop in his history,—is placed as a sort of table of contents at the beginning of that history. It is so concise that all detail rests upon other authority. Nevertheless, a translation of so much of it as relates to this expedition will be found in the notes, but not referred to till the end of this chapter, and with it of the narrative of the coronation-progress, and the Emperor’s first Italian

campaign. The amount of the discrepancies in question, however, suggests the necessity of a brief consideration of the relative position of the hostile parties, the Emperor and Milan, as explanatory as well of the feelings of the writers who thus contradict each other, as of those influencing the Emperor and the Lombards ; and will, as usual in quarrels pub'ic as well as private, show both parties to be partly in the right, and partly in the wrong. The only point remaining doubtful being the more or the less of right and of wrong on either side. To this consideration a com­parison of the Lombard cities that have commanded so much sympathy, so much admiration, with their German sisters or rivals,—those Free Imperial Cities, that have, on the contrary, been such frequent topics for ridicule—will not be without its use.

It was against the tyranny of their mesne Lords only that the German cities ever strove, the especial objects of their amb’tion being, immediate instead of mediate vas­salage to the crown—the mediaeval idea of freedom in Ger­many, if not everywhere—and imperial charters, granting them self-government, with sundry rights, liberties, and privileges. Hence, when they had obtained those objects, they were, with very few exceptions, steadily loyal. But the great peculiarity of these Free Imperial Cities is, that whilst throwing off the feudal yoke, they retained the feudal principle or feeeling, and, abhorring democracy, fashioned their institutions upon a gradation of rank as strict as that which severed the citizen from the Earl. Actual republicanism, independence of the Empire and Emperor, they desired not; but the free institutions, the self-government that they valued, they retained for full seven centuries, until the whole frame of the Holy Roman Em­pire crumbled before the insatiable ambition and military genius of Napoleon Buonaparte.

In hotter-blooded Italy, on the contrary, emancipation from the yoke of the mesne Lord speedily engendered im­patience of the sovereign’s authority ; and if the Lombard cities did not instantly disown that authority, they resisted its every exercise. Very soou absolute independence be­came tne object, democracy the active principle. The nobles were not merely deprived of their feudal superiority, they were inthralled, and compelled to become citizens;

and the same turbulent energy of democracy—whilst it dis­tracted each city, internally, with the struggle that early began between the higher and lower classes for power, and excited each city to endeavour to enslave its neigh­bours, despite this incessant warfare, that seemed to threaten famine and desolation—produced rapidly increasing prosperity. But in lieu of enjoying this anarchical liberty, such as it was, for some centuries, in little more than one, almost all these republics were themselves enslaved by separate despots, who reconciled, each his own, to the yoke, by gratifying the general passion, in which they fully shared, for waging war upon and conquering each other.

Now that Frederic could not, as his detractors allege, have imbibed any natural antipathy to thriving self­governed towns in Germany, where he had ever found them pre-eminently loyal, is manifest; but what could he see in the conduct of Milan, Asti, and Chieri, except de­mocratic turbulence, a rebellious disposition, ii not actual rebellion, and an utter disregard of that justice which was, in his eyes, the first of virtues ? To punish such offences he deemed his duty; and performed that duty too in­exorably ; but to temporize was not in his nature. Whilst Milan, on the other hand, for nearly half a century unused to control from mesne Lord or Lord Paramount, might hold herself prescriptively entitled to that which she was accustomed to enjoy—might look upon every act of sove­reign authority as an invasion of her right, and perhaps really believe that, when she swore allegiance, she had uij- charged every duty of loyalty incumbent upon her towards a German Emperor.(299) Most especially would her pride revolt at any interference with her republican thirst of conquest and domination.

rj o return to the close of the lloncaglia Diet; Chieri and Asti neither obeyed the Imperial injunctions, nor sent theii Consuls, or any other deputies to vindicate their conduct. They were laid under the ban of the Empire. Milan and Pavia, on the contrary, suspended their feud, and delivered up their respective prisoners as commanded. Frederic thereupon released the Pavians, who had never offended him, but detained the Milanese; whether in token of dis­satisfaction with their general conduct, or, what seems more likely, as hostage^ for the peaceable behaviour of their

countrymen, whilst he should be upon the territories of their powerful and little to be trusted city; which would naturally desire to avert from cities following her example, as Chieri and Asti had done, the chastisement apparently impending over them.

Frederic now broke up his camp. The Milanese Con­suls, Oberto del’ Orto and Gherardo Negro, the same who had somewhat disobediently received his commands to re­store Lodi, whether of malice prepense, or unavoidably, or, as has been asserted, in sheer stupidity,‘300) ]ed the Ger­man army through the district that had been most ravaged in the newly interrupted feud, and where heavy rains had recently increased both the desolation of the fields, and the impracticability of the roads. Upon this march provisions for man and horse were unattainable, either from the duty of vassalage or for money, and after two days of miserable, hungry toil, Frederic found himself under the fortress of Rosate, some twelve miles distant from Milan. Here the deplorable state of the roads detained the half-starved troops, and the Emperor, suspending iu such an emergency his acknowledged right to gratuitous supplies, offered to purchase of the Milanese the provisions stored up in the fort. In the very madness of perverse disloyalty, they refused even to sell food to their still recognised sovereign for his famished army; whereupon he, angrily dismissing the Milanese Consuls,(301) demanded the instant surrender of the place. No preparation for resistance having been made there—whence it should seem that the offence was a sudden outbreak of popular arrogance—the little garrison had no choice but to obey the mandate, and at once evacuate the fortress, too happy probably at being permitted to retreat unmolested to Milan. Thither, through rain, mud, and darkness, the terrified inhabitants, with what property they could carry, followed their retiring defenders. Frederic occupied the deserted Rosate, where his army was sheltered and fed, and which, when he proceeded on his way, they plundered. This indulgence of military licence proved no great additional evil to the fugitive inhabitants, since the offended sovereign ordered Rosate to be burnt, his usual mode of punishing refractory towns.

The Milanese were by this time thoroughly frightened

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at the storm they had raised. The people, forgetting the outrages of which they had themselves been guilty towards the Emperor’s messenger, reviled the Consuls for having provoked the w rath of their Liege Lord, and at once de­molished the mansion of Gherardo Negro. But neither was this sacrifice such an expiation as could propitiate Frederif, nor the destruction of llosate in his eyes sufficient punishment for the offence. The former might, however, lead him to hope that, by giving the offenders time to re­pent and submit, and showing them in the case of a less important town the chastisement that he judged it proper to inflict upon rebels, he might escape the necessity of destroying the most prosperous and most powerful city in his dominions. Either in this idea, or from reluctance just then to spare the time which the siege of such a place as Milan would consume, he passed on without attacking the contumacious city, and the spirits of the Milanese revived. What became of the hostages, or surrendered prisoners, does not appear: whence it may be concluded that all -were dismissed when the army quitted the Milanese territory, as any act of severity, or the detention of all or any of them, would not have re­mained unnoticed.

But if Frederic did not attack Milan herself, he showed her that his displeasure was unallayed. Upon the Ticino he took, sacked, and burnt Milanese castles, and destroyed two bridges, built by the Milanese for the purpose of facilitating inroads upon the lands of Novara. From Novara, whose liability to annoyance he had thus materially lessened, he proceeded—by a somewhat circuitous road, chastising refractory towns, and graciously visiting the loyal, especially Vercelli and Turin—to the offending cr'ties, Chieri and Asti. Both were deserted by their inhabitants at his approach. Frederic permitted his troops to plunder both, then set them on fire, and made over the ruins to the Mar­quess and the Bishop, against whom they had sinned.!302)

Frederic might now hope to prosecute his march to Rome uninterrupted, but seems to have conceived some appre­hension that the plunder in which, for the punishment of the plundered, he had indulged his troops, might encourage them to commit acts of wanton violence. To guard against

this danger, he published an edict, enjoining the observance of the strictest discipline, and enforcing it by the severest penalties, to which edict he required every individual in the army to swear obedience. Whilst thus engaged, he received a deputation from Pavia, complaining that Tortona, in confederacy with Milan, was cruelly de­vastating the defenceless Pavian territory south of the Po. He sent Tortona orders to forbear. Tortona, in reliance upon Milanese protection, slighted the imperial command ; and Frederic, again reluctantly delaying his progress, after denouncing the ban of the Empire against the audacious town, marched to besiege it.

Upon the 13tli of February, 1155, he sat down before Tortona. The defence was resolute, and the siege discovers some progress in the science of the engineer, or rather in reviving ancient engineering, which art would naturally be fostered by wealthy and quarrelsome cities. Here, in addition to the usual moveable towers, battering and stone- hurling machines, mention is made of mines and counter­mines ;—at Edessa only the first are named, and Frederic might have learned their use in Palestine, while the defen­sive countermine is said to have been the offspring of Lom­bard genius. Tortona proved invulnerable alike to skill and to force, to individual feats of almost unimaginable audacity, as to the terror inspired by the stern severity of Frederic’s character, here for the first time displayed, in the execution of all prisoners as rebels; and recourse was had to the customary slower process of blockade. The siege thus lasted two months; provisions became scarce, and Henry the Lion made his troops turn the course of the stream that supplied the town with water. Every drop of this necessary of life was thenceforward purchased with blood, the only well within reach being situated close to the tents of the Pavians. The sufferings of the Tortonese increased from dav to day; the troops sent from Milan proved quite inadequate to their relief, and they made an effort to prolong the possibility of resistance by reducing the number of mouths.

An armistice for the performance of the religious rites of Passion week and Easter had been concluded. Upon Good Friday the gates of the town were thrown open, and the whole ecclesiastical establishment of Tortona, regular

and secular, in full canonicals, chanting penitential psalms, with censefs waving—in short, with all the impressive ceremonial accompanying Divine Service in the Roman Church—issued forth in solemn procession Frederic sent the bishops, present in his army, to meet them and inquire their purpose. It was to solicit his permission to sever their fate from that of the rebellious town by quitting it. But the Tortonese clergy, at the same time that the} implored this indulgence to themselves upon the plea of their perfect guiltlessness of Tortona’s crimes, strove to palliate those crimes, by averring that only the tyranny of Favia had driven their fellow townsmen to seek the friend­ship and protection of Milan. Of this recrimination, which would have been more seasonably urged in answer to his first mandate, Frederic took no notice. He replied that he grieved for the sufferings of the servants of God ; but could not allow them thus, by their absence, to relieve a town that had so insolently repelled his commands, exhortations, and summonses. He added that they would best prove their own innocence and uprightness of intention by convincing the Tortonese of the flagitiousness of their conduct, and inducing them to surrender. Yet more sadly than they had come forth did the clergy return, and either their admonitions, or hunger and thirst, soon after­wards wrought the effect desired. Upon the 13th of Apri' Tortona surrendered, the only conditions obtained for #h< inhabitants, by the compassion of the Princes in the camp, being, what Frederic always granted, whether with or without previous capitulation ; to wit, safety of life and limb, with permission to take away as much property as each individual could carry. The city was then plundered and demolished, in compliance with the prayers of

Pavia.(303)

The fate of Tortona produced a twofold and con­tradictory effect. Many Lombard towns were alarmed and submitted to their victorious Emperor, sending him their keys, with large presents, apologies, and professions of loyalty. But Milan, with a few of her stauncher and bolder, or, perhaps, only more enslaved allies, found, in the length of time during which Tortona had, single-handed, resisted the whole Imperial force, encouragement to per­severance. Frederic, meanwhile, repaired to Pavia, amidst

the grateful exultation of that faithful Ghibeline city, to enjoy his triumph. He there received the iron crown of Lombardy.

Whilst these transactions were in progress in Northern Italy ; another change of Popes had occurred at Pome. Anastasius IV. had died upon the 2nd of the preceding December ; and the very next day Cardinal Nicholas, whom the reader last saw reforming the disorderly church discipline of Scandinavia, was elected in his stead, by the name of Adrian IV. Adrian, the only Briton who ever sat in St. Peter’s Chair, is by no means one of the least distinguished among the able successors of Gregory VII. (Muratori calls him a personaggio di esemplarissima vita, di sublime intendimento e fermessxa d'anima ) ; and a few words concerning the little that is known of his previous life, may be here appropriately introduced.

Nicholas Breakspear was born at St. Albans, in Hertford­shire, in so humble a station that his father’s poverty prevented his being sent to school. The incidents of his early youth, including the means by which he obtained education, are unknown ; but the Roman Church, as was observed in relation to Gregory VII., lias always offered resources in this respect to the talented poor ; and the name of Nicholas Breakspear stands enrolled amongst those of the students in the High Schools, not yet called Uni­versities, of Paris and of Arles. Whether he took the monastic vows, which are not unlikely to have been the price of the tuition afforded him, before or after the completion of his studies, seems doubtful ; but he is found as a monk in the cloister of St. Rufus, near Avignon, and soon afterwards as its Abbot. His beauty of person, powerful intellect, exemplary life, elo­quence, firmness, polite manners, affability, and charity, gained him general rsspect and affection; and, when he visited Rome upon ecclesiastical business, so charmed Eugenius III. that he gave him the bishopric of Albano, and made him a Cardinal. He afterwards sent him, as has been seen, upon a legatine mission to Scandinavia, whence the Legate returned with an increased reputation; and now his brother Cardinals j udged this almost pauper offspring of the lower classes the fittest Head for the whole Christian Church. At the moment of his exaltation the English Pope proved himself worthy of his high station, by uncon- Digitized by Microsoft gj

seiously showing that his thoughts were engrossed by its duties, not by its splendours. To the congratulations offered him he replied, “ The papal throne is thick, set with thorns ; the papal mantle heavy enough to weigh the strongest man down to the ground.”

And certainly the circumstances amidst which Adrian

IV.   was elected were not calculated to promise an easy pontificate. William of Sicily had assumed the regal title without any reference to the Pope as Lord Paramount; and if Anastasius IV., amidst the difficulties with which he was surrounded and harassed, suffered this neglect of his suzerainty to pass unnoticed, Adrian IV. was not the man to endure any deterioration of the temporal, any­more than of the spiritual, papal sovereignty in his hands. He at once asserted that sovereignty by the non-recognition of the title independently assumed, addressing William merely as “Lord of Sicily.” The angry King refused to receive the Papal Legate. His misgovernment—the now, seemingly, capricious tyranny of Maione—had already produced great discontent; the oppressed at home were impatient for external support in their meditated revolt, as were the exiles for such aid to reinstal them. But no outbreak had as yet indicated the gathering storm; and, spurred by Maione, William—in further resentment of the implied denial of his regal title—boldly attacked the Papal province lying within his continental dominions, i. e. the principality of Benevento. Adrian replied by a sentence of excommunication, and calmly awaited the result, sup­ported or inforced, as he expected his anathema to be, bv insurrection, as well as by the arms of the approaching Emperor, the official Warden of the Church.

His dissensions with the Homans were far more critically important to the Pope, than those with his vassal King. Under the feebler Anastasius the sort of compromise— in virtue of which Eugenius III. had returned to Rome, and again taken up his abode at the Lateran—had been wholly disregarded. All concessions made to Eugenius had been silently resumed; and Consuls, Senate, and people —themselves ruled or influenced by Arnold of Brescia, whom Anastasius, like Eugenius, had vainly banished, and whose nameless as unofficial power was boundless—exercised uncontrolled authority. At Arnold’s instigation the Homans now required Adrian to renounce all sovereignty

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whatever over, or in, Home; and they pressingly invited Frederic to hasten to the metropolis of Christendom, in order to be there acknowledged Emperor, and to defend that metropolis against the usurpations of the Pope. Adrian did not, it hardly need be said, yield to such demands. Positively refusing to surrender any papal right, he excommunicated the demagogue Arnold as a heretic, and withdrew, for personal safety, from the Lateran to the Vatican, in Transteverine or Leonine Rome. The republicans, exasperated at his escape from their power, murdered a Cardinal, who was passing through their part of the city on his way to the Vatican ; and Adrian laid Rome under an interdict—the first time, it has been averred, that the Eternal City was ever thus defied. He then judged it prudent to remove more completely out of reach of his republican subjects, and transferred his court to Orvieto; there to await either the effect which he judged his own strong measure calculated to produce, or the arrival of Frederic, whom he knew to be advancing, at the head of an Imperial army, for his coronation.

The interdict did produce an effect which, at the present day, it is difficult to conceive. It is, indeed, to be remem­bered that the privation was not merely of the celebration of Divine service, but likewise of the Sacraments of Marriage and Extreme Unction, with much restriction upon that of Baptism and the burial rites—the want of the last two Sacra­ments being believed to doom those who died, at least all new­born infants that died unchristened, to eternal perdition. But terrible as such a situation was everywhere felt, in Rome there was something more that enhanced its horror. The Romans —accustomed to see all the frequent and pompous cere­monies of their Church celebrated with a splendour, as in an abundance, elsewhere unknown—were absolutely horror- stricken by the total absence of the ceremonies and services appropriate to Passion-week, when they usually are well- mgh continuous. The people, disregarding even Arnold of Brescia in their despair at this privation, now compelled the Senate to negotiate with the Pope. Adrian made the banishment from the Roman territories of Arnold and such of his followers as would not recant their heresies, the condition of his revoking the interdict. The desire for the Passion-week and Easter ceremonies superseding,

for the moment, all other interests, the terms were accepted and fulfilled. Arnold was expelled ; and Adrian returned to Home to officiate on Good Friday, and perforin the remaining portion of the Easter rites. But this extorted submission of the Bomans did not appear to be either cordial or sincere; and the Pope thought that prudence required he should confine himself pretty much to the Vatican and the Leonine city.

Arnold, again a banished man, in his flight from Bome fell into the hands of Cardinal Gerardo. But though the dreaded heresiarch were thus in his power, the Pope deferred his trial, or rather his punishment—for the sentence of excommunication, as the result of his conviction, indicated further trial to be supererogatory—until he should be supported against the Boman Arnoldites by the presence of the Emperor and his army. The Arnoldites made use of this delay to rescue their leader. A party of four noblemen—of the Campagna, according to most authorities, though some writers call them Tuscans—snatched him from the Cardinal’s custody, and carried him off to the castle of one of his deliverers, where he was revered and treated as a prophet. Again Adrian deemed it expedient to remove from Bome; and he despatched three Cardinals to meet Frederic upon his road, and urge him to expedite his march, in order both to afford the Holy Father his protection against the heretically mutinous Bomans, and by his intervention to replace the convicted and excom­municated heresiarch, Arnold of Brescia, in the hands of the Church.

In compliance with these papal entreaties, Frederic caused one of the noble rescuers of Arnold to be captured by his troops, and refused to release him save in exchange for Arnold. The feudal noble being more valued than the Church reformer, the exchange was speedily effected, when Frederic immediately delivered up the reco\ ered prisoner to the Ca-dinals, and advanced rapidly to Viterbo. The assistance thus afforded towards replacing Arnold of Brescia in the Pope’s power, has, by historians of more philosophic or philanthropic times, been imputed to Frederic Barbarossa as an act of either stupid bigotry or cold-blooded atrocity —rivalling, if not quire the massacre of St. Bartholomew, yet the most sanguinary of PhiKp II. of Spain’s acts of

devotion. The accusation is evidently the fruit of the catastrophe, itself misrepresented, over which Frederic, after delivering up the prisoner, had no longer any control. Whether he even knew beforehand what that catastrophe would be, we are not told. But independently of such con­siderations, this is again measuring the twelfth century by the standard of the eighteenth and nineteenth. In the former, a monarch might occasionally resist the Pope’s will, if personally annoying to himself—though always much blamed for so doing—might contend with a Pope for Church patronage, or refuse obedience to one pontiff, as professing to believe a rival pretender to the tiara, the lawful spiritual Head of Christendom : but to dispute the authority of an acknowleged Pope as to what doctrines were or were not heretical, or to withhold from him, or make terms with him as to the treatment of a convicted heretic, were ideas that entered no head of sovereign or subject, not itself heretical. Arnold was a convicted excommunicated heretic ; moreover, a prisoner rescued by violence from the lawful custody into which he had been almost surrendered by his own partisans; and the Emperor, the especial official Protector of the Roman See, could not for a moment hesitate as to complying with the requisition of the Pope, whom he expected to recognise him as such, by performing the important ceremony of his coronation.

Nay, so thoroughly a matter of course was this com­pliance esteemed, that to Adrian it did not appear a pledge of amity sufficient to warrant his trusting himself in his protector’s hands. Negotiations, touching the security of the Holy Father, were still pending; and Frederic, far from showing resentment of such mistrust, agreed to remove it by causing some of his princes and prelates to take an oath upon the Cross and the Gospel in his name and by his soul—Emperors did not take an oath in person, unless to clear themselves of heresy to the Pope—“ that he would “ neither harm the Pope or the Cardinals, in person or in “property, nor suffer others so to harm them ; but would, “ on the contrary, secure and protect them.”

Thus re-assured, Adrian repaired to the Emperor’s camp; and now began a contest as to the forms of his reception, which its very absurdity, in modern eyes, renders highly illustrative of the age. Some little obscurity hangs Digitized by Microsoft®

over the minor details; but comparing' and combining the several accounts, the course of the affa.i ■ seems to have been as follows. Frederic sent his Princes, ecclesiastical and lay, to receive the Pope at his arriv al, and, with every demonstration of respect, conduct him to a tent, similar to the royal tent, where a sort of throne was prepared for him ; but he did not attend in person to hold the stirrup whilst his Holiness alighted- In the whole papal party this omission awoke terror even more than displeasure, or, at least, more generally. The Cardinals in the train forthwith provided for their own safety, by returning with all speed to Castellana, where Adrian had sojourned whilst negotiating with Frederic; and cloudy was the brow with which the firmer-nerved Pope suffered himself to be ushered into his tent, with which he there sank upon his throne.

Frederic now presented himself: knelt before the Holy Father to kiss bis feet, and rose up to receive from him the kiss of peace. But the haughty pontiff*—theft nearly alone in the midst of the Imperial army—repulsed him with the words, “ Thou hast not paid me due honour; such honour “ as, in reverence for the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, “orthodox emperors, thy predecessors, have ever paid “ to mine. Until thou shalt have made atonement for this “ fault, I give thee no kiss of peace.” The equally haughty monarch, thus braved in his own camp, immediately withdrew, indignantly declaring that menial services he was not bound to render.

The German Princes, especially the prelates, now inter­posed their mediation; but vain were their endeavours to effect a compromise. To all the Bishop of Bamberg’s professions of the King’s reverence for the Papal See, Adrian coldly answered, “ These are empty words. Thy “ King has dishonoured St. Peter instead of showing him “ reverence.” Finding the pontiff, who was helplessly in their power, thus inflexible, nothing remained but to prevail upon the monarch, at the head of his army, to comply with the pretensions of the priest, whose fate seemed to hang upon his word. But Frederic’s venera­tion for the Head of his Church was evidently sincere. When he was satisfied that the strange service required of him was an established custom, and lad been rendered

by former Emperors to former Popes—whether he were or were not persuaded that it was really a mark of superiority, emblematic of the protection given the Pope by the Emperor, the stirrup being held to prevent the rider’s falling—(3°4) he yielded, and promised to comply.

But all difficulties were not removed by this consent. A second reception was the only opportunity for remedy­ing the defects of the first, and the Pope was in the Imperial camp. Fortunately, however, thenar my being still upon its march, it was feasible so to arrange the movements of the parties as to bring this second reception about without any very violent derangement. Frederic advanced his camp, Adrian remaining behind until it should be again pitched in due form. Then he fol­lowed, again attended by the Cardinals whom he had summoned to rejoin him. The monarch rode forth to meet him, sprang from his horse, and held the stirrup whilst the Holy Father alighted. Adrian’s old biographer says that Frederic performed the office merrily (cum jucunditate), alluding, probably, to his jocular remark upon his inexperience in the duties of a groom. It may be conjectured, however, that he rather sought to pass off the whole transaction as a jest, than was really much amused by his groom-function s.

The Pope and Emperor were now in perfect amity, and ready for the ceremony of the Imperial coronation ; but the republican Romans, in their insane passion(3(,i') for the recovery of their old universal domination, not­withstanding their expulsion of Arnold, did not intend to suffer any such solemnity within their walls, until the conditions of their invitation were accepted. The Im­perial army was encamped half way between Sutri and Rome, when a deputation from the Roman Senate and People appeared before the sovereign. The spokesman, as the representative, or more properly the impersonation of the Eternal City, the mistress of the world, with whom new Rome very naturally chose to identify herself, ad­dressed him, much as if he had been one of her pro­consuls, v3°6) in a long and bombastic harangue. After boasting of her achievements, her glory, and her power, and declaiming upon the unfitness of priests to govern states, this histrionic Rome thus concluded, “And now,

“ O Prince ! listen patiently and mildly to a few words “ touching thy rights and mine. Thou vast a guest; I “ have made thee a citizen. A stranger from Transalpine “ regions; I have made thee a monarch. What was “ lawfully mine, I have given thee. Therefore must thou “ first guarantee from violation by the fury of barbarians “ my good usages and old laws, confirmed to me in fit- “ ting charters by emperors thy predecessors Thou “ must pay to my officers, who will proclaim thee at “ the Capitol, 5,COO lbs.” [of silver it is supposed, but Otho does not say], “ and thou must guard the “ Republic from injury, even at the cost of thine own “ blood. All this must thou assure to me in a proper “ charter, ratified by oath, and by striking of hands. '

That this harangue offended the sovereign to whom it was addressed, scarcely need be said. But what is worthy of notice in the affair is, that instead of at once angrily dismissing the deputation, or referring it to his Chancellor, Frederic replied in a speech as long as Rome’s, which might be termed elaborate were not its necessary spon- scaneity self-evident,^0?) and the eloquence of which the best judges have admired.(3°8) Addressing the orator in bin assumed character, as Rome, he proved by many long quotations from history, that empire had passed away from her, and was transferred to the German Emperors. He said that he came, not a guest or a stranger, but a sovereign, to take possession of a part of his dominions; and he concluded his reply as follows, “ Thou, Rome, “ demandest of me a threefold oath, importing first that “ I will observe thy laws and usages, secondly that I “ will defend thee at the hazard of my life. These two “ I shall answer jointly. What thou demandest, is either “just or unjust. If unjust, it is neither for thee to “ demand nor for me to grant. If just, I know it as “ my duty, which I voluntarily come to perform; an u oa*b to do a volunteered duty(3u3) were superfluous. “ Why should I violate justice towards thee, I, who “ desire to preserve to the meanest what is his ? How “ should I not, at the risk of my life, guard the chief “ seat of my empire, I, who purpose at that risk, as far ft as in me lies, to recover for the empire its ancient “ frontiers ? * * * * Thirdly, thou demandest that

“ I should swear to pay money. Shame to thee, Rome ! “ Wouldst thou deal with thy prince, as the sutler with “ the pedlar! It is of captives that ransom is asked; “ am I thy prisoner ? Am I in chains, or at the head “ of a powerful army ? Who shall transform the Roman “King from a liberal giver into a reluctant payer? It “ has been my wont to give royally, magnificently, but “only when and as I see fit. * * * * Why should “ I break this custom learned elsewhere, of my sainted “ forefathers, towards my citizens P Why should I not “ wish to make my entrance gladden the city ? But to “him who wrongfully demands what is unjust, every “ thing, even what is just, is rightfully denied.—And ail “ this, with a strange perversion of ideas, thou wouldst “ have the King, to whom all oaths are sworn, assure to “ thee by oath ! Know that my will is more immutable “ than thy laws, my word of more avail than thy oaths.”

To this reply Rome had no rejoinder prepared. The deputation merely said, that what had just been heard must be reported, fresh instructions must be received, prior to the utterance of another word ; and departed, promising an early return. But Adrian, who well knew the nature of his flock, now assured Frederic, that so far from awaiting this promised return, not a moment was to be lost in accomplishing the coronation, which he was convinced the Romans would in every way endeavour to prevent. For this purpose he recommended the despatch of a light corps, that, guided by a cardinal, should, under favour of darkness, that very night enter the Leonine city, which was still held by the troops he had left there. The object of this reinforcement of their numbers was to guard the bridge over the Tiber, and thus secure the Basilica of St. Peter for the ceremony. The whole army, with the Pope and the Emperor, he further advised, should follow, so as to arrive early in the ensuing morn­ing, when the ceremony should be performed without a moment’s delay.

The respective marches were happily effected as planned ; but neither were they the only memorable operations of that night, nor was the coronation of the ensuing early morning. With what, to the children of the nineteenth century, seems an absolutely incomprehensible insensibility

to the commonest feelings of humanity, Adrian chose to blend a sanguinary execution with the joyous pomp of the august solemnity, in which, as Hoad of the Christian Church, he was about to officiate. He actually fixed upon the night preceding the coronation for putting Arnold of Brescia to death; thus naugurating what professed to be a day of festivity, with a scene of horror, especially exasperating to the Roman disciples of the republican heretic. The only conjectural explanation that occurs, as he could hardly hope to overawe the Romans by this demonstration of his disregard for their feelings, is, that he had deferred the execution until it could take place adjacent to, if not in, Rome; and durst not delay it longer, through fear of another rescue when so immediately within reach of the prisoner’s disciples, who would of course again attempt ir.

But, whatever were the actuating motive, by command of the Pope, the Prefect of Rome—then already it will be remembered a pontifical officer, and of course in at­tendance upon the Pope—in the night of the 17th of June, 1155, brought Arnold to a spot upon the banks of the Tiber, very near the city walls on the northern side, where a pile of faggots was prepared. Upon this pile, whence as morning damned the victim could over­look the city, where his zealous partisans were then sleeping, Arnold was strangled, and afterwards burnt.(310) In the dim grey light that first announces a new day, arose the lurid glare of the flames, startling the Romans from slumber. They sprang from their couches, rushed out of the gates, chased away the papal guard, and mas­tered the sad scene. But too late ! Even the ashes of the demagogue-heretic had vanished. Upon the burning down of the pile, the whole mass had been thrown into the river, to prevent the manufacture of relics.

Whilst the Romans were returning to their houses in the frame of mind that may be imagined, German troops, in execution of Adrian's plan, had taken possession of the gate leading mto the Leonine city, and of the bridge over the Tiber, now bearing the name of St. Angelo. It was still early in the morning of the 18th of June, when the whole army arrived before the same gate, and there encamped; whilst the Pope and the Emperor, with

their respective trains, entered the portion of the town thus secured.

Adrian was, however, sufficiently in advance to be ready to present himself in full pontifical array, attended by a body of Cardinals, and the whole Papal court, upon the steps of St. Peter’s. Here, with the forms marking the importance of the office he was about to perform, he received the monarch. The Pope in person celebrated High Mass, and then, with all customary rites and ceremonies, placed the Imperial crown upon the head of Frederic, as he knelt at the Altar to receive it; whilst the princes, prelates, and nobles present, with loud shouts proclaimed their sovereign Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

The solemnity completed, the Pope, with his ecclesiasti­cal court, withdrew to the adjoining Vatican, there design­ing, temporarily at least, once more to reside under the protection of his own guards. The Emperor, in imperial array, and attended by his feudal court, mounting his charger, rode back to his camp. The day was dedicated to the festivity usual upon such occasions, the warriors, for rest after the fatigue of a hurried night-march, laying their heavy armour aside. The troops, stationed upon the bridge for the protection of the ceremony, seem to have left their post after its conclusion to share in the banquet; whether with or without permission is not clear, but the latter may be inferred from the mention of stragglers, lounging, through idleness or curiosity, in and about St. Peter’s. A total neglect of the most ordinary provisions for security, so strange under the circumstances, that it is difficult to understand whether confidence in the lingering reverence of the Romans for the Emperor they had invited, and for the Pope, with whose gorgeous functions they could not dispense, or the recklessness of danger and consequent contempt for precautionary measures, characteristic of the chivalrous spirit of feudalism, must bear the blame.

For the moment, at least, such confidence was utterly groundless. The Romans, whilst wrathfully brooding over the execution of the victim, whom they themselves had in fact delivered up to his executioners, learned, it may be said simultaneously, the Emperor’s arrival before their walls, and his coronation, not only without his having accepted their terms, and consequently without their con­

sent and concurrence, but actually without their knowledge. Their rage was unbounded. Thronging to the Capitol, they called upon the Senate to co-operate in, to take the guidance of, their vengeance; and then, waiting neither for concert nor for any regulation of their proceedings, they armed and burst tumultuously over the bridge into the Leonine city. There they slaughtered the German strag­glers, of whom mention has been made, some even under the consecrated roof of St. Peter’s, and assaulted the Vatican, iii order to get the Pope, who had dared to crown an Emperor without their permission, into their hands. The Papal guards succeeded in repulsing the attempt, but every Cardinal who unfortunately came in their way, suf­fered from the vindictive fury of the populace.

The report of this insurrection disturbed the Germans at their coronation-banquet, and reluctantly they left it to prepare for the impending affray. They were still but imperfectly armed, when a horde of disorderly assailants fell upon the Saxon division of the camp, which chanced to be pitched the nearest to the walls of Rome. The Lion flew to the rescue, and encountered them in a style worthy of his najiie ; but the battle presently became general, and is said to have lasted throughout the day, during which the victory was at times doubtful. Nevertheless when at nightfall the Romans were ultimately defeated with the loss of, it was computed, one thousand dead and two hundred prisoners, whilst carrying off’ more of their wounded than could be numbered ;(3ll) the German loss, exclusive of the men, it might almost seem unarmed, butchered in the first instance, is positively asserted not to have exceeded one individual slain—a fact that Bishop Otho records, with the observation of mirum dicta. Of Germans wounded no account is given; but subsequently incidental mention occurs of a wound received by the Duke of Saxony, owing, of course, to his being but half-armed ; and it may safely be pronounced that his could not be the only one.

Upon ascertaining this result of the battle, Frederic re­marked that he had now complied with one demand of the Romans, and purchased the crown ; but after the Germar. fashion, not theirs, with iron, not gold The prisoners were made over to the custody of the Prefect of Rome, who forthwith hanged some, and required a heavy ransom from

the more affluent of the number. The remainder were, by the Pope’s desire, released.

Scarcity of provisions prevented the Emperor’s remaining upon the spot to complete or to make the most of his victory over the Romans. The very next day he perforce broke up his camp, and, accompanied by the Pope, marched for Tivoli. Here his troops were abundantly supplied with all necessaries, and the town presented him its keys, with proffers of allegiance. Frederic gra­ciously accepted both; but Adrian claimed Tivoli as a possession of the Church, denying its right thus to make a transfer of its allegiance. Frederic was convinced, however unwillingly, that the claim was just, and immediately restored the town to the Papal See, merely reserving the usual Imperial rights. Another perhaps yet more remark­able incident of the sojourn at Tivoli is, that the Pope judged it indispensable to grant the German troops abso­lution from the guilt of shedding blood in the recent affray. This he did upon St. Peter and St. Paul’s day, when, after celebrating mass in person, he solemnly enunci­ated what it might have been supposed was even then a truism, namely, that to shed blood in defence of the sove­reign is not murder, but the lawful vindication of the rights of sovereignty. The prowess of the Duke of Saxony upon the same occasion he judged deserving of more than abso­lution, and rewarded it by consecrating the Bishop of Altenburg, whom, on account of his submission to ducal authority, he had hitherto refused to recognise, and in whom since that submission Henry took as lively an interest as the Archbishop had taken before.*3!2)

At Tivoli Frederic received deputations from several cities, with the tributary offerings usual upon the coronation of a new Emperor. Only one in this district was found disloyal. Spoleto, already offending by the forcible deten­tion of Conte Guidoguerra, upon his return from his mission to Apulia, sent less than the customary tribute, and what was sent proved to consist chiefly of base coin. Frederic, taking leave of the Pope, who now again ventured back to the Vatican, marched to chastise the guilty city. The Spoletaus came boldly forth from their gates, to confront the troops of their offended Emperor; but were routed, and

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so closely pursued, that the Imperialists entered the town with the fugitives. When taken, it was given up to be plundered. The German army remained not long at Spoleto, but, shunning the noxious effluvia from the dead bodies, removed to the vicinity of Ancona.

The objects in Southern Italy which he had contem­plated in undertaking this expedition, Frederic was con­scious were very imperfectly accomplished. His well- escorted commissioners had indeed succeeded, partly by announcing the immediate approach of the Emperor with an Imperial army, in re-installing the exiled Apulian princes and nobles in the possessions from which they had t>een expelled. But he had not as Emperor constrained William the Bad to acknowledge his suzerainty, do homage for his crown, dismiss his obnoxious favourite, and reform his government. To effect all this was still his earnest desire. The Pope, in alarm for his greatly endangered principality of Benevento, strenuously urged him by letter to invade the dominions of St. Peter’s rebellious vassal, and even sanctioned his admitting the co-operation of the Greeks in this war, thus virtually releasing him from his engagement to Eugenius III. to exclude them. And as strenuously did the Apulian exiles—who, upon the strength of his presence in Italy and expected advance into Apu.la. full as much as through the agency of his commissioners, had recovered their lomains—entreat him tc complete hit work, by taking the present favourable opportunity to de­throne the King. This opportunity was offered by fh( great increaseof William'sunpopularity, consequent upon th: loss of the African provinces, which was generally irnputec to the purchased treachery of Maione, now Grand Admiral, o of his brother, who acted as his deputy. Moreover the es pected co-operation from Constantinople was already in action ; a Greek fleet, under Michael Paleologus—who had in the end completely repulsed George of Antioch, the pre­ceding Grand Admiral—having been ordered by Manuel to attack Magna Grecia. The attachment Of the Calabrians to the Greek Church, the resentment of the duchy of Apulia at being rendered subordinate to Sicily, the desire of the returned and somewhat imperilled exiles for external support, and a liberal distribution of Greek money to malcontents,

favoured the attempt, and many places upon the coast had readily, when summoned by the fleet, returned to their old allegiance to the Eastern Empire.

This was the state of affairs, relatively to continental Sicily at least, when Frederic reached Ancona, where he found Greek Envoys awaiting him, to arrange the proposed co-operation of the two empires in the conquest of Wil­liam’s dominions, and to negotiate touching the disposal or division of the conquest when made. But—flattering to Frederic’s ambition as was the hope presented on the one hand of restoring, even of extending, the Empire of Charlemagne in Italy, and anxious as he must have been on the other, to prevent the reannexing of the provinces he coveted to the Eastern Empire—insuperable difficulties impeded his taking at that moment a single step towards his object. The German troops were by this time sinking as usual under the heat of an Italian summer. The Ger­man princes, whose term of service had ended with the coronation, he well knew to be both impatient and pretty generally resolved to return home; whilst the conduct of the Milanese—who, regardless of the imperial authority, had begun to rebuild Tortona, although in this first attempt beaten and baffled by the Pavians—demonstrated the urgent necessity for his presence in Lombardy, with an army raised in Germany for the express purpose of quelling Milanese rebellion, ere he could attempt anything against the King of Sicily. Most reluctantly, doubtless, he de­clared to the Greek Envoys his inability at that moment to fulfil his engagement with their master, owing to the obligation he was under of leading back his suffering army to Germany.^13)

No sooner did Freddie make known his determination so to do, than he saw his army very considerably reduced in numbers. The Coronation-progress being thus virtually ended, every great vassal appears to have been free to choose his own course. Some of the German princes and nobles embarked with their bands at Ancona for Venice, thence to proceed home through the Trevisan March and Carinthia; whilst others took their way by western Lom­bardy, thence crossing the Alps, into Switzerland and Savoy. Frederic himself, still with the main body, chose the eastern road by Sinigaglia, Fano, Imola, Bologna, and

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Man tua, to Verona, thence to return as he had come, through the Tyrol.

As far as the last named city he marched on without impediment or annoyance of any description ; but Verona was an ally of Milan, and had devised a snare tar him. The Veronese claimed a prescriptive exemption from the passage of troops through their town, thus debarring them from the use of the bridge within their walls; which ex­emption they had purchased by engaging always to provide for their Liege Lord adequate means without the walls of crossing the Adige. In fulfilment of this engagement they now constructed a bridge of boats somewhat higher up the river; but put it together in the slightest manner possible, whilst still higher up the stream felled trees, heavy rafts, beams of wood, and the like were collected. The scheme was that these should drift in masses against, and break through the bridge, during the passage of the army, thus drowning those who should be upon it at the moment, and dividing, by the deep river, the port’on of the troops who should have already crossed, from the other; when each might be separately and successively attacked with superior numbers, and so defeated, by the Lombard troops, who were assembled, forewarned, and ready to seize eveiy advantage offered them. One body of these Lom­bard troops appears to have been in the Imperial army, forming its rear-guard, whether as having been the con­tingent of Verona and other cities professing loyalty, or as having, upon the Emperor’s entering Lombardy, joined, under colour of a demonstration of respect; but really to watch for an opportunity of betraying him to destruction, or perhaps only to be the better able to fall upon the rear of their supposed comrades, at the decisive moment.

Whether Frederic, who was attended by some loyal Veronese, had received any intimation of tl 's treacherous

Elot, or sheer accident interposed to foil it, is uncertain, ut foiled it was. Either the Imperial army marched faster, or the masses of timber drifted slower, than the Veronese iti arranging their measures had calculated. The consequence was, that the intended victims were all safely over the Adige before the bridge was attacked by the timber; and the only sufferers by the craftily-planned accident were a part of the Lombard rear-guard who, not Digitized by Microsoft ®

venturing to disobey the Imperial orders for rapid march­ing, were in the act of crossing when it broke. That this was the work of accident no one for a moment supposed, and the Lombard troops who had reached the left bank," were instantly cut down by the incensed Germans.

But not yet was the Emperor beyond danger from the enmity of the Lombards, which seems now to have been scarcely dissembled. His line of march led up the valley of the Adige, which some few miles above Verona becomes nar­row, the road being here hemmed in by the deep stream roaring betwixt its precipitous banks, on the one hand, and the mountain ridge projecting from the Alps, with rocks as precipitous towering high over the path, on the other. Along this valley the army wended its way, followed by Lombard troops, Veronese included, who with no friendly aspect occupied every pass as soon as the Germans had cleared it. The valley grew yet narrower, became a mere defile, and now a prominent rock, crowned by a castle, well nigh obstructed it altogether. Close to the foot of this almost perpendicular rock, the troops must necessarily pass, and as the head of the first column advanced so to do, large masses of stone, in addition to other missiles, bearing destruction unavoidable, were hurled down upon them.

The Emperor ordered a halt, and inquired into the meaning and circumstances of the opposition thus offered to his progress. The castle, it appeared, was occupied by one Alberico, a noble Veronese, at the head of a band of Lombard warriors, many of them noble as himself. Guelph writers have endeavoured to acquit the Lombard cities upon this occasion, by asserting that Alberico was merely a robber-knight, with associates of the same charac­ter, who habitually plundered passengers under his castle, and thought to make his harvest by an opportunity so favourable. But even if this were the fact, it was still indisputably evident that, upon the present occasion, Alberico acted in concert with the pursuing Lombard troops, and with the Veronese authorities, who had already, in the matter of the bridge, betrayed their disloyalty. Frederic sent the faithful noblemen of Verona to remon­strate with their rebellious compatriot; but he, treating them as degenerate, servile wretches, unworthy the name of Veronese, refused to hold any intercourse with them, and

drove them back by the same measures that had previously checked the advance of the column. A Herald was then sent to warn the Lord of the castle not to obstruct the pas­sage of his Emperor. Alberico answered that the Emperor should not pass without paying an imperial ransom, nor his knights without each surrendering his horse and armour. “ God forbid !” cried Frederic, “ that ever Emperor should “ pay ransom to robbers and rebels, or any knight of mine “ surrender his horse or armour.” And he directed the camp to be pitched, in order to deliberate at leisure upon the steps to be taken.

The Emperor was no more disposed to retreat before robbers than to pay them a ransom. But even had he been willing to retrace his steps and try another pass, that would have been nearly as difficult as to advance. The defiles he had already traversed, in which a handfal of men would be more than a match for an army, being now- occupied by the Lombard troops, who were manifestly ready, upon any temptation or provocation, to throw off the thin veil still cast over their sentiments. The deliberation turned therefore solely upon the possibility of eluding or mastering Alberico’s castle. The former was clearly im­possible; but a still higher pinnacle of the rock was observed to tower above, and command the castle; diligent inquiry ascertained that it was wholly neglected by the garrison, as being inaccessible save through the castle itself. Could that pinnacle therefore be attained the strength of the castle was annihilated. But Frederic still hesitated to order so dangerous, so seemingly impossible an attempt to be made, when a volunteer sprang forward.

This was Otho of Wittelsbach, a descendent of the Scyren or Schyren, to adopt the German rather than the Latin form for an old Teutonic name, one of the oldest families of Bavaria, and himself Palsgrave of the duchy His ancestors were those Dukes of Bavaria whom, for repeated rebellion, Otho I. had superseded, when he gave the duchy to his brother Henry; but one of the family afterwards saving his life in the great battle with the Huns upon the Lech, he had invested 'nm with the palatinate in the forfeited duchy. The late Palsgrave, Otho’s father, having sided with the Welfs (to whose party his family had always been attached) in the then reccnt civil wars.

had, upon the submission of the party, been required by Conrad III. to give his eldest son as a hostage for his future loyalty. This son was Otho, who having thus been very much brought up with Frederic, had become his devoted friend, and had been made by him Standard- bearer of the Empire. He now showed himself well worthy of Imperial favour, of Imperial friendship, by at once volunteering to scale the rock with whatever comrades would follow him. The example was enkindling, and a couple of hundred noble youths presented themselves, ready to follow whithersoever he should lead.

Otho, carefully wrapping the Imperial banner round his person, stole out of the camp with his companions, all like himself in light armour, and crept round to the back of the rock, where they were thoroughly concealed from the castle. And stout were their hearts that recoiled not at sight of the adventure they had undertaken. The rock rose bluff and sheer, well nigh perpendicular before them, offering little hold either to foot or hand. But Otho and his comrades had promised to reach the summit, and to strong resolution seeming impossibilities become possible. Here one mounted upon his fellow’s shoulders to reach a propitious ledge; then in his turn dragging up his former assistant. There, with their daggers, they hacked out a resting-place for the foot, a purchase for the hand. They used their spears as ladders, as swarming or leaping poles. At length, after incredible toil and hazard, after surmounting obstacles only not insurmountable, they all stood upon the supposed inaccessible pinnacle.

Upon this pinnacle, amidst loud shouts of exultation, Otho waved the Imperial flag; at sight of which shouts vet louder rang in answer from below. The gallant band of climbers now rushed down upon the (to them open) castle ; and its garrison, utterly bewildered, surprised in the very intoxication of anticipated triumph over their Emperor, offered only a disorderly, and therefore hopeless, resistance. In thisineffectual struggle, or in equally ineffectual attempts to fly, the whole band, amounting to about five hundred men, were slain, with the exception of a dozen who were captured. Amongst these last was Alberico himself. In vain the prisoners pleaded their nobility, and offered high ransoms. Frederic sentenced them to death as robbers and

rebels, and was inexorable to offers as to prayers. One individual, nevertheless, persevered. “ Hear me, noble 66 Emperor,” he cried. “ I am no Lombard—no subject of “ the Empire; but a Frenchman, free-born though poor. “ These men proposed to me to join an adventure that “ should repair my broken fortunes, but never told me it <c was to entrap and plunder their lawful Sovereign. Why “must I, poor silly dupe, suffer for their abominable u treason ?” To this remonstrance the Emperor listened, and offered to spare the Frenchman’s life on condition of his proving his non-complicity in the treason, by perform­ing the hangman’s office upon his late commander and comrades. The terms were thankfully accepted.C314)

In two days more the army reached Trent; and toil and peril were over. The Emperor took leave of his princes and nobles, disbanded his own forces, and proeeeded to devote himself to the business of government.

FREDEETC 1.

Affairs of Germany.—Henry the Lion and LLenry Jasomir.—Frederics Marriage.—Affairs of Poland.— Of Bohemia.—Of Denmark.—Relations with France and England.—Affairs of the Sicilies.—Of Lombardy. —Dissensions and Reconciliation with the Pope.

■ [1155—1158-1

If the affairs of Italy, both in the north and in the south, were so far from settled that the Emperor must needs have contemplated an early return thither, his presence was for the moment yet more indispensably necessary in Germany. The Coronation-Progress had lasted longer than mediaeval patience could submit to the Realm’s Peace, which was, by law, to have been observed during its continuance. Those civil broils, private feuds, plunderings by robber-knights, and ecclesiastical encroachments upon the sovereign authority—which he had repressed, though not absolutely quelled, prior to crossing the Alps—had, therefore, broken out with fresh violence when his stay in Italy was pro longed, and he might well be supposed engrossed, by the troubles and rebellions of that country.

To name only a few of the principal. A Bishop ot Ratisbon, elected since Frederic had quitted Germany, had presumed to grant fiefs belonging to his see, without having received investiture of his temporalities from the Emperor. Archbishop Arnold, the treacherous supplanter in the see of Mainz of the friend and prince, Archbishop Henry, whose interests he was commissioned to defend, was at war with Hermann von Stahleck, Palsgrave on the

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Rhine, a powerfnl and ambitious pr.uce, who had wrested some districts from tbe sees of two of his (Arnold's) suffragans, the Bishops of Worms and Spires. In the north the Slavonians of Brandenburg, under one Yasso— the reputed nephew of Pribislaff Henry, the bequeather of the province, and disinherited by that bequest—had taken the opportunity of the Margrave’s absence upon his Crusade, and the Emperor’s upon his Coronation- Progress, to throw off their fealty to the former ; whilst the forfeiture incurred by the Archbishop of Bremen, and some others, required to be inforced, unless the laws of the Empire were to be a common laughing stock. But important above all others, and yet more, perhaps, in Frederic’s eyes than to the general tranquillity, was the still pending contest for Bavaria, of which Henry ■Tasouiir retained possession, in utter disregard of the Diet’s sentence.

Against one uncle, between two uncles and his favourite cousin, the Emperor would proceed only by negotiation. But towards the other offenders he felt no such tenderness : whilst to establish peace and good order in Germany was necessarily his primary object, not only because he esteemed it the first duty of a monarch thus to secure tranquillity to his subjects, but also because indispensable to his obtaining thence die force requisite to crush rebellion in Italy. This regal duty with respect to them, therefore, he at once proceeded to perform.

He compelled the Bishop of Ratisbon. and all who had done homage to him for fiefs appertaining to his see, to pay the heavy tines they had incurred by their illegal precipitancy. lie commissioned Henry the Lion to seize and temporarily occupy the towns and castles of the archiepiscopal see of Bremen, which the Archbishop had forfeited by his default at ltoncaglia, He summoned the Archbishop of Mainz and the Rhine Palsgrave, with their allies, to a Diet, to be held at Worms in January’, 11£6. These belligerents, notwithstanding tbe imperial command, which he had transmitted from Italy, to observe the Realm’s Peace, lay down their arms, and expect justice from him at his return, had continued to wage fierce war, savagely devastating each other’s territories. When, however, they beheld him again present in Germany, they

suspended their sanguinary operations ; and, obeying the summons, attended the Diet. There each endeavoured to justify himself by inculpating his antagonist as the aggressor ; but Frederic refused to inquire into the origin of the quarrel. Both were violaters of the pro­claimed peace, which both had sworn to observe, and he treated this public offence as superseding all others. As the penalty denounced against this undeniable crime, he, in concurrence with the Diet, sentenced the chief transgressors and their noble accomplices to the disgraceful and even then, as before said, nearly obsolete, punishment of carrying a dog a specified distance—usually a German mile. From this ignominious doom only the Archbishop, in consideration of his spiritual dignity, was personally exempted. The Palsgrave himself, despite his high temporal dignity, and the ten Earls who had joined either party, were compelled to endure the shame; and so keenly did Hermann von Stahleck feel that shame, that he instantly retired to a monastery, where he soon afterwards died.0515) The example, if, as it seems to have been thought, startlingly severe, was effective. Other feuds were aban­doned ; the belligerents in all haste making up their quarrels as they best could, to escape the Emperor’s notice.

The revolt of the Slavonians was of a different character, and not so to be suppressed ; but the Emperor judged it sufficient to direct the Archbishop of Magdeburg to assist Margrave Albert, at his return, in reducing the rebels to obedience. And so it proved. The Mar­grave and the Archbishop did, in the course of the following year, thus reduce them ; and this was the last Slavonian effort to recover absolute independence.(3l6} But peace seemed to be restored amongst the Princes of the Empire even before this revolt was extinguished ; and Frederic, leaving it wholly to those whom, temporally and spiritually, it most concerned, turned his attention next to destroying those castles of robber-knights whence—especially upon the Rhine as the principal highway of commerce— they plundered peaceable citizens, and other travellers, committed every kind of lawless outrage, and wholly interrupted the trade of the country. Yet did these robber-knights, whom he thus determinately punished and humbled, rendering them innoxious, constitute a large

proportion of the Chivalry of the Empire; the class held to be most peculiarly favoured by this chivalrous Prince, the class to which he looked for the supply of troops, —independent of the great vassals and of feudal service— so essential to his Italian projects. Can there be a stronger proof that his actions were governed by impartial justice, or at least what he deemed such, than hie protection of trade and traders against these knights ?

This terrible, in its individual effect, but to the Empire at large most beneficial, sentence of dog-carrying, was to the Emperor himself productive of another advantage, which he could not have anticipated. The death of Palsgrave Herman:!, without children, left the Palatinate of the llhine vacant. This palatinate—comprising, as it did, the greater portion of that part of the original duchy of Franconia which lay on the left bank of the Rhine, and the Vogtey or Stewardship of most of the Rhenish bishoprics and archbishoprics—already ranked, it has been seen, amongst the chief German principalities. The Emperor now added to it such fiefs and Franconian ducal rights as were at his disposal, obtained for it from the Archbishop of Cologne a grant in perpetuity of the county of Stahleck, which had lapsed to his see by the extinction of the line of earls on Hermann’s death, and conferred the principality, thus enlarged, upon his half-brother Conrad, the offspring of his father’s second marriage with Agnes von Saarbruck. The Rhine Pals­grave appears henceforth to have been considered as the representative of the Dukes of Franconia, and as such, the first lay Prince of the Empire.!.31?)

Whilst all these transactions were in progress, nego­tiations relative to the duchy of Bavaria had been, and still were carrying on. Of the three competitors for iis ' possession, the one who had both the least grounds for the pretension, and the least means of supporting that pre­tension, viz: Welf, was naturally the first, and the most easily, pacified. He had long since advanced another equally baseless claim, namely, to the heritage of the Great Countess, in virtue of his uncle Welf’s marriage with that mighty princess. But how idle soever the plea upon which this claim rested, to Frederic it was welcome; and of the Matildan heritage, both of w hat was and of what,

as usurped, was not at his disposal, he readily gave his uncle investiture. Thereupon Welf, renouncing all pretensions to Bavaria,—at least in opposition to his other nephew, Henry—assumed, and thenceforth bore, the titles of Duke of Spoleto, Marquess of Tuscany, and Prince of Sardinia. Although far from possessing like Matilda the real sove­reignty of all these dominions, a sufficient portion thereof acknowledged his authority—his suzerainty was yet more extensively acknowledged—to render him an opulent and a powerful prince. The Marquess of Este appears to have ere long transferred to him, as Duke of Spoleto, the homage he had previously done to Henry the Lion as head of his house,—probably with the consent of Henry, as part of the arrangement.

The negotiation with Henry Jasomir, the actual occupant of the disputed duchy, offered more difficulty. At length, however, the mediators, who were the Duke’s own brother, Otho, Bishop of Freising, his brother-in-law the Duke of Bohemia, and the Bavarian Palsgrave Otho, convinced him, if not of the justice of the Lion’s claim, yet of his own inability single-handed to withstand the Welfs, sup­ported by the Emperor and the whole force of the Empire, in the execution of a decree of the Imperial Diet; and further, that if some few princes there were, unwilling to see one of their body so preponderantly powerful as a Duke of Saxony and Bavaria must be, such malcontents would in all probability be more willing than able to stand by him ; even if they were not as unwilling to see Bavaria as well as Swabia and Austria in the hands of members of the Imperial family. Under these circumstances Henry Jasomir, at length yielding, agreed to treat concerning a compromise ; and as Frederic was most desirous as far as possible to gratify his uncle, a convention to the fol­lowing purport was arranged. Henry the Babenberger agreed to resign Bavaria, upon condition that his mar- graviate of Austria should be altogether detached from the duchy, and emancipated from the ducal authority of Bavaria, its forces being no longer bound to follow the ducal standard to the field ; that it should be augmented by the addition of the territory lying between the Inn and the Ens—now Upper Austria—including the important bishopric of Passau—virtually the metropolitan see of

Austria—and should be constituted a duchy with unusuai privileges. The privileges upon which he insisted were, tnat the duchy of Austria should rank next to the original national duchies ;(318) should be so far hereditary in the female line, that the eldest daughter of a Duke who should leave neither son nor brother, might inherit it; that in default of even a daughter, the last Babenberger should be entitled to bequeath the duchy, which must be and remain indivisible, by will; that the Dukes should not be bound to attend any Diet not convoked by the Emperor in person, or to take part in any foreign wars, except against Hungary—which in fact were mostly Austria's own, owing to the ill-will in early times apparently un­avoidable upon long disputed frontiers, and ever prevailing between Hungary aud the Eastern march. The duchy was farther endowed with various privileges of little his­torical importance. Henry the Lion, either out of regard for Frederic, or from consciousness that the whole Empire would be against him should he refuse to make the moderate sacrifice required, agreed to accept Bavaria, thus shorn of her former fair propoitions; and a Diet was accordingly appointed to be held at Ratisbon, in the autumn cf this same year 1156, for the consummation of the arrangement.

At this Diet all parlies attended, and the witnesses whose presence appears to hare been essential to the perfect legality and stability of the transaction, being too numerous to be contained in hall or church, an open field, either near the town, or in the nearest district af Upper Austria(sl9)—a disputed point—was prepared for the ceremony. The ceremony in -ts details is interesting, being one of the last emblematical legal operations re­corded in the annals oi Germany, inasmuch as written documents began about this time to supersede her original picturesque usages.

Upon this plain then the Estates of the Empire assembled in full Imperial Diet. In presence of the Diet and of the whole Bavarian vassalage, Henry the Babenberger, delivered into the Emperor’s hand seven banners, to wit, those of Bavaria, and her several marches and dependent provinces, thus expressing, or typifying his renunciation of the duchy. The Emperor immediately

delivered the whole seven to Henry the Welf, thus in­vesting him with the entire duchy, as vacated by Henry Jasomir’s act; when the new Duke of Bavaria, as agreed, instantly re-delivered to the Emperor two of these banners, namely those of the then Eastern March, or Austria, and of the older Eastern March, between the Ens and the Inn, when Hungary extended to the former river; thus in the same emblematic style signifying his renun­ciation of those Marches, and of all claim to authority of any kind over them. These two returned banners of the two Eastern Marches, the Emperor then formally delivered to Henry the Babenbergcr, and his Gi'cek wife Theodora, conjointly ; by such conjoint investiture grant­ing, with the concurrence of the Diet and to the personal knowledge of the vassalage, the limited right of female succession before described. They were received by Henry Jasomir on horseback, in princely array, ducal staff or sceptre in hand, ducal hat on head.

Some writers have averred that the title of ail Arch­duchy was now given to Austria, to mark its superiority over such dukedoms as Zaringen, Carinthia, &c., but the title does not at this time appear.(320) The new Duke of Austria made Vienna his ducal capital, and began the cathedral of St. Stephens. It will be noticed that the Dukes, and indeed all the Princes of the Empire, had their regular capitals—in German phraseology, residence towns—and it was the number of the widely scattered crown domains, which could be rendered profitable only by a sojourn long enough to consume their produce, together with his high duties, incessant calls for the pre­sence of the Emperor in different parts of his realms, that seems to have prevented his having, in like manner, a fixed seat of government.

Frederic appears to have felt such reliance upon the ties of blood, strengthened, as he must have deemed them, by those of gratitude, that holding himself as sure of the affectionate fidelity of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, as of his brother, the Rhine Palsgrave’s, he considered Germany to be tranquillized as soon as he had satisfied the Duke of Austria. In this tranquillity he felt the greater confidence from having re-established the Imperial prerogative in regard to the election of pre­

lates, such as the Calixtine Concordat had been understood to acknowledge it, prior to Lothar’s concessions. Elec­tions took place in his presence, therefore assuredly under his influence; even an Archbishop of Cologne had been so elected, and Frederic proceeded to give him investiture of the temporalities of his see without waiting for the Pope's approbation of the new metropolitan. And here better perhaps than elsewhere may be introduced an anecdote, the precise date of which is as immaterial as it seems to be uncertain, tending to show that influence over elections was not worse placed in imperial hands, or at least in Frederic Barbarossa's, than in those of pope or perhaps Chapter.

Upon the death of the Abbot of a considerable abbey, two monks were, by their respective factions amongst their brethren, severally named as'his successor; and to the Emperor, in accordance with the Calixtine Concordat, was the choice between them referred. Monks were bound by the rules of monastic discipline to be always provided with needle and thread, in order at once to repair any unseemly rent in their garments. Frederic asked the candidates for their needles; only one of them could produce the humble implement of industry, the appointed guard against indecorum; and h*m the Emperor named Abbot.

Frederic’s satisfaction in all these transactions was en­hanced by a second matrnnonial engagement, which in the midst of them he contracted. The bride was a vassal of his own instead of a Greek princess. Although his nuptial proposals had been favourably received at Con­stantinople, the subject was .still under discussion when Frederic was at Ancona, and the negotiation, whatever might be the cause, made no progiess. Whether the German Emperor were offended by any arrogant conditions which the Eastern Emperor might have annexed to the grant of his daughter’s or his niece’s hand, or simply by his offers not being eagerly accepted—whether Manuel resented the failure of Frederic’s proffered co-operation against the Normans—or Frederic a fraud, by which, after his departure from Italy, the Greek Commanders had endeavoured to

Ejromote their success in Apulia—is uncertain; but the ast seems the most likely cause of rupture. This fraud

was the promulgation of a document, bearing the forged signature and seal of the German Emperor, and transferring to the Eastern Empire all rights of sovereignty appertain­ing to the Holy Roman Empire over the maritime districts of Magna Grecia.(32i) Whether the Constantinopolitan Court were or were not cognizant of the fraud of its officers, however impertinently the matrimonial overtures may have been received, it is very clear that Manuel was even more desirous than Frederic of the connexion, for he now sent an embassy to Germany to renew the negotiation, and wras too late. Ere his embassador arrived the treaty for a different marriage had been concluded.

The treaty in question was with Countess Beatrice, the daughter of Earl Renault, the successful competitor of the Duke of Zaringen for her principality. This contest was still considered by the Duke as undecided, when, upon Renault’s death, a third claimant arose in the person of Benault’s brother, Earl William, who, asserting Burgundy, although it had come to his family through a woman, was not heritable by females, seized and imprisoned his niece as a rebel. Whilst the contention during her compulsory default was carrying on between him and Duke Bertold, Beatrice appealed to the Emperor for protection against both her uncle’s usurpation, and the empty pretensions of the Duke. The Imperial interference in behalf of the rightful heiress was efficient. Frederic compelled Earl William to release the young Countess, restore her usurped dominions, and content himself with some lordships upon the Saone, held with his hereditary title of Earl.(322) His promises to the Duke of Zaringen he fulfilled by arranging a compromise for his pretensions to the county, which were clearly groundless, he not having a drop of the blood of its earls in his veins, wherefore Lothar could have no right to give it him so long as a collateral of the race existed. Frederic granted him, instead, the mesne suzerainty of the bishoprics of Geneva, Lausanne, and Sitten, or Sion, in Switzerland, and he attached the Imperial Vicariate of Burgundy to the dukedom of Zaringen. All this being accomplished, the Emperor asked, and, need it be added, easily obtained, the ham I of the young Countess of Burgundy.               .

Such was the state of the affair when the Greek matri­monial embassy reached the court of the Western Emperor.

He, it must be presumed in courtesy, to spare an Imperial Princess the mortification of being offered and refused, deferred the reception of the Constantii op.ilitan diploma­tists unt;l their mission had been rendered nugatory by the celebration of his nuptials with Beatrice, at Whitsuntide, 1150. This marriage incorporated the county of Burgundy with the patrimonial possessions of the Emperor, and was thus as politically advantageous as it proved prolific and happy.    ...     .

At the Whitsuntide Diet, Vladislas of Poland renewed his supplications for Imperial assistance to recover his duchy of Cracow, together with his supremacy over his brothers, both usurped, it will be remembered, by Boleslas IV. One of the most active supporters, of this petition was the dethroned Duke’s namesake and brother- in-law, Vladislas, Duke of Bohemia. The lie between them had indeed been weakened by the death of the Austrian Duchess of Cracow ; but her loss had enabled her widower to enlarge his German connexion by a second marriage with a daughter of Albert the Bear, who in consequence supported him as zealoush as did the Duke of Bohemia. Hence, notwithstanding Frederic’s impatience to return to Italy, chastise Milan, expel the Greeks, whose fraud he could not pardon, and force the King of Sicily both to reconcile himself with the vassals, whose rebellion his tyranny had provoked, and to do homage to himself instead of to the Pope for his realms, an expedition on behalf of Vladislas was undertaken:—Frederic himself, probably) feeling that whatever could exalt and enhance his imperial sovereignty at home, must facilitate his operations south of the Alps, whilst any hesitation to assert that sovereignty, to afford protection when solicited, bv degrading him in Italian eyes, must proportionately counteract those operations.

With an army composed chiefly of Saxons and Bohe­mians, as the nearest neighbours to Poland, and the natural allies of the Prince who was to be restored, but unaccom­panied by the Duke of Saxon v and Bavaria, or it should seem any of his vassals, Frederic entered Silesia. He crossed toe Oder, his troops wading and swimming ; where­upon the terrified Poles, not daring to defend Glogau, and fearing to see it transformed from a guardian into a hostile

fortress, set the city on fire previous to evacuating it. Glogau was burnt to the ground, and the garrison fled, making for the army that Boleslas IV. w'as bringing to their relief. With this army, into which he had received the fugitives, Boleslas IV. retreated before the Emperor as far as Posen, and thus far the Emperor pursued his unop­posed triumphant career, his warriors devastating the country they traversed, under the very eyes of the exiled heir, whom it was their object to reinstal. At Posen Boleslas paused, but, knowing his troops inferior to the Germans, he feared to do battle with the Imperialists. In these circumstances he judged it expedient to submit for the present, and, trusting to the Emperor’s multifarious concerns, especially his calls to distant Italy for furnishing opportunities to evade, as before, the fulfilment of the terms, whatever they might be, that he must now accept. He accordingly solicited the mediation of the Duke of Bohemia, although the friend and connexion by marriage of his wronged brother, probably as being, like himself, of Slavonian race; and the Czech Duke, alive to the advantage of supporting Slavonians, negotiated his peace upon the following conditions. Barefoot, with a sword hanging from his neck, was Boleslas to repair to the Imperial camp, fall at the Emperor's feet, do homage for his dominions, whatever they might be, and make oath that it was not in contempt of the Imperial authority that he had driven his elder brother out of Poland. He was further to pledge himself to pay certain sums of money, as fines, to the Emperor, the Princes of the Empire (probably those present), the Empress, and the imperial court, respec­tively ; to appear before the Diet convoked to meet at Magdeburg the following Christmas, there plead his cause, and both hear and submit to its decision upon the points in dispute between himself and his elder brother Vladislas ; and finally, however that decision should eventuate, to attend the Emperor with a body of troops upon his next Italian expedition. For the fulfilment of these prospective engagements, his youngest brother, Casimir, and some of the chief Polish magnates, were to be given as hostages Those conditions, the performance of which was ‘:o be immediate, were, however painfully humiliating, duly exe­cuted ; the humiliation was undergone, the homage was done,

and the hostages were given. But Boleslas apparently valued the life of one brother no higher than the rights of another, or than his own character for honour and veracity ; since as soon as the pressure was removed by the withdrawal of the Im­perial army from Poland, he thought no more of his plighted word. Frederic replaced Vladislas in those dis­tricts of the Silesian duchy that were occupied bj the Ger­man army, leaving his claim to the remainder, as well as the other points in dispute with his brother, to the decision of the Diet. Whilst Frederic remained in Germany, with his eye upon Poland, Boleslas, although he failed to attend the Diet, respected this Imperial act, but again expelled Vladislas as soon as he saw his protector elsewhere and otherwise engaged.

The services of the Duke of Bohemia, and his promises for the ensuing Italian expedition, were rewarded with the crown and title of King, which, in concurrence with the Diet, the Emperor conferred upon the husband of his aunt. Thus raised in dignity, Vladislas returned to Bohemia; but his subjects, in the true Slavonian spirit, abhorring the idea of incorporation with Germany, resented this acknow­ledgment of the Emperor’s sovereignty. It is reported that upon his arrival the Czech grandees thus addressed him:— “ Who compelled thee to acquire rank and power after this “ fashion ? Did not we, when we vanquished the Emperor “ Lothar, win the crown with our bodies P Couldst thou “ not receive it here, at home, without the Emperor ? If a. “ German King thou wilt be, then art thou no King for “ Bohemians.” To these reproaches Vladislas replied : “ Voluntarily did the Emperor honour me, his uncle, and “ voluntary are tho services I, in return, render him. “ With mine is your honour exalted, and he who assists “ me in these services shall, besides honour, receive rewards. “ But if any one would rather sit idle at home, would “ rather toy with women than fight the foe, he is welcome, “ for aught I care, to shun the ranks of our bold warriors.” The new King’s resolute gallantry, and the prospect of gaining booty in the Italian wars, overpowered the some­what narrow patriotism of the Czechs.

Imperfect as Frederic’s success in Poland must appear to the reader, it answered his personal purpose. The recog­nition of his sovereignty, the long refused homage again

done, sufficed to confirm and enhance the Emperor’s authority both at home and abroad, more especially with those states that acknowledged or disowned his suzerainty according to circumstances. His arbitration or interven­tion was sought in Hungary, where Prince Stephen implored Imperial protection against the oppression of his roval brother, Geisa, who on his part sent an embassy to vindi­cate his conduct before the Imperial tribunal. From Denmark likewise he received a fresh acknowledgment of his sovereignty, and entreaties for his intervention. But the civil war that had there broken out during his absence in Italy requires something more of detail.

Sweyn, who had married a daughter of the Margrave of Misnia, had irritated his subjects almost as much by what they called the assumption of German state, as by his debauchery, extortion, and generally despotic conduct. Even Waldemar, who for his father’s sake had so steadily supported him, he at length completely alienated. So impatient had Sweyn become of the remonstrances which Waldemar, as his friend, thought it his duty as much as his right to address to him, that when, with his whole court, he accompanied his Queen to visit her parents, he intreated his father-in-law to relieve him from the annoyance by the death of this troublesome kinsman. Indignantly the Mar­grave exclaimed, “ Rather would I see you, and even my “daughter, perish upon a scaffold than so stain my honour­able name in old age!” Whether this unsuccessful treachery became known to Waldemar, or he were merely disgusted by Sweyn’s tyranny, he had now forsaken him and joined Canute, wooing and wedding his sister, as a pledge of reconciliation. The brothers-in-law triumphed, and Sweyn fled to Misnia in search of support. The Margrave offered him an asylum as long as he might require it, but declared the force of Misnia inadequate to attempt the recovery of his kingdom. Sweyn then sought the assistance of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, for which, cloaking a bribe under the name of defraying ex­penses to be incurred solely on his . behalf, he offered him a large sum of money, procured by the plunder of some Russian ships, seized in the very port of Schleswick where they were trading—an act of piracy that for awhile de­stroyed the commence of the place.

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The Lion accepted his petitioner’s offer, and in 1157, being then in quiet possession of his second duchy, afforded him the promised succours; but did so less efficiently than might have been anticipated. Ghibeline writers charge this prince with designing to break the bonds of vassalage, and form a northern kingdom for himself, in which it would naturally be very desirable to include Denmark. Whether he ever did distinctly form such a project for the actual disruption of Germany seems questionable, and it is at all events unlikely that he should already have done so, having been hitherto occupied with the acquisition of Bavaria. But that he was ambitious of greatly extending and augmenting his dominions is certain, and the Saxon duchy was evidently what he intended for the nucleus of those dominions. With such views he could not but see his most formidable rival for sovereignty over the German Slavonians in Denmark, and could not desire to see that rival strengthened by internal quiet. Hence, when he had by arms replaced Sweyn in possession of some portion of his lost kingdom, he professed to consider his engagement as fulfilled, and left him to make his part good as he best might, with the aid that he permitted Niklot and his Obodrites to give him.

Thus deserted by his powerful supporter, Sweyn felt it hopeless to get the better of his united antagonists, by arms, and negotiations were opened, which ended in the division of the small kingdom amongst three kings, Sweyn, Canute, and WaJdemar. But the first could hardly be expected to rest content with a part of that, the whole of which had once been his. The treaty and reconciliation were only the means he adopted to rid himself of his rivals. He invited them to a banquet to celebrate their new-born friendship, and the}' incautiously accepted the invitation. At a given signal he left the banqueting hall, when a band of armed men rushed in, and fell upon the unarmed, defenceless guests. Canute was at once assassinated; Waldemar, endowed with greater presence of mind and unusual bodily strength, though wounded, threw down the lights, and in the consequent darkness effected his escape, as did his foster-brother, the subsequently celebrated Archbishop Absalom. Waldemar, of course, immediately resumed, to avenge the murder of his brother-in-law and Digitized by Microsoft®

the attempt upon himself, the arms just laid aside ; and civil war raged anew. In one engagement Sweyn was wounded and fell; but he had not merited an honourable death upon the battle field. He rose, fled, and in his flight was slain by the rude hands of disaffected peasants. Waldemar was thereupon proclaimed King of Denmark, and he it was who now solicited the Imperial ratification of’his title.

Contemporary writers aver that even powerful and independent monarchs now conceived such apprehensions of the Emperor’s preponderance, that they were willing to purchase his friendship by some kind of acknowledgment of the suzerainty which, as Head of the Holy Roman Empire, that had once comprised all western Europe, he claimed over their kingdoms. His convening a Diet to sit at Besancjon in order to receive the homage of his Burgundian and Arelat vassals, especially of those whom he had personally acquired by his marriage with their hereditary Countess, so alarmed Lewis VII., that he sent an embassy professedly to meet and compliment him, but really to ascertain whether any inroad upon France were contemplated. Ilis apprehensions were speedily relieved, and his embassador convinced that Frederic’s thoughts were engrossed by Italy. But that he should have enter­tained such apprehensions cannot be matter of surprise, when the relative power of the two countries in the twelfth century, and the debilitation that France had lately suffered is borne in mind.    *

Since Frederic’s accession Elinor’s contempt for her monkish consort had been so enhanced by the passion she conceived for the youthful Henry, son of the Empress Maud, when upon his father’s death he visited the French Court to do homage for his County of Anjou, that the dissensions between her and Lewis became actually insup­portable. Of the consequent transactions there are two versions, both from contemporary authority. The account most generally adopted and most in accordance with the usual course of events, is that the jealous husband sought and obtained a divorce from his faithless wife, endeavouring, but in vain, to keep her duchy and county, nominally for their infant daughters—son they had none.C323) The other resting upon documents recently brought to light,(324) represents jealousy as less strong in the boson of the King Digitized by Microsoft I

of France than his love for Aquitaine and Poitou, and states that it was Elinor herself, who, impelled by the tastes of the Troubadour and the inflammable blood of the south, sought her release from marriage bonds, which, as a re­straint upon her intercourse with the gallant as handsome, youthful Earl, she could no longer endure; that she at length, extorting her husband’s consent, obtained a divorce, when, baffling alike the King’s efforts to retain her do­minions, and two attempts by ardent lovers either of her person or of those dominions, to seize and wed her by force, she bestowed them with herself upon the Earl of Anjou, and also it was rumoured, a child, some months earlier than was quite reputable—a circumstance that may explain the final marital consent to the dissolution of the marriage. In the year 1154 Stephen King of England had died, and Henry, in virtue of his mothers convention with her usurping kinsman, quietly succeeded to his throne. Thus the King of England, prospectively Duke of Normandy in right of his mother, who, meanwhile, cordially sup­ported him, Earl of Anjou and Maine in right of his deceased lather, and husband of the Duchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Poitou, held, with the exception of the half hide pendent duchy of Brittany, the whole western side of France; in vassalage it is true, but a vassalage more onerous to the liege Lord than to the liege man. Whilst in the south, those provinces that were not included in the duchy of Aquitaine or in the Arelat, mostly owned the mesne suzerainty of the Kings of Aragon or Navarre, and w'ere in great part held by their kinsmen.

But if Lewis Yil.’s dread of Frederic’s power is very intelligible, uct so the excessive respect displayed by Henry II. of England towards the Emperor. In answer to an Imperial embassy, proposing a firm peace, and a kind of commercial treaty between the two countries, he is said to have addressed a letter to the Emperor, which, in addition to expressions of grateful acknowledgment, contained the following words: “ England, and whatever “is elsewhere subject to our sway, we offer you and “ commit to your power, that all may be done according “ to your pleasure, and the Imperial will be in all things “ observed. Be there, then, the union of love and peace, “as also safe commerce between our nations ; but so that

“ to you, as pre-eminent in dignity, remain the command, “ whilst to us the will to obey shall not be wanting.” The old chronicler'3-5) who transcribes these expressions, professes indeed to regard them as honied words devoid of sense; and it must be confessed that Henry II. does not appear to have been much more scrupulous in regard to veracity than his contemporaries. Hut that one inde­pendent monarch should even dream, in the utmost extra­vagance of flattery, of addressing such an acknowledgment of inferiority to another, must be taken as evidence that Frederic’s lofty ideal of Imperial Sovereignty, was pretty generally admitted throughout Europe as correct. A cir­cumstance so explanatory of his conduct, should not be lost sight of even by the historian whose sympathies are most enlisted on the side of the Lombards, struggling against what they felt a foreign, if a lawful, yoke.

At this Besan^on Diet that had alarmed Lewis VII., or soon afterwards, Frederic appears to have redeemed his promise to his deceased uncle Conrad, investing his young cousin and namesake, Frederic, with the duchy of Swabia, and the family possessions in Franconia.C®26) But the consciousness of supreme power which, amidst loyalty at home, and respects and fears of neighbouring states Frederic enjoyed at Besan^on, was not to be un­alloyed. The condition of Italy was becoming daily more unsatisfactory to the Emperor, but not so to the Pope; who, no longer wanting Imperial support against the Romans, with whom he now thought himself able, un­assisted, to deal, revived that Papal claim to supremacy, which was never suffered to lie dormant, except from actual impotence to assert it. In the language and tone of the papal letters brought to this Diet, and in that of the Legates who bore them, this pretension boldly re-appeared.

The business of the Legates w7as to demand the punishment of an act of violence upon an ecclesiastic, committed in Upper Burgundy. Eskil Archbishop of Lund, the prelate whom St. Bernard had admonished rather to perform his episcopal duties, than to take the monastic vows, had, on his way home from a visit to Rome, been attacked, by Burgundian nobles or robber-knights, and was not only plundered, but detained a prisoner, until he should pay a very heavy ransom The prelate had appealed to

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the Emperor; but he, who held the assumed metropo htauship of Lund, an encroachment upon the rights of German archbishops, refused to interfere, alleging his ignorance of the existence of am such person as an arch­bishop of Lund, or of the actual perpetration of any such crime. Eskil, -who would not expend the revenues of his see upon his own ransom, next applied to Adrian for redress; and the Pope despatched his Chancellor, Cardinal Rolando Bandinelli dei Paperoni, and the learned Cardinal Bernardi to Besan^on, to demand satisfaction for this outrage. But ere relating the offence they gave to the whole Diet as well as to the Emperor, it will be proper to see what was the condition of Italy that em­boldened the Court of Rome to re-assume tins lofty tone.

In the South the Greek armament, with which Frederic, was to have co-operated, had made considerable progress in Apulia, where the cruelty of King Roger had been ill calculated to conciliate the attachment of iiis latest acquired subjects; and the tyranny of the son and that son’s favourite, had deepened the hatred provoked bv the father. But Maione, as before said, if unprincipled and arbitrary, was able. If he monopolized great offices in his own family, making himself Grand-Admiral, and his brother Stefano Captain-General of the fleet, as his deputy, his nephew Grand-Seneschal, and a brother-in-law Viceroy of Apulia, the emergency awoke his better qualities, and he breathed a spirit of exertion and resolution into King and vassalage. He raised troops, and roused the monarch to lead them in person against the invaders. Stefano gaini^d a splendid victory over the Greek fleet; whilst on" shore, Maione himself organized a defensive system, gradually recovered the lost provinces, and expelled the Greeks from Apulia. lie then appeared in such strength before Benevento, and so read} to give the again, as usual, dissatisfied Romans effective assistance, that the Pope deemed it expedient to make peace. To this Maione, provided it were on his own terms, was thoroughly dis­posed; those terms being that Adrian should revoke the ex­communication, give William investiture of his realms, with authority yet more absolute than that enjoyed by his father, and entirely abandon the cause of the papal allies and vas­sals, the insurgents—the restored exiles included. Rebels

who rely upon foreign assistance, however just their cause may be, are commonly sacrificed in the end; and with all these conditions Adrian reluctantly complied, save as he bargained for permission to emigrate, on behalf of such of the insurgents as were not already captured and ex­ecuted Those writers who do not make the Prince of Capua’s fate precede Frederic’s former expedition to Italy, say it was now that his vassal, and supposed friend, the Conte di Forli, betrayed him into the hands of the re­vengeful King. The emigrants appealed to the Emperor; many of the noblest, including the Earls of Loritelli and Rupecanina, repaired to his court, and sedulously stimulated his resentment against the Pope, who had de­serted them.

But vet more strength than from his alliance with his former enemies, the Normans, did Adrian derive from the growing ambition and audacity of Milan. Even whilst the Emperor was still in Italy had that arrogant city, in direct contravention of his commands, attempted to rebuild Tor- tona; and although then foiled by the arms of Pavia, she had, since his return to Germany, renewed the attempt. Again Pavia strenuously opposed her proceedings; but this time Milan had succeeded, and had reinstalled the ex­pelled Tortonese in their restored town. The Emperor had pronounced all tbe royalties enjoyed by Milan forfeited by this act of rebellion; but he was beyond the Alps, and Milan, laughing at a sentence which could not at the moment be enforced, and exulting in this triumph over her acknowledged sovereign, now cast off every semblance of obedience. She waged war upon all who still professed loyalty, as the Marquess of Montferrat, the cities of Cre­mona, Novara, &c., and had domineered more tyrannically than ever over those she had thoroughly subjugated. The only accession to the Imperialists in Lombardy, and that not in probably in appearance only, was Verona. She had sent her Bishop, with the tv.ro loyal noblemen who had attended the Emperor throughout Ins Italian campaign, to the Ratisbon Diet, in 1156, to profess her dutiful loyalty, her joy at the defeat and death of the miscreant Alberico, to oner an ample pecuniary gratuity, and to promise zealous aid in all future operations against Milan, and she row

388              PAPAL LEGATEb AT BESANOON.     [1155-

declared herself ready to fulfil all the promises then made.     .

This desertion of Verona was, in Adrian’s estimation, hardly any counterbalance to Milan’s eager determination to cast oft' the authority of the Empire; and the Papal Legates at Besan^on felt themselves strong. They did not delay to exhibit and abuse their strength, by insulting the Emperor and the assembled Princes of the Empire. The very salutation with which they accosted the monarch ran thus: “ The most Holy Pope Adrian and the Cardinals greet thee—he as thy father, they as thy brethren.” They then presented, or rather showed, and read aloud in Latin, immediately translating it into German, a letter from the Pope, which, in addition to the bitterest reproaches con­cerning the ill-usage of the Archbishop of Lund, contained the following arrogant phrases: “ Thou shouldst recall, “ most glorious son, before the eyeo of thy spirit, how wil- “ lingly, how joyfully, thy mother, the most Holy Roman “ Church, in the past year, received thee, with what “ cordial good-will she treated thee, what a fullness of “ honour and dignity she conferred upon thee, and how “ cheerfully, by the grant of the Imperial crown, she exalted “ thy greatness to the highest pitch. Neither do we repent “of having in everything fulfilled thy desires; had thy “ Excellency received at our hand, were that possible, yet “ greater beneficial [the Latin word, meaning both fiefs granted and benefactions, is in the present case untran- slateable, so as to preserve the equivoque], “ we, considering “ the increments and advantages that may, through thee, “ accrue to the Church of God and to us, should rejoice “ thereat.’X32?)         .

How the Princes of the Empire might have been dis­posed to consider the ruffianly seizure ot a Danish prelate, does not appear, inasmuch as the word beneficia, taken as implying, as it was certainly designed to do, that the Em­pire was a fief, granted bv the Pope, effectually prevented the subject matter of the letter from obtaining any attention. Words ran high ; and Cardinal Rolando fanned the flame by insolently asking, “ From whom, if not from our Lord the Pope, does the Emperor receive the Empire ?” At this direct assertion that the imperial crown was the free gift

of the Pope, the indignation of Palsgrave Otho burst all bounds. Drawing his sword he sprang from bis seat, rushed upon the presumptuous Cardinal, and would have cut him down upon the spot, had not the Emperor in person caught his arm. Frederic then exerted himself, with the assistance of his Chancellor, Graf Reginald von Dassel, to allay the tumult, and have the Legates escorted in safety to their quarters.

But if lie rescued the Cardinals from the sudden burst of popular resentment—if the tumultuous anger of princes and nobles may be so designated—he by no means intended to let the insult pass with impunity, or to submit to Papal usurpation. He ordered the baggage and papers of the Legates to be examined, when amongst these were found, not only letters addressed to the German prelates, designed to awaken in them contempt for the imperial authority, if not to excite them to actual rebellion, but also the Papal seal and signature affixed to blank sheets, which the Legates might fill up as to them should seem expedient. Their hostile intentions and dangerous powers thus ascer­tained, Frederic did not hesitate as to his course. He com­manded the two Cardinals to quit Besan^on the following morning, and return to Rome, without deviating from the straight road, either to the right or to the left. It has been asserted that the Legates were likewise instructed to object to Frederic’s marriage with the Countess of Burgundy as bigamy, thus virtually denying the validity of his divorce from Adelheid von Vohburg. But though it is likely enough that Adrian may have grudged the Emperor the acquisition of domains which he owed to his second mar­riage, it is by no means so that he should have risked weakening the papal authority, by disallowing a papal act, that is to say, attempting to invalidate a divorce which one of his predecessors, Eugenius III., had sanctioned. Therefore, as no further mention of any idea of the kind occurs, the report may be set down as Ghibeline slander.

The bold dismissal of the Legates sent to complain of Burgundian misdeeds appears to have touched the hitherto refractory hearts of the wife’s vassals in favour of her im­perial husband ; and its effect was, it may be presumedj heightened by an example of his respect for justice shown in Burgundian affairs. It has been stated that, in the

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compromise between the Countess of Burgundy and the Duke of Zaringen, the Emperor had assigned to the latter the mesne suzerainty over three Burgundian bishoprics. At this Besan^on Diet the Bishop of Geneva produced docu­ments proving the exemption of these sees from such inter­mediate suzerainty; whereupon the Ernperor at once cancelled the grant, and made the Duke full compensation from his own or his wife’s private domains. Ar.d now the Archbishop of Lyons, Primate of the Arelat, the Arch­bishop of Vienne, Chancellor of that kingdom, with most of the Burgundian and Arelat princes, prelates, and nobles, hastened to Besancjon to do homage, take the oath of allegiance, and receive investiture of their fiefs; whilst those who could not attend deputed representatives to perform in their names such of these duties as might be performed bv prox y.

The Emperor neglected not the means of extending and vivifying the flame of loyalty thus originating in Papal aggression. He addressed letters to such German great vassals, ecclesiastical and temporal, as had not been present at Besanc^on; describing the conduct of the Legates, and explaining it, not as a casual ebullition of Papal pre­sumption, but as the piosecution of the old scheme for subjecting the Imperial to the Papal Crown ; describing, likewise, the offensive picture of Lothar at Innocent’s feet, which Adrian had promised him to destroy, but had not even removed from the spot where it was exhibited ; and dilating nearly in the style of the apostate monk, Henry, or Arnold of Brescia, upon the contrast between the lowly Apostles, and the pompous court of the ambiriously aspiring successor of the fisherman, St. Peter. Nor did he omit to dilate upon the contempt with which the Germans were spoken of at that court, as stupid creatures, formed only to obey.

The spirit of Germany was roused to resist Papal encroachment. The lay Princes, prepared with unwonted promptitude for the Italian expedition, appointed to begin at Whitsuntide of the next year, 1158. The prelates cordially united with them and the Emperor, to withstand every Papal invasion of German independence. And the Emperor despatched his Chancellor, Bishop Reginald, with the Bavarian Palsgrave Otho, to Italy, to announce his

coming, encourage all loyal vassals and cities, and stimulate their movements, that they might be in readiness to join his standard as soon as it should appear south of the Alps. He at the same time placed some check upon the com­munication of the disaffected with Rome, by ordering all the Alpine passes to be strongly guarded. Nevertheless, he gladly accepted the offer of the Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, to take advantage of the personal favour Adrian had shown him, in order to propose himself as mediator. Frederic could not but shrink from a rupture with the Papal See, how much soever irritated against the indi­vidual Pope.

Tne Pope was no less active than the Emperor in seeking support ; one of his first measures being an attempt to lure the German prelates from their unaccustomed loyalty. He addressed an energetic epistle to them, complaining of the Emperor’s ingratitude, of the affront offered him in the dismissal of his Legates, of the obstruction of intercourse between Germany and Rome, and calling upon the German prelacy to form a wall of defence for the Church—bring the Emperor to a sense of the duty and obedience he was bound to pay the representative of the Blessed Apostle St. Peter, and procure ample satisfaction from Palsgrave Otho and Chancellor Beginald, who had been most active in the violence offered to the Legates.

The reply of the German prelates bespoke the spirit then animating the whole nation. With professions of the utmost veneration for his Holiness, and obedience to his injunctions, they stated that they had admonished the Emperor, as commanded, and had received the most satis­factory answer. The Emperor had disclaimed any, the most remote, idea of encroachment upon the rights of the Church, but alleged that he must govern the Empire by its old laws and usages ; that the Empire was the gift (ibeneficium) of God, assigned by free election, hi which the Archbishop of Mainz had the first voice ; then the other Princes in regular order ; the right of crowning the elected monarch as King of Germany being vested in the Archbishop of Cologne, as was that of performing his yet loftier coronation as Fmperor, in the Pope. They added that he justified the dismissal of the Legates as necessary to prevent the dissemination of seditious writings

throughout Germany ; the guarding the Alpine passes as designed, not to obstruct the resort of pilgrims, or persons duly authorized by their ecclesiastical superiors, to Rome, but to prevent abuses oppressive to the Church, and subversive of monastic discipline. The Bishops added that the Emperor, as he would not encroach upon the rights of the Church, would endure no encroachment upon those of the Empire, but rather la\r down his crown than see it tarnished whilst on his head ; anil he, therefore, insisted upon the annihilation of the offensive picture and the recantaiion of the offensive expressions ; they stated further that he had said much respecting the Holy Father’s alliance with William of Sicily, and some other matters, which they in reverence omitted; merely observing that Palsgrave Otho was in Italy preparing for the Emperor’s arrival, as was the Chancellor Reginald, an upright peaceable man, to whom the Legates mainly owed their rescue from the storm of public rage, provoked by the language they had used at Besancon.

This unexpected loyalty of the German prelates, con­firmed by the tone of the Bishop of Bamberg, who was deputed by his brethren to carry their answer to Rome, made a deep impression upon the Pope, as betokening Frederic’s great power. The impression was deepened by the concourse o: Italian prelates and vassals, with some Consuls of cities, around Beginald and Otho, all professing loyalty, and promising their contingent of troops to join the Imperial army upon its appearance. Adrian’s con­fidence in external support was shaken ; he saw that conciliation was again the most seasonable policy, and while he lent a more willing ear to the representations of Henry the Lion’s envoys, he despatched two other Cardinals upon a new and very different mission, more seemly from the Head of the Church, being pacific.

These Legates visited the German Bishop and Palsgrave at Modena, to request from them permission to cross the Alps, which was gladly' given, but could not insure to the travellers an untroubled journey. It obviated, indeed, any difficulties on the part of the Imperialist guards of the mountain passes, but could not hinder the outrages of robber-kniglits. By such the Legates were, as the Danish Archbishop had been, attacked and plundered

in some of the Alpine defiles ; and only by leaving the brother of one of these Princes of the Church, as a hostage for the enormous ransom which their victorious assailants demanded, could they themselves obtain permission to prosecute their important journey. But the object now was conciliation, and no public complaint was made of this flagrant violation of the law of nations. Indeed, it scarcely appears to have been mentioned, except as the cause and excuse of the delay in the Legates’ arrival at Augsburg, where it had been arranged that they should present themselves to the Whitsuntide Diet, then and there to make their apologetic explanation of the language that had given offence. This Diet, when they at length reached Augsburg, was actually breaking up, and the several Princes upon the point of proceeding to head their respective troops upon the expedition to Italy.

The dissolution was however postponed, the expedition itself delayed, in order that the assembled Estates of the Empire might witness the reception and demeanour of the new Legates. They accosted the Emperor in presence of the Diet in the following satisfactorily modified form of their predecessors’ address. “ The Head of the Holy “ Roman Church, your Highness’s pious father in Christ, “ greets you as the first and dearest son of St. Peter, and “ all the Cardinals, our reverend brethren and your clergy, “ greet you as the Lord and Emperor of Rome, and of “ the world.” They then tendered and read aloud an ex­planatory letter from the Pope, in which he assured the Emperor that he had used the word beneficium purely in its spiritual, not in its feudal sense, as a benefit, a doing of good, and such the placing the imperial crown upon the head of the elected monarch, must, he averred, surely be considered Frederic seems at first to have thought the explanation somewhat lame ; but the apologetic answers of the Cardinals, and yet more the respectfully amicable tone in which they were made, supplied all that he had felt deficient. Nor it may be presumed would he be hyper-fastidious upon the occasion, influentially as he must know that the enmity or amity of the Pope would act upon his every enterprise in Italy. He declared himself satisfied, gave the Legates the kiss of peace for the Pope, and the whole Roman hierarchy, and dismissed Digitized by Microsoft ®

them with assurances of restored harmony and friendship. He delegated to Henry the Lion the duty of procuring redress for the Cardinals, the robbery Having perhaps been perpetrated within or near the Alpine frontier of Bavaria, and ample redress and satisfaction they appear to have obtained.

The contingents of the different princes had been draw­ing together even whilst the Diet was sitting; and although several of the great vassals, occupied by pressing affairs of their ow n, remained at home with the Emperor's consent, some temporarily, as the Duke of Saxon} and Bavaria, till lie should have arranged his newly arisen dissension? with the Danes and Slavonians, and others altogether, still when the Emperor reached the place of assemblage upon the Lech, he found an army, answering to his boldest expectations awaiting him. Nor was the host here arrayed the whole; for having determined not again to risk irre­gularities by leading numerous forces in one body over the Alps, he had directed the Duke of Zaringen with his Burgundians and the Lotharingians to take his line of march over the Gnat St. Bernard, and it is verj unlikely that this division should have been brought so far out of its way as the banks of the Lech. Of the remainder, the Duke of Swabia, with the Swabians, Franconians, and some Rhinelanders proceeded by the Splugen pass, Chiavenna, and the Lake of Como; the Dukes of Aus­tria and Carintliia led their vassals, and, it is said, a Hungarian contingent, through Friuli; whilst the Em­peror in person, accompanied by his brother the Rhine Palsgrave, by the King of Bohemia, the Archbishops of Mainz and Treves, an I the majority of the princes, con­ducted the main army bj his former road through the Tyrol, ami over the Brrnner. He felt as he did so, that his proud hope of restoring the Holy Roman Empire to its pristine dignity and splendour of sovereignty, Mas about to bp realized, at, least, i ti Italy.

END OF VOL. I.

NOTES TO YOL I.

(1)    p. 4. Conde. This Spanish Orientalist, whose history is taken from Hispano-Arab MSS., has been followed in the text; hut the German Orientalist, Ilammer-Purgstall, it must be stated, says that the proper name is A1 Morabithin, meaning the Hermits, or Champions of the Faith, and represents these invaders rather as a sect than a tribe.

(2)    p. 4. Emir A1 Muminin, is the title corrupted by old chroniclers into -Mirainolin.

(3)    p. 7. William the Conqueror's sons already numbered Alfred amongst their ancestry, through their mother, Matilda of Flanders, Earl Baldwin of Flanders haying obtained Alfred’s daughter Elfrida for his Countess.

(4)    p. 7. Edith, one of the daughters of Edward the Elder, was the first wife of the Emperor Otho the Great, and another, Edgiva, married Charles the Simple, King of France.

(5)    p. 8. It is at least singular that the word Berserkr is found in Persian bearing a sense not unappropriate to the Norse heroes ; to wit, acting from impulse, or self-willed.—Ilammer-Purgstall.

(6)    p. 9. This name for Scandinavian warriors is variously written, Warangian, Waragian, Wteringar, Yarengian and Barengian ; but the first seems to be the most common form.

(7)    p. 9. Gibbon.

(8)    p. 9. Pritchard.        ■

(9)    p. 9. This same order of succession has, in the present century, been found established amongst the Talpoor Ameers of Scinde.—See Napier’s ‘ Conquest op Scinde.’

(10)  p. 10. Karamsin.

(11)  p. 11. Rcepel.

(12)  p. 11. It maybe presumed that this assertion was merely a stratagem to facilitate the permanent occupation of Hungary; since, if true. Attila and his Huns must have been cruelly calumniated as to their personal appearance. But whether the origin of the Magyars be Turkish, Hunnish i meaning Calmouk), or Finnish, is still an undecided question. M. de Besse, a recent visitor of the Caucasus, says that at the present day Ma<ljat is t le ’.ame u: the waggon in which the

Tartars remove their families, a strong argument surely in favour of the Turkish hypothesis, as from the locality of this Fienchman’s travels, he must needs mean Caucasian. Tartars, and not Mongols. Iiask, as quoted by Pritchard, adopts the Finnish theory, and renders this somewhat sur prising classification of races yet more startling, by including in the same family group the Euskarians, i. e. the Aborigines of Spain and perhaps Italy A recent historian of Hungary, Dr. Fessler, alleges in disproof of this opinion, the absence of identity of roots in the Magyar and Finnish languages, though he admits considerable similarity of words. He blends the Turkish and Hunnish theories, affirming that both Huns and Magyars are Turks, and quoting in support of this opinion the words of Procopius, “ Genus et nomen Hunnorum par­ticipant, licet cum Hunnis quos novimus nihil illis commune sit.” Dr. Schott, one of the latest investigators of the subject, goes further, asserting Huns, Mongols, and Turks, to be all of one race, the Turk-, owing their improved Caucasian appearance to a settled town life, in a milder climate—the first of which sources of improvement can hardly have acted upon the Caucasian Tartars, alias Circassians and Dr. Pritchard inclines to the same opinion, adding the Magyars to the family. Finally Graf Mailath, in his Geschichte deii Mag wren, inserts a paper from the pen of a Magyar Canon of Pesth, named Fejer, who prefers the Parthians as ancestors, and the noble historian is evi­dently convinced by the Canon’s arguments

(13)  p. 15. This is the form of the Cry most generally given; and it may seem strange that any doubt should exist respecting an excla­mation that must have been universally known, when recorded by the first chroniclers of the Crusade. Nevertheless divers forms appear in mediu'val as well as in modern writers, e.g., Deus lo vult; Deus id vult; Dieux el volt; and Deus vult. But it is to be recollected that con­temporaneous chroniclers wrote in Latin, into which they therefore translated the vernacular ejaculation, in whatever form of the vulgar tongue it burst forth; so that we know it only in their translation, which modern writers labour to retranslate into the Langue d’oil.

(14)  p. 16. 'SVilkon.

(15)  p. 16. Gibbon implies that all the ruffians, profligates, &c., were in the army of the Goat and the Goose, to which army he confine” the bulk of the atrocities recorded, witn the exception of the massacre of the Jews, which he imputes to all. But he neither speaks very posi­tively nor cites his authorities; and the veiy existence of the 200,000 under such unusual generals, even assisted, as those Generals are said to have been, by a Graf Emicho, is questiored by some historians.

(16)  p. 16, If the Goat and Goose rabble be a fiction, or were dis­persed. as reported, early enough for the majority to return to theii homes, 150,000, must smely, as their contingent, be deducted from the

880,000    victims, unless indeed the calculation be made by those who deny the Goat and Goose.

(17)  p. 18. Th» denomination of Saracen, though often used as

vituperative, is far from being, in its proper signification, which is happily descriptive of the Arabs. It is derived from the Arabic word Sarag, meaning cavalier, or horseman.—See Heeren.

(18)  p. 20. Muratori. Annali d’ Italia.

(19)  p. 24. K. J. Weber. Die Ritter der Kreuzziige sind die hochste Poesie des Rittervvesens, und das Ritterthum war die Polizei der Adel- welt. Der Anfang unserer drey welt-historischer Ritterorden ist herz- erhebend. Riihrende, erhabene Einfalt bezeichnet ihre Kindheit; Glanz, und hohe Waffenthaten ihre Jugend.

(20)  p. 25. Mills, relying upon Vertot and Helyot, asserts that the Hospitalers did not require legitimacy any more than nobility in their Knights. Most, if not all, other writers say they did ; and had they not, so striking a contrast to the Templars must surely have attracted so much notice as to be generally mentioned. Perhaps the conflicting statements may be reconciled by the conjecture, that in their original lowly condition and entire devotion to hospital duties, they gladly received all candidates for permission to share in those ur alluring avocations—indeed it is known that of the early Hospitalers many were low-born, whether in or out of wedlock—aud that admission was gradually restricted, when the humble nurses assumed the additional character of Knights.—That ultimately both legitimacy and nobility were indispensable qualifications of a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem, or of Malta, is notorious.

(21)  p. 26. Hurter.

(22)  p. 26. Curzon, Monasteries of the Levant,

(23)  p. 26. AVilken.

(24)  p. 26. Hammer-Purgstall.

(25)  p. 26. D’Herbelot.

(26)  p. 28. According to Neander, the modern German biographer of that canonized Abbot, St. Bernard, to whose judgment the proposed constitution of the Templars was submitted, and by whom it was finally arranged, the original document, as corrected and improved by the Saint, is lost; the oldest extant copy bearing evidently marks of a later age—and possibly of alterations.

(27)  p. 31. Hammer-Purgstall.

(28)  p. 31. Wilken and Michaud. But for the account of the Sheik of the Assassins and his subjects, Marco Polo is the real original authority, and upon him both mainly rely, though the German quotes Oriental authorities likewise.

(29)  p. 32. Another etymology for Assassins has by some inquirers, been found in the Arabic word Chassas, meaning a spy. But if this idea be adopted, Assassin must be supposed the Arabic name of these Ismaelis,—which it has never been stated to be;—since the Crusaders, who were unacquainted with that language—not even the vernacular of the native Syrians, who are said to have spoken Chaldaic—could hardly makr a denomination for their abhorred neighbours from a -wor<l

VOL, I.      T

of an unknown tongue, the signification of which, moreover, had they been acquainted with it, is not "what they attached to the word assassin, and rather aldn to, than descriptive of, the atrocious duties of thoso to whom it was given. It may be worth observing, that a recent tra­veller in Western Barbary, Mr. IXay Drummond, gives, the word hatbesh as the name of an intoxicating liquor in use there,—kc&hisk seemingly in another dialect, or perhaps language. Wilken, who derives the name Assassin from the drink, haskiih, says the drug employed to render the drink actually stupifying, was Indian, ana ascribes the detestation in which Mohammedans held the Assassins, not to their murders, but to their many heresies, mostly of Indian origin. This last opinion of his, startlingly inconsistent with their fanatic Sheahism, is consonant with an idea thrown out by Major Tod, viz : that modern Indian Thuggism, is the off-pring of Ismailisin, which is again confirmed by Mountstuart Elphinstone’s statement, that there are more Mohammedans than Hindoos amongst the Thugs, strange as it seems to find the rigidly Monotheist-Moslem under the patnjnage of a Hindoo Goddess.

(30)  p. 32. Hammer-Purgstall.

(31)  p. 32. Id.

(32)  p. 33. The whole of this empire, with the exception of Italy, appears, prior to its dissolution, to have been called Frankenfa/ui or Frankenrrich, the country or empire of the Franks. In this name that of Gaul early merged, unless it be supposed to have survived in Walloon, given seemingly by the Franks, alias Germans, to those who spoke the Romane or Kustic-Latin tongue. The several German races, Swabians, Bavarians, Saxons, on the contrary, carefully preserved their distinct nationalities, even whilst admitting some superiority in the conquering Franks, nence, while at the division, the name of Frank- enreioh, gradually softening into France, remained to the western portion, which has thence assumed to have been originally mistress of the whole, in the eastern it was confined to the duchy of Franconia; and the old Latin denomination of Germania, and, in the vernacular Teutschland or Deutschland, became the collective designation.

(33)  p. 33. Or Sclavonian. The incorrect form Sclaronian, wa« very likely adopted to avoid confusion with, or resemblance to, slavery, but must in these days of fastidiously precise orthography be discarded. The proper namt-, Slavonian, is derived by those now bearing it, from the Slavonian word Slawa, glory, but the German Wachsmuth (with most non-Slavonian philologists), prefer* the etymology of S'loico, word, upon the strong ground, that non-Slavonians were and are termed by them Niemetz or dumb; and if the statement of Sir Gardner Wilkinsi n, that the name was originally written Slovonian, be correct, it would settle the question.        *

(34)  p. 34. Eichhom. But in opposition to thi« high authoiity it must be observed, that no such Duke of Burgundy occurs in any of the his-

tones of Germany consulted for these volvmes; andthe Dukes of Zaringen, who subsequently held the rectorship or government, did not obtain the ducal title till after the death of Conrad's son and heir, Henry III.

(35)  p. 31. It may be worth stating, though more relevant to the French pretensions to the left bank of the Rhine, than to the period of history under consideration, that the Romans regarded the country ''.ailed Lotharingia in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, as part of Germany, Constans, who, at the division of Constantine’s empire, had Africa, Italy, and Germany, but not Gaul, for his share, made Treves his capital; and yet earlier it was included in Germania pium,* and Germania seccnda.

(36)  p. 36. Hallam.

(37)  p. 36. In German Heer means an aimy, zog is the preterite of kiehcn, to draw or lead.

(38)  p. 36. Hallam.

(39)  p. 37. It has been further observed that in modern German the very name of a fief, lehn (lehnen being one form of to lend) implies land lent, not given or inherited. With regard to the distinction between fiefs and allodia, some little confusion arises from early writers occasionally using the word allodium as synonymous with heritable property, when fiefs were generally held for life; but the proper meaning is land owning no feudal service, or freehold. And the land so held, Mr. Kemble in his Saxons in England argues, must originally have been arable, since pasture and forest were the common property of a district, the right to share in which was regulated by the possession of the arable land.

(40)  p. 37. Taeitus indicates this great superiority of the freemen or freeholders over the band of a prince—afterwards his vassals—which would naturally consist of youths, not yet established in homes of their own, when he says, “ Nor is there any shame in appearing amongst the Comites.” And he further shows the feeling which, centuries later, converted these proud freeholders into ever belligerent vassals, when he observes, “ It seemed dull to acquire by sweat what might be acquired by blood." It is somewhat curious that the same Latin word Comes, which designated this inferior, the member of the band—excluded as such from the folkmote, and subject to the jurisdiction of the Palace Judge, the Pfalzgraf—should have been subsequently appropriated to the vassal noble, perhaps because originally selected from the band, the Leudei, who judged those proud freemen.

(41)  p. 38. Savigny.

(42)  p. 39. Amongst modem investigators of the subject, Hormayr thinks be did so divide the offices ; Warnkcrnig conceives Italian dukes and earls to have differed only in rank. Testa says that he likewise appointed a Conte del Palazzo or Palace-Earl, as supreme Judge, to whom lay appeals from all other tribunals; but who, after the .civil war under Henry II., was succeeded by Conti Palatini di Provineia, or Provincial Earls Palatine, of lesp dignity.

(43)  p. 40. Tacitus. Glrmania.

(44)  p 41. What those Royalties, in German Rajalien, long the subject of contention between the emperors and the Lombard cities, were, seems much to perplex some modern writers. Berrington, for instance, takes them for the general rights of sovereignty, while Jamcr confines them to domains and real property. Almost all Germai. inquirers, on the other hand, take thi view given upon their authority in the text. The difficulty may have arisen from finding some of these royalties, especially the right, or the practice of coining, possessed by different towns and princes; it was often usurped, but often granted as the recompense of services, or alienated for money in pressing emergencies.

(45)  p. 42. TWnhorn, Pfistei The general opinion is, that when the archbishoprit was created, the primacy was withheld, because the popes disliked the intervention of such comprehensive powers betwixt themselves and the body of the clergy. But Eichhorn, a high authority, and Pfister, are clear that St. Bonifafe, whether he bore ths title of Primate or not, was invested with supremacy over the Church in East and West Trankenland, i.e. in France ar d Germany, and transmitted that supremacy to his successors.

(46)  p. 42. That the iron crown ot Lombardy -was the right of the elected German Sovereign, is the general opinion of German historian:, and antiquaries; and a modern, apparently very liberal, Italian, Testa, allov-’j that, from the time of the Othos It Was so, adding Costume fatale. But an English writer, whose authority it is alike painful and hazardous to dispute. Mr. Hallam, conceives that the Italians elected him over igain, rt the Roncaglia Diet, to which Italian affairs were habitually referred. Upon a German or half German question, however, the authority of investigators £.s diligent as the Germans, and scarcely dis­puted by Italians, seems so decisive, as to warrant the conclusion that, if any form of new election took place at Roncaglia. it was a mere form. No anti-election appears to hare occurred there after Otho’s conquest of Italy. The iron crown is so named because a nail, reported to have been taken from the Tri’e Cross, was hammered out, and spread through the rim.

(47)  p. 13. Savigny.

(48)  p. 44. Ilormayr.

(49)  p. 4(i, J. Grimm says, that tne original meaning of Voyt, was Judge, of Landvogt, Superior Judge. This intimate association of the office of administering justice with title is not to be overlooked.

(50)  p. 47. Hormayr.

(•51) p. 49. The commercial grandeur of Vinetha is no longer un­disputed, having been the subject of much profound investigation the results of which are far from uniform. Barthold, the historian of Pomeraniu, maintains that the account is merely exaggerated, and that the Arab coins prove the prodigious extent of the commerce of which Vinetha was the mart. Humboldt, adopts the commercial'

origin of the accumulation of Arab coins, believing them to have been brought by Asiatic caravans. Dahlmann, the learned historian of Denmark, asserts that Yinetha was merely a seat of piracy, and that the idea of its consequence has arisen from confounding it with its successor Wollin; and it will be remembered that the Arab coins might be the fruit of piracy. But again our own learned Pritchard concurs in Barthold’s view, and in his statement, that the remains of the splendour of Yinetha, in marble and alabaster, are still to be seen upon its former site at the bottom of the sea.

(52)  p. 49. That these municipal rights were everywhere wholly lost, is not the undisputed, though the prevalent, opinion. It is that of Hallam and Sismondi, who quote Lupi and Spittler as maintaining it. On the other hand Savigny, as high an authority upon such questions, and Pagnoncelli argue that the similarity, not to say identity, of the institutions is often too great to result from anything but the continuous knowledge and observance of the original institutions. Eichhorn, another great German authority, thinks that the cities of the south of France

e had thus retained the organization of Roman colonies, as had some, but not many, in Germany. If any had, it must be inferred that he thinks Cologne one of them ; since, he says, those that did retain their organi­zation had a municipal class ready provided ; and it is known that the Cologne patricians claimed descent from the Romans. Thierry goes further than any of the writers here cited, insisting that the cities had usurped yet greater rights and privileges amidst the disorders caused by barbarian invasion. Robertson had emitted the same opinion ; but the necessity of profound research into original documents, had not been felt in his day. The question relatively to Germany and France is chiefly interesting to Antiquaries ; in Italy it is held important to that of right and wrong, in the contest between Frederic Barbarossa and the Lombard cities.

(53)  p. 50. Raumer.

(54)  p. 50. The origin of these guilds is another point upon which German scholars are divided, those of other countries joining in the dispute. The corporation-forming spirit whence they sprang is, out of question, essentially Teutonic, and Wolfgang Menzel sees the germ of the guilds in the associated band of warriors, who, as Tacitus tells us, followed some chosen leader, and subsequently became the Leudes, or military household of the long-haired Merovingian kings. Thierry derives them from the banquets, at common cost, of Scandinavian brothers-in-arms, who were bound to defend each other in every possible emergency, even against lawful authority, and the just punishment of the most heinous crimes. That these banquets bore the name of gilde is indisputable, but the German word corresponding to the English guild, is zunfty not gilde, which last word was simultaneously used in Danish, to express, not a guild or zunft, but, a voluntary association for. some definite object, as a gildc for repressing Slavonian piracy. Again, other writers see in the guilds (ziinfte), the continuation of the corpora

t 3

artificum of the old Roman municipia ; and Mr. Kemble finds the kindred word gegyldan, in Ina’s Anglo-Saxon Laws, used as synonymous with family-union. Although Loher holds the guild to be the germ of the German great federation of small federations, the question of its origii* does not seem very important, save to Teutonic antiquaries.

(55)  p. 50. It is not a little curious to find in ever enslaved India, a village organization somewhat analogous to this German civic organiza­tion of partial self government. See Mountstuart Elphinctone’s History of India, Vol. I., p. 119.

(56)  p. 50. These Patricians and Gesehlethter were generally, but not a'.ways, the descendants of the first noble townsmen. In the towns founded by Henry, they were often the posterity of the ninth men; at Cologne, as before said, they claimed descent from the Roman colonists; and so forth; different in different places.

(57)  p. 51. The account of the condition of the handicraftsmen Is not very clear, which must be attributed chiefly to the utter indifference of the old chroniclers to such matters. Modern investigators have picked up a casual mention here, a law there, contradicted perhaps by the laws of the next town, and have drawn conclusions probably according to their preconceived opinions.

(58)  p. 52. Hormayr.

(59)  p. 51. Krazinski, who supports himself by Herder’s authority.

(60)  p. 55. In exemplification of the indefinite ideas connected in the middle ages with the title Consul, it may be stated that in some German towns it was borne by the Patricians or Qeschlrchttr.

(61)  p. 55. Testa, Perceval. Perhaps rebuilt would have been the proper word, as walled some of them had indisputably been, and Testa intimates the ruin of the old walls from long neglect and indolence.

(6i) p. 55. Bishop Otho says that in Italian cities all clashes were eligible to the consulship; but it is difficult to reconcile this statement with the struggle, to be narrated in the history of the thirteenth century, of the lower classes to wrest the municipal offices from the nobility, and the compromise mediated by Honorius III. May it be conjectured that the Austrian Chronicler, who does not appear to have visited Italy, was less well acquainted with Italian than vuth German institutions, and either confused the practice perhaps of a time when the Lombards were under their own kings, with that of a later period, or, misled by the identity of name, mistook the- Consuls of ‘ Arti,’ i.e., guilds, fox Mayors ? His words are: “Barbaricae deposito feritatis rancore, ex eo forsan, “ ^uod indigenis per connubia juncti, lilios ex materno sanguine, ac “ terrae aerisvc proprietate, aliquid Romana- mansuetudinis et saga( itatis V trahcntes, genuerint, Latini sermonis elegantiam. morumque retinent “ urbanitatem. in civitatuin yioque disposition et Reipub. conserva- “ tione, antiquorum adhuc Komanorum imitantur sourtiam. Denique “ libertatem tantopere affectant, ut potestatis insulentiam fugiendo, Con- “ sulum potius quam linperantium regantur axbitrio. Cumque tres “ inter eos ordines, id est Capitaneorum, Yalvassorum, et Flebis esse

“ noscantur, ad reprimendam superbiam, non de uno, sed de singulis,

“ prsedicti Consules ciiguntur.” Testa ascribes the noble monopoly of municipal authority to democratic modesty; meaning probably the reverence of the helpless, ignorant thralls for their masters—and it is not unlikely to have rested rather upon prescription than written laws.

(63)  p. 57. Hurter.

(64)  p. 58. It is to be inferred that separate cells were of later date; and indeed when the word cell occurs in early writers, it is generally used for a sort of hermitage, connected with, or dependent upon a monastery, something akin to the aggregate of hermitages upon Mont­serrat in Spain.

(65)  p. 59. The size of the Abbey of Clugny will appear in the course of the narrative ; but with respect to the library it may be here stated that when the Hugonots destroyed the abbey, a.d. 1562, they burnt eighteen hundred MSS., the manual work of.medieval monks—including copies perhaps of some of the lost classic productions.

(66)  p. 60. In later times unmarried French princesses have been Abbesses of Fontevraud. But if royal blood was thus substituted for the experience of married life, the spirit of the founder's law was so far adhered to that these abbesses were not nunnery-bred.

(67)  p. 61. Vogt.

(68)  p. 63. Weber quotes an epistle from Pope Gelasius, who died a.d. 496, to the Greek Emperor Anastasius, in which he advanced the pretension to such superiority, as if generally acknowledged; saying, “ Thou knowest, beloved son, that the spiritual authority is superior to “ the temporal, and that bishops, as stewards over God’s mysteries, are " responsible to him for kings.”

(69)  p. 64. J. H. Wolf. Of contemporary authorities it is only Eginhard, Charlemagne’s secretary, son-in-law, and biographer, who speaks of this Imperial coronation as a sudden impulse of Leo’s, and but for his evident anxiety to exalt bis wife’s father, no better authority could be desired. Nor after all do the words he ascribes to Charle­magne, “ that he would not have attended mass had he suspected the Pope's intention,” necessarily import any disinclination to the Imperial title, or anything more than his having projected a different form of coronation, one, probably, marking it his own act.

(70)  p. 65. Pfister.

(71)  p. 65. Charlemagne, even before he was Emperor, convoked Church Councils, and seems to have presided in them, as, according to Jones’s Histoby op the Waldenses, in the year 794 he wrote to the Spanish Church, relatively to some heterodox opinions which had been examined in a Council held that year, “ Wb have decided what must be believed.” The Carlovingians convoked in all one hundred and seven Church Councils, without any objection on the part of the popes.

(72)  p. 65. Bower, History of Popes.

(73)  p. 65. Weber.

(74)  p. 66. Bettinelli.      .

(75)  p. 67. Savignyr

(76)  p. 67. Muratori positively rejects this decree as spurious ; and Hallam, more cautiously, doubts its genuineness. The argument in its favour, a strong one, is that Gratian, whose object was to maintain the supremacy of the popes, admits it into his DechbtdK. But some writers, while admitting the authenticity of this decree, hold it invalid, because so are all the acts of the uncanonically elected Leo VIII., who is nevertheless an acknowledged Pope. The case with respect to this view is, that John XII., forgetting his obligations to Otho the Great, joined the Lombard Adelbert against him ; whereupon Otho returned to Home, and convoking a Council, had him deposed, and Leo YIII. elected therein.—(Yoigt, translated with additions by Abbe Jager.) Another circumstance that has thrown doubt upon this Papal re­cognition of Imperial sovereignty, is that Moshcim ascribes to Adrian 1. an analogous recognition of Charlemagne's sovereignty, while one of his annotators, either his translator, Murdock, or the editor of the translation, Soames, says it is supposed that Gratian copied the decree from the Chronit'ov of Sigebert, who wrote more than a century later,

a.d. 1111. It would indeed be strange that two Popes should have thus freely recognized a lay superior ; even in potent emperors. But again it is explained. The ultra-papist, Abbe Jager, conceives that Sigebert in his partisan zeal for the persecuted Henry iff., if he did not forge a papal bull, gave weight to that which was advantageous to him, by transferring it from Leo VIII. in the tenth century, to Adrian L in the eighth.

(77)  p. 68. This character of Henry III., does not rest upon unanimous testimony. Old anti imperialist writers lay to his charge a fault that has stained the reputation of too many great men, liber­tinism ; and a modern liheralist (if history may borrow a word from fashionable slang to express a fashionable tendency) Luden, farther taxes him with simony, and calls him an unfeeling (qcmutblose) tyrant With respect to the first of these imputations, it can only be said that it rests upon no proof, his accusers mentioning neither mistresses nor illegitimate offspring, and that he seems to have lived in perfect harmony with his wife, to whom he bequeathed the regency, as well as the guardianship of their children ; with respect to simony, that his recorded anxiety touching his father’s soul, on account of some simoniacal appointments to which pecuniary wants had tempted that Emperor, would seem strange in a simoniac. The vauue accusation of tyranny, is scarcely more supported by the naixative of Luden himself, or of the panegyrist;, of Gregory VII., Voigt, and Bowden, than by those of the modem Ghibeline historians, Stenzel, Raumer, and Pfister.

(78)  p. 70. Bowden.

(79)  p. 70. Wolf. This view of Gregory VII.'s character, which impressed itself irresistibly upon the present writer in studying this portion of history, is, it must be confessed, opposed to most of those usually token by all, save ultra-papists. Even Romanists ■whu favoui

the emperors, and Protestants generally, as well as sceptical ■writers, represent him as actuated solely by inordinate ambition, both personal and for the papacy; whilst among moderns, even those ultra-liberalists, who affect to give him fair praise — some far more than his due, ascribing to him the philosophic sentimentality of the nineteenth century—impute to him an original scheme of ambition, that would render the whole early portion of his public career, one uninterrupted scene of disgusting hypocrisy and dissimulation. (See Westminster Review, No. 69, p. 351.) And those ultra-papists who cannot see a fault in him, unless perhaps too tender a sensibility, similarly ascribe to him the project of emancipating the papacy from imperial control, and raising it to supremacy, from the hour of his accompanying Leo IX. to Rome:—ay, and admire him for it, as the Abbe Jager !

(80)  p. 73. Bowden.

(81)  p. 74. The words in which this reservation is made, are “ Salvo debito honore et reverentia dilecti filii nostri, Henrici, qui “in presentiam rex habetur, et futurns imperator, Deo concedcnte, “speratur!” The emperor’s oath to the Church, as embodied in the pope, presently adverted to, was Subjectionem debitam, et fidem reverenter servare,” the debito in one case, and debitam in the other, being held sufficient to prevent any undue or forced interpretation of the other words.

(82)  p. 74. This transaction Was afterwards used, not to foiind, but to prove the papal sovereignty over tlife Two Sicilies, as Magna Grecia and Sicily are now denominated. The claim itself rests upon a three­fold foundation. First, the right to all countries conquered from infidels, mentioned in the text; secondly, the alleged donation of Constantine, with the arguments for and against which, it were needless to weary the reader, being enough to observe that the fact of Constantine’s having been baptized at Nicomedia, not Rome, and by Eusebius, Bishop of Cesarea, not by the Pope, extinguishes the plea of the grant having been a baptismal fee. The third ground is altogether ecclesiastical—an assertion that the whole of Magna Grecia was suburbicarian to Rome; which, even were the suburbiearian character not restricted, as supposed, to a radius of one hundred miles, cannot surely include the insular Sicily.

(83)  p. 75. Testa says, that the Archbishop was married, and the right to marry one •virgin claimed by the successors of St. Ambrose for themselves and their clergy; but, as usual, he cites no authority.

(84)  p. 76. It is remarkable that the eulogists of Archbishops Hanno and Adalbert, amongst whom rank the Protestant Voigt and his Romanist translator, whilst they ascribe to them all the virtues under the sun, even chastity to Adalbert, allow all that writers on the other side say of the intentionally vicious education of the unfortu­nate little monarch. Tbe blame of the simoniacal nomination to sees, abbeys, and benefices that disgraced Henry IWs minority, and greatly assisted the papal attack upon lay patronage, must be shared probably

by Archbishop Adalbert, and the vicious society to which he inducted his royal ward.

(85)  p. 80 Tiraboschi, Benvenuto da Imola.

(86)  p. 81. The words of the decree indeed aie that they shall not receive investiture by ring su’d crozier at the hands of a layman. But as this was the only form of giving such investiture then known, th<= intention was clearly to preclude lay patronage.

(87)                   p. 84- It lias subsequent to this submission in the matter of simony, that Philip, as has been stated, incurred excommunication by marrying a married woman, being himself a married man, and, like his: predecessor Kobert, felt its evils.    •

(88)  p. 85. It seems needless to multiply examples cf submission to dibgracefi'l penances, but it may be added that in this same eleventh century Sweyn King of Denmark was compelled to do penance bare­foot and in sackcloth at the church door for putting rebels to death in a church, and was sentenced to this penance, not by the Pope, but, by his own subject, the Danish Bishop of Sealand, who loved him so devotedly as to die of grief at his death. And that among nations not Christian similar obedience to the ministers of religion prevailed, may be proved as regard*, the Mohammedans by the Almoiavide Emperor of Moslem Spain having submitted to be scourged by cn Iman, for the offence of too much exposing his sacred person in battle; whilst the free ancient Hermans are averred to have held that a blow inflicted by a Priest, the deputed agent of the Gods, could not disgrace.

(89)  p. 88. That Pascal was guilty of some degree of duplicity in the latter part of the transactions is undeniable; though his fault was perhaps merely weakness, in suffering his own opinion to be overborne. Certain’y, however, the Ghibelines are not entitled to tax him with such duplicity in the first instance. The hrnesty of his proposal, that the Church should relinquish thtf fiefs for which homage was due, is evident, from an answer he made to Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury The prelate inquired, “ What is to be done if a layman should ofler to endow “ an indigent church with lauds, upon condition of homage being donp “ far them ?” Pascal replied, “ If the condition be insisted upon, the “ gift must be declined.” His favourite axiom was that ecclesiastics, holding a higher station than laymen, should be free from dependence upon them, and also, as far as possible, from worldly business.

(BO) p. 89. The origin of the Welf family is another point upon which historians differ, and which has some little interest for the English reader, inasmuch as it is doubly ancestral to the reigning royal family of Great Britain:—the heiress of the eldest line of Welfs being eji ancestress of that Frederic Elector Palatine, who by his marriage with the daughter of James I. was the maternal grandfather of George I., the repre­sentative of the younger line. Wolff asserts that the Welt's belonged to the illustrious Agilolfcigs of Bavaria; but Zschokke, whose diligence and veracity are highly esteemed, expressly avers that Charlemagne completely extinguished the Agilolflngs and exalted the Welfs. The

majority of even. Bavarian historians allow that, though most illustrious, and possessed of prodigious domains, the Welfs never had ducal rank till they received the duchy of Bavaria from Henry IV.; a few only maintaining that Louis the Pious, when he married the Welf Judith, gave ducal rank to her father. Vogt says that the Welf, the Zaringen, and the Habsburg families were all branches of the Babenberg stock, and descended from Eticho, Duke of the Allemans under the Merovin­gians.

(91)  p. 89. Muratori says the marriage contract constituted Welf Matilda’s heir. If so, he was indeed cheated into matrimony. So com­pletely had she given all to the See of Rome, that she held herself unentitled to endow a convent without the Pope’s concurrence. Other writers, adopting Muratori’s statements, make the deed of gift subse­quent to the second marriage, and Welf thereupon quarrel with, and leave Matilda. But the deed would surely have been invalidated by such a previous marriage contract, which was not pleaded by Emperors or Welfs.

(92)  p. 89. Mr. Hallam is clearly of opinion that, as a vassal or sub­ject, Matilda could not alienate her dominions from the Empire; and when it is considered that she was a patroness of legal studies, it will hardly be supposed that she executed so important an act as the gift of a principality without legal advice. Is not the probability that she meant to give her allodial possessions, which are said to have included the duchy of Spoleto and the March of Ancona, not alienating them from the Empire, but merely placing the Pope so far in the position in ■which she herself stood; and that the fiefs were not excepted, simply because it was needless to except what she could not give.

(93)  p. 94. Robertson says he made them liberi; actual freemen, it will be remembered they could not be without landed property. His grant therefore must rather have been exemption irom villenage.

(94)  p. 96. Thierry, Lettees sub l’Hxstoire de France. He says the citizens built themselves such fortress dwellings simultaneously with the town walls ; and Testa says so numerous were these private castles or towers in Italian cities that Italy was thence named la Turrita. Yet it is difficult to believe any but the wealthiest so housed.

(95)  p. 99. Savigny. Laidner.

(96; p. 99. Bettinelli. The question of priority between the Italian Professor of Grammar and Alcuin is still not absolutely settled. Tiraboschi contends vehemently for his own countryman, and with much probability ; the Frank sovereign having more connexion with Rome, and therefore with Italy, than with England.

(97)  p. 100. The revival of civil law by the' discovery of a copy of the Pandects at the sacking of Amalfi by the Pisans,.a.d. 1135, is first mentioned by writers of the fourteenth century ; and Savigny is positive that this especial book was expounded by Imerius. A.i old copy— perhaps a finely executed copy —might very likely be found at Amalfi, and would be carried off by the Pisans as valuable booty, scarcity an d

consequent dearness making all books valuable, even to those who could not read them.

(98)  p. 100. Some of these schools have been regarded by Italian ■writers as surviving relics of the public Schools and Athenaeums, established by the Emperor Adrian for the study of the law, in the second century of our era. But even if we suppose any of those institutions to have prolonged their existence through the disastrous conquests, the convulsions, and the consequent ignorance of the intervening centuries, so inanimate must have been the state of such existence, that their revival may still be ascribed as a new birth, to papal protection and monastic exertion.

(99)  p. 101. Sharon Turner.

(100)        p. 102. Michelet. Because a finite being could not conceive the idea of Infinite Being, save through the influence of that Infinite Essence.

(101)        p. 103. Whj Mr. Macaulay should call the Italian Primate, who was an alien to both nations alike, “ one of the dominant caste,” is not very apparent. Surely not because he came to Canterbury from his Norman abbey ?

(102)        p. 103. This is the usual version of the Pope’s compliment; but Tiraboschi gives as his words, “ Quia Becci ad soholam ejus fui, et ad pedes ejus cum multis aliis auditor consedi.”

(103)        p. 104. Accor ling to Bede, Ethelbert, who died 605, with the advice of the Witan, promulgated laws written in English, that is to say Anglo-Saxon.—J. M. Kemble.

(104)        p. 105. The chief, if not the only ground upon which the poems, bearing the names of those old Welch Bards, were long pro­nounced lorgeries of the twelfth century, was that they are in rhyme, and rhyme was conceived to have been unknown at an earlier epoch. This last opinion having been proved to be a mistake—the proofs will be mentioned in their proper place- -archaeologist judgment, relieved from the argument founded upon it, has pronounced the poems authentic; whilst to the unlearned the internal evidence seems conclusive. The matter of these poems is not the fabulous career of a -victorious, triumphant Arthur, which might be supposed to have been sung by later forgers to exalt the fume of their unfortunate ancestors, but lamentations over the misfortunes of tl >se ancestors, over the faults of obscure British princes, the cause of those disasters; assuredly more natural as effusions of contemporary regret, breathed by contemporary affection, than as the device of a vainglorious, falsifying posterity.— Sharon Turner. To whose investigation ol the subject, Suuthev, in a note to Madoc, thus gives his sanction, “ Those who chose to considei the Welch poems as spurious, had never examined them. Their groundless and impudent incredulity, however, has been of service to literature, as it occasioned Mr. Turner to write his Vindication-, which <ettled the question for ever.”

(105)        p 107. Roscelin was the founder of the Nominalist School,

ivhich held abstract ideas to be merely verbal abstractions, in opposition to the Realists, who esteemed them the original types of all things, and entitled themselves disciples of Plato. But Abelard modified Nomi­nalism into Universalism, and his disciples were called Universalists.

(106)        p. 108. Whence our Welch, and the German Walsche for Italian.

(107)        p. 108. If the song with which Taillefer animated his country­men at the Battle of Hastings recorded the feats of Orlando, that alone would decide the earliest date for Turpin, with whom the fame of Charlemagne’s Paladins is held to have originated, and the appeal to the Chronicles of St. Denis must have been the addition of a later transcriber, designed, as suggested, to give the work additional authen­ticity or dignity. Wace, who says the lay was of Roland (Orlando), professes to derive his knowledge from his father, Taillefer’s contempo­rary, but much his junier, Valet eres; and it is to be observed that Hrolfr, i.e. Rollo, was then latinized into Rolandus, which thu3 stood alike for the Paladin and the Norse Ancestor of Duke William, whose feats would seem “ more germane to the matter,” than those of Charlemagne’s champion.

(108)        p. 108. Is it worth remarking how closely akin are the words Tro-uveurs or Trout eres, and Trotibadour or Trobador, as also the old English Maker, to the Greek 7roit]rr]r, in its original sense from iroieiv ? And that without imitation or translation, since modern languages take Poet, from the Latin, where Poeta has only its arbitrary signification. Creation, or invention is the natural idea of poesy. A strong wish arises to discover something analogous in the German Diehter, but the best etymologists derive it from the Latin dictitare.

(109)        p. 108. Abelard's love songs are altogether lost, but that they were written in the vulgar tongue, appears from the following words of Eloisa, in one of her letters to him. “ Etiam illiterates melodise dulcedo tui non sineret immemores esse.”

(110)        p. 108. Sharon Turner.

(111)        p. 109. Roquefort.

(112)        p. 110. According to Jornandes the Goths had written laws, and although Gothic is not now a living language, it was so when those laws were written.

(113)        p. 110. Vogt, Within the last few years, a.d. 1842, at Merse­burg, upon the spare leaf of an old MS , two metrical spells have indeed been found, evidently anterior to the conversion of Germany to Christianity, because breathing the very spirit of Asa mythology. But as the MS. itself pretends to no such antiquity, the spells must have been orally preserved until German had become a habitually written language, and then taken down from the lips of the witch who had inherited them. Kemble.

(114)                 p. 111. Gervinus.   .

(115)        p. 111. Id. Wachsmuth.

(116)        p. 112. The words, as quoted by Hormayr, are that this Ezzo,

vol. i.        u

called a Scholasticus, “ Cantilenam de Miraculis Christi, pat.ria lingus- nobiliter coraposuit”; which word compmdt, it is argued, f-nd surely with all likelihood, would not haye been applied, especially ith the addition of nobiliter, to an unwritten vernacular eflusion.

(117)        p. 114. Lach Szyrma—Prii chard.

(118)        p. 114. Roepel.

(119)        p. 115. The charge against Omar of burning the Alexandrian library rests upon no contemporary authority; but, according to Humboldt, in his Kosmos, upon that of writers who lived 580 years after the supposed conflagration. Nevertheless, the library has dis­appeared, and the act is not unlikely—Arab value for science being of somewhat later date ; a similar charge, the result of similar feelings, natural to ignorant enthusiasm, is brought against the Crusaders. The library found at Tripoli, when taken by the Comte de Toulouse, was doomed to the flames by a Priest, because, amongst its 300,000 volumes, he discovered a multitude of commentaries on the Koran. Gibbon and Haimner-Purgstall.

(120)        p. 115. Bagdad is said to have derived her Hellenic learning from Gondisapor in Persia, where some Nestorian heretics, flying from persecution, had established a College, much frequented by studious Asiatics, who there learned to worship Ariatotle. The Gondi&apor College is said to have excelled as a school of medicine ; though Humboldt does not look upon it as the source of Arab medical skill, which he conceives to have been derived, in empirical guise, from India, and transformed inlo science by Arab genius, which also invented the apothecary’s art.

(121)        p. 116. The number, whilst the printing-press was undis­covered, seems incredible ; but 30J,00U volumes have been recorded as tound in the Tripolitan library; and another in the East is named as the private property of a learned Doctnr, who refused the vizierate of Bokhara, because he should require 4H0 camels to romuve it thither.

(122)        p. 116 Another opinion concerning rhyme now proved to Dave been erroneous—to wit, that it was unknown in Europe before the twelfth century—has been already mentioned ; and though Xiere tu enter at length into the discussion is out of the question, a few words touching both the origin of rnyme, and its date in modem Europe, as established by recent investigation, may be admissible. That rhjme has been found in both Sanscrit and in Chinese, in the last, some 4,000 years old, might seem to confirm the theory of its Oriental origin ; but if so, would prove, likewise, that it may have reached Europe prior to Arab conquest. But the fact seems rather to be that rhyme, such pleasure does the ear take in a regular recurrence of identical or similar sounds, impressing metrical lines upon the memory, has spontaneously arisen in many lands. The oldest Welsh triads, it has been seen, are rhymed. Some of the oldest fragments of German poetry are in rhyme. Shall it be said that the rhyme may be a later addition to unrhymed originalsr

Otfried expressly states that he wrote his rhymed paraphrase of the Gospels in order to supersede indecent songs, whence it must surely be inferred that those songs were in rhyme. And prior to these German rhymers, the Spanish Bishop Eugenius, and the Irish Columban, wrote rhyming Latin verses in the seventh century ; as did Yenantius Fortu- natus, Bishop of Poitou, in the sixth, and Pope Damasus in the fourth, all of which are extant j to say nothing of St. Augustin’s 270 asonont lines against the Donatists. Nor is this all; it has been ascertained that rhyme was known to the classical ancients. Muratori has shown that the Romans had a rude, vulgar style of verse, not metrical but rhyming, in which the Fescennine and Saturnalian verses were written ; Cicero quotes two rhyming triplets, one from Ennius, the other anonymous ; and Virgil, in the love-spell in his eighth Eclogue, shows his full sense of the effect of rhyme. Nor is even this all. Aristotle distinctly names and describes rhyme in his Rhetoric L. 3—c. 9, as op.oioTixevTov, of which he gives an example:

Tt av £7ra$££ deivov,

El avlp uhs apyov ;

And in a Greek Life of Homer, which Gale ascribes to the elder Dionysius Halicarnasseus, the Poet’s occasional rhymes are both eulogized as especial beauties and pointed out; to wit, in the first book of the Iliad, fifty-eight lines of which the middle and final syllables rhyme, and ninety-five rhyming in couplets. Sharon Turner.

(123’ p. 117. "VVachsmuth.

(124)        p. 117. Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. 10, p. 437-3. Almi- rante and Gibraltar are said to be the only two- words bearing trace of Arabic.

(125)        p. 118. Sismondi, in his Literature du Midi, assigns the following dates to the languages derived from the Latin :—To the Langued’oc, the ninth century ; to the Langued’oil or Walloon, the tenth ; to Castilian and Portuguese, the eleventh ; and to Italian, the twelfth.

(126)        p. 118. The author of Details of the AValdenses states that the Vaudois of the Piedmontese valleys profess to have Provencal MSS. older than these ; one necessarily of the sixth century, because it speaks of the invocation of Saints as an error in the bud. But of this he gives no specimen, and the Italian title that he does give of one MS., bearing the date of 1120, Qual cosa sia l’Antichrist, is too decisive against the claim to antiquity, to allow of any further notice. These simple people, like their English historian, not being philologists, have probably taken translations for originals.

(127)        p. 118. Millot. This crusading Troubadour built and con­stituted a house of profligacy, as a complete parody upon a nunnery ; and to the support of this indecent, if not sacrilegious, parody, he compelled his vassals to contribute.

(128)        p. 119. Hallam. Humboldt, in his Kosmos, states the know­ledge of tho powers of the magnet to be so old in China that Sza-ki.

a Chinese historian who wrote b.o. 150, relates that 900 year* before his time the Kmperor Tching Wang gave embassadors from Tonquiu and Cochin China magnetic cars, as security against losing their way when crossing the desart upon their r»ad home by land.

(129)        p. 120. Rumohr.

(130)        p. 120. The existing Cathedral at Aix la Chupelle is not Charlemagne’s; but his was certainly of stone, and a part of the present much larger edifice, occupied by a remaining portion of his, is pointed out.

(131)        p. 120. Encyclopedia. Britannica—Article Freemasonry.

(132)        p. 121. Professor Rosini, in his Conte TJgolino.

(133)        p. 121. A discrepancy from the previously given estimate of the Pisan population at 200,000; unless these 34,000 are to be taken as the monied portion, able thus to contribute.

(134)        p. 122. Milner ; held sufficient authority, though Rochester Castle has been ascribed to the times of Alfred.

(135)        p. 122. Lanzi. Rumohr.

(136)        p. 124. Of these are, t. g. the Celtic harp and the Slavonian quzla. Sharon Turner, indeed, quotes Yenantius Fortunatus, a writer of the sixth century, as distinguishing the harp of the Barbarians from the Welsh or British instrument;

Romanusque lyra plaudat tibi, barbarus harpa,

Graecus anhillata, chrotta Britanna canat; which chrotta he takes to be the Crwth, a species of violin, probably identical with the rota. But a species of 'violin neither is nor can bp the Welsh harp.

(137)        p. 125. Green, Lives of the Princesses or England ; Benoit. Rer. Script. Nor. Gesta Gi'l. Dai. Norm.

(138)        p. 121. Mills.

(139)        p. 124. We may here find tlia origin of the liability of the lower classes of freemen to pecuniary impositions irom which the nobles, who served at their own expense, were, of course, exempt. Their service was tantamount to a land-tax.

(140)        p. 127. Torrens’s-- Rejiarxs cn the Scope and Uses or Military Literature and History.

(141)        p. 130. Robertson says that the sugar cane was only brought from Asia to Sicily about the middle of the twelfth century, end thence carried to Spain. But, with all respect for Robertson, the knowledge of the eighteenth century wan, generally speaking, less accuratc thai that of the nineteenth; there is little probability of a new plant, or species of culture, being carried from Norman Sicily to Moslem Spain; and it would be strange if Abderrahman « botanical efforts, for which Humboldt's Kosmos is ths authority relied upon, had overlooked so valuable a plant as the sugar cane.

(142)        p. 130. Unknown, as Denina seems to represent it, the malaria could not be, since Dante, not two centuries later, speaks of die deadly atmosphere of the Tuscan tnaremma, Purg. Co. S, v."135.

(143)        p. 130. J. Grimm. In singular coincidence with, this remark, English philologists have lately ascertained that a considerable number of the words denoting daily processes of agriculture were borrowed by the Anglo-Saxons from the Celtic languages ; as also those denoting the processes of domestic life, of in-door and out-door service. (Kemble—Garnett’s papers in the Philological Society.) Naturally, the conqueror would be more promptly obeyed by giving orders to his slaves in words they understood.

(144)        p. 130. Caesar, it will be remembered, represents the Germans as living principally upon flesh, cheese, and milk; and is corroborated by Tacitus.

(145)        p. 133. Lanzi Principe di Scordia. The general idea has been that silk-weaving was only introduced into Sicily in 1148, the Sicilian fleet bringing back silk-weavers from an invasion of Greece; but this statement of the Prince’s entirely refutes the idea.

(146)        p. 133. The name looks as if the paper had been of silk ; but this was clearly not the case ; and the word may, perhaps, be explained by Pliny's applying the silky name to the delicate fibres of the cotton.

(146)        p. 134. James.

(147)        p. 137. Rauschnik.

(148)        p. 138. Savigny.

(149)        p. 138. An extant document of the Great Countess contains these words :—Matilda Marchionissa professa sum ex natione mea legem vivere videor Lantgobaidam, sed nunc modo pro parte supra- seripti Gottifredi, qui fuit viro ineo, legem vivere videor Saligam.

(150)        p. 138. The Burgundians, according to Mr. Hallam, always punished murder with death ; but this seems to be nearly the sole exception.

(151)        p. 139. Raumer, upon the authority of Anna Comnena, wTho, he adds, does not ascribe the speech to Raymund. Wilken says Ray- mund, on the contrary, asserted that he owned no superior, no Lord over him, but the Saviour, for whose service he had left home ; which might imply merely some peculiarity of position as a crusader. The Earl of Toulouse could hardly disown his natural sovereign.

(152)        p. 139. Sharon Turner. .

(153)        p. 140. The Truce of God might more naturally have originated in Germany, where, even in Heathen times, such a pious suspension of all warfare was imperatively enjoined during the annual procession and bath of the Goddess Hertha.

(154)        p. 141. Hammer-Purgstall. Is it worth noticing that this taste for the sight of physical suffering seems compatible with a good deal of luxury ? In the recent excavations at or near Nineveh, amongst the bas reliefs adorning the palace walls, many, in what is supposed to be the banquetting hall, represent the torturing of prisoners of war in the most atrocious ways imaginable. (Quarterly Review.) To be sure, the streaming blood and quivering flesh were' wanting here. •

(155)        p. 143. Bettinelli.

(156)        p. 143. Waohsmuth.

(157)        p. 144. Trial by wager of battle and by ordeal have been usually called the offspring of the ignorrnce and superstition of the Dark Ages ; but of the last traces are to be found in classical antiquity, and of the first in something perhaps yet older. Mieale, the laborious collector of all that can be discovered respecting' those parents of Latin civilization, the Etruscans, and other ante-Roman Italians, gives the following extract to show that the judicial combat was a practice of the Umbrians. 'OfLStuKot irav     a\\qXovc i^uaiv an<j>iaSiir)]7ivf nat)07r\iaavTee, Iv TroXf^ijj, paxoVTai, rai doicovai ducaiorepa \eynv oi tovq ivavTiovg inroa<j>ai,avTtQ. Nic. Damasc. ap. Stob. Serm. XIII. That the ordeal was practised in ancient Hellas, as well as by our own ancestors and some of the Negro tribes of Africa, is apparent from the following lines of Sophocles :

fijttv S' stoi/iol Kal /u'Tput’C aipuv x^pdiv,

Kai nvp uikpirtiv, Jcai Sreovg opKtoftoruv, to fiJjrs toa'TLli, fiijri rtp Zwti&kvai

to TToayfLa 3ov\t i'rjai'Ti, jii]r    v<’K—Antigone V. 264.

The word Ordeal (Low Latin Ordalium) is from the Anglo-Saxon Orddl, or Ordtl-l, signifying Judgment, and answering to the German TJrtheil. "With respect to the practice, if Shakspeare be right in the remark that

“ Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just,

And he but naked though wrapt up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted,”

it must surely be allowed some weight in favour of a resort to wager of battle, for testing the truth of an accusation, in times unacquainted with the niceties of cross-examination, investigating circumstantial evidence, and the like, though still admitted to be a strange mode of deciding between “ nice sharp quillets of the law." Yet under Otho I., a judicial duel was fought to ascertain whether the son of a deceased eldest son, or the next lining son, was the legal heir of the paternal estates. The champion of the right of representation triumphed.

(158)        p. 146. Hallam. In an old mansion at Augsburg, originally the residence of the Rothschilds of the sixteenth century, i. e. those princely bankers, the Fuggers, the state room in which they entertained the Emperor Charles V., and warmed him with a cinnamon, in lieu of a wood fire, is upon the second or third floor.

(159)        p. 140. Leo.

(160; p. 147. Hammer-Purgstall.

(161)        p. 118. Waehsmuth, Moelm Triid 65.

(162)        p. 149. A pipe of wine per day, besides mt ad, metheglin, and beer, is spoken of as the usual consumption of a castle.

(163)        p. 119. Ihere is a passage in the Essays of Sir Walter Scott, that looks as if his researches had led him to the idea adopted by

Leo. He says “ The page, when a candidate for the honours of chi­valry,” i, e, an esquire, *f was withdrawn from the private apartments of the ladies, and only saw them upon occasions of stated ceremony.” If the ladies habitually dined and supped in the hall, the squire must needs see them daily. But in reference to this question, it must be observed, that some of the earliest tales speak of a revolting custom, singularly dissonant from these views, to wit, the attendance of hand­maidens upon male guests in the bath. To suppose these hand-maidens menial slaves, or villeins in gross, would hardly lessen the discrepancy, whilst it disagrees with the representations of the ballads. Or may it be conjectured that the seclusion was confined to Germany, the bath attendance to France at an earlier date—many German talcs are trans­lated from the French—where La Curne de St. Palaye conceives the duties of hospitality to have once included supplying the male guest nightly with a female companion from the Lady of the Castle’s train. It is true the tale he quotes as proof can hardly be held to establish the custom ; since in it the Countess says she cannot offer herself to the guest because her Lord is not yet asleep ; and even if the French of those days be supposed, like some savage tribes, to have lent their wives and daughters, in sheer hospitality to their visitors, stealthy adultery could never be a recognised custom.

(164)        p. 151. Amongst the Homans the investing the boy with the manly toga, amongst the early Germans the first placing weapons in his hands, are known to have been accompanied with ceremonies adapted to the state of civilization of the several nations, and those of the Germans may "have continued and increased till they developed themselves into, and merged in, those of chivalry. William of Malmes­bury speaks of Alfred’s conferring knighthood upon his grandson Athelstan; which, as there certainly was no chivalry in England in Alfred’s time, can only mean that the historian saw the ceremonial de­scribed by Tacitus in its then more advanced state, through the medium of the knightly habits, feelings, and opinions of his own day. How, when every freeman was a warrior, the idea of knighthood, as something distinct in character, should arise, seems difficult to understand. But may it not have originated in the solely warlike character of the German sovereign’s Leudes, or military household; that exceptional character gradually augmenting with the training of horsemen, and suddenly brought into distinct and positive shape by the institution of the monastic Orders of Knights, which, awakening a spirit of imitation, would give the new form a religious character, though exempt from their monasticism and consequent celibacy? That this character was religious is evident, from the religiously symbolical spirit of many of the ceremonies of knighting, as the previous bath, typical of regenera­tion by a second baptism, the white garment, of future purity of heart and life, to say nothing of the nocturnal watching of the arms before • the altar. The stroke with the sword, apparently the remains of the preliminary duel fought by the Teutonic boy with a veteran warrior,

whose courtesy in process of time, regularly gave the novice the victory, was finally held to signify that this was the last blow to be endured. 'VTachsmuth supposes the idea of connecting disgrace with a blow to have arisen from the restriction of the unfree to the use of cudgels alike in mock fights, and in judicial combats. It should be observed that neither in the Teutonic nor in the Latin languages has the denomina­tion any laudatory, or any peculiar signification; the word Knight being as manifestly the Anglo-Saxon Cniht (Old German Cnecht), meaning youth or attendant, as Ritter, Chevalier, Camlliere, or Caballero, horseman.

(165)        p. 151. Funk.

(166)        p. 153. It seems strange to find the same absurd horror of long­haired men, expressed with the same tyrannical violence, amongst the Pilgrim Fathers of the Massachusetts, who thus exaggerated the Hound- head prejudice against the curls of the Cavaliers.

(167)        p. 155. Hurter.

(168.) p. 156. Amentia et furor mentis.

(169)        p. 156. Martene Thes.

(170)        p. 158. The complete destruction of the Castle of Hohen- staufen is not attributed so much to neglect or the ravages of time, or even of war, as to the vile practice that has destroyed so iiiany classical monuments in Greece and Italy, and which was equally t prevalent in Germany; to wit, the practice of using deserted edifices

as stone quarries, whence materials for the erection of later dwellings, with their stables and dog-kennels—even of labourers’cottages—might easiest and cheapest be obtained.

(171)        p. 160. Pfister. Vogt.

(172)        p. 160. Pfister, in his Geschichte von Schwaben, gives this clause,

“ I will set thee over, &c.,” as the original regular form of appointing an official duke ; and therefore retained when a duke of a new family was invested with a provincial duchy.

(173)        p. 160. Pfister. Schmidt, Chron. Ursperg.

(174)        p. 169. Luden.

(175)        p. 172. Luden, Albertus Stadensis.

(176)        p. 173. Raumer. Perz. Monu.

(177)        p. 173. Pfister maintains ihe legality ot the claim of the

60,000     to vote ; the legal Antiquaries of Germany being, as before said, divided.

(178)        p. 174. This committal of the choice of a sovereign to electors appointed Tor the express purpose, appears to have been much mis­understood by able writers of non-German countries; and that in various ways. The forty have been reduced to ten ; probably from some mistranslation, the words being “ Decem ex singulis “ Bavaria', Sueviae, Franconise, et Saxoniai provinces principes consilio “ utiliores proposuerunt quorum eleetioni cseteri omnes assensum “ praberc promiserunt.” Raumer, Anonym, de Elei-t. Lothar. But the sense seems determined by the impossibility of taking ten in all, equally, which was indispensable, from four provinces; and clearly to

the four named was the choice limited, not only is there no mention of Lorrain, but each duchy naming its candidate, only four are found. Again, the insulated stratagem of Archbishop Adalbert to effect a single object, has been esteemed a judicious preventive of disorder by the permanent introduction of a representive system, and as the origin of the subsequent College of Electors, Again, some German author speaks of specific electors appointed merely to collect votes and ascertain who had the majority. The idea seemed so wild that no note of it was made when met with, whence the name of the author cannot be referred to.

(179)        p. 175. Some Austrian historians ascribe Leopold’s refusal of the chance of an imperial crown, wholly to fear of being withdrawn by the duties of empire from his devotional exercises—a reason doubtless that might influence a fanatic penitent. But that assigned by others, and given in the text, seems at least as natural and more rational, the duties of a ruler, if not of an emperor, being already his. It is not unlikely, however, that if the Margrave's motive were to expiate his rebellion against the grandfather by placing the grandson upon the throne, he might feel tempted to allege a purely religious motive rather than Ms own guilt to his peers and to his vassals.

(180; p. 176. Pfister.

(181)        p. 180. Albert the Bear has a second surname, viz.: the Handsome ; but the Bear being that by which he is usually designated, it may be sufficient here to mention the existence of another. The two seem little to harmonize.

(182)        p. 183. Otho Freisingensis.

(183)        p. 183. The relation of the interview, as given in the text, is the result of a careful collation of the conflicting accounts of historians belonging to opposite parties; but some of the discrepancies in their statements may be worth mentioning. According to some writers Frederic did not find his brother-in-law at the abbey, and it was in order to await him that he agreed to sleep there ; it was Henry's attempt to surprise him in his sleep that alarmed him in the night, and he escaped to the belfry during the storming of the abbey. The Bavarian historians, from whom the earlier circumstances of the incident detailed in the text are taken, assert, on the other hand, that Henry designed no treachery, but that Frederic conceived a groundless alarm from some casual disturbance in the night. And one modem historian, Haumer, perplexed probably by such contradictions, cites no authorities, and has evaded stating whether the brothers-in-law did or did not meet, though fully adopting the opinion that the Duke of Bavaria’s intentions were treacherous. To which, in justice to the reputation of Henry the Proud it should be added, that the astute modern historian, Luden, rejects the whole tale as spurious, because inconsistent with the, character of the supposed traitor. But Luden is not an authority to be blindly followed. He caricatures the Niebuhr school, and his subtly acute intellect inclines him to disbelieve all old tales, to argue away the

most generally received facts and hypotheses, whilst Ins exeesaivu liberalism (onee again apologising for borrowing ? slang word to eiprest a slang idea) biasses him unreasonably in favour of every opponent of the rplei'did Swabian dynasty of Emperors. Upon the present occasion he evidently forgete the different appreciation of strict veracity in the twelfth and in the nineteenth centuries, an oblivion of the difference between the past to the present yery commonly the cause of erroneous historical judgments

(184)        p. 185, Vicar and Rector were the titles habitually adopted in the Holy Roman Empire for Governor, Lord Lieutenant, Viceroy or Regent, and their occasional use cannot well be avoided, although their peculiar technical appropriation in English rertainly renders them objectionable. In an Anglo-Saxon charter or diploma still existing, Mr. John Kemble finds the word Rector synoi ymous with Bntn ealda, the title of the supreme King of the Heptarchy, if such a supreme King there were, which has been questioned.

(185)        p. 186. Muratori in his Annali d’Italia observes “Ed ecco “ come liberate le citta Lombarde dal giogo straniero, commiariarono a “ volger l’arme l’una contro dell’altra; mali chc mireremo andai “ crescendo per la matta ambizione da cui chi piii puo=, piil degli altri “ anrora si lascia sovvertire.” Even Testa, his natural sympathy with rebels notwithstanding, calls the Milanese “ Ambkiosi e prcpotenti” in their attacks upon their weaker neighbours.

(186)        p. 190. Temme. Volkssacusn von Pommebn andRugen.

(187)        p. 192. Vogt.

(188)        p. 193. Luden.

(189)        p. 193. Wigand asserts that it was this Lewis II. who got the ducal rights, getting both thorn and the landgroviate itself, because he had married a daughter of Lothar. I have met with no other mention of this marriage ; and as Gertrude is always spoken of as an only child— wae certainly sole heiress—if the Emperor had another daughter for Landgrave Lewis, she must have been illegitimate. There is probably some confusion touching the relationship, and it should be added that aome writers make Ludwig der Springer the second not the first Land­grave Lewis.

(190)        p. 199. It is to be observed that no contemporary of St. Bernard’s, however hostile, dreamt of disbelieving his miracles, oi in any way mistrusting his honesty. Otho of Freising states simply, as a mattei of tact, that, whilst preaching the crusade, he performed many miracles in public or in secret. Enthusiastic modern Romankts, his German biographer, Neander one, incline to adopt the contemporaneous opinion, to believe in his m-racles and to look upon the canonized Cistertian as a direct successor of the Apostles; whilst the superficial, as arrogant, self­entitled philosophers of the last century represented him as at once an ignorant, bigoted fanatic, and an impostor, two characters not very com­patible. It may be as well here to add the opinion formed of the Abbot of Clairvaux, by a living author less captivated by his character, perhaps,

than the present 'writer. Mr. James, in hts Life of Richard Cceur de Lion, calls him “ fiery, ambitious, proud, and vain” (do pride and vanity, the faults respectively of an enlarged and of a small mind, often coalesce ?) “ but combining wonderful eloquence, vast powers of reason- *f ing, considerable erudition, with infinite self-confidence, an impressive “ tone of authority, and dazzling enthusiasm.” The liberalist Testa, liberalist seemingly in religion as in politics, attributes St. Bernard’s influence to his lofty freedom from (sorvolando) all mundane interests.

(191)        p. 202. Coronation-progress or coronation-expedition seems to be the nearest analogous expression to the specific German name of the specific visit to Rome, whether belligerent or pacific, of every elected German monarch to receive the Imperial crown. This name is the Romerzug, but as the literal translation, Roman expedition, could not at once convey to the English reader the distinct idea of that single, usually pacific, expedition, and conducted as it was with specific forms, imposing specific and peculiar duties upon the great vassals, it seems desirable to follow the example of the Germans, and give it a distinct name specifically appropriated to it alone,

(192)        p. 202. Pfister.

(193)        p. 205. Leo.

(194)        p. 207. Probably as due to the duke of Franconia, though the title only was his.

(195)        p. 207. Roepel.

(196)        p. 209. Capecelatro.

(197)        p. 210. Bower.

(198)        p. 219. Otho of Freising's words are that Henry—-“Quo “ veniens, regalia quidem multis illectus promissis, reddidit, sed tamen “ ea minime consecutus, infecto pacis negotio, sine gratia ejus (t recessit.”

(199)        p. 220. Welf—Bottiger, &c,, and their authorities.

(200)        p. 221. Schmidt describes the proceedings at Wurzburg as the acts of the Emperor and Princes conjointly, but not of a Diet—this character being, it may be surmised, lost by the transfer from the appointed place of meeting—reckoning the acts, nevertheless, perfectly legal; the loss of Saxony having been pronounced in Diet at Augsburg, the proceedings at Wurzburg were merely the carrying out of the sen­tence. He expressly says that seven princes concurring in the forfeiture it was legal, thus seeming to ascribe legality more to the number and dignity of the judges, than to their constituting a Diet. It seemed needless to cumber the text with these nice distinctions of German law,

(201)        p. 225. Yogt says that the prelate was armed with the gifts of Plutus as well as those of Bacchus ; but luckily this work of utter supererogation, which quite spoils the story, does not seem to be the general report.

(202)        p. 225. Luden. Chronographus S. Chronicon montis Sereni, and Analista S. who however qualifies the assertion by an utfertur.

(203)        p. 225. Otto Frisingensis, in Muratori’s Collection of Sobip-

tores Reilt'm: Itali.t:, Chronic. Ursperg. Luden, Monachus Weingar- tensis- -*'•< supra.

(204)        p. 225. Luden. Auctarium Gemblacense.

(205)        p. 225. Id. Dodechin. Albert. Stadens.

(206)        p. 227. German writers have expended, and still expend no Dmall quantity of labour and learning upon several questions connected with this battle cry, such as, how many Waiblingen castles there were, where they were situated, and which of them was meant by the cry. The English reader will probably think it sufficient, even in a note which he can omit, to be told, that there were clearly three, two in Swabia, one of which was part of Gisela’s B argundian heritage, and one in Franconia; which last Adolf Menzel avers to have been a county of Conrad II’s prior to his election ; which if true might properly entitle it to become the family battle cry.

(207)        p. 229. It must not bo concealed that this is another of the delightful old stories of which the modern school of astutely ratincinizing historical critics deny the truth, even as they deny the existence of Homer and Achilles, of Romulus, Remus, and their wolf-nurse. But even if history be no more than re qu’il est convenu de croire, why exclude from what we agree to believe that which quickens the pulse with a thrill of moral delight, and has for centuries so quickened the pulse of our forefathers ? It may be added that historians differently constituted from Niebuhr and Luden, perhaps because still belonging to the poetical middle ages, though long posterior to the siege of Weinsberg, seek on the contrary to heighten the interest of the talo, by adding that Welf himself was so carried out by his Duchess. But, as Welf could not be shut up in the town when he brought an army to its relief, and would hardly slip in after his defeat merely to negotiate its surrender and be taken, this incident cannot claim to be received into the ronvenu.

(208)        p. 230. Bottiger. This might seem a conclusive argument against the theory, that the right of electing the emperor was originally attached to the great household offices, us it undoubtedly was at a later period. Conrad would not have deprived his brother and his brother’s posterity of a prerogative so high and important to the family interests, though he might think the office of the Arch-Chamberlain not worth theii holding. Similar conduct will hereafter be seen on the part of Frederic Barbarossa, as also later elections of emperors, completely jpposed to the idea that the right of election was as yet specifically \ ested in, or limited to any especially designated princes.

(209)        p. 230. This bequest is the mode in which contemporaneous chroniclers state Brandenburg to have been acquired by the Northern Saxon March, and it is that adopted by Frederic II of Prussia, in his History ot his predecessors—though not all, his ancestors—the Margraves of Brandenburg. But no will of Prince Pribislaff Henry now exists, ind that any ever did exist is deemed questionable. So mucn Slavonian territory was simply conquered, that whether this one province was sc

or more legitimately obtained—if indeed, a royal bequest be a more legitimate mode—cannot much matter.

(210)        p. 231, What the French, with their peculiar aptness, term patriotisme du Clocher.

(211)        p. 234. Fessler.

(212)        p. 234. Id.

(213)        p. 235. So decidedly was it the right of every feudal noble at least, if not of every free man, to wage war for the redress of his own wrongs, that Riehard Cccur de Lion, a monarch little likely to acknow­ledge any unnecessary restriction upon his authority, when negotiating a treaty of peace with Philip II. of France, rejected a clause restraining the vassal nobles, resident upon the marches of cither King, from harassing those of the other, expressly because such a prohibition would be an illegal infringement of the rights of his vassals.

(214)        p. 238. Muratori asserts that Conrad had made so ungrateful a return for Innocent's assistance in raising him to the throne, as to have deserved no consideration. But he does not prove his assertion, nor if he did, could the ingratitude of an individual emperor invalidate admitted imperial rights. Muratori's position in the service of the Este family, always at the head of the Guelfs, gave him a strong anti­imperialist bias, in addition to his national anti-German ism. In truth though excellent authority upon Italian affairs he is none for German ; and only in Germany could Conrad, who had as yet scarcely meddled with Italian concerns, have shown active ingratitude.

(215)        p. 239. Capecelairo.

(216)        p. 240. Id.

(217)   p. 242. Giannone gives a seventh great officer, a Gran*-Giusti-• ziere, whom other writers represent as an addition by Roger’s son or grandson, one of the Williams; and with all respect for Giannone's accuracy, it seems more likely that the second supreme Judge should have been a later addition, when, from the Chancellor’s political busi­ness, the want of another might be felt, than that two Heads of Justice should have been originally appointed. .

(218)        p. 242. Romualdus Salernitanus, Archbishop of Salerno, and a member of the Norman royal family, says that King Roger made the eunuch Philip Master of the Palace Household, because he found him upright, faithful, and able in the management of such business.

(219)        p. 244. According to the French saw : L’appetit vient en mangeant.

(220)        p. 245. That this was at the time esteemed a complete revo­lution, establishing a satisfactory republic, there is little doubt; of which, or at the very least of the great importance attached to the result of the insurrection, the verbose dates of Roman public documents may afford some evidence. One of these, a little later, when a regular government seemed to be in action, runs thus : •* Anno nativitatis “ Domini nostri, Jesu Christi, MCXLVIII., Indictione XII., mensis

vol. i.       x

“ Decembris die XXIII., anno vero pontiticatus D. Eugenii papa; IU “ Renovationis vero saeri Scnatus anno V.” It maybe recollected ass explanatory of this, to modern notions, strange sort of republic, that Emperor, Imperator, was, in its original sense, a merely military title, answering to Generalissimo, or perhaps, in Merivale’s view, to Com­mander of the Forces, and unconnected with ideas of sovereignty, until its adoption by the Roman Despots, gave it its present signification.

(221)        p 248. Eunk.

(222)        p. 249. Id.

(223)        p. 250. Wiiken.

(224)        p. 250. Id.

(225)        p. 251. Id.

(226)        p. 251. James.

(227)        p. 252. Authors differ upon Anar’s political position, whether he were Emir of Damascus under the Seljuk Sultan of Persia, Sultan of Damascus under, or in a manner vassal to, the said Sultan of Persia, or merely Yizier to such a subordinate Sultan. The question is scarcely worth investigating, though it seemed right to mention the discre­pancies, whilst adopting the view juuged most consentaneous with the course of events.

(228)        p. 253. Hammer-PurgitaU.

(229)        p. 254, Raumer.

(230)        p. 258 "Wiiken and Hammer-Purgstall. upon Arab authority.

(231)        p. 258. Raumer, Dodechin, Roger Iloved. Alber.

(232)        p. 258. Id. Guil. Neubrig.

(233)        p. 258. Wiiken, Abulfeda, William of Tyre.

(234)        p. 258, Michaud, Abulfaradge.

(235)        p. 258, Id, Wiiken. Id.

(236)        p. 258. Id.

(237)        p. 260. The legend was that Edessa owed its conversion to the teaching of the Redeemer himself.

(238)        p. 262. Miss Strickland

(239)        p. 263. Miss Strickland says that Queen Elinor thus hosded her own vassals “ in amamman attire but does not explain whether she means a real suit of light armour, such as Clorinda or Bradam-tnte may be supposed to have worn, or an equestrian dress, answering to a modem riding halJit—the French amazon*—as seems must likely. Elinor is said to have required the ladies attending her to equip themselves in the same style; and no notice of such a corps ot Ama/ons is takon by the Greek writers, who remark upon the French ladies’ public exhibition of themselves, riding astriue like men;—side saddles were not then invented, be it remembered—and no mention occurs of her appearing upon any occasion in the field

(240)        p. 263, As a specimen of St, Bernard s mind rather than of his style, and of his views concerning Crusades, a very close translation of his epistle to the German hierarchy and nation is here inserted.

To the beloved Lords and Fathers, the Archbishops, Bishops, and entire

Clergy and People of Eastern France and of Bavaria, Bernard, called

Abbot of Clairvaux, [wisheth] to abound in the spirit of strength.

1.     I address You concerning the business of Christ, in whom verily is our salvation. This I say, that the authority of the Master may excuse the unworthiness of the speaker: which let also the respect of Your own profit excuse. I am indeed small: but not small is my yearning towards You all, in the bowels of Jesu Christ. That is now my reason of writing unto You: that the cause, wherefore I am bold, by letter, to approach You, all. I would perform this more gladly, with living speech, if, as the will is, so were the power. Lo, now, Brethren, the acceptable time 1 Behold, now, the day of abundant salvation ! Forasmuch as the earth is moved and hath trembled, because the God of Heaven hath begun to lose His own part of the earth :—his own, I say, where he was beheld teaching the word of His Father, and, in more than thirty years, He did converse, a man amongst men. His own, which He glorified with wonders, which He dedicated with His own blood, in which the first flowers of His resurrection did appear. And now, our sins so requiring, the adversaries of the Cross have lifted up their sacrilegious head: laying desolate with the edge of the sword the land of promise. For it is nigh, if there be none to withstand, that they shall break even into the city of the living God, that they shall overturn the work-shop* of our redemption, that they shall pollute the holy places, impurpled in the blood of the Lamb without spot. With sacri­legious mouth do they gape wide—O affliction!—for the sanctuary itself of the Christian religion; and strive to invade and to trample down the very bed, in which for our sake our Life fell asleep in death.

2.     What do Ye, valiant men ?—What make Ye, servants of the Cross ?—Will Ye thus give the holy unto dogs, and pearls unto swine ?— How many sinners, confessing their sins with tears, have there won pardon: sithenee, by the swords of Your fathers, the filth of the Heathen was cast out-at-door!—That Evil One seeth and grudge thf. He gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth. He stirreth up the vessels of his iniquity ; neither will he leave any marks or footsteps of so great piety, if, perchance, ever—which God forefend!—He shall prevail to get in possession those Holies of Holies. But that should, in truth, be to all ages thereafter, an inconsolable sorrow, because an irrecoverable loss ; but, specially, to this most impious generation, an infinite confusion and aii everlasting reproach.

3.     And yet what deem we, Brethren ?—Is the hand of the Lord shortened, or made powerless to save: that unto the keeping, or the restoring, of His heritage, He calleth us, little wormlings ?—Is He not

*      Orjicinas. + The original haa a play of word*—ridct et invidet.

able to send more than twelve legions of Angels ■—cr, in sooth, to s^eak with a word, and the land shall be delivered ?—Host assuredly, it liuth in Him, if He will, so to do. But I tell You, that the Lord Your God trieth you. He regardeth the sons of men, if, perchance, there be any that understandeth and seeketh,f and sorroweth for his hapf. For the Lord pitieth His people, and, for them that have grievously fallen, He provideth a saving remedy.

4.     Consider how great subtlety He useth to pieserve You, and be admonished!—Behold the abyss of His mercy and take trust, O ye sinners !—He willeth not Your death, but that Ye be turned and live !— seeing that He thus seeketh occasion not against You, but on Your side. For what is this else, but a most curiously sought mean, and that God alone might devise, of salvation?—that the Omnipotent deigneth to send summons to murderers, robbers, adulterers, perjurers and them that are fast bound with all other crimes, in respect of his service?— Despair not, O Ye sinners ! The Lord is gracious. Would He punish You, not only should He not ask Your service, but neither would He accept it, freely tendered. Again I say, weigh the riches of the goodness of the Most High God! Give heed to the counsels of His mercy. Either He makes Himself—or He feigneth—to have need, for that He desireth to succour Your needs. He is willing to be held a debtor, that He may render to his soldiers their wages, tho remission of their trespasses, and eternal glory. Blessed uav I, therefore, call the gene­ration, whom this fruitful season of indulgence hath overtaken ; whom this placable year of the Lord, this true year of jubilee, hath found yet alive. For this benediction is shed abroad over the whole world : and all do flock emulously together, to the standard of life.

5.     Therefore, because Your land is fertile of valorous men, and is known to be replenished with a stalward youth, as Your praise is gone forth in the whole world, and the renown of Yoi'r prowess hath filled the circuit of the earth : gird Ye, too, yourselves, man-like, and take up fortunate arms, in the zeal of Your Christian name. Let that ancient— not vsrfare, but—plain wickedness} have ending, wherewith Ye use mutually to smite down, mutually to destroy, till Ye be mutually corsumed. What so dire lust inflames these unhappy Ones, that they will transfix with the sword the body of their neighbour : whose soul, belike, perishes also ?—But neither hath he that escapeth, whereof to glory: and the sword shall pierce through his own soul, whilst he rejoices that only his foe hath fallen. To engage oneself to such peril, is folly and not valour: nor to be imputed unto boldness, but unto mad- uessi, rathe*-. Now hast Thou, O brave soldier!—now hast Thou, C man tried in i’rms !—where Thor mayest combat without hazard;

*      Qui intelligat et requirat: from Pa. xiv, 2, or liii, 2.

+ Qui doleat vieem ejm. I Sam. xxii, 8:—Vulgate. Our Version has nothing, for vicem, here so singularly applied. The -words are from Saul’s complaint of his deserted state.

J Hla non militia ncd plane malitia• An evident play on the words.

$ Non audacia scd amentia potius, Still a play on the form of the words.

■where to vanquish is glory, and to die, gain. If thou art a wary merchant, if a getter of this world, I inform thee of a certain mighty Fair. See that it pass not over. Take upon thee the sign of the Cross : and of all those things equally whereof thou shalt with a contrite heart make confession, shalt thou obtain indulgence. The piece itself, should one buy it, is of low price: if it be worn on a devout shoulder, it is worth, undoubtedly, the kingdom of Heaven. They, therefore, have well done, who, already, have taken upon themselves the heavenly badge : and the rest do well, nor shall be charged with foolishness, if they too shall hasten to lay hold upon that, which stands to them also for salvation.

6.     Furthermore, Brethren, I warn You,—and yet not I, but the Apostle of God with me,—that not every spirit must be believed. We have heard, and we rejoice, that the zeal of God gloweth in You: but all need is that the tempering of knowledge lack not. The Jews are not to be persecuted, are not to be slaughtered, are not to be driven out of the land even. Question concerning them the divine pages. I know what is read, being prophesied, in the Psalm*, of the Jews. c< God hath showed me,” saith the Church, “ concerning mine enemies, that thou slay they them not; lest at any time my people forget/’ They are unto us as living scriptures, representing the passion of our Lord. For this cause are they scattered into all regions, that, whilst they suffer the just punishment of so heinous a malefaction, they may remain the witnesses of our ransom. Whence the Church, speaking in the same Psalm, addeth also: “ Scatter them in thy might, and put them down, O Lord, my defender.” So hath it been done. They are scattered: they are put down. They endure hard captivity, under the Christian princes. But they shall be turned again, in the evening: and when the season cometh, shall respect be had of them. Lastly, when the multitude of the nations shall have entered, “ then shall all Israel be saved.—saith the Apostle. Yerily, for the meanwhile, he, that dieth, rcmaineth in death.

7.     I pass over, that, wheresoever they are not, we mourn that, there, Christian usurers worse play the Jew : if, at least, they shall” be called Christians, and not baptized Jews, rather. If the Jews be utterly ground down, whence shall their salvation, or their conversion, promised in the end, prosper? Manifestly, were the Heathen, in like manner, to be expected, rather must they be bome with, than sought afteTf with the sword. But now, since they have begun to be violent against us, it behoveth them that bear the sword not in vain, with force to repel force. But it pertaineth to Christian piety, as with war to beat down the proud, so to spare the vanquished^: these, especially to whom the giving of the Law is again promised, of whom were the Fathers, and from whom w'as Christ after the flesh, who is blessed for evermore. But it should be required of them, after the command of the Apostle, ■

*      Ps. Iviii.

+ Si expectandi—non expetendi.

i lie uses Virgil’s own words: Ut debellare superbos sic ei parcere subjectis*

x 3

that they release, wholly free from the exaction of usuries, all such as ihall have taken upon themselves the sign of the Cross.

8.     Hereof also, Beloved ljrethreu, need is that Ye be admonished. that if any one, coveting to hold chiefdom amongst You, nhal1. have purposed with his own expedition to prevent the army of the realm, he shall on no wise adventure so to do. And if he pretend himself sent by us, it is not true : or if he show letters as though written by us, Ye shall call them a mere falsehood and fraud*. Men, praetique in war, and having skill of :iuch work, must be chosen leaders: and the armament of the Lord shall go forwards altogether, that in every part it may have strength ; nor be liable to suffer violence from any. For there was in the former enterprise, ere Jerusalem were taken, a certain man, Peter by name, of whom Ye also (if I mistake not) have oftentime heard mention. He did conduct into such perils that whole people which had put their trust in him, going with only his own, that either none, or exceeding few, of them escaped, that fell not, either through femme or by the sword. Wherefore all ground is of fearing, lest, if Ye shall do likewise, it befal, in like sort, unto You:—which may God avert from You, who is blessed for ever, world without end. Amen,

(241)        p. 264. Gibbon and Voltaire impute the canonized Abbot’s exertions in behalf of the persecuted Jews to his jealousy of the monk, as a successful rival in crusade-preaching,. Readers of the more tolerant, because more truly philosophic nineteenth century—intolerance and bigotry are quite as frequent amongst inadels as amongst fanatics—will, it is hoped, agree with tlie opinion that he was actuated by bettei motives.

(242).       p. 265. St. Hildegard thus speaks of her visions. “I lift up “ my hands to God, and am by Him, like an imponderable wind-wafted “ feadier, borne whithersoever He lists. From my childhood, when my “ limbs were yet feeble, till now, in my seventieth year, have I in my “ soul seen these apparitr'ons. My spirit is carried, even as God wills, “ to the height of the fhmament, into tho various regions oi the air, or “ amongst divers nations, though severed fiom me by distant land^. 1 “ see in my soul the appaiitions iashiun themselves variously, according “ to the condition of the clouds oi of the nations. I neither see these “ tilings with my corporeal eye, nor comprehend them with my senses, “ nor through my usual thoughts, but through my spirit, yet with open “ eyes. These visions have I waking, by day and by night, and so that I “ never thereby felt a convulsion.” The greater part of Hildegard's writings—she wrote chiefly upon theology and medicine—appear „o be lost, though some of her lucubrations are said to be extant at Wiesbaden, and to show considerable erudition. Fragments of them have been separately preserved by contemporary and nearly contemporary Chroni­clers, from whom Yogt, in his Rheinische Gesohichte und Saoen (Rhenish History and Traditions'), has taken End translated the above

*      Fnhas, nc dicam. furtivM. Plsy of alliterat ion

extract. He has also taken from the Chronicon Alberti Studensis, one of her prophecies, that has been held to predict the Reformation of Luther, as the consequence of the corruption of the clergy. It is sufficiently apposite both to Luther’s times and to the present revolu­tionary epoch, to be worth transcribing; and as he has luckily given it in the original, his example shall be followed, to avert all suspicion of modification or adaptation. The Prophetess first enumerates the faults of omission and commission, by which the Emperors will deserve to lose their empire, and thus proceeds. “ Unaqueeque provincia et “ quisquis populus Regem sibi tunc instituet, cui obediat, dicens quod ** latitudo imperii magis sibi oneri fuerat quam honori.. . .Postquam “ imperiale sceptrum hoc mo do divisum fuerit, nec reparari potuerit, “ turn etiam infula apostoliea honoris dividetur. Quia enim nec prin- “ cipes nec reliqui homines, tain spiritualis quam secularis ordinis in “ apostolico nomine ullam religionem tunc invenient, dignitatem no­** minis illius imminuent; alios ministros et archiepiscopos, sub altero “ nomine, in diversis regionibus sibi preeferent, ita ut etiam Apostolicus, 4< eo tempore, Romam et pauca illi adjaeentia loca vix tunc sub infula “ sua obtineat.”

(243)        p. 266. Yogt.

(244)        p. 266. Raumer; Carinthia usually appears as a duchy.

(245)        p. 266. Scoffers at the Middle Ages and their Saints, ridicule the idea of a Frenchman's persuading Germans, of whose language he was ignorant, to take the Cross, and conclude that his manner and gestures gained him the palm of eloquence. And a miracle it would indeed have been if he had thus pantomimically converted ruffians. But though Voltaire and his compatriot contemporaries knew no German, why a studious and learned Monk, accustomed to negotiate for the Pope with Kings and Princes of all nations, should be supposed ignorant of the language of his nearest neighbours, in •whose country and amongst whose princes, he had already been very actively employed, they do not explain.

(246)        p. 271. Here again Qerman and Hungarian writers differ. Fessler, upon the authority of compatriot old chroniclers, taxes the German crusaders with such disorders, imputing them to Conrad, as might justify all the treachery (which he admits to the utmost of German complaint) practised by the Greeks towards them; whilst he praises the discipline of the French. That Conrad should have sanctioned or per­mitted such outrages as the plunder of cloisters and the like, is as irreconcileable with all that is known of his character, as with his in­terest upon the present occasion, and the fact of his having published laws expressly to guard against such disorderly conduct. But an army of volunteers, which an army of Crusaders must needs be, cannot be very strictly disciplined; and when the classes that had supplied some of these volunteers are considered, no marvel of Aladdin’s lamp can be more incredible than would be the assertion that the march was free from disorders. On the other hand, Hungarian chroniclers, under the

influence of Hungarian anger at the suzerainty claimed by the German Kmperor, and Hungarian irritation growing out of the habitual hostili ties with Austria, would unquestionably exaggerate those disorders The offences of the Greeks they would be equally prone to exaggerate ; similarly habitual hostilities with the Eastern Empire having produced hatred so virulent, that Bela III. was near losing his birthright, dimply because, having been given in his childhood as a hostage, he had been educated at Constantinople.

(247)        p. 272. Wilken, Cinnamus.

(248)        p. 272. Gibbon. The Archbishop’s word, loricati (were it not limited by Duoange to knights), would naturally seem, as he expressly exclude? the light horse and infantry (exceptis peditibus et equitibus levis armature:) to include the knights’ men-at-arms, the complement of each lance. If it does not, 70,000 lances would amount to either

280,000    or 420,000 heavily armed horsemen, according as the comple­ment is reckoned at it* lowest, or its highest, regular number.

(249)        p. 274. Raumer.

(250)        p. 276. Michaud, usually a good authority respecting the crusades, says, “ Ccesar and Constantine but the Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire do not appear to have ever laid claim to the whole suc­cession of him who forsook Rome for Byzantium, or disputed the right of the East Roman Emperors to the Eastern Empire, thuugh some may Have contemplated conquering it. They called themselves successors of the insignificant Augustulus, merely because he was the last Emperor of the Western Empire.

(251)        p. 279. The prodigious honours which Michaud avers that the Greek Emperor paid to the French King can, by readers acquainted with the peculiarly supercilious arrogance of the Constantinopolitan Court, hardly be deemed uncxaggcrated. A little colouring might, to the vanity of French recorders of the scenes, appear a very venial deviation from truth, even if memory did not, in after yearn, really show them through a magnifying glass.

(252)        p. 280. Michelet, Nicetas,

(253)        p. 288. James, Abulfaradge.

(254)        p. 288. Wilken. It is difficult to reconcile Malte Brun’s de­scription with the history given of the siege.

(255)        p. 288. Raumer, with German patriotism, gives Conrad the command of the main body, whilst Mills denies him any. The state­ment in the text is Wilken’s, and agTees best with the account of the bsttle.

(256)        p. 289. Modem Military historians (see Gleig’s Military History) statu that the Dragoons were originally iinantry, mounted solely to expedite their arrival on the spot where their service was re­quired, and habitually dismounting to engage, though of course able to light on horseback. And, indeed, Mr. Eliot Warburton derives their name, Dragoons, from their lighting like dragons, on the ground and in the air But although Conrad's tactics recall these things to the mind,

no explanation is found therein of a fact so astounding, as the asserted habitual dismounting of the steel-clad German knights to combat on foot in their heavy load of armour. Strange as it seems, however,fthe practice must have been found beneficial, since other nations appear to have adopted it. At a later epoch of still heavier armour, Comines dis­tinctly says that, upon one occasion, many Burgundian nobles alighted to fight on foot amongst the infantry, which custom they had learned from their English allies.

(257)        p. 290. Funk.

(258)        p. 201. Wilken, Ebn el Athir. James, William of Tyre, and

Abulfaradge.

(259)        p. 293* Id. Guillaume de Nangis, a writer of the following century, accuses Melisenda of being the instigator of this crime. But she could have no interest in the matter, beyond preserving the county to her sister’s husband; a motive likely more strongly to actuate that husband, the Earl himself, and hardly sufficient inducement to murder one of the champions of her son, and risk offending the others. There is in most writers a very considerable bias against Melisenda.

(260)        p. 293. Dante, Par. C. 15, 16, and 17.

(261)        p. 297. These home crusaders placed the cross upon a globe or wheel; probably not being permitted to bear the sacred emblem, which upon the standard announced the hallowed character of the enterprise in which those who followed it were engaged, precisely in the same form as the true Crusaders,

(262; p. 299. Bottiger accuses Innocent II. of acting in concert with King Roger, and supplying Welf with money, in order, by arming him, to keep Conrad out of Italy. But independently of the inconsistency of such conduct with this Pope’s support of and confidence in Conrad, there was so very short a period of his pontificate in which he could act in concert with the King of Sicily (having died long before the second Crusade), that it may be presumed the biographer of Henry the Lion has confused Innocent II. with Eugenius III.

(263)        p, 299. Bottiger.

(264)        p. 301. Luden.

(265)        p. 302. Muratori, who however doubts Roger’s guilt. ’

(266)        p. 303. Ilurter.

(267)        p. 303. Balbo, in his Life of Dante, Jucundam vitam, dicebat, habere literatos, quoting Ginguene.

(268)        p. 303. A specimen or two of Abelard’s heresies may be in­teresting, as showing the difference between them, and those hereafter to be enumerated. He maintained that, although the mysteries of Faith are to human reason inscrutable, Faith must be intelligent, because “ Nec credi posse aliquid nisiprimitus intellectum * * * Dubitando “ ad inquisitionem venimus, inquirendo veritatem adspicimus.” He illustrated the Trinity by the Power, the Wisdom, and the Goodness of God; he found the Holy Ghost in Plato’s Soul of the World; and thought the Heathen knew enough of God, to admit the virtuous into Heaven.

(269)        p. 303. Michelet.

(270)        p. 304. Neander, or his translator, Vial.

(271)        p. 304. Jones, who highly praise*) him.

(272)        p. 304, Neander or Vial.

(273)        p. 305. Id.        Id. Perhaps suspicious authority against Henry.

(274)        p. 306. Hurter. Lardner reduces the five hundred to one hundred and sixty, exaggerating as much probably the other wpy, if the word may be so used.

(275)        p. 307. Hammer-Purgstall

(276)        p. 310. It seem? worth remarking that so completely did this innovation of Vladimir Moromach’a extinguish the idea of these princes being members of the royal family, really as much descf ndants of Rurik’s as was the Grand-Prince, that when, in the sixteenth century, the direct rnale line of Monomach expired with Czar Fedor Ivanowitz, no collateral appears to have advanced a claim, the throne remaining, apparently, almost open to the first occupant.

(277)        p. 315. Frankfurt-on-the*Main, although founded by Charle­magne; who planted one of his colonies of transported Saxons as a suburb—thence called Sachsenhausen—op the opposite bank of the river, and although upon the division of his empire, made, by his grand­son Lewis the German, the capital of Germany, appears to have subse­quently lost all its dignity, and remained utterly insignificant, until raised, upon the occasion in question, to the dignity of the only proper seat of an Electoral Diet, or rather so raised a( to claim that dignity, which it did not as yet fully attain, since elections w;U sti'l be seen t.o take place elsewhere.

(278)        p. 315. Wolfgang Menzel.

(279)        p. 315. Had such deputies been allowed so to vote, it would have been an almost unprecedented favour to cities ; only those of Christian Spain at that time enjoying any such privilege : explicable in thrir case by the constant struggle with the Moors. In Germany the progress of burgher liberty and burgher rights was slow; and not till the middle of the fourteenth century, a period beyond the limits of these volumes, did the Free Imperial Cities constitute a distinct Order or College in the Imperial Diet.

(280)        p. 315. Voigt.

(281)        p. 316. The following are Frederic Birbarossa’s verses, com­posed on the occasion of Raymond Berenger, Earl of Provence, (Raymond of Barcelona, who married the heiress of Provence, bequeathed her heritage to their second son,'? attended by his whole Court of troubadour4, visiting the Imperial Court at Turin, to do homage for his county. The less poetic the Emperor’s effusion the more it marks the estimation in which the gai saber and literature in general were then held, since it could tempt the chivalrous Emperor to play the Troubadour with his guests.

Plaz rue (a) cavalier Franccz,  (a) Pleases me.

E la donna Catalans.

Digitized by Microsoft ®

El’onrar (b) del Genovez, (b) the paying honour.

E la court (c) de Castellana,    (e) courtesy.

Lou cantar Provemjalez,

E la danza Trevisana,

E lou corps (of Aragonez, (d) figure.

E la perla Juliana,

La mans e kara (e) d’Anglez,   (e) hand and face.

Elou donzel (/) de Toscana.     (f) youth.

(282)        p. 318. Wolfgang Menzel expressly says that Frederic esteemed justice the virtue tor' t^oxrjv of a monarch ; and often has Frederic struck the present writer as the possible prototype of the Artegal of the Fairy Queen. Sismondi’s character of him is worth transcribing, for who can be a warmer partisan of the Italian republics than their zealous historian ? “La mort de Frederic fut pleuree par les yilles qui avaient longtemps ete en butte a sa puissante haine et a ses vengeances. Les Lombards, et jusqu’aux Milanais, ne pouvaient meconnoitre son rare courage, sa constance dans l'adversite et meme sa generosity. Une conviction intime de la justice de sa cause l’avait souvent rendu cruel jusqu’a la ferocity envers ceux, qui lui resistaient encore; mais apriis la victoire, c’^toit en abattant des murs insensibles qu’il assouvissait sa vengeance ; et quelqu’irritS qu’il fut contre les Tortonais, les Cremasques et les Milanais, quelque sang qu’il eut rgpandu pendant qu’il eombattait encore, il ne souilla point son triomphe sur eux par d’odieux supplices. Malgre la trahison & laquelle il eut recours une seule fois contre les Alexandriens, [whether this trahisuu be a true or false charge is, as will be seen, a disputed point] sa fidSlite dans l'observation de ses promesses etoit en g€n6ral respectee ; et lorsqu’un au apriisla paix de Constance les villes qui lui avaient fait la guerre la plus acharnge le resurent dans leurs murs, elles n'eurent point a so tenir en garde contre aucune tentative de sa part, pour supprimer les privileges qu’il avoit reconnus.” The more prejudiced Luden and Perceval say that the unjust ambition which dictated his invasion of Italy makes him worthy of universal detestation, calling him an insatiate conqueror, the prototype of Napoleon. It seems to be a difficult matter even to understand, much more to appreciate, a principle not our own. Frederic held it the duty of an Emperor, heir to Otho and Charlemagne, to re-establish the Empire such as they had left it. That this last was his aim and Charlemagne his model, he himself, in a statement of his scheme of government, announced as follows :—“ Ad Caroli imitationem jus ecclesiarum, statum reipublicae “ (showing the sense of republic in the twelfth century) incolumem, “ et legum integritatem, per totum nostrum imperium, servaremus.” Raumer, Harzheim, Concil, III., 399.

(283)        p. 323. Archbishop Henry publicly charged the Legate with being bribed, appealing from him to the Saviour, before whose tribunal he summoned his corrupt Judge to meet him, and justify himself if

he could. The Legate scoffingly replied, “ Go thou first ; I will follow thee.” But this is not one of the cases There immediate death renders the summons impressively awful.

(284)        p, 326. It must be observed that Bottiger represents the rights gianted by the Emperor and the Diet to Henry, relative to the investi­ture of Slavonian bishops, as much more absolute than they appear in the statement of most other historians. The diploma, it should seem, nc longer exists, and writers enlarge or contract its expressions according to their bias. The statement in the text, taken from Raumer, seemf most consonant with the course of events and the characters of the parties.

(285)        p. 328. Jluratori. Other writers say that Robert only sent messengers, being already a sight-robbed prisoner in the dungeon in which he died.

(286)        p. 328. Albemando is by some writers called a German, possibly from his speaking German, as will be seen ; and his name is variedly given, as Alamanno, Albenard, and Aberardo Alamanno, which certainly looks German. Of course while the two countries were so intimately connected, Germans would settle in Italy; but from the same cause individuals of each nation would be familiar with the language of the other; and Albernando’s intense Lodesan patriotism and impetuous conduct being more Italian than Teutonic in character, the most Italian name has been preferred.

(287)        p. 329. Denina, even whilst he calls Frederic I. “amante per natural carattere della giusti/ia,” imputes his support of all the rictims of Milanese tyranny solely to policy, as part of a deep-laid plan for the subjugation of Lombardy. Surely the very impolicy of this rash step bespeaks the impulse of a ruling passion, in him zeal to perform what he deemed an imperative duty, the administration of inexorable justice.

(288)        p. 330. llallam.

(289)        p. 332. Otto S. Blasius

(200)        p. 33*2. Therefore did Mary nf Scotland, in the height of her disgust at the follies and vices of Damley, reject the proposal of a divorce, which must have made her son illegitimate. And so in the present century, those Romanists who affirmed the lawfulness of Napoleon’s second marriage with an Archduchess, argued upon the plea thai he was bound to Josephine only by a civil contract; once the truth ; but Pius VII., to whom she revealed the fact, insisted upon a proper Roman Catholic marriage, before ho would officiate at the coronation.

(281)        p. 333. Morena make* the equality porfect “ Non cun* ■ainori copia equitum quam ipse Rex venerat.”

(292)        p. 333. I.ardnur translates Heerschllden bucklers, reducing the iiumber to sir. The word evidently puzzles modern Germans ; of whom Raumer conceives it to mark degrees of vassalage and feudal superiority, but not of rank, either noble or military

(293)        p. 334. Whether this innovation were attributable to father or Son, to Roger or William the Bad, seems doubtful.

(294)        p. 336. If including the agricultural population, the numbers may, be only a little exaggerated. A Lombard urban campaign, if it may be so termed, which consisted of attacking the nearest town or ravaging its territories, and going home, perhaps nightly, to sleep, did not expose the burgher warrior to the trying hardships of a soldier’s life, whence the proportion of fighting men to the whole population would greatly exceed the usual calculation, boys and old men forming part of these armies.

(295)        p. 339. Raumer, from whom the description is taken, does not explain whether the centre be of the German camp, or of the two, the encircling lines being continuous from bank to bank.

(296)        p. 341. Raumer, Radulph Mediola., Otto Moren.

(297)        p. 341. JIuratori avers that Frederic agreed to accept the com­pensation, and only rejected it when afterwards angry at the misguidance of the Milanese. But if he considered it in that light, pecuniary com­pensation—in legal phraseology damages—being the very spirit of early German legislation, there would be no reason for his rejecting it either first or last. Therefore the rejection at one time or other being undisputed, the account given by Frederic himself, to his uncle Bishop Otho, as well as by some of the Chroniclers, has been pre­ferred.

(298)        p. 342, Bottiger.

(299)        p. 314. Tiraboschi gives as fair a character of Frederic’s wars with the Lombard cities, as can perhaps be expected from an Italian in regard to a German sovereign. He says:—“ Gl’ Imperatori si con- “ sideravano, ed erano veramente ancora Sovrani d' Italia, benche le “ avessero accordata la liberta, e volean pure mostrarle a' fatti ch’essi " non ne avean perduto 1’alto dominio. L’ Italia non ricusava di render “ loro gl’onori dovuti alia maesta imperiale, ma volea in cio ancora “ mostrarsi libera; e vegliava gelosamente percho la sua indipendenza “ non soffrisse alcun danno.” His Italianism probably prevented his observing that the acknowledgment of the Emperor's sovereignty is not very compatible with absolute independence.

(300)        p. 345. Muratori; his word is “ balordaggine.”

' (301) p. 345. Testa.

(302)        p. 346. It may be worth while to state thit Testa accuses Frederic of ordering a massacre in one of these evacuated cities; in order to observe, that a modem exile, with an evidently strong revolutionary bias, who quotes no authorities, probably having few books or none at hand, cannot be allowed much weight.

(303)        p. 348. The Milanese chronicler, Ser Raul, affirms thai Tor­tona capitulated, one of the condition? being that the town should not be damaged, and That Pavia afterwards purchased its demolition of Frederic; to which Testa adds that the Abbot who negotiated the capitulation died of grief at its violation. The first part of this account

Muratori inclines to believe; but it seems so inconsistent with tike simultaneous expul6ion of the inhabitants carrying away by permission’ a certain quantity of their property, that the statement of Morena has been preferred. In fact Frederic appears to have almost invariably* refused a capitulation to revolted cities ; often announcing, as of hi6 free * will, such conditions as these.      •

(304) p. 355. A. Menzel.   ■*'

(305) p. 355. Denina, pazzo entusiasmo.  •

(.306) p. 355. Id.      .

(307)        p. 356. The spontaneity of Frederic’s reply is distinctly asserted by his uncle-biographer in these words, ex improviso non improvise.

(308)        p. 356, Gibbon.

(309)        p. 356. The Emperor, somewhat whimsically, plays first with-' the words “ debendo velle” and u volendo deb ere/* then with “ voluri- tario debito” and “ debitae voluntati,” in a way that cannot be rendered in a language which substitutes auxiliaries for inflexion.

- (310) p. 358. Muratori says that Arnold was “impiccato e abbruc- 1 ciatoGunther, as quoted by Luden, has “ cruci appenso,” which, as under the circumstances crucifying seems an absolute impossibility, must surely be a poetical way of expressing hanged. Which of these two was the mode of execution matters little, both establishing the" essential point, that he was not burnt alive, though it may be observed- that strangulation would spare the time and trouble of erecting a gibbet* It is not the least remarkable part of the whole that Arnold should have been spared the agonizing death by fire, apparently the common lot ef heretics. And that this act of mercy should be usually omitted, not only b-y writers hostile either to the Swabian Emperors or to the Popes, but' also by partisans of either, can only be explained by the temper of the age, to which the more or less of the suffering of a criminal about whom1* no one cared, seemed uninteresting. Many of these plainly state that* Arnold was burnt to death, and the Historian of the Waluenses, Jones, adds * the epithet cruelly. But Muratori may be taken as an impartial and there- * fore credible witness. For the burning, whether of a living man or of a ’ senseless corse, there was an object, namely to leave no relics. It must1 be noticed that the date of the execution is fixed rather inferentially than from positive record; but the reasoning by which it is so fixed seems conclusive. Had it preceded the deputation it must 'have figured in the declamation against the government of priests, and it will be seOn that after the coronation there is no time for it.

(311)        p. 360. Muratori.

(312)              p. 361. Bottiger. . . .. r

(313)        p. 363. German historians hold these motives for postponing his Sicilian wrars insufficient, and ascribe to Frederic oihcrs of profound policy, originating in his fear of seeing the Greeks recover any footing in Italy, which indeed he had bound himself to Eugenius III. to prevent. But he must have deemed himself released from that engage­ment by Adrian* when he, in his enmity to the King of Sicily, sanctioned >

Greek co-operation; and the Greek fleet being already on the coast, and successful, leaving the field clear to its operations, would be an -odd way of preventing Manuel’s getting a footing there. In fact, the feudal character of the Imperial armies, and the deleterious action of 'the summers of southern Italy upon northern constitutions, appear to -have been, during the middle ages, the ever-recurring and all-sufficient -obstacles to the establishment of the German Emperors’ sovereignty 'over the fair Ausonian peninsula.

• (314) p. 368. In his before-mentioned letter to Bishop Otho, the Emperor, after observing that the Lombards—having grown insolent during the protracted absence of an Emperor, and confident in their own strength—had become rebellious, thus proceeds : “ The Milanese, as crafty as arrogant, gave us empty words, and would have pur- “ chased at a high price a grant of dominion over Lodi and Como, “ But when we, unmoved by their prayers and proffers (precibus et pretiis) entered their territories, they, avoiding their fertile lands, led us for three days through desarts, until we encamped at no <( great distance from Milan. As they refused to sell us food, we took if and burnt their noble castle of Rosate, garrisoned with five hundred '■** armed men, our soldiers chasing them to their own doors, wounding and taking great numbers. Ilence arose enmity between us and ** them. Then we, crossing the Ticino towards Novara, seized two ** bridges that they had built, armed, and fortified castle-wise ; and after the passage of the whole army, we destroyed them, as also three of 44 the strongest Milanese castles. After keeping our Christmas right joy- u ously at Vercelli, we crossed the Po to Chieri, a large strong place ** that we destroyed, and we laid Asti waste with fire. Next we besieged ** Tortona, a place thoroughly fortified by nature, and by art; in three u days we carried the town, and should have won the castle likewise, ** had not a tempestuous night hindered us. At last, after repeated ** assaults, and a lamentable slaughter of them, with no small loss to us, “ the castle surrendered, and we liberated a Greek Prince, captured “ by Marquess Malaspina. Tortona destroyed, the Pavians invited ** us to their city, that they might celebrate our triumph. And there, “ wearing the crown, with a mighty attendance on the city’s part, we “ spent three days in great joyance. Then we went straight through. “ Lombardy, Romagna, and Tuscany, to Sutri, where the Pope with ft the whole Church of Rome met us rejoicingly, paternally offered us “ consecration, and complained to us of the conduct of the Romans. f Thus daily travelling together, lodging together, and mingling in sweet “ converse, we went on to Rome. The Romans sent out a deputation “ to meet us, and demand large sums of money, .and also oaths, as the ** price of their fealty and service. As we would not purchase our 41 empire, and must not plight oaths to the commonalty, we consulted. *.* with the Lord Pope and the Cardinals how to avoid their snares and ft machinations. By their advice a large part of our army, guided by ^.Cardinal Octavian, entered Rome in the night, by a postern door close

“ to St. Peter's, and so got possession of the minster (mouasterium,' of “ St. Peter, Early in the morning the Pope preceded us to tho “ Basilica of St. Pet“r, and, with the -whole Church in grand procession, “ received as upon its s’epn. Then, a» it was Sunday, he celebrated at “ the altar of St. Peter and St. Paul, a mass ir, honour of tLe Ble»>»ed “ Virgin, and placed the crown of the Roman Empire upon our hea-i, “ with a large effusion of benedictions. This duly done and completed, “ whilst we, spent with fatigue ai-.d heat, all retiured to our tents, “ and were tailing food, the Romans burst over the Tiber bridge, in St. “ Peter’s killed two of our servants, plundered the Cardinals, and “ sought to take the t’ope prisoner. But we, from without hearing the “ uproar; hastened in arms over the walls, and fought the whole day “ with the Roma".-i, so that about a thousand of them we slew, drowned “ in the Tiber, or made prisoners, before night parted us. Next morn- “ ing, provisions falling short, we, with the Pope and the Cardinals iu “ eur company, and rejoining in our victory, reino'.ed from Rome. Ali “ the nasties and fortresses about the city yielding to us, we came to “ Alba [Everybody bv.t the Emperor says* Tivoli], and there stayed “ some days with the Pope. Thence wc c&me to S]x»lew, and as thu “ town was in rebellion, keeping Conte Guido Gierra and our oihei “ envoys prisoners, we assaulted it. And, marvellous and inscrutable “ iudf.ment of God! between the th-xd and ninth hours we with fire “ and sword mastered this strongly fortified town, furnished with “ upwards of an hundred towers; and carrying away immense spoils and “ burning more, we utterly destroyed it. Thence proceeding to Ancona “ we were met by Palseologus, an illustrious Prince of the Greeks, “ and other C o^stantmopolitan envoys, who proffered us immeasurable f treasures, if we would only enter Apulia, and, with the might of our “ valour, crush William, the enemy of both EmpVres. But the arm). “ having suffered muck from fatigue and fighting, was exceedingly re- “ duced ; wherefore the Princes urged returning home, So the Greeks “ entering Apulii> * * • * Wc, departing with the surpassing “ victory granted as by God, such as, with only 1,800 fighting men, “ never before was heard of, reached Yerona. Of the snares therj “ devised for us amidst the precipices of certain mountains, thou hast “ neard.”

(315)        p. 371. Otho of Freising, speaking of this sentence, says: Yetus consuetudo pro le^e apud Francos et Suevos ineievit, ut si quis nobilis, mini^terialLs, vel eolunus, coram judice “no pro hujusmodi excessibus reus inventus fuerit, ante quam mortis sententiam miniatur, ad cunfusionib sua ignomin am, nobilis canem, ministerialis sellam, rusticus aratr: rotam, de conntatu in proxunum comiiatum gestare cogatur.

(316)        p. 8ri. Politz.

(317)        p. 372. This species of primacy of the Dukeo of Franconia, and of the Rhine Palsgr.ivn as their representative, was a concession to the pride of the Franconians, who esteemed themselves, as the com­

patriots of the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, the first of German nations. As such they held that they alone were entitled to give sovereigns to the Empire ; and when a Saxon or a Swabian super­seded their countrymen upon the throne, they solaced their mortification with the assertion, that by the very fact of his election he became a Frank. It is not, however, upon this ground that the Emperors of the Saxon dynasty have sometimes been called Franconians. The sup­position in their case, is that they were of Frank origin; and when it is considered that the Saxons struggled for their independence during more than a quarter of a century, it is, in default of positive informa­tion, certainly no rash conjecture, that Charlemagne would set one of his own conquering race, and probably kin, over this harilly subjugated nation as their Duke, rather than one of themselves. Henry the Fowler unquestionably claimed Carlovingian blood ; and his relationship to the Saxon Billungs, to whom at his election he transferred his duchy, might, like his descent from Witekind, be in the female line.

(318)        p. 374. The words relative to precedence are, that the Dukes of Austria shall rank ‘ post principes Electores.’ They seem explicit, and Mr. Hallam very naturally infers from them that the seven electors in whom the rights of suffrage was vested, were already definitively ascer­tained. It is surely unnecessary to repeat that only with the most shrinking timidity can the opinion of such an authority as Mr. Hallam be questioned, even in relation to the country with whose institutions he professes himself the least acquainted; but in the course of the present history so many princes will be found taking part in the election of their future sovereigns, either invited or claiming the right so to do, that it is difficult to believe that right already legally restricted to the seven specifically, whether according to the arch-ministerial and household offices held- -another reason for doubting this view will be seen later in Frederic I.’s reign—or by name. But while there were five national duchies complete, they with the three archbishoprics gave e^ht electors; and two Dukes of Lorrain. Upper and Lower, appear once even voting separately, making nine votes, before that duchy ceased to take part in the elections. At the election of Conrad II., a.d. 1025, the two Dukes of Upper and Lower Lorrain voted separately, with the Dukes of Franconia, Saxony, Swabia, Bavaria, Bohemia, and Carinthia. Other varieties of electors will be found even in these volumes. The document constituting the duchy ot Austria, with its golden bull or seal, is still extant, its authenticity being avouched by those scarcely disputed German authorities, Peru and Baron Seckmdorf. It is strange that in opposition to such evidence and the nanative of Otho of Freising, Sismondi should have adopted the allegations of those who, in order to plunder Maria Theresa, maintained thet Austria was legally not heritable by females, and the Pragmatic Sanction of her father, the Emperor Charles YI. (in exact conformity to the original constitution of the duchy), an arbitrary innovation.

(319)        p. 374, Raumer >Jid Luden place the field near Katisboi'..

Mail ith, -vi ho should be authority fur Austria, says the investiture took place, as it properly should, upon Austrian ground. B ut the nearest Aus­. trian ground, the ceded, or to be ceded, district of Upper Austria, is fully seventy miles distant from Ratisbon. The description of the ce.-emony is nowise affected by the locality, though its dignity is enhanced if the Diet really travelled so far to sanction it; wherefore it is Unlikely thst Bishop Otho should omit a circumstance so honourable to his brother, ind he merely states that the Diet assembled at Ratisbon, that they went to perform the ceremony “ in campum,” and that when it was over the Emperor returned to the town.

(320)        p. 375. Iiuden, the in\ ariable censurer ot Frederic I., imputes to the creation of this powerful duchy the subsequent denationalization and consequent weakening of Germany, by its breaking into so many separate states. That such disruption must be the result of tho sedulous preservation of the distinct nationalities of the original duchies, and the constantly increasing power of their Dukes, is apparent very early m German history; not so how the creation of one additional duchy, laiming no distinct nationality, and, however considerable, of inferior dignity, should even hasten it more than the creation of the marjiraviate ot Brandenburg or the aggregation of Slavonian Bohemia. Austria :oul(l not at this period be compared in power to Saxony, whose loss of the Northern March was more than compensated by Slavonian additions. But Austria increased in power, getting one neighbouring dukedum and margraviate after another, whilst Saxony, as will be seen, was in the course of this very reign diminished.

(321)        p. 377. A forged renunciation of rights, denied alike by the forgers, by those over whom the rights are claimed, and by a' rival suzerain (to wit, the Pope), soemB a very superfluous fraud:—but that, such a forgery was put forth by Manuel’s officers seems indubitable. The (Jonstantinopolitan court could recognize no righ*s in the German Emperor but what were derived from the £rant to Otho II.’s consort, Theophano, as her wedding jjortion, which would be held to havi- expired with her childless only child, Otho 111. Otho’s successors claimed the Sicilies as locally included in'thc Holy Roman Empire.

(322)        p. 377. It will be remembered that in Germany all the children bear the title of the father, although the whole property may go to the eldest son, leaving them penniless earls and countesses.

(328) p 383. Thierry, Scrip. Rer. Erane.

(324) p. 383. Miss Strickland,

(335) p. 385. Radevieus, whose words are perhaps yet stronger, “ Regnurn nostrum ut quicquid ubique nostrse snbjieit.ur ditioni, vobis exponimus, et vestae committimus potestati, ut ad vestrum nutum omnia diaponantur, et in omnibus vestri fiat voluntas Imporii. Sit igitur inter nos et populos nostros dilectionu et pacis unitas indivisa, et commercia tuta, ita tamen ut vobis, qui dignitate prajeminetif, imperandi cedat auctoritas, nobis non deerit voluntas obsequendi.” .

(320)        p . 385, Some Guelph writers assert that Frederic was compelled

thus to fulfil his promise to his uncle Conrad III., by an embassy from Manuel, claiming the investiture of the nephew of his Empress. But neither is there anything in Frederic’s conduct through life to indicate that he would have considered such an embassy as compulsory, nor had he discovered any such dilatoriness in fulfiling his promise as could authorize a remonstrance from the Greek Emperor. Conrad’s request to the nephew he recommended as his heir, and to the Princes of the Fmpire, was so to invest his surviving son, when of man’s estate; and that son, who was only seven years old at his father’s death, in 1152, could hardly have attained to a riper age than twelve or thirteen, in 1157 or 1158 ; as young surely as his father had meant him to be intrusted with pretty nearly sovereign power.

(327) p. 388. The words of the papal epistle are: “Neque tamen pcenitet nos desideria tuse voluntatis in omnibus implevisse; sed si majora beneficia Excellentia tua de manu nostra suscepisset, si fieri posset, considerantes quanta Ecclesise Dei et nobis per te incrementa possint et commoda provenire, nonimmeritb gauderemus.**

END OF NOTES TO VOL. I.