In 1251 a religious frenzy arose in Flanders and France under the name of the Pastoureux or Shepherds. It began among the lowest classes, who attributed the imprisonment of their king, St. Louis, by the Mussulmans to the neglect and avarice of the clergy. A champion arose, called the Master of Hungary, an aged man with a long beard and a pale emaciated face, who spoke three or four languages, boasted that he had no authority from the Pope, but he clasped in his hand a roll which he said contained instructions from the Blessed Virgin herself. He said she had appeared to him encircled by hosts of angels, and had given him this commission to summon the poor shepherds to the deliverance of their godly King. This awful personage excited the most intense interest. He was an apostate monk, who in his youth had imbibed atheism and magic from unholy sources. He it was who in his youth led a crusade of children who had plunged, following his steps, by thousands into the sea. His eloquence and mystic look attracted wondering crowds. The shepherds and peasants left their flocks, their ploughs, and their fields, and, regardless of hunger and want, roamed after their leader, till they swelled to thirty thousand, and then to one hundred thousand men. They moved in battle-array, brandishing clubs, pikes, axes, and weapons picked up at random. Provosts and mayors were panic-stricken at the swarm of banners of the cross and standards of the Virgin and angels. The Master scornfully spoke of the clergy and usurped the offices of the Church, distributing crosses and dispensing absolution. He taunted the monks and friars with hypocrisy, gluttony, and pride. It was rumoured that the mob was miraculously fed. He entered a church and declaimed eloquently on the vices of the enemy. At last riots arose, and his head was cloven by a battle-axe, and the leaders were killed like mad dogs till the multitude disappeared.
DEATHBED OF ST. LOUIS OF FRANCE, CRUSADER (A.D. 1270).
For seven years after his return from the East in 1254, St. Louis, King of France, could not rest in his mind till he had again entered on a new crusade to reconquer Jerusalem and deliver the Holy Sepulchre. But he kept his own counsel and awaited the progress of events. In 1261 he told his parliament that there should be fasts and prayers for the Christians of the East. In 1267, on convoking his parliament in Paris, having first had the precious relics deposited in the Holy Chapel set before the eyes of the assembly, he opened the session by ardently exhorting those present to avenge the insult which had so long been offered to the Saviour in the Holy Land, and to recover the Christian heritage possessed for our sins by the infidels. And next year, in 1268, he took an oath to start in May 1270, and to take his three sons, aged twenty-two, eighteen, and seventeen. He urged Joinville, his biographer, to take the cross and join him; but Joinville flatly refused, thinking the King would do far more good by remaining at home. The King was in weak health, and the plan of the expedition was long unsettled, and at the last moment he decided first to go to Tunis, as he had a notion that he might convert the King, Mohammed Mostanser, who had long been talking of becoming a Christian. But on reaching Tunis on July 17th, 1270, it was found that the French must first fight the Mussulman prince, and the army was ill provisioned and unready. On August 3rd the King was attacked with epidemic fever and kept his bed in tent. He called his son and daughter and gave them the best advice; and after giving an interview to a messenger from the Emperor sent to bespeak his good offices, the saintly King ceased to think of the affairs of this world. He kept repeating prayers for mercy on his own people, and that they might return safely to their own land. He now and then raised himself on his bed, muttering the words, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. We will go up to Jerusalem.” He retained possession of his faculties to the last, insisted on receiving out of bed extreme unction, and on lying down upon a coarse sackcloth covered with cinders with the cross before him. On Monday, August 25th, 1270, at 3 p.m., he died, uttering these last words: “Father, after the example of the Divine Master, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”
CRUSADERS ENTERTAINED ON THEIR WAY HOME.
When Earl Richard, brother of King Henry III., returned in 1241 from the Holy Land on his way to visit the Emperor, Frederick II., and the Empress, the sister of Richard, he was received with the greatest joy and honour in the various cities, the citizens and their ladies coming to meet him with music and singing, bearing branches of trees and flowers, dressed in holiday garments and ornaments. On reaching the Emperor, Richard was treated with blood-letting, baths, and divers medicinal fomentations to restore his strength after the dangers of the sea. At the end of some days, by the Emperor’s orders, various kinds of games and musical instruments, which were procured for the Empress’s amusement, were exhibited before him, and afforded great pleasure. Amongst other astonishing novelties there was one which particularly excited his admiration and praise. Two Saracen girls of handsome form mounted upon four round balls placed on the floor—namely, one of the two on two balls, and the other on the other two. They walked backwards and forwards, clapping their hands, moving at pleasure on these revolving globes, gesticulating with their arms, singing various tunes and twisting their bodies according to the tune, beating cymbals or castanets together with their hands, and putting themselves into various amusing postures, affording, with the other jugglers, an admirable spectacle to the lookers-on. After staying with the Emperor about two months, Earl Richard took his departure, loaded with costly presents.
A DYING KING BEQUEATHS HIS HEART AS A CRUSADER.
When Robert Bruce, King of Scotland, was on his deathbed in 1329, Froissart tells how he made this dying request to his friend Sir James Douglas: “‘Sir James, my dear friend, none knows better than you how great labour and suffering I have undergone in my day for the maintenance of the rights of my kingdom, and when I was hardest beset made a vow which it now grieves me deeply that I have not accomplished. I vowed to God, that, if I should live to see an end of my wars, and be enabled to govern this realm in peace, I would carry on war against the enemies of my Lord and Saviour to the best of my power. Never has my heart ceased to bend to that point; but our Lord has not consented thereto, for I have had my hands full in my days, and now at the last I am seized with this grievous sickness, so that, as you all see, I have nothing to do but to die. And since my body cannot go thither and accomplish that which I have so much at heart, I have resolved to send my heart there in place of my body, to fulfil my vow. I entreat thee, therefore, my dear and tried friend, that for the love you bear to me you will undertake this voyage and acquit my soul of its debt to my Saviour.’ On the knight promising faithfully to obey his command, ‘Praise be to God,’ said the King. ‘I shall die in peace, since I am assured that the best and most valiant knight of my kingdom has promised to achieve for me that which I myself could never accomplish.’” When King Robert Bruce died, his heart was taken out from his body and embalmed, and the Douglas caused a case of silver to be made, into which he put the heart and wore it round his neck by a string of silk and gold. He set out to the Holy Land, attended by a gallant train of Scottish chiefs; but on touching at Spain he found the Saracen King or Sultan of Grenada, called Osmyn, then invading the realms of Alphonso, the orthodox Spanish King of Castile. The latter King received the Douglas with great honour, and persuaded him to assist in driving back these Saracens. Douglas consented; and during a battle, seeing a comrade surrounded by the Moors, he took from his neck the heart, flung it into the thick of the enemy, and rushing to the spot where it fell, was himself slain. The body of the good Lord James was found lying above the silver case, as if to defend it had been his last effort. His companions then resolved not to proceed to the Holy Land, but to return with the sacred heart to Scotland, and it was buried below the high altar in Melrose Abbey.
THE HOSPITALLERS AND KNIGHTS TEMPLARS (A.D. 1118-1313).
A monastery for the benefit of Latin pilgrims had been founded at Jerusalem about 1050 by some wealthy merchants, and a hospital of St. John the Baptist was attached to help sick pilgrims and protect them against robbers. The Hospitallers soon separated from the monastery when the Crusaders arrived, and their dress was fixed as black with a white cross. Kings and nobles came to the assistance of this charity with gifts and endowments, and Raymond du Puy, on becoming master of the hospital in 1118, drew up rules which enjoined a regular system of begging alms for the poor, and each member when travelling was to carry a light with him, which was to be kept burning all night. The order of Knights Templars began about 1118 from similar motives, the object being to protect against the robbers the highways used by pilgrims. At first the Knights Templars were very poor, and the seal of their order showed two knights riding on one horse, a symbol which some explain as indicating poverty, and others as indicating brotherly kindness. Hugh de Payens and other French knights were the first members, and soon attracted attention, especially as St. Bernard, a nephew of one of the knights, warmly commended the institution and drew up rules for them. Each knight was restricted to keep three horses only, not to hawk nor hunt, not to receive presents nor use gaudy trappings in their equipments. They were charged always “to strike the lion,” which was understood to mean the infidels. They were forbidden to lock their trunks, to walk alone, or to kiss their mothers or sisters. Their habit was said to be white with a red cross on the breast. The order began modestly, but soon included three hundred knights of noble families, and these attracted wealth, and this in time gave occasion for pride, insolence, and defiance of ecclesiastical discipline. The Knights Templars by degrees became a half-monastic and half-military order, attracting all the spirited youths of Europe. St. Bernard called them a perpetual sacred militia, the bodyguard of the Kings of Jerusalem, and a standing army on the outposts of civilisation. Lands, castles, riches, were given to them. The Popes patronised them. For two hundred years they kept up their credit, and fought with consummate valour, discipline, activity, and zeal for the cause of Christianity. They then excited the enmity of Philip the Fair, who coveted their wealth, and as an excuse for attacking them said he had heard of the secret vices and depravity of the order, and accused and arrested all that were in France in 1307. They were subjected by him to fearful torture to make them confess, and many confessed anything and everything, being thereby able to escape further tortures. De Molay, the Grand Master, confessed, retracted, then confessed, and again retracted. Edward II. caused those Templars settled in England to be arrested also. In 1310 fifty-four of the French Templars who denied the charges were burnt in Paris. De Molay, after being six years in prison, was burnt in 1313, protesting his innocence and that of the order. Philip the Fair was present part of the time. Philip’s avarice and desire to confiscate their property were thought to be the moving cause of this atrocious tyranny, as he had borrowed money from them to pay the dowry of his sister, the Queen of England. The ashes of the victims were carefully collected and treasured as relics. It was afterwards currently believed that Molay at the stake summoned the Pope and the King (Philip), as the authors of his death, to appear before the judgment seat of Christ within forty days and a year respectively, and that each of them died within the time assigned. Philip, at the age of forty-six in 1314, met with an accident while hunting in the forest of Fontainebleau, from which he never recovered, leaving a name detested for every kind of despotism and oppression; and his chief minister, Marigny, was hanged soon after. Pope Clement V. had acted with a mean and cowardly acquiescence in the King’s acts, and died in the same year.
CRUSADERS’ FAITH IN PROVIDENCE.