Wladislas died in 1434, at the age of eighty years. It is said that he contracted his mortal sickness by being tempted to remain exposed too long to the night air, captivated by the sweet notes of a nightingale. Notwithstanding his faults, this monarch had many virtues; his piety was great, and he practised severe abstinences; and although he at times gave way to a suspicious temper, his general character was trusting, frank, and generous even to imprudence. His suspicions, in fact, did not originate with himself. They sprang, in the case of both his wives, from the tongues of calumniators, to whom he listened with a hasty credulity. He raised the glory and extended and consolidated the dominion of Poland. He was succeeded by his son, a child of eleven years, who had previously been, elected to the throne, but not until Jagello had confirmed and even enlarged the privileges of the nobles. His tardy consent, at the diet of Jedlin, roused their pride, so that it was not until four years later that they solemnly gave their adhesion.
It has not been our purpose to give more than a page out of the Polish annals illustrative of the patriotic and Christian spirit of sacrifice for which Poland's daughters have, down to the [{158}] present day, been no less noted than her sons. The mind naturally reverts to the late cruel struggle in which this generous people has once more succumbed to the overwhelming power of Russia, and her unscrupulous employment of the gigantic forces at her command. Europe has looked on apathetically, and, after a few feeble diplomatic remonstrances, has allowed the sacrifice to be completed. But the cause of Poland is essentially the cause of Catholicism and of the Church; and this, perhaps, may account for the small degree of sympathy it has awakened in European governments. Russia's repression of her insurgent subjects became from the first a religious persecution. Her aim is not to Russify, but to decatholicize Poland. The insurrection, quenched in blood, has been followed by a wholesale deportation of Poles into the eastern Russian provinces, where, with their country, it is hoped they will, ere long, lose also their faith. These are replaced by Russian colonists transplanted into Poland. To crush, extirpate, and deport the nobility—to leave the lower class alone upon the soil, who, deprived of their clergy—martyred, exiled, or in bonds—may become an easy conquest to the dominant schism—such is the plan of the autocrat, as we have beheld it actively carried out with all its accompanying horrors of sacrilege and ruthless barbarity. One voice alone—that of the Father of Christendom—has been raised to stigmatize these revolting excesses, and to reprove the iniquity of "persecuting Catholicism in order to put down rebellion." [Footnote 44] The same voice has exhorted us to pray for our Polish brethren, and has encouraged that suffering people to seek their deliverance from the just and compassionate Lord of all.
[Footnote 44: The terms of the Holy Father's address have been strangely exaggerated in many continental journals, where he is made to refer to the subject politically, and loudly to proclaim the justice of the Polish insurrection in that regard. The Pope entirely restricted his animadversions on the Czar to his persecution of the faith of his subjects.]
From The Lamp.
MONKS AMONG THE MONGOLS.
In tracing the progress of the various branches of science during the Middle Ages, there is nothing more striking than the slow stages by which a knowledge of the truth was reached on the subject of the earth's form, and the relative positions of the various countries which compose it. Though from the very earliest period the subject necessarily occupied a considerable amount of attention, and though facts began to be observed bearing upon it in the first ages after the diffusion of mankind, and were largely multiplied in proportion as the formation of colonies and intercommunication for purposes of commerce or war became more frequent, yet we find very little advance made in geographical knowledge from the days of Ptolemy, when the observations of the ancients were most systematically collected and arranged, till some centuries after, when the maritime enterprise of the Portuguese impelled them to the series of discoveries which led to the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, and incited the genius of Columbus to the discovery of a new world.
The cause of this slow advance of geographical, in comparison with other branches of knowledge, was owing in some measure to the absence of any exact records of the discoveries made, by which they might have been communicated to others, and become the [{159}] starting-point for further investigations; but still more to the imperfect means of navigation in existence, and to those barbarian uprisings and migrations which for centuries, at least, were perpetually changing the state of Europe and Asia, and, by removing the landmarks of nations, obliging geography to begin as it were anew. During the whole of this period, however, we find evidences of the patient cultivation of this, as of all other branches of human knowledge, within the walls of those monastic institutions which ignorant prejudice still regards as the haunts of idleness, but to which the learned of all creeds and countries acknowledge their deep debt of obligation. Formal accounts of some distant land, either written by the traveller himself or recorded from the oral information he communicated; historical chronicles, in which not alone the events, but all that was known of the country is recorded, and maps in which the position of various places is attempted to be laid down, were to be found in every monastery both on the continent and in our own island. The holy men, too, who preached the gospel to pagan nations were usually careful also to enlarge their contemporaries' knowledge concerning the places and the people among whom they labored. Thus the great St. Boniface not only converted the Sclavonic nations to Catholic truth, but, at the special injunction of the Pope, wrote an account of them and of their country. St. Otho, bishop of Bamberg, did the same for the countries upon the shores of the Baltic; the holy monk Anscaire for Scandinavia, where he carried on his apostolic labors; and many others might be mentioned.
Among the most valuable of the contributions to the geography of the Middle Ages were those furnished by some monks of the order of St. Francis, who in the middle of the thirteenth century penetrated into the remote east, on special missions to the barbarian hordes that then threatened the very existence of religion and civilization, and whose enterprises, embarked in at the call of duty, are in many respects interesting.
History, whether ancient or modern, has few chapters so remarkable as that which records the rise of the Mongol power. A great chief, who had ruled over an immense horde of this hitherto pastoral people, died, leaving his eldest son an infant, and unable to command the adhesion of his rude subjects. The young chief, as he grew to man's estate, found his horde dispersed, and only a few families willing to acknowledge his sway. Determined, however, to regain his power and carry out the ambitious design which he had formed of conquering the world, he caused an assembly of the whole people to be summoned on the banks of the Selinga. At this assembly one of the wise men of the tribes announced that he had had a vision, in which he saw the great God, the disposer of kingdoms, sitting upon his throne in council, and heard him decree that the young chief should be "Zingis Khan," or "Greatest Chief" of the earth. The shouts of the Mongols testified their readiness to accept the decree; Zingis Khan was raised to supreme power over the whole Mongol race. He soon subdued the petty opposition of his neighbors, and, establishing the seat of his empire at Karakorum, spread his conquests in every direction with extraordinary rapidity, and died the ruler of many nations, bequeathing his power to sons and grandsons as warlike and ambitious as himself. One of these, Batoo Khan, invaded Europe with an immense army. He overran Russia, taking Moscow and its other principal places; subdued Poland and burnt Cracow; defeated the king of Hungary in a great battle; penetrated to Breslau, which he burned; and defeated, near Liegnitz, an army composed of Christian volunteers from all lands;—one of the bloodiest battles ever fought against the eastern hordes.
It was four years after this great battle, namely, in 1246, and when all [{160}] Europe was trembling at the expectation of another invasion of the Mongols (who, having devastated the country with fire and sword, had retired loaded with spoils), that two embassies were despatched by the Pope, Innocent IV., to endeavor to induce them to stop their progress into Europe, and to embrace Christianity. These important missions were intrusted to monks of the Franciscan order; Jean du Plan Carpini being despatched toward the north-east, where the camp of Batoo was fixed, and Nicholas Ascelin, the year after, sent into Syria and Persia.