§ 93.13. The Old Prussians and Lithuanians also belonged to the Lettish stem. Adalbert, bishop of Prague, first brought the message of salvation to the Prussians between the Vistula and Memel, but on the very first entrance into Sameland [Samland] in A.D. 997 he won the martyr’s crown. This, too, was the fate twelve years later of the zealous Saxon monk Bruno and eighteen companions on the Lithuanian coast. Two hundred years passed before another missionary was seen in Prussia. The first was the Abbot Gothfried from the Polish monastery of Lukina; but in his case also an end was soon put to his hopefully begun work, as well as to that of his companion Philip, both suffering martyrdom in A.D. 1207. More successful and enduring was the mission work three years later of the Cistercian monk Christian from the Pomeranian monastery of Oliva, in A.D. 1209, the real apostle of the Prussians. He was raised to the rank of bishop in A.D. 1215, and died in A.D. 1245. On the model of the Livonian Order of the Brethren of the Sword he founded in A.D. 1225 the Order of the Knights of Dobrin (Milites Christi). In the very first year of their existence, however, they were reduced to the number of five men. In union with Conrad, Duke of Moravia, whose land had suffered fearfully from the inroads of the pagan Prussians, Christian then called in the aid of the Teutonic Knights, whose order had won great renown in Germany. A branch of this order had settled in A.D. 1228 in Culm, and so laid the foundation of the establishment of the order in Prussia. With the appearance of this order began a sixty years’ bloody conflict directed to the overthrow of Prussian paganism, which can be said to have been effected only in A.D. 1283, when the greater part of the Prussians had been slain after innumerable conflicts with the order and with crusaders from Germany, Poland, Bohemia, etc. Among the crowds of preachers of the gospel, mostly Dominicans, besides Bishop Christian and the noble papal legate William, bishop of Modena, the Polish Dominican Hyacinth, who died in A.D. 1257, a vigorous preacher of faith and repentance, deserves special mention. So early as A.D. 1243, William of Modena had sketched an ecclesiastical organization for the country, which divided Prussia into four dioceses, which were placed in A.D. 1255 under the metropolitanate of Riga.

§ 93.14. The introduction of Christianity into Lithuania was longest delayed. After Ringold had founded in A.D. 1230 a Grand Duchy of Lithuania, his son Mindowe endeavoured to enlarge his dominions by conquest. The army of the Prussian-Livonian Order, however, so humbled him that he sued for peace and was compelled to receive baptism in A.D. 1252. But no sooner had he in some measure regained strength than he threw off the hypocritical mask, and in A.D. 1260 appeared as the foe of his Christian neighbours. His son Wolstinik, who had remained true to the Christian faith, dying in A.D. 1266, reigned too short a time to secure an influence over his people. With him every trace of Christianity disappeared from Lithuania. Christians were again tolerated in his territories by the Grand Duke Gedimin (A.D. 1315-1340). Romish Dominicans and Russian priests vied with one another under his successor Olgerd in endeavours to convert the inhabitants. Olgerd himself was baptized according to the Greek rite, but apostatised. His son Jagello, born of a Christian mother, and married to the young Polish queen Hedwig, whose hand and crown seemed not too dearly purchased by submitting to baptism and undertaking to introduce Christianity among his people, made at last an end to heathenism in Lithuania in A.D. 1386. His subjects, each of whom received a woollen coat as a christening gift, flocked in crowds to receive baptism. The bishop’s residence was fixed at Wilna.

§ 93.15. The Mongolian Mission Field.—From the time of Genghis Khan, who died in A.D. 1227, the princes of the Mongols, in consistency with their principles as deists with little trace of religion, showed themselves equally tolerant and favourable to Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. The Nestorians were very numerous in this empire, but also very much deteriorated. In A.D. 1240-1241 the Mongols, pressing westward with irresistible force, threatened to overflow and devastate all Europe. Russia and Poland, Silesia, Moravia, and Hungary had been already dreadfully wasted by them, when suddenly and unexpectedly the savage hordes withdrew. Innocent IV. sent an embassage of Dominicans under Nicolas Ascelinus to the Commander Batschu in Persia, and an embassage of Franciscans under John of Piano-Carpini to the Grand Khan Oktaï, Genghis Khan’s successor, to his capital Karakorum, with a view to their conversion and to dissuade them from repeating their inroads. Both missions were unsuccessful. Certain adventurers pretending to be bearers of a message from Mongolia, told Louis IX. of France fabulous stories of the readiness of the Grand Khan Gajuk and his princes to receive Christianity, and their intention to conquer the Holy Land for the Christians. He accordingly sent out two missions to the Mongols. The first, in A.D. 1249 was utterly unsuccessful, for the Mongols regarded the presents given as a regular tribute and as a symbol of voluntary submission. The second mission in A.D. 1253, to the Grand Khan Mangu, although under a brave and accomplished leader, William of Ruysbroek, yielded no fruit; for Mangu, instead of allowing free entrance into the land for the preaching of the gospel, at the close of a disputation with Mohammedans and Buddhists sent the missionaries back to Louis with the threatening demand to tender his submission. After Mangu’s death in A.D. 1257, the Mongolian empire was divided into Eastern and Western, corresponding to China and Persia. The former was governed by Kublai Khan, the latter by Hulagu Khan.—Kublai Khan, the Emperor of China, a genuine type of the religious mongrelism of the Mongolians, showed himself very favourable to Christians, but also patronised the Mohammedans, and in A.D. 1260 gave a hierarchical constitution and consolidated form to Buddhism by the establishment of the first Dalai Lama. The travels of two Venetians of the family of Polo led to the founding of a Latin Christian mission in China. They returned from their Mongolian travels in A.D. 1269. Gregory X. in A.D. 1272 sent two Dominicans to Mongolia along with the two brothers, and the son of one of them, Marco Polo, then seventeen years old. The latter won the unreserved confidence of the Grand Khan, and was entrusted by him with an honourable post in the government.On his return in A.D. 1295 he published an account of his travels, which made an enormous sensation, and afforded for the first time to Western Europe a proper conception of the condition of Eastern Asia.[266] A regular Christian missionary enterprise, however, was first undertaken by the Franciscan Joh. de Monte-Corvino, A.D. 1291-1328, one of the noblest, most intelligent, and most faithful of the missionaries of the Middle Ages. After he had succeeded in overcoming the intrigues of the numerous Nestorians, he won the high esteem of the Grand Khan. In the royal city of Cembalu or Pekin he built two churches, baptized about 6,000 Mongols, and translated the Psalter and the New Testament into Mongolian. He wrought absolutely alone till A.D. 1303. Afterwards, however, other brethren of his order came repeatedly to his aid. Clement V. appointed him archbishop of Cembalu in A.D. 1307. Every year saw new churches established. But internal disturbances, under Kublai’s successor, weakened the power of the Mongolian dynasty, so that in A.D. 1370 it was overthrown by the national Ming dynasty. By the new rulers the Christian missionaries were driven out along with the Mongols, and thus all that they had done was utterly destroyed.—The ruler of Persia, Hulagu Khan, son of a Christian mother and married to a Christian wife, put an end in A.D. 1258 to the khalifate of Bagdad, but was so pressed by the sultan of Egypt, that he entered on a long series of negotiations with the popes and the kings of France and England, who gave him the most encouraging promises of joining their forces with his against the Saracens. His successors, of whom several even formally embraced Christianity, continued these negotiations, but obtained nothing more than empty promises and protestations of friendship. The time of the crusades was over, and the popes, even the most powerful of them, were not able to reawaken the crusading spirit. The Persian khans, vacillating between Christianity and Islam, became more and more powerless, until at last, in A.D. 1387, Tamerlane (Timur) undertook to found on the ruins of the old government a new universal Mongolian empire under the standard of the Crescent. But with his death in A.D. 1405 the dominion of the Mongols in Persia was overthrown, and fell into the hands of the Turkomans. Henceforth amid all changes of dynasties Islam continued the dominant religion.

§ 93.16. The Mission Field of Islam.—The crusader princes and soldiers wished only to wrest the Holy Land from the infidels, but, with the exception perhaps of Louis IX., had no idea of bringing to them the blessings of the gospel. And most of the crusaders, by their licentiousness, covetousness, cruelty, faithlessness, and dissensions among themselves, did much to cause the Saracens to scorn the Christian faith as represented by their lives and example. It was not until the 13th century that the two newly founded mendicant orders of Franciscans and Dominicans began an energetic but fruitless mission among the Moslems of Africa, Sicily, and Spain. St. Francis himself started this work in A.D. 1219, when during the siege of Damietta by the crusaders he entered the camp of the Sultan Camel and bade him kindle a fire and cause that he himself with one of the Moslem priests should be cast into it. When the imam present shrank away at these words, Francis offered to go alone into the fire if the sultan would promise to accept Christianity along with his people should he pass out of the fire uninjured. The sultan refused to promise and sent the saint away unhurt with presents, which, however, he returned. Afterwards several Franciscan missions were sent to the Moslems, but resulted only in giving a crowd of martyrs to the order. The Dominicans, too, at a very early period took part in the mission to the Mohammedans, but were also unsuccessful. The Dominican general Raimund de Pennaforti [Pennaforte], who died in A.D. 1273, devoted himself with special zeal to this task. For the training of the brethren of his order in the oriental languages he founded institutions at Tunis and Murcia. The most important of all these missionary enterprises was that of the talented Raimund Lullus of Majorca, who after his own conversion from a worldly life and after careful study of the language, made three voyages to North Africa and sought in disputations with the Saracen scholars to convince them of the truth of Christianity. But his Ars Magna (§ [103, 7]), which with great ingenuity and enormous labour he had wrought out mainly for this purpose, had no effect. Imprisonment and ill-treatment were on all occasions his only reward. He died in A.D. 1315 in consequence of the ill-usage which he had been subjected.

§ 94. The Crusades.[267]

The Arabian rulers had for their own interest protected the Christian pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. But even under the rule of the Fatimide dynasty, early in the 10th century, the oppression of pilgrims began. Khalif Hakim, in order that he might blot out the disgrace of being born of a Christian mother, committed ruthless cruelties upon resident Christians as well as upon the pilgrims, and prohibited under severe penalties all meetings for Christian worship. Under the barbarous Seljuk dynasty, which held sway in Palestine from about A.D. 1070, the oppression reached its height. The West became all the more concerned about this, since during the 10th century the idea that the end of the world was approaching had given a new impulse to pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pope Sylvester II. had in A.D. 999 ex persona devastatæ Hierosolymæ summoned Christendom to help in this emergency. Gregory VII. seized anew upon the idea of wresting the Holy Land from the infidels. He had even resolved himself to lead a Christian army, but the outbreak of contentions with Henry IV. hindered the execution of this plan. Meanwhile complaints by returning pilgrims of intolerable ill-usage increased. An urgent appeal from the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus gave the spark that lit the combustible material that had been gathered throughout the West. The imperial ambassadors accompanied Pope Urban II. to the Council of Clermont in A.D. 1095, where the pope himself, in a spirited speech, called for a holy war under the standard of the cross. The shout was raised as from one mouth, “It is God’s will.” On that very day thousands enlisted, with Adhemar, bishop of Puy, papal legate, at their head, and had the red cross marked on their right shoulders. The bishops returning home preached the crusade as they went, and in a few weeks a glowing enthusiasm had spread throughout France down to the provinces of the Rhine. Then began a movement which, soon extending over all the West, like a second migration of nations, lasted for two centuries. The crusades cost Europe between five and six millions of men, and yet in the end that which had been striven after was not attained. Its consequences, however, to Europe itself were all the more important. In all departments of life, ecclesiastical and political, moral and intellectual, civil and industrial, new views, needs, developments, and tendencies were introduced. Mediæval culture now reached the highest point of its attainment, and its failure to transcend the past opened the way for the conditions of modern society. And while on the other hand they afforded new and extravagantly abundant nourishment for clerical and popular superstition, in all directions, but specially in giving opportunity to roguish traffic in relics (§ [104, 8]; [115, 9]), on the other hand they had no small share in producing religious indifference and frivolous free-thinking (§ [96, 19]), as well as the terribly dangerous growth of mediæval sects, which threatened the overthrow of church and State, religion and morality (§ [108, 1], [4]; [116, 5]). The former was chiefly the result of the sad conclusion of an undertaking of unexampled magnitude, entered upon with the most glowing enthusiasm for Christianity and the church; the latter was in great measure occasioned by intercourse with sectaries of a like kind in the East (§ 71).

§ 94.1. The First Crusade, A.D. 1096.—In the spring of A.D. 1096 vast crowds of people gathered together, impatient of the delays of the princes, and put themselves under the leadership of Walter the Penniless. They were soon followed by Peter of Amiens with 40,000 men. A legend, unworthy of belief, credits him with the origin of the whole movement. According to this story, the hermit returning from a pilgrimage described to the holy father in vivid colours the sufferings of their Christian brethren, and related how that Christ Himself had appeared to him in a dream, giving him the command for the pope to summon all Christendom to rescue the Holy Sepulchre. The legend proceeds to say that, by order of the pope, Peter the Hermit then went through all Italy and France, arousing the enthusiasm of the people. The hordes led by him, however, after committing deeds of horrid violence on every side, while no farther than Bulgaria, were reduced to about one half, and the remnant, after Peter had already left them because of their insubordination, was annihilated by the Turks at Nicæa. Successive new crusades, the last of them an undisciplined mob of 200,000 men, were cut down in Hungary or on the Hungarian frontier. In August a regular crusading army, 80,000 strong, under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine, passing through Germany and Hungary, reached Constantinople. There several French and Norman princes joined the army, till its strength was increased to 600,000. After considerable squabbling with the Byzantine government, they passed over into Asia. With great labour and heavy loss Nicæa, Edessa, and Antioch were taken. At last, on 15th July, 1099, amid shouts of, It is God’s will, they stormed the walls of Jerusalem; lighted by torches and wading in blood, they entered with singing of psalms into the Church of the Resurrection. Godfrey was elected king. With pious humility he declined to wear a king’s crown where Christ had worn a crown of thorns. He died a year after, and his brother Baldwin was crowned at Bethlehem. By numerous impropriations crowds of greater and lesser vassals were gathered about the throne. In Jerusalem itself a Latin patriarchate was erected, and under it were placed four archbishoprics, with a corresponding number of bishoprics. The story of these proceedings enkindled new enthusiasm in the West. In A.D. 1101 three new crusades of 260,000 men were fitted out in Germany, under Welf, duke of Bavaria, and in Italy and in France. They marched against Bagdad, in order to strike terror into the hearts of Moslems by the terrible onslaught; the undisciplined horde, however, did not reach its destination, but found a grave in Asia Minor.

§ 94.2. The Second Crusade, A.D. 1147.—The fall of Edessa in A.D. 1146, as the frontier fortress of the kingdom, summoned the West to a new effort. Pope Eugenius III. called the nations to arms. Bernard of Clairvaux, the prophet of the age, preached the crusade, and prophesied victory. Louis VII. of France took the sign of the cross, in order to atone for the crime of having burnt a church filled with men; and Conrad III. of Germany, moved by the preaching of Bernard, with some hesitation followed his example. But their stately army fell before the sword of the Saracens, the malice of the Greeks, and internal disorders caused by famine, disease, and hardships. Damascus remained unconquered, and the princes returned humbled with the miserable remnant of their army.

§ 94.3. The Third Crusade, A.D. 1189.—The kingdom of Jerusalem before a century had past was in utter decay. Greeks or Syrians and Latins had a deadly hatred for one another: the vassals intrigued against each other and against the crown.Licentiousness, luxury, and recklessness prevailed among the people; the clergy and the nobles of the kingdom, but especially the so called Pulleni,[268] descendants of the crusaders born in the Holy Land itself, were a miserable, cowardly and treacherous race. The pretenders to the crown also continued their intrigues and cabals. Such being the corrupt condition of affairs, it was an easy thing for the Sultan Saladin, the Moslem knight “without fear and without reproach,” who had overthrown the Fatimide dynasty in Egypt, to bring down upon the Christian rule in Syria, after the bloody battle of Tiberias, the same fate. Jerusalem fell into his hands in October, A.D. 1187. When this terrible piece of news reached the West, the Christian powers were summoned by Gregory VIII. to combine their forces in order to make one more vigorous effort, Philip Augustus of France and Henry II. of England forgot for a moment their mutual jealousies, and took the cross from the hands of Archbishop William of Tyre, the historian of the crusade. Next the Emperor Frederick I. joined them, with all the heroic valour of youth, though in years and experience an old man. He entered on the undertaking with an energy, considerateness, and circumspection which seemed to deserve glorious success. After piloting his way through Byzantine intrigues and the indescribable fatigues of a waterless desert, he led his soldiers against the well-equipped army of the sultan at Iconium, which he utterly routed, and took the city. But in A.D. 1190 the heroic warrior was drowned in an attempt to ford the river Calycadnus. A great part of his army was now scattered, and the remnant was led by his son Frederick of Swabia against Ptolemais. At that point soon after landed Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion of England, who after his father’s death put himself at the head of an English crusading army and had conquered Cyprus on the way. Ptolemais (Acre) was taken in A.D. 1191. But the jealousies of the princes interfered with their success.Frederick had already fallen, and Philip Augustus under pretence of sickness returned to France; Richard gained a brilliant victory over Saladin, took Joppa and Ascalon, and was on the eve of marching against Jerusalem when news reached him that his brother John had assumed the throne of England, and that Philip Augustus also was entertaining schemes of conquest. Once again Richard won a great victory before Joppa, and Saladin, admiring his unexampled bravery, concluded with him now, in A.D. 1192, a three years’ truce, giving most favourable terms to the pilgrims. The strip along the coast from Joppa to Acre continued under the rule of Richard’s nephew, Henry of Champagne. But Richard was seized on his return journey and cast into prison by Leopold of Austria, whose standard he had grossly insulted before Ptolemais, and for two years he remained a prisoner.After his release he was prevented from thinking of a renewal of the crusade by a war with France, in which he met his death in A.D. 1199.[269]

§ 94.4. The Fourth Crusade, A.D. 1217.—Innocent III. summoned Christendom anew to a holy war. The kings, engaged in their own affairs, gave no heed to the call. But the violent penitential preacher, Fulco of Neuilly, prevailed upon the French nobles to collect a considerable crusading army, which, however, instead of proceeding against the Saracens, was used by the Venetian Doge, Dandolo, in payment of transport, for conquering Zaras in Dalmatia, and then by a Byzantine prince for a campaign against Constantinople, where Baldwin of Flanders founded a Latin Empire, A.D. 1204-1261. The pope put the doge and the crusaders under excommunication on account of the taking of Zaras, and the campaign against Constantinople was most decidedly disapproved. Their unexpected success, however, turned away his anger. He boasted that at last Israel, after destroying the golden calves at Dan and Bethel, was again united to Judah, and in Rome bestowed the pallium upon the first Latin patriarch of Constantinople.—The Children’s Crusade, which in A.D. 1212 snatched from their parents in France and Germany 30,000 boys and girls, had a most tragic end. Many died before passing from Europe of famine and fatigue; the rest fell into the hands of unprincipled men, who sold them as slaves in Egypt.—King Andrew II. of Hungary, urged by Honorius III., led a new crusading army to the Holy Land in A.D. 1217, and won some successes; but finding himself betrayed and deserted by the Palestinian barons, he returned home in the following year. But the Germans under Leopold VII. of Austria, who had accompanied him remained, and, supported by a Cologne and Dutch fleet, undertook in A.D. 1218, along with the titular king John of Jerusalem, a crusade against Egypt. Damietta was taken, but the overflow of the Nile reservoirs placed them in such peril that they owed their escape in A.D. 1221 only to the generosity of the Sultan Camel.