[64]Page 174.
[64]Page 174.
PIPIN AND CHARLES THE GREAT.
A.D.741-814.
PART I.
Towards the end of St. Boniface's life, a great change took place in the government of the Franks. Pipin, who had succeeded his father, Charles Martel, as mayor of the palace, grew tired of being called a servant while he was really the master; and the French sent to ask the pope, whose name was Zacharias, whether the man who really had the kingly power ought not also to have the title of king. Zacharias, who had been greatly obliged to the Franks for helping him against his enemies the Lombards, answered them in the way that they seemed to wish and to expect; and accordingly they chose Pipin as their king. And while, according to the custom in such cases, Pipin was lifted up on a shield and displayed to the people, while he was anointed and crowned, the last of the poor old race of "do-nothing" kings was forced to let his long hair be shorn until he looked like a monk, and was then shut up in a monastery for the rest of his days.
Pipin afterwards went into Italy for the help of the pope, and bestowed on the Roman Church a large tract of country which he had taken from the Lombards. And thisdonation(as it was called) or gift, was the first land which the popes possessed in such a way that they were counted as the sovereigns of it.
Pipin died in 768, and was succeeded by his son Charles, who is commonly called Charlemagne (or Charles the Great). Under Charles the connexion between the Franks and the Popes became still closer than before; and when Charles put down the Lombard kingdom in Italy (A.D.774), the popes came in for part of the spoil.
But the most remarkable effect of this connexion was at a later time, when Pope Leo III. had been attacked in a Roman street by some conspirators, who tried to blind him and to cut out his tongue. But they were not able to do their work thoroughly, and Leo recovered the use both of his tongue and of his eyes. He then went into Germany to ask Charles to help him against his enemies; and on his return to Rome he was followed by Charles. There, on Christmas Day,A.D.800, when a vast congregation was assembled in the great church of St. Peter, the pope suddenly placed a golden crown on the king's head, while the people shouted, "Long life and victory to our emperor, Charles!" So now, after a long time, an emperor was set up again in the West; and, although these new emperors were German, they all styled themselves emperors of the Romans. The popes afterwards pretended that they had a right to bestow the empire as they liked, and that Leo had taken it from the Greeks, and given it to the Germans. But this was quite untrue. Charles seems to have made up his mind to be emperor, but he was very angry with the pope for giving him the crown by surprise, instead of letting him take his own way about it; and, if he had been left to himself, he would have taken care to manage the matter so that the pope should not appear to do anything more than to crown him in form after he had been chosen by the Roman people.
PART II.
Charles was really a great man, although he had very serious faults, and did many blameable things. He carried his conquests so far that the Greeks had a proverb, "Have the Frank for thy friend, but not for thy neighbour,"—meaning that the Franks were likely to try to make their neighbours' lands their own. He thought it his duty to spread the Christian faith by force, if it could not be done in a gentler way; and thus, when he had conquered the Saxons in Germany, he made them be baptized and pay tithes to the Church. But I need hardly say that people's belief is not to be forced in this way; and many of those who submitted to be baptized at the conqueror's command had no belief in the Gospel, and no understanding of it. There is a story told of some who came to be baptized over and over again for the sake of the white dresses which were given to them at their baptism; and when one of these had once got a dress which was coarser than usual, he declared that such a sack was fitter for a swineherd than for a warrior, and that he would have nothing to do with it or with the Christian religion. The Saxons gave Charles a great deal of trouble, for his war with them lasted no less than thirty-three years; and at one time he was so much provoked by their frequent revolts that he had the cruelty to put 4,500 Saxon prisoners to death.
But there are better things to be told of Charles. He took very great pains to restore learning, which had long been in a state of decay. He invited learned men from Italy and from England to settle in his kingdom; and of all these, the most famous was a Northumbrian named Alcuin. Alcuin gave him wise and good advice as to the best way of treating the Saxons in order to bring them to the faith; and when Charles was on his way to Rome, just before he was crowned as emperor, Alcuin presented him with a large Latin Bible, written expressly for his use; for we must remember that printing was not invented until more than six hundred years later, so that all books inCharles's days weremanuscript(or written by hand). Some people have believed that an ancient manuscript Bible which is now to be seen in the great library at Paris is the very one which Alcuin gave to Charles.
We are told that when Charles found himself at a loss for help in educating his people, he said to Alcuin that he wished he might have twelve such learned clerks as Jerome and Augustine; and that Alcuin answered, "The Maker of heaven and earth has had only two such; and are you so unreasonable as to wish for twelve?"
Alcuin was made master of the palace school, which moved about wherever the court was, and in which the pupils were Charles's own children and the sons of his chief nobles; and besides this, care was taken for the education of the clergy and of the people in general. Charles himself tried very hard to learn reading and writing when he was already in middle age; but although he became able to read, and used to keep little tablets under his pillow, in order that he might practise writing while lying awake in bed, he never was able to write easily. Many curious stories are told of the way in which he overlooked the service in his chapel, where he desired that everything should be done as well as possible. He would point with his finger or with his staff at any person whom he wished to read in chapel, and when he wished any one to stop he coughed; and it was expected that at these signals each person would begin or stop at once, although it might be in the middle of a sentence.
During this time the question of images, which I have already mentioned,[65]came up again in the Greek Church. A council was held in 787 at Nicæa, where the first general council had met in the time of Constantine, more than four centuries and a half before;[66]and in this second Nicene council images were approved of. In the West, the popes were also for them; but they were condemned in a council at Frankfort, and a book was written againstthem in the name of Charles. It is supposed that this book was mostly the work of Alcuin, but that Charles, besides allowing it to go forth with his name and authority, had really himself had a share in making it.
Charles the Great died in the year 814. A short time before his death, he sent for his son Lewis, and in the great church at Aix-la-Chapelle, which was Charles's favourite place of abode, he took from the altar a golden crown, and with his own hands placed it on the head of Lewis. By this he meant to show that he did not believe the empire to depend on the pope's will, but considered it to be given to himself and his successors by God alone.
NOTES
[65]Page 170.
[65]Page 170.
[66]See Part I.,chap. XI.
[66]See Part I.,chap. XI.
DECAY OF CHARLES THE GREAT'S EMPIRE.
A.D.814-887.
Lewis, the son of Charles the Great, was a prince who had very much of good in him, so that he is commonly called the Pious. But he was of weak character, and his reign was full of troubles, mostly caused by the ambition of his own sons, who were helped by a strong party among the clergy, and even by Pope Gregory the Fourth. At one time he was obliged to undergo public penance, and some years later he was deprived of his kingdom and empire, although these acts caused such a shock to the feelings of men that he found friends who helped him to recover his power. And after his death (A.D.840) his children and grandchildren continued to quarrel among themselves as long as any of them lived.
Besides these quarrels among their princes, the Franks were troubled at this time by enemies of many kinds.
First of all I may mention the Northmen, who poured down by sea on the coasts of the more civilized nations.These were the same who in our English history are called Danes, with whom the great Alfred had a long struggle, and who afterwards, under Canute, got possession of our country for a time. They had light vessels,—serpents, as they were called,—which could sail up rivers; and so they carried fire and sword up every river whose opening invited them, making their way to places so far off the sea as Mentz, on the Rhine; Treves, on the Moselle; Paris, on the Seine; and even Auxerre, on the Yonne. They often sacked the wealthy trading cities which lay open to their attacks; they sailed on to Spain, plundered Lisbon, passed the Straits of Gibraltar, and laid waste the coasts of Italy.
After a time they grew bolder, and would leave their vessels on the rivers, while they struck across the country to plunder places which were known to be wealthy. They made fortified camps, often on the islands of the great rivers, and did all the mischief they could within a large circle around them. These Northmen were bitter enemies of Christianity, and many of them had lost their homes because they or their fathers would not be converted at Charlemagne's bidding; so that they had a special pleasure in turning their fury against churches and monasteries. Wherever they came, the monks ran off and tried to save themselves, leaving their wealth as a prey to the strangers. People were afraid to till the land, lest these enemies should destroy the fruits of their labours. Famines became common; wolves were allowed to multiply and to prey without check; and such were the distress and fear caused by the invaders, that a prayer for the deliverance "from the fury of the Northmen" was added to the service-books of the Frankish church.
Another set of enemies were the Mahometan Saracens, who got possession of the great islands of the Mediterranean and laid waste its coasts. It is said that some of them sailed up the Tiber and carried off the altar which covered the body of St. Peter. One party of Saracens settled on the banks of a river about halfway between Rome and Naples; others in the neighbourhood of Nice,and on that part of the Alps which is now called the Great St. Bernard; and they robbed pilgrims and merchants, whom they made to pay dearly for being let off with their lives.
Europe also suffered much from the Hungarians, a very rude, heathen people, who about the year 900 poured into it from Asia. We are told that they hardly looked human, that they lived like beasts, that they ate men's flesh and drank their blood. They rode on small active horses, so that the heavy-armed cavalry of the Franks could not overtake them; and if they ran away before their enemies, they used to stop from time to time, and let fly their arrows backwards. From the Elbe to the very south of Italy these barbarians filled Europe with bloodshed and with terror.
The Northmen at length made themselves so much feared in France, that King Charles III., who was called the Simple, gave up to them, in 911, a part of his kingdom, which from them got the name of Normandy. There they settled down to a very different sort of life from their old habits of piracy and plunder, so that before long the Normans were ahead of all the other inhabitants of France; and from Normandy, as I need hardly say, it was that William the Conqueror and his warriors came to gain possession of England.
The princes of Charles the Great's family, by their quarrels, broke up his empire altogether; and nobody had anything like the power of an emperor until Otho I., who became king of Germany in 936, and was crowned emperor at Rome in 962.
STATE OF THE PAPACY.
A.D.891-1046.
All this time the papacy was in a very sad condition. Popes were set up and put down continually, and some of them were put to death by their enemies. The body of one pope named Formosus, after it had been some years in the grave, was taken up by order of one of his successors (Stephen VI.), was dressed out in the full robes of office, and placed in the papal chair; and then the dead pope was tried and condemned for some offence against the laws of the Church. It was declared that the clergy whom he had ordained were not to be reckoned as clergy; his corpse was stripped of the papal robes; the fingers which he had been accustomed to raise in blessing were cut off; and the body, after having been dragged about the city, was thrown into the Tiber (A.D.896).
Otho the Great, who has been mentioned as emperor, turned out a young pope, John XII., who was charged with all sorts of bad conduct (A.D.963); and that emperor's grandson, Otho III., put in two popes, one after another (A.D.996, 999). The second of these popes was a very learned and clever Frenchman, named Gerbert, who as pope took the name of Sylvester II. He had studied under the Arabs in Spain (for in some kinds of learning the Arabs were then far beyond the Christians); and it was he who first taught Christians to use the Arabic figures (such as 1, 2, and 3) instead of the Roman letters or figures (such as I., II., and III.). He also made a famous clock; and on account of his skill in such things people supposed him to be a sorcerer, and told strange stories about him. Thus it is said that he made a brazen head, which answered "Yes" and "No" to questions. Gerbert asked his headwhere he should die, and supposed from the answer that it was to be in the city of Jerusalem. But one day as he was at service in one of the Roman churches which is called "Holy Cross in Jerusalem," he was taken very ill; and then he understood that that church was the Jerusalem in which he was to die. We need not believe such stories; but yet it is well to know about them, because they show what people were disposed to believe in the time when the stories were made.
The troubles of the papacy continued, and at one time there were no fewer than three popes, each of whom had one of the three chief churches of Rome, and gave himself out for the only true pope. But this state of things was such a scandal that the emperor, Henry III., was invited from Germany to put an end to it, and for this purpose he held a council at Sutri, not far from Rome, in 1046. Two of the popes were set aside, and the third, Gregory VI., who was the best of the three, was drawn to confess that he had given money to get his office, because he wished to use the power of the papacy to bring about some kind of reform. But on this he was told that he had been guilty of simony—a sin which takes its name from Simon the sorcerer, in the Acts of the Apostles (ch. viii.), and which means the buying of spiritual things with money. This had never struck Gregory before; but when told of it by the council he had no choice but to lay aside his papal robes, and the emperor put one of his own German bishops into the papacy.
MISSIONS OF THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES.
It will be pleasanter to tell you something about the missions of those times; for a great deal of missionary work was then carried on.
(1.) The Bulgarians, who had come from Asia in theend of the seventh century, and had settled in the country which still takes its name from them, were converted by missionaries of the Greek Church. It is said that, when some beginning of the work had been made, and the king himself had been baptized by the patriarch of Constantinople (A.D.861), the king asked the Greek emperor to send him a painter to adorn the walls of his palace; and that a monk named Methodius was sent accordingly, for in those times monks were the only persons who practised such arts as painting. The king desired him to paint a hall in the palace with subjects of a terrible kind, by which he meant that the pictures should be taken from the perils of hunting. But, instead of such subjects, Methodius painted the last judgment, as being the most terrible of all things; and the king, on seeing the picture of hell with its torments, and being told that such would be the future place of the heathen, was so terrified that he gave up the idols which he had kept until then, and that many of his subjects were also moved to seek admission into the Church.
Although the conversion of Bulgaria had been the work of Greek missionaries, the popes afterwards sent some of their clergy into the country, and claimed it as belonging to them; and this was one of the chief causes why the Greek and the Latin churches separated from each other, so that they have never since been really reconciled.
(2.) It is not certain whether the painter Methodius was the same with a monk of that name, who, with his brother, named Cyril, brought about the conversion of Moravia (A.D.863). These missionaries went about their work in a different way from what was common; for it had been usual for the Greek clergy to use the Greek language, and for the Western clergy to use the Latin, in their church-service and in other things relating to religion; but instead of this, Cyril and Methodius learnt the language of the country, and translated the church-services, with parts of the holy Scriptures, into it, so that all might be understood by the natives. In Moravia, too, there was a quarrelbetween the Greek and the Latin clergy; but, although the popes usually insisted that the services of the Church should be either in Latin or in Greek (because these were two of the languages which were written over the Saviour's cross), they were so much pleased with the success of Cyril and Methodius, that they allowed the service of the Moravian Church to be still in the language of the country.
(3.) Soon after the conversion of the Moravians, the duke of Bohemia paid a visit to their king, Swatopluk, who received him with great honour, but at dinner set him and his followers to sit on the floor, as being heathens. Methodius, who was at the king's table, spoke to the duke, and said that he was sorry to see so great a prince obliged to feed as if he were a swineherd. "What should I gain by becoming a Christian?" he replied; and when Methodius told him that the change would raise him above all kings and princes, he and his thirty followers were baptized.
A story of the same kind is told as to the conversion of the Carinthians, which was brought about in the end of the eighth century by a missionary named Ingo, who asked Christian slaves to eat at his own table, while he caused food to be set outside the door for their heathen masters, as if they had been dogs. This led the Carinthian nobles to ask questions; and in consequence of what they heard they were baptized, and their example was followed by their people generally.
The second bishop of Prague, the chief city of Bohemia, Adalbert, is famous as having gone on a mission to the heathens of Prussia, by whom he was martyred on the shore of the Frische Haff in 997.
(4.) In the north of Germany, in Denmark, and in Sweden, Anskar, who had been a monk at Corbey, on the Weser, laboured for thirty-nine years with earnest devotion and with great success (A.D.826-865). In addition to preaching the Gospel of salvation, he did much in such charitable works as the building of hospitals and the redemption of captives; and he persuaded the chief men ofthe country north of the Elbe to give up their trade in slaves, which had been a source of great profit to them, but which Anskar taught them to regard as contrary to the Christian religion. Anskar was made archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, and is styled "The Apostle of the North." But he had to suffer many dangers and reverses in his endeavours to do good. At one time, when Hamburg was burnt by the Northmen, he lost his church, his monastery, his library, and other property; but he only said, with the patriarch Job, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" Then he set to work again, without being discouraged by what had befallen him, and he even made a friend of the heathen king who had led the attack on Hamburg. Anskar died in the year 865. It is told that when some of his friends were talking of miracles which he was supposed to have done, he said, "If I were worthy in my Lord's sight, I would ask of Him to grant me one miracle—that He would make me a good man!"
(5.) The Russians were visited by missionaries from Greece, from Rome, and from Germany, so that for a time they wavered between the different forms of the Christian religion which were offered to them; but at length they decided for the Greek Church. When their great prince (who, at his baptism, took the name of Basil) had been converted (A.D.988) he ordered that the idol of the chief god who had been worshipped by the Russians should be dragged at a horse's tail through the streets of the capital, Kieff, and should be thrown into the river Dnieper. Many of the people burst into tears at the sight; but when they were told that the prince wished them to be baptized, they said that a change of religion must be good if their prince recommended it; and they were baptized in great numbers. "Some," we are told, "stood in the water up to their necks, others up to their breasts, holding their young children in their arms; and the priests read the prayers from the bank of the river, naming at once whole companies by the same name."
(6.)I might give an account of the spreading of the Gospel in Poland, Hungary, and other countries; but let us keep ourselves to the north of Europe. Although Anskar had given up his whole life to missionary work among the nations near the Baltic Sea, there was still much to be done, and sometimes conversion was carried on in ways which to us seem very strange. As an instance of this, I may give some account of a Norwegian king named Olave, the son of Tryggve.
Olave was at first a heathen, and had long been a famous sea-rover, when he was converted and baptized in one of the Scilly islands (A.D.994). He took up his new religion with a great desire to spread it among his people, and he went about from one part of Norway to another, everywhere destroying temples and idols, and requiring the people to be baptized whether they were willing or not. At one place he found eighty heathens, who were supposed to be wizards. He first tried to convert them in the morning when they were sober, and again in the evening when they were enjoying themselves over their horns of ale; and as he could not persuade them, whether they were sober or drunk, he burnt their temple over their heads. All the eighty perished except one, who made his escape; and this man afterwards fell into the king's hands, and was thrown into the sea.
At another time, Olave fell in with a young man named Endrid, who agreed to become a Christian if any one whom the king might appoint should beat him in diving, in archery, and in sword-play. Olave himself undertook the match, and got the better of Endrid in all the trials; and then Endrid gave in, and allowed himself to be converted and baptized. These were strange ways of spreading the Gospel; but they seem to have had their effect on the rough men of the North.
At last, Olave was attacked by some of his heathen neighbours, and was beaten in a great sea-fight (A.D.1000). It was generally believed that he had perished in the sea; but there is a story of a Norwegian pilgrim who, nearlyfifty years later, lost his way among the sands of Egypt, and lighted on a lonely monastery, with an old man of his own country as its abbot. The abbot put many questions to him, and asked him to carry home a girdle and a sword, and to give them with a message to a warrior who had fought bravely beside King Olave in his last battle; and on receiving them the old warrior was assured that the Egyptian abbot could be no other than his royal master, who had been so long supposed to be dead.
Somewhat later than Olave the son of Tryggve (A.D.1015) Norway had another king Olave, who was very zealous for the spreading of the Gospel among his people, and, like the elder Olave, was willing to do so by force if he could not manage the matter otherwise. On his visiting a place called Dalen, a bishop named Grimkil, who accompanied him, set forth the Christian doctrine; but the heathens answered that their own god was better than the God of the Christians, because he could be seen. The king spent the greater part of the night in prayer, and next morning at daybreak the idol of the northern god Thor was brought forward by his worshippers. Olave pointed to the rising sun, as being a witness to the glory of its Maker; and, while the heathens were gazing on its brightness, a tall soldier, to whom the king had given his orders beforehand, lifted up his club and dashed the idol to pieces. A swarm of loathsome creatures, which had lived within the idol's huge body, and had fattened on the food and drink which were offered to it, rushed forth, as in the case of the image of Serapis, hundreds of years before;[67]whereupon the men of Dalen were convinced of the falsehood of their old religion, and consented to be baptized. King Olave was at length killed in battle against his heathen subjects (A.D.1030), and his memory is regarded as that of a saint.
(7.) From Norway the Gospel made its way to the Norwegian settlements in Iceland, and even in Greenland, where it long flourished, until, in the middle of the fifteenthcentury, ice gathered on the shores so as to make it impossible to land on them. About the same time a great plague, which was called the Black Death, carried off a large part of the settlers, and the rest were so few and so weak that they were easily killed by the natives.
It seems to be certain that some of the Norwegians from Greenland discovered a part of the American continent, although no traces of them remained there when the country was again discovered by Europeans, hundreds of years later.
NOTES
[67]See Part I.,chap. XVI.
[67]See Part I.,chap. XVI.
POPE GREGORY THE SEVENTH.
PART I.
In the times of which I have been lately speaking, the power of the popes had grown far beyond what it was in the days of Gregory the Great.
I have told you Gregory was very much displeased because a patriarch of Constantinople had styled himselfUniversal Bishop.[68]But since that time the popes had taken to calling themselves by this very title, and they meant a great deal more by it than the patriarchs of Constantinople had meant; for people in the East are fond of big words, so that, when a patriarch called himselfUniversal Bishop, he did not mean anything in particular, but merely to give himself a title which would sound grandly. And thus, although he claimed to be universal, he would have allowed the bishops of Rome to be universal too. But when the popes called themselvesUniversal Bishops, they meant that they were bishops of the whole church, and that all other bishops were under them.
They had friends, too, who were ready to say anythingto raise their power and greatness. Thus, about the year 800, when the popes had begun to get some land of their own, through the gifts of Pipin and Charlemagne,[69]a story was got up that the first Christian emperor, Constantine, when he built his city of Constantinople, and went to live in the East, made over Rome to the pope, and gave him also all Italy, with other countries of the West, and the right of wearing a golden crown. And this story of Constantine's gift (ordonation, as it was called), although it was quite false, was commonly believed in those days of ignorance.
About fifty years later another monstrous falsehood was put forth, which helped the popes greatly. Somebody, who took the name of Isidore, a famous Spanish bishop who had been dead more than two hundred years, made a collection of Church law and of popes' letters; and he mixed up with the true letters a quantity which he had himself forged, but which pretended to have been written by bishops of Rome from the very time of the Apostles. And in these letters it was made to appear that the pope had been appointed by our Lord Himself to be head of the whole Church, and to govern it as he liked; and that the popes had always used this power from the beginning. This collection of laws is known by the name of theFalse Decretals; but nobody in those times had any notion that they were false, and so they were believed by every one, and the pope got all that they claimed for him.
But in course of time the popes would not be contented even with this. In former ages nobody could be made pope without the emperor's consent, and we have seen how Otho the Great, his grandson, Otho III., and afterwards Henry III., had thought that they might call popes to account for their conduct; how these emperors brought some popes before councils for trial, and turned them out of their office when they misbehaved.[70]But just after Henry III., as we have read, had got rid of threepopes at once, a great change began, which was meant to set the popes above the emperors. The chief mover in this change was Hildebrand, who is said to have been the son of a carpenter in a little Tuscan town, and was born between the years 1010 and 1020.
PART II.
Hildebrand became a monk of the strictest kind, and soon showed a wonderful power of swaying the minds of other men. Thus, when a German named Bruno, bishop of Toul, had been chosen as pope by Henry III., to whom he was related, and as he was on his way to Rome that he might take possession of his office, his thoughts were entirely changed by some talk with Hildebrand, whom he happened to meet. Hildebrand told him that popes, instead of being appointed by emperors, ought to be freely chosen by the Roman clergy and people; and thereupon Bruno, putting off his fine robes, went on to Rome in company with Hildebrand, whose lessons he listened to all the way, so that he took up the monk's notions as to all matters which concerned the Church. On arriving at Rome, he told the Romans that he did not consider himself to be pope on account of the emperor's favour, but that if they should think fit to choose him he was willing to be pope. On this he was elected by them with great joy, and took the name of Leo IX. (A.D.1048). But, although Leo was called pope, it was Hildebrand who really took the management of everything.
When Leo died (A.D.1054), the Romans wished to put Hildebrand into his place; but he did not yet feel himself ready to take the papacy, and instead of this he contrived to get one after another of his party elected, until at length, after having really directed everything for no less than five-and-twenty years, and under the names of five popes in succession, he allowed himself to be chosen in 1073, and styled himself Gregory VII.
The empire was then in a very sad state. Henry III.had died in 1056, leaving a boy less than six years old to succeed him; and this poor boy, who became Henry IV., was very badly used by those who were about him. One day, as he was on an island in the river Rhine, Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, gave him such an account of a beautiful new boat which had been built for the archbishop, that the young prince naturally wished to see it; and as soon as he was safe on board, Hanno carried him off to Cologne, away from his mother, the empress Agnes. Thus the poor young Henry was in the hands of people who meant no good by him; and, although he was naturally a bright, clever, amiable lad, they did what they could to spoil him, and to make him unfit for his office, by educating him badly, and by throwing in his way temptations to which he was only too ready to yield. And when they had done this, and he had made himself hated by many of his people on account of his misbehaviour, the very persons who had done the most to cause his faults took advantage of them, and tried to get rid of him as king of Germany and emperor. In the meantime Hildebrand (or Gregory, as we must now call him) and his friends had been well pleased to look on the troubles of Germany; for they hoped to turn the discontent of the Germans to their own purpose.
Gregory had higher notions as to the papacy than any one who had gone before him. He thought that all power of every kind belonged to the pope; that kings had their authority from him; that all kingdoms were held under him as the chief lord; that popes were as much greater than kings or emperors as the sun is greater than the moon; that popes could make or unmake kings just as they pleased; and although he had asked the emperor to confirm his election, as had been usual, he was resolved that such a thing should never again be asked of an emperor by any pope in the time to come.
PART III.
One way in which Gregory tried to increase his power was by forcing the clergy to live unmarried, or, if they weremarried already, to put away their wives. This was a thing which had not been required either in the New Testament or by the Church in early times. But by degrees a notion had grown up that single life was holier than married life; and many canons (or laws of the Church) had been made against the marriage of the clergy. But Gregory carried this further than any one before him, because he saw that to make the clergy different from other men, and to cut them off from wife and children and the usual connexions of family, was a way to unite them more closely into a body by themselves. He saw that it would bind them more firmly to Rome; that it would teach them to look to the pope, rather than to their national sovereign, as their chief; and that he might count on such clergy as sure tools, ready to be at the pope's service in any quarrel with princes. He therefore sent out his orders, forbidding the marriage of the clergy, and he set the people against their spiritual pastors by telling them to have nothing to do with the married clergy, and not to receive the sacraments of the Church from them. The effects of these commands were terrible: the married clergy were insulted in all possible ways, many of them were driven by violence from their parishes, and their unfortunate wives were made objects of scorn for all mankind. So great and scandalous were the disorders which arose, that many persons, in disgust at the evils which distracted the Church, and at the fury with which parties fought within it, forsook it and joined some of the sects which were always on the outlook for converts from it.
Another thing on which Gregory set his heart, as a means of increasing the power of the popes, was to do away with what was calledInvestiture. This was the name of the form by which princes gave bishops possession of the estates and other property belonging to their sees. The custom had been that princes should put the pastoral staff into the hands of a new bishop, and should place a ring on one of his fingers; but now fault was found with these acts, because the staff meant that the bishop had thecharge of his people as a shepherd has of his flock, and the ring meant that he was joined to his Church as a husband is joined to his wife in marriage. For now it was said to be wrong to use things which are signs of spiritual power, when that which the prince gives is not spiritual power, but only a right to the earthly possessions of the see. Gregory, therefore, ordered that no bishop should take investiture from any sovereign, and that no sovereign should give investiture; and out of this grew a quarrel which lasted fifty years, and was the cause of grievous troubles in the Church.
Gregory had also quarrels with enemies at home. One of these, a rough and lawless man named Cencius, went so far as to seize him when he was at a service about midnight on Christmas Eve, and carried him off to a tower, where the pope was exposed all night to the insults of a gang of ruffians, and of Cencius himself, who even held a sword to his naked throat, in the hope of frightening him into the payment of a large sum as ransom. But Gregory was not a man to be terrified by any violence, and held out firmly. A woman who took pity on him bathed his wounds, and a man gave him some furs to protect him against the cold; and in the morning he was delivered by a party of his friends, by whom Cencius and his ruffians were overpowered, and frightened into giving up their prisoner.
PART IV.
In Germany many of the princes and people threw off their obedience to Henry. They destroyed his castles and reduced him to great distress; they held meetings against him, and were strong enough to make him give up his power of government for a time, and leave all questions between him and his subjects to be settled by the pope. Henry was so much afraid of losing his kingdom altogether, that, in order to beg the pope's mercy, he crossed the Alps, with his queen and a few others, in the midst of a very hard winter, running great risks among the snow and ice whichcovered the lofty mountains over which his road lay. In the hope of getting the pope's forgiveness, he hastened to Canossa, a castle among the Apennines, at which Gregory then was; but Gregory kept the emperor standing three days outside the gate, dressed as a penitent, and pierced through and through by the bitter cold of that terrible winter, before he would allow himself to be seen. When at last Henry was admitted, the pope treated him very hardly; some say that he even tried to make him take the holy sacrament of our Lord's body, by way of proving whether he were innocent or guilty of the charges which his enemies brought against him. And, after all that Henry had gone through, no peace was made between him and his enemies. The troubles of Germany continued: the other party set up against Henry a king of their own choosing, named Rudolf; and Henry, in return for this, set up another pope in opposition to Gregory.
After a time, Henry was able to put down his enemies in Germany, and he led a large army into Italy, where he got almost all Rome into his hands; and on Easter Day, 1084, he was crowned as emperor, in St. Peter's Church, by Clement III., the pope of his party. Gregory entreated the help of Robert Guiscard, the chief of some Normans who had got possession of the south of Italy; and Guiscard, who was glad to have such an opportunity for interfering, speedily came to his relief and delivered him. But in fighting with the Romans in the streets, these Normans set the city on fire, and a great part of it was destroyed, so that within the walls of Rome there are even in our own day large spaces which were once covered with buildings, but are now given up to cornfields or vineyards. Gregory felt himself unable to bear the sight of his ruined city, and, when the Normans withdrew, he went with them to Salerno, where he died on the 25th of May, 1085. It is said that his last words were, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile;" and the meaning seems to be, that by these words he wished to claim the benefit of our Lord's saying, "Blessed are they which are persecutedfor righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Of all the popes, Gregory VII. was the one who did most to increase the power of the papacy. No doubt he was honest in his intentions, and thought that to carry them out would be the best thing for the whole Church, as well as for the bishops of Rome. But he did not care whether the means which he used were fair or foul; and if his plans had succeeded, they would have brought all mankind into slavery to Rome.
NOTES
[68]Part I.,p. 159.
[68]Part I.,p. 159.
[69]See p. 178.
[69]See p. 178.
[70]Pp.184,185.
[70]Pp.184,185.
THE FIRST CRUSADE.
A.D.1095-1099.
PART I.
The popes who came next after Gregory VII. carried things with a high hand, following the example which he had set them. They got the better of Henry IV., but in a way which did them no credit. For when Henry had returned from Italy to his own country, and had done his best, by many years of good government, to heal the effects of the long troubles of Germany, the popes encouraged his son Conrad, and after Conrad's death, his younger son Henry, to rebel against him. The younger Henry behaved very treacherously to his father, whom he forced to give up his crown; and, at last, Henry IV. died broken-hearted in 1106. When Henry was thus out of the way, his son, Henry V., who, until then, had seemed to be a tool of the pope and the clergy, showed what sort of man he really was by imprisoning Pope Paschal II. and his cardinals for nine weeks, until he made the pope grant all that he wanted. But at length this emperor was able to settle for a time the great quarrel of investitures, by an agreement made at the city of Worms, on the Rhine, in 1123.
But before this time, and while Henry IV. was still emperor, the popes had got a great addition to their power and importance by theCrusades,—a word which means wars undertaken for the sake of the Cross. I have told you already, how, from the fourth century, it became the fashion for Christians to flock from all countries into the Holy Land, that they might warm their faith (as they thought) by the sight of the places where our Blessed Lord had been born, and lived, and died, and where most of the other things written in the Scripture history had taken place.[71]Very often, indeed, this pilgrimage was found to do more harm than good to those who went on it; for many of them had their minds taken up with anything rather than the pious thoughts which they professed: but the fashion of pilgrimage grew more and more, whether the pilgrims were the better or the worse for it.
When the Holy Land had fallen into the hands of the Mahometans, as I have mentioned,[72]these often treated the Christian pilgrims very badly, behaving cruelly to them, insulting them, and making them pay enormously for leave to visit the holy places. And when Palestine was conquered by the Turks, who had taken up the Mahometan religion lately, and were full of their new zeal for it (A.D.1076), the condition of the Christians there became worse than ever. There had often been thoughts among the Christians of the West as to making an attempt to get back the Holy Land from the unbelievers; but now the matter was to be taken up with a zeal which had never before been felt.
A pilgrim from the north of France, called Peter the Hermit, on returning from Jerusalem, carried to Pope Urban II. a fearful tale of the tyranny with which the Mahometans there treated both the Christian inhabitants and the pilgrims; and the pope gave him leave to try what he could do to stir up the Christians of the West for the deliverance of their brethren. Peter was a small, lean, dark man, but with an eye of fire, and with a power offiery speech; and wherever he went, he found that people of all classes eagerly thronged to hear him; they even gathered up the hairs which fell from the mule on which he rode, and treasured them up as precious relics. On his bringing back to the pope a report of the success which he had thus far met, Urban himself resolved to proclaim the crusade, and went into France, as being the country where it was most likely to be welcomed. There, in a great meeting at Clermont,A.D.1095, where such vast numbers attended that most of them were forced to lodge in tents, because the town itself could not hold them, the pope, in stirring words, set forth the reasons of the holy war, and invited his hearers to take part in it. While he was speaking, the people broke in on him with shouts of "God wills it!"—words which from that time became the cry of the Crusaders; and when he had done, thousands enlisted for the crusade by fixing little crosses on their dress.
All over Europe everything was set into motion; almost every one, whether old or young, strong or feeble, was eager to join; women urged their husbands or their sons to take the cross, and any one who refused was despised by all. Many of those who enlisted would not wait for the time which had been fixed for starting. A large body set out under Peter the Hermit and two knights, of whom one was called Walter the Pennyless. Other crowds followed, which were made up, not of fighting men only, but of poor, broken-down old men, of women and children who had no notion how very far off Jerusalem was, or what dangers lay in the way to it. There were many simple country folks, who set out with their families in carts drawn by oxen; and whenever they came to any town, their children asked, "Is this Jerusalem?" And besides these poor creatures, there were many bad people, who plundered as they went on, so as to make the crusade hated even by the Christian inhabitants of the countries through which they passed.
These first swarms took the way through Hungary to Constantinople, and then across the Bosphorus into AsiaMinor. Walter the Pennyless, who, although his pockets were empty, seems to have been a brave and good soldier, was killed in battle near Nicæa, the place where the first general council had been held,[73]but which had now become the capital of the Turks; and the bones of his followers who fell with him were gathered into a great heap, which stood as a monument of their rashness. It is said that more than a hundred thousand human beings had already perished in these ill-managed attempts before the main forces of the Crusaders began to move.
PART II.
When the regular armies started at length,A.D.1096, part of them marched through Hungary, while others went through Italy, and there took ship for Constantinople. The chief of their leaders was Godfrey of Bouillon, a brave and pious knight; and among the other commanders was Robert, duke of Normandy, whom we read of in English history as the eldest son of William the Conqueror, and brother of William Rufus. When they reached Constantinople, they found that the Greek emperor, Alexius, looked on them with distrust and dislike rather than with kindness; and he was glad to get rid of them by helping them across the strait to Asia.
In passing through Asia Minor, the Crusaders had to fight often, and to struggle with many other difficulties. The sight of the hill of bones near Nicæa roused them to fury; and, in order to avenge Walter the Pennyless and his companions, they laid siege to the city, which they took at the end of six weeks. After resting there for a time, they went on again and reached Antioch, which they besieged for eight months (Oct., 1097-June, 1098). During this siege they suffered terribly. Their tents were blown to shreds by the winds, or were rotted by the heavy rains which turned the ground into a swamp; and, as theyhad wasted their provisions in the beginning of the siege (not expecting that it would last so long), they found themselves in great distress for food, so that they were obliged to eat the flesh of horses and camels, of dogs and mice, with grass and thistles, leather, and the bark of trees. Their horses had almost all sunk under the hardships of the siege, and the men were thinned by disease and by the assaults of their enemies.
At length Antioch was betrayed to them; but they made a bad use of their success. They slew all of the inhabitants who refused to become Christians. They wasted the provisions which they found in the city, or which were brought to them from other quarters; and when a fresh Mahometan force appeared, which was vastly greater than their own, they found themselves shut in between it and the garrison of the castle, which they had not been able to take when they took the city.
Their distress was now greater than before, and their case seemed to be almost hopeless, when their spirits were revived by the discovery of something which was supposed to be the lance by which our blessed Lord's side was pierced on the cross. They rushed, with full confidence, to attack the enemy on the outside; and the victory which they gained over these was soon followed by the surrender of the castle. But a plague which broke out among them obliged them to remain nearly nine months longer at Antioch.
Having recruited their health, they moved on towards Jerusalem, although their numbers were now much less than when they had reached Antioch. When at length they came in sight of the holy city, a cry of "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! God wills it!" ran through the army, although many were so moved that they were unable to speak, and could only find vent for their feelings in tears and sighs. All threw themselves on their knees and kissed the sacred ground (June, 1099). The siege of Jerusalem lasted forty days, during which the Crusaders suffered much from hunger, and still more from thirst: for it was the height ofsummer, when all the brooks of that hot country are dried up; the wells, about which we read so much in holy Scripture, were purposely choked with rubbish, and the cisterns were destroyed or poisoned. Water had to be fetched from a distance of six miles, and was sold very dear; but it was so filthy that many died after drinking it. The besiegers found much difficulty in getting wood to make the engines which were then used in attacking the walls of cities; and when they had at length been able to build such machines as they wanted, the defenders tried to upset them, and threw at them showers of burning pitch or oil, and what was called the Greek fire, in the hope that they might set the engines themselves in flames, or at least might scald or wound the people in them. We are even told that two old women, who were supposed to be witches, were set to utter spells and curses from the walls; but a stone from an engine crushed the poor old wretches, and their bodies tumbled down into the ditch which surrounded the city. The Crusaders were driven back in one assault, and were all but giving way in the second; but Godfrey of Bouillon thought that he saw in the sky a bright figure of a warrior beckoning him onwards; and the Crusaders pressed forward with renewed courage until they found themselves masters of the holy city (July 15, 1099). It was noted that this was at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon,—the same day of the week, and the same hour of the day, when our Blessed Lord was crucified.
I shall not tell you of the butchery and of the other shocking things which the Crusaders were guilty of when they got possession of Jerusalem. They were, indeed, wrought up to such a state that they were not masters of themselves. At one moment they were throwing themselves on their knees with tears of repentance and joy; and then again they would start up and break lose into some frightful acts of cruelty and plunder against the conquered enemy, sparing neither old man, nor woman, nor child.
PART III.
Eight days after the taking of Jerusalem, the Crusaders met to choose a king. Robert of Normandy was one of those who were proposed; but the choice fell on Godfrey of Bouillon. But the pious Godfrey said that he would not wear a crown of gold when the King of kings had been crowned with thorns; and he refused to take any higher title than that of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.
Godfrey did not live long to enjoy his honours, and his brother, Baldwin, was chosen in his room. The kingdom of Jerusalem was established, and pilgrims soon began to stream afresh towards the sacred places. But, although we might have expected to find that this recovery of the Holy Land from the Mahometans by the Christians of the West would have led to union of the Greek and Latin Churches, it unhappily turned out quite otherwise. The popes set up a Latin patriarch, with Latin bishops and clergy, against the Greeks, and the two Churches were on worse terms than ever.
This crusade was followed by others, as we shall see by and by; but meanwhile, I may say that, although the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was never strong, and soon showed signs of decay, these crusades brought the nations of the West, which fought side by side in them, to know more of each other; that they served to increase trade with the East, and so to bring the produce of the Eastern countries within the reach of Europeans; and, as I have said already,[74]they greatly helped to increase the power of the popes, who had seen their way to take the direction of them, and thus get a stronger hold than before on the princes and people of Western Christendom.
NOTES