[542] Hist. Hierosol.; Jacob. Vitriaci.
[543] The Templars founded many charitable institutions, but attendance on the sick was not a part of their profession.
[544] For a more particular and correct account of the armour of the crusades, I must refer to the invaluable work of Dr. Meyrick, which I regret much not to have had by me while writing this book. My sources of information have been alone the historians of the day, in consulting whom the ambiguity of language is very often likely to induce error in matters which, like armour, are difficult to describe.
[545] Mills says, “The news of the loss of the eastern frontier of the Latin kingdom reached France at a time peculiarly favourable for foreign war.” It will be seen that I have taken up a position as exactly the reverse of that assumed by that excellent author as can well be conceived; but I have not done so without much investigation, and the more I consider the subject, the more I am convinced that the moment when the feudal power was checked by the king and assailed by the communes, was not the most propitious to call the nobility to foreign lands—that the moment in which the burghers were labouring up hill for independence, was not a time for them to abandon the scene of their hopes and endeavours—and that the moment when a kingdom was torn by conflicting powers, when the royal authority was unconfirmed, and the nobility only irritated at its exertion, was not the period that a monarch should have chosen to quit his dominions.
[546] A curious essay might be written on the classes or castes in Europe at that period. It is quite a mistaken notion which some persons have entertained, that the only distinctions under the monarch, were noble and serf. We find an immense class, or rather various classes, all of which consisted of freemen, interposed between the lord and his slave. Thus Galbertus Syndick, of Bruges, in recounting the death of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, A. D. 1130, mentions not only the burghers of the town, but various other persons who were not of the noble race, but were then evidently free, as well as the Brabançois or Cotereaux, a sort of freebooting soldier of that day. Guibert of Nogent, also, in his own life, and Frodoardus, in the history of Rheims, refer to many of whose exact station it is difficult to form an idea.
[547] Rouillard, Histoire de Melun: Vie de Bouchard.
[548] I know that I use this word not quite correctly, but I can find none other to express more properly what I mean.
[549] Suger in vit. Ludovic VI.
[550] Galbert in vit. Carol.
[551] Suger in vit. Ludovic VI.