hosts of Moguls; the King of Hungary was defeated, and forced to flee his country; Silesia was laid waste, and the bloody discomfiture of the Christian army at Lignitz filled the whole Western world with consternation. Happily the destroyers penetrated no further into Europe; and the stream of their conquests, as if diverted by a protecting hand, took its course first towards the Arabian Caliphate of Bagdad, which they put an end to; and afterwards towards India, and other Asiatic and Mahometan countries. This was a passing, but awful, warning to Christendom, how much she needed the strong arm of a powerful Protector, and that union alone would enable her to resist the assaults and inroads of barbarous nations. It was the strong feeling of such a necessity which had first inspired the idea of the Western Empire.
In the German Empire order was first restored by Rodolph of Hapsburgh, who, notwithstanding his earldom of Alsace and his other hereditary demesnes in the Alps, had not yet so much power as many other aspirants to the imperial crown; but his chivalrous virtues ranked him high in the estimation of many of the princes. A happy and singular coincidence of accidental circumstances occasioned his unexpected election to the empire, which appeared to him, as to many others, a calling from above. Being on the most peaceful understanding with the Pope, he yet abandoned his expedition to
Rome; for he was, above all things, anxious to put an end to anarchy, to establish the public tranquillity on a solid basis, and, as far as was then possible, to restore the reign of justice. The high services which by this he rendered to his country in those distracted times, History has not been backward to acknowledge; and, as the Patriarch of the imperial house of Hapsburgh, he has been the founder of a power which, in succeeding ages, has ever proved a pillar of strength and security to Germany and even Europe. But often again did anarchy rear her head, and often did disorder obtain the ascendant in Germany, as well as in other European states. Nations felt the want of one mighty, independent, and protecting power—they lamented the decline of those Christian principles which had knit so closely all the ties of public and private life; and they saw with regret the gradual approach of the general dissolution and mighty ruin of European society. Under Rodolph’s successors, down to Maximilian and Charles the Fifth, the Emperors were confined in their sphere of action to Germany and its internal affairs, which do not here immediately concern us. The expeditions to Rome tended, indeed, to keep alive the remembrance of the old imperial rights and claims; but they were productive of no permanent advantage, nor real extension of power. It was only in the summoning of general councils (the want of which was soon so urgently felt for the well-being of
the church and of Christendom), that the imperial power was really exerted in favour of the general interests of Europe.
But the evils which ensued to the church and its head, from its unhappy conflict with the temporal power, were far more extensive and fatal in their consequences. In the mighty contests between the Popes and Emperors, it was actual right which was the subject of dispute; and, in truth, the first basis and highest principle of all right in Christian states, and indeed in all human society; and however much of error the exaggerations of later times may have infused into these disputes, it was a sublime idea which animated either party. In France, which now took up that attitude of hostility towards the head of the church which the Emperors had once assumed, an entirely new era in European policy, which had now ceased to be Christian, commenced with the reign of Philip-le-bel. In the place of those great motives and lofty ideas which animated a Gregory VII., on the one hand, and a Conrad or Barbarossa, on the other, we meet with a vulgar policy, a selfish cupidity, and an unworthy cunning. In every point of view, Philip the Fair may be considered as the worthy predecessor of Louis XI. Even his conduct towards the whole order of Templars, their execution, or rather judicial murder, for the purpose of confiscation, was a deed of violence which nothing could justify; even had the suspicion entertained against the more corrupt
portion of the order, of having introduced from the East certain unchristian tenets, rites and practices, been not entirely destitute of foundation. But yet this suspicion did not affect the whole body, nor even the then worthy grandmaster, as was shortly afterwards acknowledged by the King of Portugal and the Pope himself; and, in any case, an ecclesiastical affair of so much importance ought to have been investigated and determined by a mode of procedure very different from this arbitrary and despotic course.
The untimely exaggerations and absolute pretensions of Boniface VIII., which, though Papal, may almost be termed Ghibelline (in the same sense that we have applied that term to the acts of preceding emperors), must have proved very welcome to Philip the Fair. He found in the conduct of the Pope, a pretext for enticing him into France, in order, on the first vacancy in the Holy See, to promote the election of a Pope favourable to his views, and fix him at Avignon. It was a deep-laid plan of policy on his part, to fix the residence of the Popes for ever within his territories, in order more easily to extort their consent to all his selfish projects, as in the case of the Templars; a policy by which the Popes, during seventy years, were kept in a state of absolute dependance on the court of France. And when at last one of the Popes succeeded in rescuing the chair of Peter from this Babylonish captivity,
and placing it again at Rome, Popes were elected one against the other at Rome and Avignon; and a schism broke out in the church which lasted for forty years, till it was finally quelled by the general council of Constance. A deeper wound could not have been inflicted on Christianity than this division in the church, which led minds astray, and introduced an indescribable confusion in all the relations of public and private life. As, without the all-protecting and all-connecting authority of the first Christian Emperors, Europe in general, and Germany in particular, would much sooner have been split and dismembered, and been deprived of all power of permanent resistance against foreign aggression, and barbarian inroads; so, without the Papal power, which was founded on, and adapted for, unity, and which held together the fabric of the church, Christianity would very soon have been lost and extinguished in a multitude of particular sects, petty congregations, and opposite parties, even where totally dissimilar systems of religion did not spring up. The maintenance of orthodoxy in the Greek church, where the Patriarch does not possess the same spiritual power, nor the same extensive influence on society, as the Pope during the middle ages, cannot be fairly adduced as an objection to the truth of this observation. For it would be absurd to expect from the active, stirring, restless, and animated spirit of the Western nations, moving on as they did through
a series of rapid, incessant, and progressive changes, that innate monotony of thought even in faith, which was natural to the dead, torpid Byzantine mind. When the Western church had been weakened and convulsed by the conflict with the secular power, the prejudicial and fatal effects of this contest became apparent in religion itself and the internal region of faith. At first, indeed, there arose a mighty moral power of resistance against the growing corruption and the impending evil—a great spiritual remedy, which sprang out of religion, and was perfectly conformable to its spirit. It was here again apparent how that strengthening Spirit of aid and counsel—that Paraclete promised to the church by its divine Founder, knows at every period, and on every new occurrence of danger, to employ the remedies the best and most fitting for the exigences of the time; remedies of which the high origin is clearly discernible, though in the hands of men they no longer retain their primitive character, and do not accomplish all the good they might have effected, or even become at last more and more perverted.
The great wealth of the church was not the sole, but one of the principal subjects of dispute with the secular power, and was even a stumbling-block to many, especially among the people. It was this wealth, indeed, which had furnished the means of cultivating and fertilizing the soil of Europe, and sowing the seeds of