The Normans, who by a wonderful fortune had made themselves masters of England under the guidance of William, were grateful to the Pope for the assistance he had given them by prohibiting all opposition to their conquest on the part of the English Church. Another branch of Normans were still more useful in their support of the papal chair. A body of pilgrims to Jerusalem, amounting to only forty men, had started from Scandinavia in 1006, and, having landed at Salerno, were turned aside from completing their journey by the equally meritorious occupation of resisting the Saracens who were besieging the town. They defeated them with great slaughter, and were amply rewarded for their prowess with goods and gear. News of their gallantry and of their reward reached their friends and relations at home. In a few years they were followed by swarms of their countrymen, who disposed of their acquisitions in Upper Italy to the highest bidder, and were remunerated by grants of land in Naples for their exertion on behalf of Sergius the king. But in 1037 a fresh body of adventurers proceeded from the neighbourhood of Coutances in Normandy, under the command of three brothers of the family of Hauteville, to the assistance of the same monarch, and, with the usual prudence of the Norman race, when they had chased the enemy from the endangered territory, made no scruple of keeping it for themselves. Robert, called Guiscard, or the Wise, was the third brother, and succeeded to the newly-acquired sovereignty in 1057. In a short time he alarmed the Pope with the prospect of so unscrupulous and so powerful a neighbour. His Holiness, therefore, demanded the assistance of the German Emperor, and boldly took the field. The Normans were no whit daunted with the opposition of the Father of Christendom, and dashed through all obstacles till they succeeded in taking him prisoner. Instead of treating him with harshness, and exacting exorbitant ransom, as would have been the action of a less sagacious politician, the Norman threw himself on his knees before the captive pontiff, bewailed his hard case in being forced to appear so contumacious to his spiritual lord and master, and humbly besought him to pardon his transgression, and accept the suzerainty of all the lands he possessed and of all he should hereafter subdue. |A.D. 1059.|It was a delightful surprise to the Pope, who immediately ratified all the proceedings of his repentant son, and in a short time was rewarded by seeing Apulia and the great island of Sicily held in homage as fiefs of St. Peter’s chair. From thenceforth the Italian Normans were the bulwarks of the papal throne. But, more powerful than the Normans of England, and more devoted personally to the popes than the greedy adventurers of Apulia, the Countess Matilda was the greatest support of all the pretensions of the Holy See. Young and beautiful, the holder of the greatest territories in Italy, this lady was the most zealous of all the followers of the Pope. Though twice married, she on both occasions separated from her husband to throw herself with more undivided energy into the interests of the Church. With men and money, and all the influence that her position as a princess and her charms as a woman could give, the sovereign pontiff had no enemy to fear as long as he retained the friendship of his enthusiastic daughter.
A.D. 1060.
Hildebrand was the ruling spirit of the papal court, and was laying his plans for future action, while the world was still scarcely aware of his existence. He began, while only Archdeacon of Rome, by a forcible reformation of some of the irregularities which had crept into the practice of the clergy, as a preparatory step to making the clergy dominant over all the other orders in the State. He gave orders, in the name of Stephen the Tenth, for every married priest to be displaced and to be separated from his wife. For this end he stirred up the ignorant fanaticism of the people, and encouraged them in outrages upon the offending clergy, which frequently ended in death. The virtues of the cloister had still a great hold on the popular veneration, in spite of the notorious vices of the monastic establishments, both male and female; and Hildebrand’s invectives on the wickedness of marriage, and his praises of the sanctity of a single life, were listened to with equal admiration. The secular clergy were forced to adopt the unsocial and demoralizing principles of their monkish rivals; and when all family affections were made sinful, and the feelings of the pastor concentrated on the interests of his profession, the popes had secured, in the whole body of the Church, the unlimited obedience and blind support which had hitherto been the characteristic of the monastic orders. With the assistance of the warlike Normans, the wealth and influence of the Countess Matilda, the adhesion of the Church to his schemes of aggrandizement, he felt it time to assume in public the power he had exercised so long in the subordinate position of counsellor of the popes; and the monk seated himself on what he considered the highest of earthly thrones, and immediately the contest between the temporal and spiritual powers began. |A.D. 1073.|The King of France (Philip the First) and the Emperor of Germany (Henry the Fourth) were both of disreputable life, and offered an easy mark for the assaults of the fiery pontiff. He threatened and reprimanded them for simony and disobedience, proclaimed his authority over kings and princes as a fact which no man could dispute without impiety, and had the inward pleasure of seeing the proudest of the nobles, and finally the most powerful of the sovereigns, of Europe, forced to obey his mandates. The pent-up hatred of his race and profession was gratified by the abasement of birth and power.
The struggle with the Empire was on the subject of investiture. The successors of Charlemagne had always retained a voice in the appointment of the bishops and Church dignitaries in their states; they had even frequently nominated to the See of Rome, as to the other bishoprics in their dominions. The present wearer of the iron crown had displaced three contending popes, who were disturbing the peace of the city by their ferocious quarrels, and had appointed others in their room. There was no murmur of opposition to their appointment. They were pious and venerable men; and of each of them the inscrutable Hildebrand had managed to make himself the confidential adviser, and in reality the guide and master. Even in his own case he waited patiently till he had secured the emperor’s legal ratification of his election, and then, armed with legitimacy, and burning with smothered indignation, he kicked down the ladder by which he had risen, and wrote an insulting letter to the emperor, commanding him to abstain from simony, and to renounce the right of investiture by the ring and cross. These, he maintained, were the signs of spiritual dignity, and their bestowal was inherent in the Pope. The time for the message was admirably chosen; for Henry was engaged in a hard struggle for life and crown with the Saxons and Thuringians, who were in open revolt. Henry promised obedience to the pontiff’s wish, but when his enemies were defeated he withdrew his concession. The Pope thundered a sentence of excommunication against him, released his subjects from their oath of fealty, and pronounced him deprived of the throne. The emperor was not to be left behind in the race of objurgation. |A.D. 1076.|He summoned his nobles and prelates to a council at Worms, and pronounced sentence of deprivation on the Pope. Then arose such a storm against the unfortunate Henry as only religious differences can create. His subjects had been oppressed, his nobility insulted, his clergy impoverished, and all classes of his people were glad of the opportunity of hiding their hatred of his oppressions under the cloak of regard for the interests of religion. He was forced to yield; and, crossing the Alps in the middle of winter, he presented himself at the castle of Canossa. Here the Pope displayed the humbleness and generosity of his Christian character, by leaving the wretched man three days and nights in the outer court, shivering with cold and barefoot, while His Holiness and the Countess Matilda were comfortably closeted within. And after this unheard-of degradation, all that could be wrung from the hatred of the inexorable monk was a promise that the suppliant should be tried with justice, and that, if he succeeded in proving his innocence, he should be reinstated on his throne; but if he were found guilty, he should be punished with the utmost rigour of ecclesiastical law.
Common sense and good feeling were revolted by this unexampled insolence. Friends gathered round Henry when the terms of his sentence were heard. The Romans themselves, who had hitherto been blindly submissive, were indignant at the presumption of their bishop. None continued faithful except the imperturbable Countess Matilda. He was still to her the representative of divine goodness and superhuman power. But her troops were beaten and her money was exhausted in the holy quarrel. Robert Guiscard, indeed, came to the rescue, and rewarded himself for delivering the Pope by sacking the city of Rome. Half the houses were burned, and half the population killed or sold as slaves. It was from amidst the desolation his ambition had caused that the still-unsubdued Hildebrand was guarded by the Normans to the citadel of Salerno, and there he died, issuing his orders and curses to his latest hour, and boasting with his last breath that “he had loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that therefore he expired in exile.” |A.D. 1085.|After this man’s throwing off the mask of moderation under which his predecessors had veiled their claims, the world was no longer left in doubt of the aims and objects of the spiritual power. There seems almost a taint of insanity in the extravagance of his demands. In the published collection of his maxims we see the full extent of the theological tyranny he had in view. “There is but one name in the world,” we read; “and that is the Pope’s. He only can use the ornaments of empire. All princes ought to kiss his feet. He alone can nominate or displace bishops and assemble or dissolve councils. Nobody can judge him. His mere election constitutes him a saint. He has never erred, and never shall err in time to come. He can depose princes and release subjects from their oaths of fidelity.” Yet, in spite of the wildness of this language, the ignorance of the period was so great, and the relations of European nations so hostile, that the most daring of these assumptions found supporters either in the superstitious veneration of the peoples or the enmity and interests of the princes. The propounder of those amazing propositions was apparently defeated, and died disgraced and hated; but his successors were careful not to withdraw the most untenable of his claims, even while they did not bring them into exercise. They lay in an armory, carefully stored and guarded, to be brought out according to the exigencies either of the papal chair itself, or of the king or emperor who for the moment was in possession of the person of the Pope. None of the great potentates of Europe, therefore, was anxious to diminish a power which might be employed for his own advantage, and all of them by turns encouraged the aggressions of the Papacy, with a short-sighted wisdom, to be an instrument of offence against their enemies. Little encouragement, indeed, was offered at this time to opposition to the spiritual despot. Though Hildebrand had died a refugee, it was remarked with pious awe that Henry the Fourth, his rival and opponent, was punished in a manner which showed the highest displeasure of Heaven. His children, at the instigation of the Pope, rebelled against him. He was conquered in battle and taken prisoner by his youngest son. |A.D. 1106|He was stripped of all his possessions, and at last so destitute and forsaken that he begged for a subchanter’s place in a village church for the sake of its wretched salary, and died in such extremity of want and desolation that hunger shortened his days. For five years his body was left without the decencies of interment in a cellar in the town of Spires.
But an immense movement was now to take place in the European mind, which had the greatest influence on the authority of Rome. |A.D. 1095|A crusade against the enemies of the faith was proclaimed in the year 1095, and from all parts of Europe a great cry of approval was uttered in all tongues, for it hit the right chord in the ferocious and superstitious heart of the world; and it was felt that the great battle of the Cross and the Crescent was most fitly to be decided forever on the soil of the Holy Land.
From the very beginning of this century the thought of armed intervention in the affairs of Palestine had been present in the general mind. Religious difference had long been ready to take the form of open war. As the Church strengthened and settled into more dogmatic unity, the desire to convert by force and retain within the fold by penalty and proscription had increased. As yet some reluctance was felt to put a professing Christian to death on merely a difference of doctrine, but with the open gainsayers of the faith no parley could be held. Thousands, in addition to their religious animosities, had personal injuries to avenge; for pilgrimage to Jerusalem was already in full favour, and the weary wayfarers had to complain of the hostility of the turbaned possessors of the Holy Sepulchre, and the indignities and peril to which they were exposed the moment they came within the infidel’s domain. Why should the unbelievers be allowed any longer to retain the custody of such inherently Christian territories as the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane? Why should the unbaptized followers of Mohammed, those children of perdition, pollute with hostile feet the sacred ground which had been the witness of so many miracles and still furnished so many relics which manifested superhuman power? Besides, what was the wealth of other cities—their gold and precious jewels—to the store of incalculable riches contained in the very stones and woodwork of the metropolis and cradle of the faith? Bones of martyrs—garments of saints—nails of the cross—thorns of the crown—were all lying ready to be gathered up by the faithful priesthood who would lead the expedition. And who could be held responsible, in this world or the next, for any sins, however grievous, who had washed them out by purifying the floors of Zion with the blood of slaughtered Saracens and saying prayers and kneeling in contemplation within sight of the Sepulchre itself? So Peter the Hermit, an enthusiast who preached a holy war, was listened to as if he spake with the tongues of angels. The ravings of his lunacy had a prodigious effect on all classes and in all lands; and suddenly there was gathered together a confused rabble of pilgrims, armed in every variety of fashion—princes and beggars, robbers and adventurers—the scum of great cities and the simple-hearted peasantry from distant farms—upwards of three hundred thousand in number, all pouring down towards the seaports and anxious to cross over to the land where so many high hopes were placed. Vast numbers of this multitude found their way from France through Italy; and luckily for Urban the Second—the fifth in succession from Gregory—they took the opportunity of paying a visit to the city of Rome, scarcely less venerable in their eyes than Jerusalem itself. They were the soldiers of the Cross, and in that character felt bound to pay a more immediate submission to the Chief of Christianity than to their native kings. They found the city divided between two rivals for the tiara, and, having decided in favour of Urban, chased away the anti-pope who was appointed by the Imperial choice. Terrified at the accession of such powerful supporters, the Germans were withdrawn from Italy, and Urban felt that the claims of Hildebrand were not incapable of realization if he could get quit of unruly barons and obstinate monarchs by engaging them in a distant and ruinous expedition. It needed little to spread the flame of fanaticism over the whole of Christendom. The accounts given of this first Crusade transcend the wildest imaginings of romance. An indiscriminate multitude of all nations and tongues seemed impelled by some irresistible impulse towards the East. Ostensibly engaged in a religious service, enriched with promises and absolutions from the Pope, giving up all their earthly possessions, and filled with the one idea of liberating the Holy Land, it might have been expected that the sobriety and order of their march would have been characteristic of such elevating aspirations. But the infamy of their behaviour, their debauchery, irregularity, and dishonesty, have never been equalled by the basest and most degraded of mankind. Like a flood they poured through the lands of Italy, Bohemia, and Germany, polluting the cities with their riotous lives, and poisoning the air with the festering corruption of their innumerable dead. They at last found shipping from the ports, and presented themselves, drunk with fanatical pride, and maddened with the sufferings they had undergone, before the astonished people of Constantinople. That enervated and over-civilized population looked with disgust on the unruly mass. Of the vast multitudes who had started under the guidance of Peter the Hermit, not more than 20,000 survived; and of these none found their way to the object of their search. The Turks, who had by this time obtained the mastery of Asia, cut them in pieces when they had left the shelter of Constantinople, and Alexis Comnenus, the Grecian emperor, had little hope of aid against the Mohammedan invaders from the unruly levies of Europe.
But in the following year a new detachment made their appearance in his states. This was the second ban, or crusade of the knights and barons. Better regulated in its military organization than the other, it presented the same astonishing scenes of debauchery and vice; and dividing, for the sake of sustenance, into four armies, and taking four different routes, they at length, in greatly-diminished numbers, but with unabated hope and energy, presented themselves before the walls of Constantinople. This was no mob like their famished and fainting predecessors. All the gallant lords of Europe were here, inspired by knightly courage and national rivalries to distinguish themselves in fight and council. Of these the best-known were Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwyn of Flanders, Robert of Normandy, (William the Conqueror’s eldest son,) Hugh the Great, Count of Vermandois, and Raymond of St. Gilles. Six hundred thousand men had left their homes, with innumerable attendants—women, and jugglers, and servants, and workmen of all kinds. Tens of thousands perished by the way; others established themselves in the cities on their route to keep up the communication; and at last the Genoese and Pisan vessels conveyed to the Golden Horn the strength of all Europe, the hardy survivors of all the perils of that unexampled march—few indeed in number, but burning with zeal and bravery. Alexis lost no time in diverting their dangerous strength from his own realms. He let them loose upon Nicea, and when it yielded to their valour he had the cleverness to outwit the Christian warriors, and claimed the city as his possession. On pursuing their course, they found themselves, after a victory over the Turks at Dorylæum, in the great Plain of Phrygia. Hunger, thirst, the extremity of heat, and the difficulty of the march, brought confusion and dismay into their ranks. All the horses died. Knights and chevaliers were seen mounted on asses, and even upon oxen; and the baggage was packed upon goats, and not unfrequently on swine and dogs. Thirst was fatal to five hundred in a single day. Quarrels between the nationalities added to these calamities. Lorrains and Italians, the men of Normandy and of Provence, were at open feud. And yet, in spite of these drawbacks, the great procession advanced. Baldwyn and Tancred succeeded in getting possession of the town of Edessa, on the Euphrates, and opened a communication with the Christians of Armenia. |A.D. 1098.|The siege of Antioch was their next operation, and the luxuries of the soil and climate were more fatal to the Crusaders than want and pain had been. On the rich banks of the Orontes, and in the groves of Daphne, they lost the remains of discipline and self-command and gave themselves up to the wildest excesses. But with the winter their enjoyment came to an end. Their camp was flooded; they suffered the extremities of famine; and when there were no more horses and impure animals to eat, they satiated their hunger on the bodies of their slaughtered enemies. Help, however, was at hand, or they must have perished to the last man. Bohemund corrupted the fidelity of a renegade officer in Antioch, and, availing themselves of a dark and stormy night, they scaled the walls with ladders, and rushed into the devoted city, shouting the Crusaders’ war-cry:—“It is the will of God!” and Antioch became a Christian princedom. But not without difficulty was this new possession retained. The Turks, under the orders of Kerboga, surrounded it with two hundred thousand men. There was neither entrance nor exit possible, and the worst of their previous sufferings began to be renewed. But Heaven came to the rescue. A monk of the name of Peter Bartholomew dreamt that under the great altar of the church would be found the spear which pierced the Saviour on the cross. The precious weapon rewarded their toil in digging, and armed with this the Christian charge was irresistible, and the Turks were cut in pieces or dispersed. Instead of making straight for Jerusalem, they lingered six months longer in Antioch, suffering from plague and the fatigues they had undergone. When at last the forward order was given, a remnant, consisting of fifty thousand men out of all the original force, began the march. As they got nearer the object of their search, and recognised the places commemorated in Holy Writ, their enthusiasm knew no bounds. The last elevation was at length surmounted, and Jerusalem lay in full view. “O blessed Jesus,” cries a monk who was present, “when thy Holy City was seen, what tears fell from our eyes!” Loud shouts were raised of “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! God wills it! God wills it!” They stretched out their hands, fell upon their knees, and embraced the consecrated ground. But Jerusalem was yet in the hands of the Saracens, and the sword must open their way into its sacred bounds. The governor had offered to admit the pilgrims within the walls, but in their peaceful dress and merely as visitors. This they refused, and determined to wrest it from its unbelieving lords. On the 15th of July, 1099, they found that their situation was no longer tenable, and that they must conquer or give up the siege. The brook Kedron was dried up, the sun poured upon them with unendurable heat, their provisions were exhausted, and in agonies of despair as well as of military ardour they gave the final assault. The struggle was long and doubtful. At length the Crusaders triumphed. Tancred and Godfrey were the first to leap into the devoted town. Their soldiers followed, and filled every street with slaughter. The Mosque of Omar was vigorously defended, and an indiscriminate massacre of Mussulmans and Jews filled the whole place with blood. In the mosque itself the stream of gore was up to the saddle-girths of a horse. The onslaught was occasionally suspended for a while, to allow the pious conquerors to go barefoot and unarmed to kneel at the Holy Sepulchre; and, this act of worship done, they returned to their ruthless occupation, and continued the work of extermination for a whole week. The depopulated and reeking town was added to the domains of Christendom, and the kingdom of Jerusalem was offered to Godfrey of Bouillon. With a modesty befitting the most Christian and noble-hearted of the Crusaders, Godfrey contented himself with the humbler name of Baron of the Holy Sepulchre; and with three hundred knights—which were all that remained to him when that crowning victory had set the other survivors at liberty to revisit their native lands—he established a standing garrison in the captured city, and anxiously awaited reinforcements from the warlike spirits they had left at home.