From that time the spirit of the crusaders begins to change; whilst a small number of Christians still shed their blood for the deliverance of the tomb of Jesus Christ, the princes and the knights are deaf to everything but the voice of ambition. The popes complete the corruption of the true spirit of the crusaders, by urging them on, by their preaching, against other Christian people, and against their own personal enemies. The holy wars then degenerate into civil wars, in which both religion and humanity are outraged.
These abuses of the Crusades, and the dire passions which had mixed themselves with them, plunge Europe in disorder and anarchy; when a pious king undertakes once more to arm the powers of the West against the infidels, and to revive among the crusaders the spirit which had animated the companions of Godfrey. The two wars directed by this pious chief are more unfortunate than all the others. In the first, the world is presented with the spectacle of a captive army and a king in fetters; in the second, that of a powerful monarch dying in its ashes. Then it is that the illusion disappears, and Jerusalem ceases to attract all the attention of the West.
Soon after, the face of Europe is changed; intelligence dissipates barbarism; the Crusades no longer excite the same degree of enthusiasm, and the first effect of the civilisation it begins to spread is to weaken the spirit of the fanaticism which had given them birth. Some few useless efforts are at times made to rekindle the fire which had burned so fiercely in Europe and Asia. The nations are so completely recovered from the pious delirium of the Crusades, that when Germany finds itself menaced by the Mussulmans who are masters of Constantinople the banner of the cross can with difficulty gather an army around it; and Europe, which had risen in a mass to attack the infidels in Asia, opposes but a feeble resistance to them on its own territories.
Such is, in a few words, the picture of the events and revolutions which the historian of the Crusades has to describe.
We do not now require much sagacity to discover in our ancient chronicles what is fabulous and what is not. A far more difficult thing is to reconcile, upon some points, the frequent contradictory assertions of the Latins, the Greeks, and the Saracens, and to separate, in the history of the Crusades, that which belongs to religious fanaticism, to policy, or to human passions.
In an age in which some value is set upon an opinion of the Crusades, it will be first asked if the wars of the Crusades were just. Upon this head we have but little to answer. Whilst the crusaders believed that they were obeying God himself by attacking the Saracens in the East, the latter, who had invaded a part of Asia possessed by Christian people, who had got possession of Spain, who threatened Constantinople, the coasts of Italy, and several countries of the West, did not reproach their enemies with making an unjust war, and left to fortune and victory the care of deciding a question almost always useless.
We shall think it of more importance here to examine what was the cause and the nature of these remote wars, and what has proved to be their influence on civilisation. The Crusades were produced by the religious and military spirit which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages. The love of arms and religious fervour were two dominant passions which, mingling in some way, lent each other a mutual energy. These two great principles, united and acting together, gave birth to the holy war; and carried, among the crusaders, valour, resignation, and heroism of character to the highest degree of eminence. Some writers have seen nothing in these great expeditions but the most deplorable excesses, without any advantage to the ages that succeeded them; others, on the contrary, maintain that we owe to them all the benefits of civilisation. It is not, at present, our business to examine these two conflicting opinions. Without believing that the holy wars have done either all the good or all the harm that is attributed to them, it must be admitted that they were a source of bitter sorrow to the generations that saw them or took part in them; but, like the ills and tempests of human life, which render man better and often assist the progress of his reason, they have forwarded the experiences of nations; and it may be said that, after having for a time seriously agitated and shaken society, they have, in the end, much strengthened the foundations of it. This opinion, when stripped of all spirit of exaggeration or system, will perhaps appear the most reasonable.
EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES
[306-335 A.D.]
From the earliest ages of the church, a custom had been practised of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Judea, full of religious remembrances, was still the promised land of the faithful; the blessings of heaven appeared to be in store for those who visited Calvary, the tomb of Jesus Christ, and renewed their baptism in the waters of the Jordan. Under the reign of Constantine, the ardour for pilgrimages increased among the faithful; they flocked from all the provinces of the empire to worship Jesus Christ upon his own tomb, and to trace the steps of their God in that city which had but just resumed its name, and which the piety of an emperor had caused to issue from its ruins. The Holy Sepulchre presented itself to the eyes of the pilgrims surrounded by a magnificence which redoubled their veneration. An obscure cavern had become a marble temple, paved with precious stones and decorated with splendid colonnades. To the east of the Holy Sepulchre appeared the church of the Resurrection, in which they could admire the riches of Asia, mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome. Constantine celebrated the thirty-first year of his reign by the inauguration of this church, and thousands of Christians came, on occasion of this solemnity, to listen to the panegyric of Christ from the lips of the learned and holy bishop Eusebius.