History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2) / Revised Edition

by John William Draper

Bernard of Clairvaux stimulates the second crusade.Things seemed to be going to ruin in Rome, and such must inevitably have been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the beater down of heresies, theological and political. He had been a pupil of William of Champeaux, the vanquished rival of Abelard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and personal hate. He was a wonder-worker. He excommunicated the flies which [25] infested a church—they all fell down dead and were swept out by the basketful. He has been described as "the mellifluous doctor, whose works are not scientific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at the basis of Abelard's philosophy—the assertion of the supremacy of reason. Of Arnold of Brescia—who carried that principle to its political consequences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were inconsistent with their profession—he was the accuser and punisher. Its failure. Bernard preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, affirmed to be not inferior to those of our Saviour; promising to him who should slay an unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life to come. This second crusade was conducted by kings, and included fanatic ladies, dressed in the armour of men; but it ended in ruin.

It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the papacy to visit Rome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon others. Nicolas Breakspear—Adrian IV.—put the Eternal City under interdict, thereby ending the republic which the partisans of Arnold of Brescia had set up. But in this he was greatly aided by a change of sentiment in many of the inhabitants of Rome, who had found to their cost that it was more profitable for their city to be the centre of Christianity than the seat of a phantom republic. Murder of Arnold of Brescia. As an equivalent for his coronation by Adrian, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to surrender to the Church Arnold of Brescia. With indecent haste, the moment she had obtained possession of her arch-enemy she put him to death—not delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom had been, but murdering him with her own hand. Seven centuries have elapsed, and the blood of Arnold is still crying from the ground for retribution. Notwithstanding a new—the third—crusade, things went from bad to worse in the Holy Land. Saladin had retaken Jerusalem, A.D. 1187. Barbarossa was drowned in a river in Pisidia. Richard of England was treacherously imprisoned; nor did the pope interfere for this brave soldier of the Cross. Birth of Frederick II. In the meantime, the Emperors of Germany had acquired Sicily [26] by marriage—an incident destined to be of no little importance in the history of Europe; for, on the death of the Emperor Henry VI. at Messina, his son Frederick, an infant not two years old, was left to be brought up in that island. What the consequences were we shall soon see.

Review of the preceding events.If we review the events related in this chapter, we find that the idolatry and immorality into which Rome had fallen had become connected with material interests sufficiently powerful to ensure their perpetuation; that converted Germany insisted on a reform, and therefore made a moral attack on the Italian system, attempting to carry it into effect by civil force. This attack was, properly speaking, purely moral, the intellectual element accompanying it being derived from Western or Arabian influences, as will be shown in the next chapter; and, in its resistance to this, the papacy was not only successful, but actually was able to retaliate, overthrowing the Emperors of Germany, and being even on the point of establishing a European autocracy, with the pope at its head. It was in these events that the Reformation began, though circumstances intervened to postpone its completion to the era of Luther. Henceforth we see more and more plainly the attitude in which the papacy, through its material interests, was compelled to stand, as resisting all intellectual advancement. Our subject has therefore here to be left unfinished until we shall have described the Mohammedan influences making pressures on the West and the East.

CHAPTER II. THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST—(Continued). THE WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM.

The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of Arabian Spain.

Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and Sicily.—Example of Saracen Science in Alhazen, and of Philosophy in Algazzali.—Innocent III. prepares to combat these Influences.—Results to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics.

The spread of Mohammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy.—The crushing of Heresy in the South of France by armed Force.—The Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, and Casuistry.

The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily.—His Conflict with and Overthrow by the Pope.—Spread of Mutiny among the mendicant Orders.

The pressure from the West upon Rome. A [27]pressure upon the Italian system had meantime been arising in the West. It was due to the presence of the Arabs in Spain. It is necessary, therefore, to relate the circumstances of their invasion and conquest of that country, and to compare their social and intellectual condition with the contemporary state of Christendom.

Barbarism of Europe.From the barbarism of the native people of Europe, who could scarcely be said to have emerged from the savage state, unclean in person, benighted in mind, inhabiting huts in which it was a mark of wealth if there were bulrushes on the floor and straw mats against the wall; miserably fed on beans, vetches, roots, and even the bark of trees; clad in garments of untanned skin, or at the best of leather—perennial in durability, but not conducive to personal purity—a state in which the pomp of [28] royalty was sufficiently and satisfactorily manifested in the equipage of the sovereign, an ox-cart, drawn by not less than two yokes of cattle, quickened in their movements by the goads of pedestrian serfs, whose legs were wrapped in wisps of straw; from a people, devout believers in all the wild fictions of shrine-miracles and preposterous relics; from the degradation of a base theology, and from the disputes of ambitious ecclesiastics for power, it is pleasant to turn to the south-west corner of the continent, where, under auspices of a very different kind, the irradiations of light were to break forth. The crescent in the West was soon to pass eastward to its full.