History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2). Draper John William

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СКАЧАТЬ Christian brethren were exposed, and the abominations of the holy places now in the hands of the infidel, roused Europe, by his preaching, to a frantic state; and Urban, at the Council of Clermont, A.D. 1095, gave authority to the Holy War. "It is the will of God," was the unanimous shout of the council and the populace. The periodical shower of shooting stars was seen with remarkable brilliancy on April 25th, and mistaken by the council for a celestial monition that the Christians must precipitate themselves in like manner on the East. From this incident we may perceive how little there was of inspiration in these blundering and violent ecclesiastical assemblages; the moment that they can be brought to a scientific test their true nature is detected. As a preliminary exercise, a ferocious persecution of the Jews of France had burst forth, and the blood and tortures of multitudes offered a tardy expiation for the crimes that their ancestors had committed at the Crucifixion in Jerusalem, more than a thousand years previously.

      The first crusade. It does not fall within my plan to give a detailed description of the Crusades. It is enough to say that, though the clergy had promised the protection of God to every one who would thus come to his assistance – an ample reward for their pious work in this life, and the happiness of heaven in the next – Urban's crusade failed not only disastrously, but hideously, so far as the ignorant rabbles, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, were concerned. Nevertheless, under the better-organized expeditions that soon followed, Jerusalem was captured, July 15th, A.D. 1099. The long and ghastly line of bones whitening the road through Hungary to the East showed how different a thing it was for a peaceable and solitary pilgrim, with his staff, and wallet, and scallop-shell, to beg his way, and a disorderly rabble of thousands upon thousands to rush forward without any subordination, any organization, trusting only to the providence of God. The van of the Crusades consisted of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men, accompanied by eight horses, and preceded by a goat and a goose, into which some one had told them that the Holy Ghost had entered. Driven to madness by disappointment and famine – expecting, in their ignorance, that every town they came to must be Jerusalem – in their extremity they laid hands on whatever they could. Their track was marked by robbery, bloodshed, and fire. In the first crusade more than half a million of men died. It was far more disastrous than the Moscow retreat.

       Storming of Jerusalem. But still, in a military sense, the first crusade accomplished its object. The capture of Jerusalem, as might be expected under such circumstances, was attended by the perpetration of atrocities almost beyond belief. What a contrast to the conduct of the Arabs! When the Khalif Omar took Jerusalem, A.D. 637, he rode into the city by the side of the Patriarch Sophronius, conversing with him on its antiquities. At the hour of prayer, he declined to perform his devotions in the Church of the Resurrection, in which he chanced to be, but prayed on the steps of the Church of Constantine; "for," said he to the patriarch, "had I done so, the Musselmen in a future age would have infringed the treaty, under colour of imitating my example." But, in the capture by the Crusaders, the brains of young children were dashed out against the walls; infants were thrown over the battlements; every woman that could be seized was violated; men were roasted at fires; some were ripped open, to see if they had swallowed gold; the Jews were driven into their synagogue, and there burnt; a massacre of nearly 70,000 persons took place; and the pope's legate was seen "partaking in the triumph."

       Political results of the Crusades. It had been expected by the politicians who first projected these wars that they would heal the divisions of the Latin and Greek churches, and give birth to a European republic, under the spiritual presidency of the pope. In these respects they proved a failure. It does not appear that the popes themselves personally had ever any living faith in the result. Not one of them ever joined a crusade; and the Church, as a corporation, took care to embark very little money in these undertakings. But, though they did not answer to the original intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful stimulus to the papal power. Give to Rome the control of men and money in Europe. Under the plausible pretences offered by them, the pope obtained control over the person of every Christian man from the highest to the lowest. The cross once taken, all civil control over the Crusader ceased – he became the man of the Church. Under those pretences, also, a right was imperceptibly acquired of raising revenue in all parts of Europe; even the clergy might be assessed. A drain was thus established on the resources of distant nations for an object which no man dared to gainsay; if he adventured on any such thing, he must encounter the odium of an infidel – an atheist. A steady stream of money flowed into Italy. Nor was it alone by this taxation of every Christian nation without permission of its government – this empire within every empire – immense wealth accrued to the projectors, while the infatuation could be kept up, by the diminished rate at which land could be obtained. Domains were thrown into the market; there were few purchasers except the Church. Immense domains were also given away by weak-minded sinners, and those on the point of death, for the salvation of their souls. Thus, all things considered, the effect of the Crusades, though not precisely that which was expected, was of singular advantage to the Church, giving it a commanding strength it had never before possessed.

      In their resistance to the German attack the popes never hesitated at any means. They prompted Prince Henry to revolt against their great antagonist, his father; they intervened, not to rebuke, but to abet him, when he threw his father into prison and deprived him of the necessaries of life. They carried their vengeance beyond the grave. When the aged emperor, broken in heart, escaped from their torment, and was honourably buried by the Bishop of Liège, that prelate was forthwith excommunicated and compelled to disinter the corpse. But crimes like these, against which human nature revolts, meet with retribution. Resistance of Henry V. This same Prince Henry, becoming Henry V., was forced by circumstances to resume his father's quarrel, and to refuse to yield his right of granting investitures. He marched upon Rome, and at the point of the sword compelled his adversary, Pope Paschal II., to surrender all the possessions and royalties of the Church – compelled him to crown him emperor – not, however, until the pontiff had been subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment, and brought into condemnation among his own party.

       Bernard of Clairvaux stimulates the second crusade. Things seemed to be going to ruin in Rome, and such must inevitably have been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the beater down of heresies, theological and political. He had been a pupil of William of Champeaux, the vanquished rival of Abelard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and personal hate. He was a wonder-worker. He excommunicated the flies which infested a church – they all fell down dead and were swept out by the basketful. He has been described as "the mellifluous doctor, whose works are not scientific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at the basis of Abelard's philosophy – the assertion of the supremacy of reason. Of Arnold of Brescia – who carried that principle to its political consequences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were inconsistent with their profession – he was the accuser and punisher. Its failure. Bernard preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, affirmed to be not inferior to those of our Saviour; promising to him who should slay an unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life to come. This second crusade was conducted by kings, and included fanatic ladies, dressed in the armour of men; but it ended in ruin.

      It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the papacy to visit Rome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon others. Nicolas Breakspear – Adrian IV. – put the Eternal City under interdict, thereby ending the republic which the partisans of Arnold of Brescia had set up. But in this he was greatly aided by a change of sentiment in many of the inhabitants of Rome, who had found to their cost that it was more profitable for their city to be the centre of Christianity than the seat of a phantom republic. Murder of Arnold of Brescia. As an equivalent for his coronation by Adrian, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to surrender to the Church Arnold of Brescia. With indecent haste, the moment she had obtained possession of her arch-enemy she put him to death – not delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom had been, but murdering him with her own hand. Seven centuries have elapsed, and the blood of Arnold is still crying from the ground for retribution. Notwithstanding a new – the third – crusade, things went from bad СКАЧАТЬ