The conclave met at length, but the election of Innocent IV., made amidst trouble and discord, put an end to neither the public scandal nor the furies of the war, which grieved all true Christians. The new pontiff followed the example of Innocent III. and Gregory IX., and soon surpassed all their excesses. Under his pontificate, disorder continued increasing, until it had reached its height. The Christians of Greece and Palestine were quite forgotten. Missionaries in vain perambulated the kingdoms of the West, to exhort the faithful to make peace among themselves, and turn their arms against the Saracens; many of these angels of peace were proscribed by Frederick, who was, at once, at war with the sovereign pontiff, the emperor of the East, and all those who, in taking the cross, had sworn to defend Rome, or to deliver Constantinople or Jerusalem. We will not attempt to describe the violent scenes of which the West, but particularly Italy, was the theatre. Attention becomes fatigued by dwelling long upon the same pictures; the wars and revolutions which lend so much life to history finish by presenting only a wearisome, twice-told tale; and thus, likewise, may the reader perceive that the passions have their uniformity and tempests their monotony.
Each of the preceding crusades had a distinct object, a march which could be easily followed, and was only remarkable for great exploits or great reverses. That which we have just described, which embraces a period of thirty years, is mingled with so many different events, with so many clashing interests, so many passions foreign to the holy wars, that it at first appears to present only a confused picture; and the historian, constantly occupied in relating the revolutions of the East and of the West, may with reason be accused of having, as a European Christian, forgotten Jerusalem and the cause of Christ.
When we have read the twelfth book of this history, we perceive that we are already far from the age that gave birth to the crusades, and witnessed their brilliant progress. When comparing this war with those that preceded it, it is easy to see that it has a different character, not only in the manner in which it was conducted, but in the means employed to inflame the zeal of the Christians, and induce them to take up arms.
When we observe the incredible efforts of the popes to arm the nations of the West, we are at first astonished at the small quantity of success obtained by their exhortations, their menaces, and their prayers. We have but to compare the Council of Clermont, held by Urban, with the Council of the Lateran, presided over by Gregory. In the first, the complaints of Jerusalem excite the tears and sobs of the auditory; in the second, a thousand different objects intrude, to occupy the attention of the fathers of the Church, who express themselves upon the misfortunes of the Holy Land, without emotion and without pain. At the voice of Urban, knights, barons, and ecclesiastics all swore together to go and fight against the infidels; the council became, in a moment, an assembled host of intrepid warriors: it was not so at the Council of the Lateran, in which no one took the cross, or burst forth into an expression of that high enthusiasm which the pope desired to awaken in all hearts.
We have drawn attention, in the course of our recital, to the circumstance of pilgrims being permitted by the preachers of the holy war to buy off their vow by paying a sum of money; this mode of expiating sins appeared to be a scandalous innovation: and the indulgence of the missionaries of the holy war, who thus released the faithful from the pilgrimage, made them lose a considerable portion of their ascendancy. They were not, as formerly, the messengers of Heaven; the multitude no longer endowed them with the power of working miracles; they were even sometimes obliged to employ the menaces and promises of the Church to draw hearers to their sermons; in short, at length the people ceased to consider them as the interpreters of the gospel, and saw in them only the collectors of the dues of the Holy See. This sale of the privileges of the crusade, purchased at an extravagant price, necessarily checked the effects of all generous passions, and, in the minds of Christians, confounded that which belonged to Heaven with that which belonged to earth.
Preceding ages were unacquainted with any other motive but religion and its promises.[251] The companions of Peter the Hermit and Godfrey, the warriors who followed Louis the Young, Philip Augustus, Richard Cœur de Lion, Boniface, and Baldwin of Flanders, could not have possibly believed that gold could be made a substitute for the merit and glory of the holy war.
We find another remarkable difference in the preaching of this crusade,—the refusal to admit great criminals under the banners of the cross. The astonishment which the enrolment of a crowd of obscure persons in the holy militia caused among the Christian knights, suffices to denote a great change in the manners and opinions of the Crusaders. The sentiment of honour, which is allied with a love of glory, and has a tendency to establish distinctions among men, appears to have prevailed over the purely religious feeling which inspires humility, acknowledges the equal rights of all Christians, and confounds repentance with virtue. The crusade, into which none were admitted but men of acknowledged bravery and good conduct, ceased, in some sort, to be a simply religious war, and began to resemble other wars, in which leaders have the power of selecting the soldiers they have to command.
The enthusiasm for the holy wars only revived at intervals, like a fire upon the point of going out of itself; the people required some great event, some extraordinary circumstance, some striking example of princes or warriors, to induce them to take arms against the infidels; the subtleties of theologians, who insisted upon everything being subservient to their discussions, contributed to cool the remains of that pious and warlike ardour, which, till that time, it had been found necessary to moderate and restrain within just limits. Disputes were started in the schools upon such questions as these: In what case was a Christian exempt from the accomplishment of his vow? What sum was sufficient to redeem a promise made to Christ? If certain pious exercises could be substituted for pilgrimage? If an heir was bound to fulfil the oath of a testator? Whether the pilgrim who died on his way to the Holy Land, had more merit in the eyes of God than one who died on his return?[252] Whether a wife could take the cross without the consent of her husband, or the husband without the consent of the wife? &c. From the moment in which all these questions were solemnly discussed, and, upon several points, the opinions of theologians differed, enthusiasm, which never reasons, was rendered languid by the cold arguments of the doctors; and pilgrims appeared to yield less to the transports of a generous feeling, than to the necessity of performing a duty or of following an established rule.
This sixth crusade was more abundant in intrigues and scandalous quarrels than in military exploits; the Christians never united all their efforts against the infidels; no spirit of order presided over their enterprises; the Crusaders, who only held their mission of their zeal, set out at the time their will or their fancy selected; some returned to Europe without having faced a Saracen in fight; others abandoned the colours of the cross, after a victory or a defeat; and fresh Crusaders were constantly summoned to defend the conquests or repair the faults of those that had preceded them. Although the West had counted in this crusade more than five hundred thousand of her warriors departing for Palestine or Egypt, great armies were rarely assembled on the banks of the Nile or the Jordan. As the Crusaders were never gathered together in great bodies, they were not subjected to famine, or the other scourges that had so fearfully thinned the ranks of the early defenders of the cross; but if they experienced fewer reverses, if they were better disciplined, we may say that they showed none of that ardour, or of those lively passions which men communicate to each other, and which acquire a new degree of force and activity amidst a multitude assembled for the same cause and under the same banners.