CHAPTER X.

[71]Part I.,p. 91.

[72]Page 169.

[73]Part I.,p. 45.

[74]Page 199.

NEW ORDERS OF MONKS.—MILITARY ORDERS.

In the times of which I have lately been speaking, the monks did much valuable service to the Church and to the world in general. It was mostly through their labours that heathen nations were converted to the Gospel, that their barbarous roughness was tamed, and that learning, although it had greatly decayed, was not altogether lost. Often, where monks had built their houses in lonely places, little clusters of huts grew up round them, and in time these clusters of huts became large and important towns. Monks were very highly thought of, and sometimes it was seen that kings and queens would leave all their worldly grandeur, and would withdraw to spend their last years under the quiet roof of a monastery. But it was found, at the same time, that monks were apt to fall away from the strict rules by which they were bound, so that reforms were continually needed among them.

As the popes became more powerful, they found the monks valuable friends and allies, and they gaveexemptionsto many monasteries; that is to say, they took it on themselves to set those monasteries free from the control which the bishops had held over them, so that the monks of these exempt places did not own any bishop at all, and would not allow that any one but the pope was over them.

I have already told you of the rule which was drawn up for monks by St. Benedict of Nursia.[75]Some other rules were afterwards made, such as that of Columban, an Irish abbot, who for many years (A.D.589-615) laboured in France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy. Columban went more into little matters than Benedict had done, and laid down exact directions in cases where Benedict had left the abbots of monasteries to settle things as they shouldthink fit. Thus Columban's rule laid down that any monk who should call anything his own should receive six strokes, and appointed the same punishment for every one who should omit to sayAmenafter the abbot's blessing, or to make the sign of the cross over his spoon or his candle; for every one who should talk at meals, or should cough at the beginning of a psalm. There were ten strokes for striking the table with a knife, or for spilling beer on it; and for heavier offences the punishment sometimes rose as high as two hundred: besides that, other punishments were used, such as fasting on bread and water, psalm-singing, humble postures, and long times of silence.

Still, however, Benedict's rule was that by which the greater part of the Western monks were governed. But, although they were under the same rule, they had no other connexion with each other; each company of monks stood by itself, having no tie outside its own walls. There was not as yet, in the West, anything like the society which St. Pachomius had long before established in Egypt,[76]where all the monasteries were supposed to be as so many sisters, and all owned the mother-monastery as their head. It was not until the tenth century that anything of this kind was set on foot in the Western Church.

(1.) In the year 912, an abbot named Berno founded a new society at Cluny, in Burgundy. He began with only twelve monks; but by degrees the fame of Cluny spread, and the pattern which had been set there was copied far and wide, until at length more than two thousand monasteries were reckoned as belonging to the "Congregation" (as it was called), or Order of Cluny; and all these looked up to the great abbot of the mother-monastery as their chief. The early abbots of Cluny were very remarkable men, and took a great part in the affairs both of the Church and of kingdoms: some of them even refused the popedom; and bishops placed themselves under them, as simple monks of Cluny, for the sake of their advice and teaching.

The founders of the Cluniac order added many precepts to the rule of St. Benedict. Thus the monks were required to swallow all the crumbs of their bread at the end of every meal; and when some of them showed a wish to escape this duty, they were frightened into obedience by an awful tale that a monk, when dying, saw at the end of his bed a great sack of the crumbs which he had left on the table rising up as a witness against him. The monks were bound to keep silence at times; and we are told that, rather than break this rule, one of them allowed his horse to be stolen, and another let himself be carried off as a prisoner by the Northmen. During these times of silence they made use of a set of signs, by which they were able to let each other know what they wanted.

This congregation of Cluny, then, was the first great monkish order in the West, and others soon followed it. They were mostly very strict at first—some of them so strict that they not only forbade all luxury in the monks, but would not allow any fine buildings, or any handsome furniture in their churches. But in general the monks soon got over this by saying that, as their buildings and their services were not for themselves, but for God, their duty was to honour Him by giving Him of the best that they could.

These orders were known from each other by the difference of their dress: thus the Benedictines were called Black Monks, the Cistercians were called White Monks, and at a later time we find mention of Black Friars, White Friars, Grey Friars, and so forth.

(2.) About the time of Gregory VII., several new orders were founded; and of these the most famous were the Carthusians and the Cistercians.

As to the beginning of the Carthusian order, a strange story is told. The founder, Bruno, is said to have been studying at Paris, when a famous teacher, who had been greatly respected for his piety, died. As his funeral was on its way to the grave, the corpse suddenly raised itself from the bier, and uttered the words, "By God's righteousjudgment I am accused!" All who were around were struck with horror, and the burial was put off until the next day. But then, as the mourners were again moving towards the grave, the dead man rose up a second time, and groaned out, "By God's righteous judgment I am judged!" Again the service was put off; but on the third day, the general awe was raised to a height by his lifting up his head and saying, "By God's righteous judgment I am condemned!" And it is said that on this discovery as to the real state of a man who had been so highly honoured for his supposed goodness, Bruno was so struck by a feeling of the hollowness of all earthly judgment that he resolved to hide himself in a desert.

I have given this story as a sample of the strange tales which have been told and believed; but not a word of it is really true, and Bruno's reasons for withdrawing from the world were of quite a different kind. It is, however, true that he did withdraw into a wild and lonely place, which is now known as the Great Chartreuse, among rough and awful rocks, near Grenoble; and there an extremely severe rule was laid down for the monks of his order (A.D.1084). They were to wear goatskins next to the flesh, and their dress was altogether to be of the coarsest and roughest sort. On three days of each week their food was bread and water; on the other days they were allowed some vegetables; but even their highest fare on holidays was cheese and fish, and they never tasted meat at all. Once a week they submitted to be flogged, after confessing their sins. They spoke on Sundays and festivals only, and were not allowed to use signs like the Cluniacs. It is to be said, to the credit of the Carthusians, that, although their order grew rich and built splendid monasteries and churches, they always kept to their hard way of living, more faithfully, perhaps, than any other order.

(3.) The Cistercian order, which I have mentioned, was founded by Robert of Molême (A.D.1098), and took its name from its chief monastery, Citeaux, or, in Latin,Cistercium. The rule was very strict. From the middle ofSeptember to Easter they were to eat but one meal daily. Their monasteries were not to be built in towns, but in lonely places. They were to shun pomp and pride in all things. Their services were to be plain and simple, without any fine music. Their vestments and all the furniture of their churches were to be coarse and without ornament. No paintings, nor sculptures, nor stained glass were allowed. The ordinary dress of the monks was to be white.

At first it seemed as if the hardness of the Cistercian rule prevented people from joining. But the third abbot of Citeaux, an Englishman, named Stephen Harding, when he was distressed at the slow progress of the order, was comforted by a vision in which he saw a multitude washing their white robes in a fountain; and very soon the vision seemed to be fulfilled. In 1113 Bernard (of whom we shall hear more presently) entered the monastery of Citeaux, and by and by the order spread so wonderfully that it equalled the Cluniac congregation in the number of houses belonging to it. These were not only connected together like the Cluniac monasteries, but had a new kind of tie in the general chapters, which were held every year. For these general chapters every abbot of the order was required to appear at Citeaux, to which they all looked up as their mother. Those who were in the nearer countries were bound to attend every year; those who were further off, once in three, or five, or seven years, according to distance. Thus the smaller houses were allowed to have a share in the management of the whole; and the plan was afterwards imitated by Carthusians and other orders.

(4.) I need not mention any more of the societies of monks which began about the same time; but I must not omit to say that the Crusades gave rise to what are calledmilitary orders, of which the first and most famous were the Templars and the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John. These orders were governed by rules which were much like those of the monks; but the members of them were knights, who undertook to defend the Holy Land against the unbelievers. The Hospitallers were at first connected witha hospital which had been founded at Jerusalem for the benefit of pilgrims by some Italian merchants, and took its name from St. John, an archbishop of Alexandria, who was called the Almsgiver. They had a black dress, with a white cross on the breast, and, from having been at first employed in nursing the sick and relieving the poor, they became warriors who fought against the Mussulmans.

The Templars, who wore a white dress, with a red cross on the breast, were even more famous as soldiers than the Hospitallers. The knights of both these orders were bound by their rules to remain unmarried, to be regular and frequent in their religious exercises, to live plainly, to devote themselves to the defence of the Christian faith and of the Holy Land; and for the sake of this work emperors, kings, and other wealthy persons bestowed lands and other gifts on them, so that they had large estates in all the countries of Europe. But as they grew rich, they forgot their vows of poverty and humility, and, although they kept up their character for bravery, they were generally disliked for their pride and insolence.

We shall see by and by how it was that the order of the Temple came to ruin. But the Hospitallers lasted longer. When the Christians were driven out of the Holy Land, the knights of this order removed first to Cyprus, then to Rhodes, and, last of all, to Malta, where they continued even until quite late times.

Other military orders were founded after the pattern of the Templars and the Hospitallers. The most famous of them were the Teutonic (or German) knights, who fought the heathens on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and got possession of a large country, which afterwards became the kingdom of Prussia; and the order of St. James, which belonged to Spain, and there carried on a continual war with the Mahometan Moors, whose settlement in that country has already been mentioned.[77]

NOTES

[75]Part I.,p. 150.

[76]See Part I.,p. 62.

[77]Page 170.

ST. BERNARD.

A.D.1091-1153.

PART I.

St. Bernard was mentioned a little way back,[78]when we were speaking of the Cistercian order. But I must now tell you something more specially about him; for Bernard was not only famous for his piety and for his eloquent speech, but by means of these he gained such power and influence that he was able to direct the course of things in the Church in such a way as no other man ever did.

Bernard, then, was born near Dijon, in Burgundy, in the year 1091. His father was a knight; his mother, Aletha, was a very religious woman, who watched carefully over his childhood, and prayed earnestly and often that he might be kept from the dangers of an evil world. As Bernard was passing from boyhood to youth, the good Aletha died. We are told that even to her last breath she joined in the prayers and psalm-singing of the clergy who stood round her bed; and he afterwards fancied that she appeared to him in visions, warning him lest he should run off in pursuit of worldly learning so as to forget the importance of religion above all things.

After a time, Bernard was led to resolve on becoming a monk. But before doing so he contrived to bring his father, his uncle, his five brothers, and his sister to the same mind; and when he asked leave to enter the Cistercian order, it was at the head of a party of more than thirty. It is said that, as they were setting out, the eldest brother saw the youngest at play, and told him that all the family property would now fall to him. "Is it heaven foryou, and earth for me?" said the boy; "that is not a fair division;" and he followed Bernard with the rest.

We have seen that, although the Cistercian order had been founded some years, people were afraid to join it because the rule was so strict.[79]But the example of Bernard and his companions had a great effect, and so many others were thus led to enter the order, that the mother-monastery was far too small to hold them. Bernard was chosen to be head of one of the swarms which went forth from Citeaux. The name of his new monastery was Clairvaux, which meansThe Bright Valley. When he and his party first settled there, they had to bear terrible hardships. They suffered from cold and from want of clothing. For a time they had to feed on porridge made of beech-leaves; and even when the worst distress was over, the plainness and poverty of their way of living astonished all who saw it.

Bernard himself went so far in mortification that he made himself very ill, and would most likely have died, if a bishop, who was his friend, had not stepped in and taken care of him for a time. Bernard afterwards understood that he had been wrong in carrying things so far; but the people who saw how he had worn himself down by fasting and frequent prayer, were willing to let themselves be led to anything that so saintly a man might recommend to them. It was even believed that he had the gift of doing miracles; and this added much to the admiration which he raised wherever he went.

Perhaps there never was a man who had greater influence than Bernard; for, although he did not rise to be anything more than Abbot of Clairvaux, and refused all higher offices, he was able, by the power of his speech, and by the fame of his saintliness, to turn kings and princes, popes and emperors, and even whole assemblies of men, in any way that he pleased. When two popes had been chosen in opposition to each other, Bernard was able to draw all the chief princes of Christendom into siding with thatpope whose cause he had taken up; and when the other pope's successor had been brought so low that he could carry on his claims no longer, he went to Bernard, entreating him to plead for him with the successful pope, Innocent II., and was led by the abbot to throw himself humbly as a penitent at Innocent's feet.

Some years after this, one of Bernard's old pupils was chosen as pope, and took the name of Eugenius III. Eugenius was much under the direction of his old master, and Bernard, like a true friend, wrote a book "On Consideration," which he sent to Eugenius, showing him the chief faults which were in the Roman Church, and earnestly exhorting the pope to reform them.

PART II.

Bernard was even the chief means of getting up a new crusade. When tidings came from the East that the Christians in those parts had suffered heavy losses (A.D.1145), he travelled over great part of France and along the river Rhine in order to enlist people for the holy war. He gathered meetings, at which he spoke in such a way as to move all hearts, and stirred up his hearers to such an eagerness for crusading that they even tore the clothes off his back in order to divide them into little bits, which might serve as crusaders' badges. And he drew in the emperor Conrad and king Lewis VII. of France, besides a number of smaller princes, to join the expedition, although it was so hard to persuade Conrad, that, when at last he was brought over, it was regarded as a miracle.

It had been found, at the time of the first crusade, that many people were disposed to fall on the Jews of their own neighbourhood, as being enemies of Christ no less than the Mahometans of the Holy Land, and the same was repeated now. But Bernard strongly set his face against this kind of cruelty, and was not only the means of saving the lives of many Jews, but brought the chief preacher of the persecution to own with sorrow and shame that he had been utterly wrong.

Although, however, a vast army was raised for the recovery of the Holy Land, and although both the emperor and the French king went at the head of it, nothing came of the crusade except that vast numbers of lives were sacrificed without any gain; and even Bernard's great fame as a saint was not enough to protect him from blame on account of the part which he had taken in getting up this unfortunate attempt.

These were some of the most remarkable things in which Bernard's command over men's minds was shown; and he was able also to get the better of some persons who taught wrong or doubtful opinions, even although they may have been men of sharper wits and of greater learning than himself.

In short, Bernard was the leading man of his age. No doubt he believed many things which we should think superstitious or altogether wrong; and in his conduct we cannot help noticing some tokens of human frailty—especially a jealous love of the power and influence which he had gained. But, although he was not without his defects, we cannot fail to see in him an honest, hearty, and laborious servant of God, and we shall not wish to grudge him the title ofsaint, which was granted to him by a pope in 1173, and has ever since been commonly attached to his name. Bernard died in 1153.

NOTES

[78]Page 209.

[79]Page 209.

ADRIAN IV.—ALEXANDER III.—BECKET.—THE THIRD CRUSADE.

A.D.1153-1192.

In the year of Bernard's death Adrian IV. was chosen pope; and he is especially to be noted by us because he was the only Englishman who ever held the papacy. His name at first was Nicolas Breakspeare; and he was bornnear St. Albans, where, in his youth, he asked to be received into the famous abbey as a monk. But the monks of St. Albans refused him; and he then went to seek his fortune abroad, where he rose step by step, until at length the poor Hertfordshire lad, who would have had no chance of any great place in his own country (for he was of Saxon family, and the Normans, after the Conquest, kept all the good places for themselves), was chosen to be the head of Christendom (A.D.1154).

Adrian had a high notion of the greatness and dignity of his office. When the emperor Frederick I. (who is calledBarbarossa, orRedbeard) went from Germany into Italy, and was visited in his camp by the pope, Adrian required that the emperor should hold his stirrup as he mounted his horse, and said that such had been the custom from the time of the great Constantine. Frederick had never heard of such a thing before, and was not willing to submit; but on inquiry he found that a late emperor, Lothair III., had held a pope's stirrup, and then he agreed to do the like. But he took care to do it so awkwardly that every one who saw it began to laugh; and thus he made his submission appear like a joke.

Frederick Redbeard carried on a long struggle with the popes. When, at Adrian's death, two rival popes had been chosen (A.D.1159), the emperor required them to let him judge between their claims; and, as one of them, Alexander III., refused to admit any earthly judge, Frederick took part with the other, who called himself Victor IV. And when Victor was dead, Frederick set up three more anti-popes, one after another, to oppose Alexander.

But Alexander had the kings of France and England on his side, and at last he not only got himself firmly settled, but brought Frederick to entreat for peace with him, and with some cities of North Italy, which had formed themselves into what was called the Lombard League (A.D.1177). But we must not believe a story that, when this treaty was concluded in the great church of St. Mark at Venice, the pope put his foot on the emperor's neck, andthe choir chanted the words of the 91st Psalm, "Thou shalt go upon the lion and the adder:" for this story was not made up until long after, and has no truth at all in it.

It was in Alexander III.'s time that the great quarrel between Henry II. of England and Archbishop Thomas Becket took place. Becket had been raised by the king's favour to be his chancellor, and afterwards to be archbishop of Canterbury and head of all the English clergy (A.D.1162). But, although until then he had done everything just as the king wished, no sooner had he become archbishop than he turned round on Henry. He claimed that any clergyman who might be guilty of crimes should not be tried by the king's judges, but only in the Church's courts. He was willing to allow that, if a clergyman were found guilty of a great crime in these courts, he might be degraded,—that is to say, that he should be turned out of the ranks of the clergy,—and that, when he had thus become like other men, he might be tried like any other man for any fresh offences which he might commit. But for the first crime Becket would allow no other punishment than degradation at the utmost. The king said that in such matters clergy and laity ought to be alike; and about this chiefly the two quarrelled, although there were also other matters which helped to stir up the strife.

In order to get out of the king's way, the archbishop secretly left England (A.D.1164), and for six years he lived in France, where king Lewis treated him with much kindness, partly because this seemed a good way to annoy the king of England. But at length peace was made, and Becket had returned to England, when some new acts of his provoked the king to utter some hasty words against him; whereupon four knights, who thought to do Henry a service, took occasion to try to seize the archbishop, and, as he refused to go with them, murdered him in his own cathedral (A.D.1170). But as you must have read the story of Becket in the history of England, I need not spend much time in repeating it.

In 1185, when Urban III. was pope, tidings reachedEurope that Jerusalem had been taken by the great Mussulman hero and conqueror, Saladin; and at once all Western Christendom was stirred up to make a grand attempt for the recovery of the Holy City. The lion-hearted Richard of England, Philip Augustus of France, and the emperor Frederick Redbeard, who had lately made his peace with the pope, were all to take part; but very little came of it. Frederick, after having successfully made his way by Constantinople into Asia Minor, was drowned in the river Cydnus, in Cilicia. Richard, Philip, and other leaders, after reaching the Holy Land, quarrelled among themselves; and the Crusaders, after a vast sacrifice of life, returned home without having effected the deliverance of Jerusalem. You will remember how Richard, in taking his way through Austria, fell into the hands of the emperor Henry VI., the son of Frederick Redbeard, and was imprisoned in Germany until his subjects were able to raise the large sum which was demanded for his ransom.

INNOCENT THE THIRD.

A.D.1198-1216.

PART I.

The popes were continually increasing their power in many ways, although they were often unable to hold their ground in their own city, but were driven out by the Romans, so that they were obliged to seek a refuge in France, or to fix their court for a time in some little Italian town. They claimed the right of setting up and plucking down emperors and kings. Instead of asking the emperor to confirm their own election to the papacy, as in former times, they declared that no one could be emperor without their consent. They said that they were the chief lords over kingdoms;they required the emperors to hold their stirrup as they mounted on horseback, and the rein of their bridle as they rode. And while such was their treatment of earthly princes, they also steadily tried to get into their own hands the powers which properly belonged to bishops, so that the bishops should seem to have no rights of their own, but to hold their office and to do whatever they did only through the pope's leave and as his servants. They contrived that, whenever any difference arose in the Church of any country, instead of being settled on the spot, it should be carried by an appeal to Rome, that the pope might judge it. They declared themselves to be above any councils of bishops, and claimed the power of assembling general councils, although in earlier times this power had belonged to the emperors, as was seen in the case of the first great council of Nicæa. They interfered with the election of bishops, and with the appointment of clergy to offices, in every country; and they sent into every country their ambassadors, orlegates(as they were called), whom they charged people to respect and obey as they would respect and obey the pope himself. These legates usually made themselves hated by their pride and greediness; for they set themselves up far above the archbishops and bishops of any country that they might be sent into, and they squeezed out from the clergy of each country which they visited the means of keeping up their pomp and splendour.

The popes who followed Gregory VII. all endeavoured to act in his spirit, and to push the claims of their see further and further. And of these popes, by far the strongest and most successful was Innocent III., who was only thirty-seven years old when he was elected in 1198. I have told you how Gregory said that the papacy was as much greater than any earthly power as the sun is than the moon. And now Innocent carried out this further by saying that, as the lesser light (the moon) borrows of the greater light (the sun), so the royal power is borrowed from the priestly power.

Innocent pretended to a right of judging between theprinces who claimed the empire and the kingdom of Germany, and of making an emperor by his own choice. He forced the king of France, Philip Augustus, to do justice to a virtuous Danish princess, whom he had married and had afterwards put away. And he forced John of England to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, although Langton was appointed by the pope without any regard to the rights of the clergy or of the sovereign of England. Both in France and in England Innocent made use of what was called aninterdictto make people submit to his will. By this sentence (which had first come into use about three hundred years before), a whole country was punished at once, the bad and the good alike; all the churches were closed, all the bells were silenced, all the outward signs of religion were taken away. There was no blessing for marriage, there were no prayers at the burial of the dead; the baptism of children and the office for the dying were the only services of the Church which were allowed while the interdict lasted. And it was commonly found, that, although a king might not himself care for any spiritual threats or sentences which the pope might utter, he was unable to hold out against the general feeling of his people, who could not bear to be without the rites of religion, and cried out that the innocent thousands were punished for the sake of one guilty person.

John was completely subdued to the papacy, and agreed to give up his crown to the pope's commissioner, Pandulf; after which he received it again from Pandulf's hands, and promised to hold the kingdoms of England and Ireland under the condition of paying a yearly tribute as an acknowledgment that the pope was his lord.

Archbishop Langton, although he had been forced on the English Church by the pope, yet afterwards took a different line from what might have been expected. For when John, by his tyranny, provoked his barons to rise against him, the archbishop was at the head of those who wrung from the king the Great Charter as a security for English liberty; and, although the pope was violently angry,and threatened to punish the archbishop and the barons severely, Langton stood firmly by the cause which he had taken up.

PART II.

While Innocent was thus carrying things with a high hand among the Christians of the West, he could not but feel distress about the state of affairs in the East. There, countries which had once been Christian, and among them the Holy Land, where the Saviour had lived and died, had fallen into the hands of unbelievers, and all the efforts which had been made to recover them had hitherto been vain. The pope's mind was set on a new crusade, and in order to raise money for it he gave much out of his own purse, stinted himself as to his manner of living, obliged the cardinals and others around him to do the like, and caused collections to be gathered throughout Western Christendom. Eloquent preachers were sent about to stir people up to the great work, and the chief beginning was made at a place called Ecry, in the north of France. It so happened that the most famous of the preachers, whose name was Fulk, arrived there just as a number of nobles and knights were met for a tournament (which was the name given to the fights of knights on horseback, which were regarded as sport, but very often ended in sad earnest). Fulk, by the power of his speech, persuaded most of these gallant knights at Ecry to take the cross; and, as the number of Crusaders grew, some of them were sent to Venice, to provide means for their being carried by sea to Egypt, which was the country in which it was thought that the Mahometans might be attacked with the best hope of success.

When these envoys reached Venice, which was then the chief trading city of Europe, they found the Venetians very willing to supply what they wanted. It was agreed that for a certain sum of money the Venetians should prepare ships and provisions for the number of Crusaders which was expected; and they did so accordingly. But when theCrusaders came, it was found that their numbers fell short of what had been reckoned on; for many had chosen other ways of going to the East; and, as the Venetians would take nothing less than the sum which they had bargained for, the Crusaders, with their lessened numbers, found themselves unable to pay. In this difficulty, the Venetians proposed that, instead of the money which could not be raised, the Crusaders should give them their help against the city of Zara, in Dalmatia, with which Venice had a quarrel. The Crusaders were very unwilling to do this; because the pope, in giving his consent to their enterprise, had forbidden them to turn their arms against any Christians. But they contrived to persuade themselves that the pope's words were not to be understood too exactly; and at a meeting in the great church of St. Mark, Henry Dandolo, the doge or duke of Venice, took the cross, and declared to the vast multitude of citizens and Crusaders who crowded the church that, although he was ninety-four years of age, and almost or altogether blind, he himself would be the leader.

A fleet of nearly five hundred vessels sailed from Venice accordingly (Oct., 1202), and Zara was taken after a siege of six days, although the inhabitants tried to soften the feelings of the besiegers by displaying crosses and sacred pictures from the walls, as tokens of their brotherhood in Christ. After this success, the Crusaders were bound by their engagement to go on to Egypt or the Holy Land; but a young Greek prince, named Alexius, entreated them to restore his father, who had been dethroned by a usurper, to the empire of the East; and, although the French were unwilling to undertake any work that might interfere with the recovery of the Holy Land, the Venetians, who cared little for anything but their own gain, persuaded them to turn aside to Constantinople.

When the Crusaders came in sight of the city, they were so astonished at the beauty of its lofty walls and towers, of its palaces and its many churches, that (as we are told) the hearts of the boldest among them beat with a feelingwhich could not be kept down, and many of them even burst into tears. They found the harbour protected by a great chain which was drawn across the mouth of it; but this chain was broken by the force of a ship which was driven against it with the sails swollen by a strong wind. The blind old doge, Henry Dandolo, stood in the prow of the foremost ship, and was the first to land in the face of the Greeks who stood ready to defend the ground. Constantinople was soon won, and the emperor, who had been deposed and blinded by the usurper, was brought from his dungeon, and was enthroned in the great church of St. Sophia, while his son Alexius was anointed and crowned as a partner in the empire.

But quarrels soon arose between the Greeks and the Latins. Alexius was murdered by a new usurper; his father died of grief: and the Crusaders found themselves drawn on to conquer the city afresh for themselves. This conquest was disgraced by much cruelty and unchecked plunder; and the religion of the Greeks was outraged by the Latin victors as much as it could have been by heathen barbarians.

The Crusaders set up an emperor and a patriarch of their own, and the Greek clergy were forced to give way to Latins. The pope, although he was much disappointed at finding that his plan for the recovery of the Holy Land had come to nothing, was yet persuaded by the greatness of the conquest to give a kind of approval to it. But the Latin empire of the East was never strong; and after about seventy years it was overthrown by the Greeks, who drove out the Latins and restored their own form of Christian religion.

Innocent did not give up the notion of a crusade, and at a later time he sent about preachers to stir up the people of the West afresh; but nothing had come of this when the pope died. I must, however, mention a strange thing which arose out of this attempt at a crusade.

A shepherd boy, named Stephen, who lived near Vendome, in the province of Orleans, gave out that he hadseen a vision of the Saviour, and had been charged by Him to preach the cross. By this tale Stephen gathered some children about him, and they set off for the crusade, displaying crosses and banners, and chanting in every town or village through which they passed, "O Lord, help us to recover Thy true and holy cross!" When they reached Paris, there were no less than 15,000 of them, and as they went along their numbers became greater and greater. If any parents tried to keep back their children from joining them, it was of no use; even if they shut them up, it was believed that the children were able to break through bars and locks in order to follow Stephen and his companions. Ignorant people fancied that Stephen could work miracles, and treasured up threads of his dress as precious relics. At length the company, whose numbers had reached 30,000, arrived at Marseilles, where Stephen entered the city in a triumphal car, surrounded on all sides by guards. Some shipowners undertook to convey the child-crusaders to Egypt and Africa for nothing; but these were wretches who meant to sell them as slaves to the Mahometans; and this was the fate of such of the children as reached the African coast, after many of them had been lost by shipwreck on the way.

Innocent, although he had nothing to do with this crusade, or with one of the same kind which was got up in Germany, declared that the zeal of the children put to shame the coldness of their elders, whom he was still labouring, with little success, to enlist in the cause of the Holy Land.

PART III.

A war of a different kind, but which was also styled a crusade, was carried on in the south of France while Innocent was pope. In that country there were great numbers of persons who did not agree with the Roman Church, and who are known by the names of Waldenses and Albigenses. The opinions of these two parties differed greatly from each other. The Waldenses, whose namewas given to them from Peter Waldo, of Lyons, who founded the party about the year 1170, were a quiet set of people, something like the Quakers of our own time. They dressed and lived plainly, they were mild in their manners, and used some rather affected ways of speech; they thought all war and all oaths wrong, they did not acknowledge the claims of the clergy, and, although they attended the services of the Church, it is said that they secretly mocked at them. They were fond of reading the Holy Scripture in their own language, while the Roman Church would only allow it to be read in Latin, which was understood by few except the clergy, and not by all ofthem. And so eager were the Waldenses to bring people to their own way of thinking, that we are told of one of them, a poor man, who, after his day's work, used to swim across a river in wintry nights, that he might reach a person whom he wished to convert.

The Albigenses, on whom the persecution chiefly fell, held something like the doctrines of Manes, whom I mentioned a long way back,[80]so that they could not properly be considered as Christians at all. But, although we cannot think well of their doctrines, the treatment of these people was so cruel and so treacherous as to raise the strongest feelings of anger and horror in all who read the accounts of it. Tens of thousands were slain, and their rich and beautiful country was turned into a desert.

The chief leader of the crusade in the south of France was Simon de Montfort, father of that Earl Simon who is famous in the history of England. Innocent, although he seems to have been much deceived by those who reported matters to him, was grievously to blame for having given too much countenance to the cruelties and injustice which were practised against the unhappy Albigenses.

Among the clergy who accompanied the Crusaders into southern France and tried to bring over the Albigenses and Waldenses to the Roman Church was a Spaniard namedDominic, who afterwards became famous as the founder of an order of mendicant friars (that is to say,begging brothers). He also founded the Inquisition, which was a body intended to search out and to put down all opinions differing from the doctrines of the Roman Church. But the cruelty, darkness, and treachery of its proceedings were so shocking, that, although Dominic was certainly its founder, we need not suppose that he would have approved of all its doings.

The Waldenses and Albigenses had been used to reproach the clergy of the Church for their habits of pomp and luxury; and Dominic had done what he could to meet these charges by the plainness and hardness of the life which he and his companions led while labouring in the south of France. And when he resolved to found a new order of monks, he carried the notion of poverty to an extreme. His followers were to be not only poor, but beggars. They were to live on alms, and from day to day, refusing any gifts of money so large as to give the notion of a settled provision for their needs.

PART IV.

About the same time another great begging order was founded by Francis, who was born in 1182 at Assisi, a town in the Italian duchy of Spoleto. The stories as to his early days are very strange; indeed, it would seem that, when he was struck with a religious idea, he could not carry it out without such oddities of behaviour as in most people would look like signs of a mind not altogether right. When Francis heard in church our Lord's charge to His apostles, that they should go forth without money in their purses, or a staff, or scrip, or shoes, or changes of raiment (St. Matt.x. 9, 10), he went before the bishop of Assisi, and, stripping off all his other clothes, he set forth to preach repentance without having anything on him but a rough gray woollen frock, with a rope tied round his waist. He fancied that he was called by a vision to repair a certainchurch; and he set about gathering the money for this purpose by singing and begging in the streets. He felt an especial charity for lepers, who, on account of their loathsome disease, were shut out from the company of men, and were subject to miseries of many kinds; and, although many hospitals had already been founded in various countries for these unfortunate people, the kindness which Francis showed to them had a great effect in lightening their lot, so far as human fellow-feeling could do so.

Francis wished his followers to study humility in all ways. They were to seek to be despised, and were told to be uneasy if they met with usage of any other kind. They were not to let themselves be calledbrethrenbutlittle brethren; they must try to be reckoned as less than any other persons. They were especially to be on their guard against the pride of learning; and, in order to preserve them from the danger of this, Francis would hardly allow them even a book of the Psalms. But, in truth, all these things might really be turned the opposite way, and in making such studied shows of humility it was quite possible that the Franciscans might fall under the temptations of pride.

Francis was very fond of animals, which he treated as reasonable creatures, speaking to them by the names of brothers and sisters. He used to call his own bodybrother ass, on account of the heavy burdens and the hard usage which it had to bear. He kept a sheep in church, and it is said that the creature, without any training, used to take part in the services by kneeling and bleating at proper times. He preached to flocks of birds on the duty of thanking their Maker for His goodness to them; nay, he preached to fishes, to worms, and even to flowers.

Perhaps the oddest story of this kind is one about his dealing with a wolf which infested the neighbourhood of Gubbio. Finding that every one in the place was overcome by fear of this fierce beast, Francis went out boldly to the forest where the wolf lived, and, meeting him, began to talk to him about the wickedness of killing, not onlybrute animals, but men; and he promised that, if the wolf would give up such evil ways, the citizens of Gubbio would maintain him. He then held out his right hand; whereupon the wolf put his paw into it as a sign of agreement, and allowed the saint to lead him into the town. The people of Gubbio were only too glad to fulfil the promise which Francis had made for them; and they kept the wolf handsomely, giving him his meals by turns, until he died of old age, and in such general respect that he was lamented by all Gubbio.

There is a strange story that Francis, towards the end of his life, received in his body what are called thestigmata(that is to say, the marks of the wounds which were made in our Lord's body at the crucifixion). And a great number of other superstitious tales became connected with his name; but with such things we need not here trouble ourselves.

When Dominic and Francis each applied to Pope Innocent for his approval of their designs to found new orders, he was not forward to give it; but, on thinking the matter over, he granted them what they asked. Each of them soon gathered followers, who spread into all lands. The Franciscans, especially, made converts from heathenism by missions; and these orders, by their rough and plain habits of life, made their way to the hearts of the poorest classes in a degree which had never been known before. And the influence which they thus gained was all used for the papacy, which found them the most active and useful of all its servants.

In the year 1215, Innocent held a great council at Rome, what is known as the fourth Lateran Council, and is to be remembered for two of its canons; by one of which the false doctrine of the Roman Church as to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was, for the first time, established; and by the other, it was made the duty of every one in the Roman Church to confess to the priest of his parish at least once a year.

NOTES

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