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._

[Sidenote: The pressure from the West upon Rome.] A 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.

[Sidenote: 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 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.

But I must retrace my steps through four centuries, and resume the

description of the Arabian movement after the subjugation of Africa, as

related in the former volume, Chapter XI.

[Sidenote: Arab invasion of Spain.] Those were the circumstances of the

Arab conquest of Spain. In that country the Arian Creed had been

supplanted by the orthodox, and the customary persecutions had set in.

From the time of the Emperor Hadrian, who had transported 50,000 Jewish

families into Spain, that race had greatly increased, and, as might be

expected, had received no mercy at the hands of the orthodox. Ninety

thousand individuals had recently suffered compulsory baptism, and so

had been brought under the atrocious Catholic law that whoever has been

baptized shall be compelled to continue the observances of the Church.

The Gothic monarchy was elective, and Roderic had succeeded to the

throne, to the prejudice of the heirs of his predecessor. Though a very

brave soldier, he was a luxurious and licentious man. It was the custom

of the Goths to send their children to Toledo to be educated, and, under

these circumstances, a young girl of extraordinary beauty, the daughter

of Count Julian, governor of Ceuta in Africa, was residing there. King

Roderic fell passionately in love with her, and, being unable to

overcome her virtuous resolution by persuasion, resorted to violence.

The girl found means to inform her father of what had occurred. "By the

living God!" exclaimed the count, in a paroxysm of rage, "I will be

revenged." But, dissembling his wrath, he crossed over into Spain, had

an understanding with Oppas, the Archbishop of Toledo, and other

disaffected ecclesiastics, and, under specious pretences, lulled the

suspicions of Roderic, and brought his daughter away. And now he opened

communications with the Emir Musa, prevailing upon him to attempt the

conquest of the country, and offering that he himself would take the

lead. The conditions were settled between them, and the consent of the

khalif to the expedition obtained. [Sidenote: Its conquest.] Tarik, a

lieutenant of the emir, was sent across the Straits with the van of the

army. He landed on the rock called, in memory of his name, Gibraltar,

April, A.D. 711. In the battle that ensued, a part of Roderic's troops,

together with the Archbishop of Toledo, consummated their treasonable

compact, and deserted to the Arabs; the rest were panic-stricken. In the

rout, Roderic himself was drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir.

Tarik now proceeded rapidly northward, and was soon joined by his

superior, the Emir Musa, who was not, perhaps, without jealousy at his

success. As the Arab historians say, the Almighty delivered the

idolators into their hand, and gave them one victory after another. As

the towns successively fell, they left them in charge of the Jews, to

whose revenge the conquest was largely due, and who could be thoroughly

trusted; nor did they pause in their march until they had passed the

French frontier and reached the Rhone. It was the intention of Musa to

cross the European continent to Constantinople, subjugating the Frank,

German, and Italian barbarians by the way. At this time it seemed

impossible that France could escape the fate of Spain; and if she fell,

the threat of Musa would inevitably have come to pass, that he would

preach the Unity of God in the Vatican. But a quarrel had arisen between

him and Tarik, who had been imprisoned and even scourged. The friends of

the latter, however, did not fail him at the court of Damascus. An envoy

from the Khalif Alwalid appeared, ordering Musa to desist from his

enterprise, to return to Syria, and exonerate himself of the things laid

to his charge. But Musa bribed the envoy to let him advance. Hereupon

the angry khalif dispatched a second messenger, who, in face of the

Moslems and Christians, audaciously arrested him, at the head of his

troops, by the bridle of his horse. The conqueror of Spain was compelled

to return. He was cast into prison, fined 200,000 pieces of gold,

publicly whipped, and his life with difficulty spared. As is related of

Belisarius, Musa was driven as a beggar to solicit charity, and the

Saracen conqueror of Spain ended his days in grief and absolute want.

[Sidenote: Arrest of Mohammedanism in Western Europe.] The dissensions

among the Arabs, far more than the sword of Charles Martel, prevented

the Mohammedanization of France. Their historians admit the great check

received at the battle of Tours, in which Abderrahman was killed; they

call that field the Place of the Martyrs; but their accounts by no means

correspond to the relations of the Christian authors, who affirm that

375,000 Mohammedans fell, and only 1500 Christians. The defeat was not

so disastrous but that in a few months they were able to resume their

advance, and their progress was arrested only by renewed dissensions

among themselves--dissensions not alone among the leaders in Spain, but

also more serious ones of aspirants for the khalifate in Asia. On the

overthrow of the Ommiade house, Abderrahman, one of that family, escaped

to Spain, which repaid the patronage of its conquest by acknowledging

him as its sovereign. He made Cordova the seat of his government.

Neither he nor his immediate successors took any other title than that

of Emir, out of respect to the khalif, who resided at Bagdad, the

metropolis of Islam, though they maintained a rivalry with him in the

patronage of letters and science. Abderrahman himself strengthened his

power by an alliance with Charlemagne.

[Sidenote: Civilization and splendour of the Spanish Arabs.] Scarcely

had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain when they commenced a

brilliant career. Adopting what had now become the established policy of

the Commanders of the Faithful in Asia, the Emirs of Cordova

distinguished themselves as patrons of learning, and set an example of

refinement strongly contrasting with the condition of the native

European princes. Cordova, under their administration, at its highest

point of prosperity, boasted of more than two hundred thousand houses,

and more than a million of inhabitants. After sunset, a man might walk

through it in a straight line for ten miles by the light of the public

lamps. Seven hundred years after this time there was not so much as one

public lamp in London. Its streets were solidly paved. In Paris,

centuries subsequently, whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy

day stepped up to his ankles in mud. Other cities, as Granada, Seville,

Toledo, considered themselves rivals of Cordova. The palaces of the

khalifs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns might well look

down with supercilious contempt on the dwellings of the rulers of

Germany, France, and England, which were scarcely better than

stables--chimneyless, windowless, and with a hole in the roof for the

smoke to escape, like the wigwams of certain Indians. The Spanish

Mohammedans had brought with them all the luxuries and prodigalities of

Asia. [Sidenote: Their palaces and gardens.] Their residences stood

forth against the clear blue sky, or were embosomed in woods. They had

polished marble balconies, overhanging orange-gardens; courts with

cascades of water; shady retreats provocative of slumber in the heat of

the day; retiring-rooms vaulted with stained glass, speckled with gold,

over which streams of water were made to gush; the floors and walls were

of exquisite mosaic. Here, a fountain of quicksilver shot up in a

glistening spray, the glittering particles falling with a tranquil sound

like fairy bells; there, apartments into which cool air was drawn from

the flower-gardens, in summer, by means of ventilating towers, and in

winter through earthen pipes, or caleducts, imbedded in the walls--the

hypocaust, in the vaults below, breathing forth volumes of warm and

perfumed air through these hidden passages. The walls were not covered

with wainscot, but adorned with arabesques, and paintings of

agricultural scenes and views of Paradise. From the ceilings, corniced

with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung, one of which, it is said, was

so large that it contained 1804 lamps. Clusters of frail marble columns

surprised the beholder with the vast weights they bore. In the boudoirs

of the sultanas they were sometimes of verd antique, and incrusted with

lapis lazuli. The furniture was of sandal and citron wood, inlaid with

mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and precious

malachite. In orderly confusion were arranged vases of rock crystal,

Chinese porcelains, and tables of exquisite mosaic. The winter

apartments were hung with rich tapestry; the floors were covered with

embroidered Persian carpets. Pillows and couches, of elegant forms, were

scattered about the rooms, perfumed with frankincense. It was the

intention of the Saracen architect, by excluding the view of the

external landscape, to concentrate attention on his work; and since the

representation of the human form was religiously forbidden, and that

source of decoration denied, his imagination ran riot with the

complicated arabesques he introduced, and sought every opportunity of

replacing the prohibited works of art by the trophies and rarities of

the garden. For this reason, the Arabs never produced artists; religion

turned them from the beautiful, and made them soldiers, philosophers,

and men of affairs. Splendid flowers and rare exotics ornamented the

courtyards and even the inner chambers. Great care was taken to make due

provision for the cleanliness, occupation, and amusement of the inmates.

Through pipes of metal, water, both warm and cold, to suit the season of

the year, ran into baths of marble; in niches, where the current of air

could be artificially directed, hung dripping alcarazzas. [Sidenote:

Libraries and works of taste.] There were whispering-galleries for the

amusement of the women; labyrinths and marble play-courts for the

children; for the master himself, grand libraries. The Khalif Alhakem's

was so large that the catalogue alone filled forty volumes. He had also

apartments for the transcribing, binding, and ornamenting of books. A

taste for caligraphy and the possession of splendidly-illuminated

manuscripts seems to have anticipated in the khalifs, both of Asia and

Spain, the taste for statuary and paintings among the later popes of

Rome.

[Sidenote: The court of Abderrahman III.] Such were the palace and

gardens of Zehra, in which Abderrahman III. honoured his favourite

sultana. The edifice had 1200 columns of Greek, Italian, Spanish, and

African marble. Its hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls.

Through the long corridors of its seraglio black eunuchs silently

glided. The ladies of the harem, both wives and concubines, were the

most beautiful that could be found. To that establishment alone 6300

persons were attached, The body-guard of the sovereign was composed of

12,000 horsemen, whose cimeters and belts were studded with gold. This

was that Abderrahman who, after a glorious reign of fifty years, sat

down to count the number of days of unalloyed happiness he had

experienced, and could only enumerate fourteen. "Oh man!" exclaimed the

plaintive khalif, "put not thy trust in this present world."

[Sidenote: Social habits of the Moors.] No nation has ever excelled the

Spanish Arabs in the beauty and costliness of their pleasure-gardens. To

them we owe the introduction of very many of our most valuable

cultivated fruits, such as the peach. Retaining the love of their

ancestors for the cooling effect of water in a hot climate, they spared

no pains in the superfluity of fountains, hydraulic works, and

artificial lakes in which fish were raised for the table. Into such a

lake, attached to the palace of Cordova, many loaves were cast each day

to feed the fish. There were also menageries of foreign animals;

aviaries of rare birds; manufactories in which skilled workmen, obtained

from foreign countries, displayed their art in textures of silk, cotton,

linen, and all the miracles of the loom; in jewelry and filigree-work,

with which they ministered to the female pride of the sultanas and

concubines. Under the shade of cypresses cascades disappeared; among

flowering shrubs there were winding walks, bowers of roses, seats cut

out of the rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn in the living stone.

Nowhere was ornamental gardening better understood; for not only did the

artist try to please the eye as it wandered over the pleasant gradation

of vegetable colour and form--he also boasted his success in the

gratification of the sense of smell by the studied succession of

perfumes from beds of flowers.

[Sidenote: Their domestic life.] To these Saracens we are indebted for

many of our personal comforts. Religiously cleanly, it was not possible

for them to clothe themselves according to the fashion of the natives of

Europe, in a garment unchanged till it dropped to pieces of itself, a

loathsome mass of vermin, stench, and rags. No Arab who had been a

minister of state, or the associate or antagonist of a sovereign, would

have offered such a spectacle as the corpse of Thomas a Becket when his

haircloth shirt was removed. They taught us the use of the often-changed

and often-washed under-garment of linen or cotton, which still passes

among ladies under its old Arabic name. But to cleanliness they were not

unwilling to add ornament. Especially among women of the higher classes

was the love of finery a passion. Their outer garments were often of

silk, embroidered and decorated with gems and woven gold. So fond were

the Moorish women of gay colours and the lustre of chrysolites,

hyacinths, emeralds, and sapphires, that it was quaintly said that the

interior of any public building in which they were permitted to appear

looked like a flower-meadow in the spring besprinkled with rain.

[Sidenote: They cultivate literature, music,] In the midst of all this

luxury, which cannot be regarded by the historian with disdain, since in

the end it produced a most important result in the south of France, the

Spanish khalifs, emulating the example of their Asiatic compeers, and in

this strongly contrasting with the popes of Rome, were not only the

patrons, but the personal cultivators of all the branches of human

learning. One of them was himself the author of a work on polite

literature in not less than fifty volumes; another wrote a treatise on

algebra. When Zaryab the musician came from the East to Spain, the

Khalif Abderrahman rode forth to meet him in honour. The College of

Music in Cordova was sustained by ample government patronage, and

produced many illustrious professors.

[Sidenote: but disapprove of European mythology.] The Arabs never

translated into their own tongue the great Greek poets, though they so

sedulously collected and translated the Greek philosophers. Their

religious sentiments and sedate character caused them to abominate the

lewdness of our classical mythology, and to denounce indignantly any

connexion between the licentious, impure Olympian Jove and the Most High

God as an insufferable and unpardonable blasphemy. Haroun al Raschid had

gratified his curiosity by causing Homer to be translated into Syriac,

but he did not adventure on rendering the great epics into Arabic.

Notwithstanding this aversion to our graceful but not unobjectionable

ancient poetry, among them originated the Tensons, or poetic

disputations, carried afterward to perfection among the Troubadours;

from them, also, the Provencals learned to employ jongleurs. Across the

Pyrenees, literary, philosophical, and military adventurers were

perpetually passing; and thus the luxury, the taste, and above all, the

chivalrous gallantry and elegant courtesies of Moorish society found

their way from Granada and Cordova to Provence and Languedoc.

[Sidenote: The south of France contracts their tastes.] The French, and

German, and English nobles imbibed the Arab admiration of the horse;

they learned to pride themselves on skilful riding. Hunting and falconry

became their fashionable pastimes; they tried to emulate that Arab skill

which had produced the celebrated breed of Andalusian horses. It was a

scene of grandeur and gallantry; the pastimes were tilts and

tournaments. The refined society of Cordova prided itself in its

politeness. A gay contagion spread from the beautiful Moorish miscreants

to their sisters beyond the mountains; the south of France was full of

the witcheries of female fascinations, and of dancing to the lute and

mandolin. [Sidenote: Light literature spreads into Sicily and Italy.]

Even in Italy and Sicily the love-song became the favourite composition;

and out of these genial but not orthodox beginnings the polite

literature of modern Europe arose. The pleasant epidemic spread by

degrees along every hillside and valley. In monasteries, voices that had

vowed celibacy might be heard carolling stanzas of which St. Jerome

would hardly have approved; there was many a juicy abbot, who could

troll forth in jocund strains, like those of the merry sinners of Malaga

and Xeres, the charms of women and wine, though one was forbidden to the

Moslem and one to the monk. The sedate greybeards of Cordova had already

applied to the supreme judge to have the songs of the Spanish Jew,

Abraham Ibn Sahal, prohibited; for there was not a youth, nor woman, nor

child in the city who could not repeat them by heart. Their immoral

tendency was a public scandal. The light gaiety of Spain was reflected

in the coarser habits of the northern countries. It was an archdeacon of

Oxford who some time afterward sang,

"Mihi sit propositum in taberna mori,

Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,

Ut dicant, cum venerint angelorum chori;

'Deus sit propitius huic potatori,'" etc.

Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste for learning

and for elegant amenities found their way into Spain from all adjoining

countries; a practice in subsequent years still more indulged in, when

it became illustrated by the brilliant success of Gerbert, who, as we

have seen, passed from the Infidel University of Cordova to the papacy

of Rome.

[Sidenote: The Arabian school system.] The khalifs of the West carried

out the precepts of Ali, the fourth successor of Mohammed, in the

patronage of literature. They established libraries in all their chief

towns; it is said that not fewer than seventy were in existence. To

every mosque was attached a public school, in which the children of the

poor were taught to read and write, and instructed in the precepts of

the Koran. For those in easier circumstances there were academies,

usually arranged in twenty-five or thirty apartments, each calculated

for accommodating four students; the academy being presided over by a

rector. In Cordova, Granada, and other great cities, there were

universities frequently under the superintendence of Jews; the

Mohammedan maxim being that the real learning of a man is of more public

importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain. In

this they followed the example of the Asiatic khalif, Haroun al Raschid,

who actually conferred the superintendence of his schools on John Masue,

a Nestorian Christian. The Mohammedan liberality was in striking

contrast with the intolerance of Europe. Indeed, it may be doubted

whether at this time any European nation is sufficiently advanced to

follow such an example. In the universities some of the professors of

polite literature gave lectures on Arabic classical works; others taught

rhetoric or composition, or mathematics, or astronomy. From these

institutions many of the practices observed in our colleges were

derived. They held Commencements, at which poems were read and orations

delivered in presence of the public. They had also, in addition to these

schools of general learning, professional ones, particularly for

medicine.

[Sidenote: Cultivation of grammar, rhetoric, composition.] With a pride

perhaps not altogether inexcusable, the Arabians boasted of their

language as being the most perfect spoken by man. Mohammed himself, when

challenged to produce a miracle in proof of the authenticity of his

mission, uniformly pointed to the composition of the Koran, its

unapproachable excellence vindicating its inspiration. The orthodox

Moslems--the Moslems are those who are submissively resigned to the

Divine will--are wont to assert that every page of that book is indeed a

conspicuous miracle. It is not then surprising that, in the Arabian

schools, great attention was paid to the study of language, and that so

many celebrated grammarians were produced. By these scholars,

dictionaries, similar to those now in use, were composed; their

copiousness is indicated by the circumstance that one of them consisted

of sixty volumes, the definition of each word being illustrated or

sustained by quotations from Arab authors of acknowledged repute. They

had also lexicons of Greek, Latin, Hebrew; and cyclopedias such as the

Historical Dictionary of Sciences of Mohammed Ibn Abdallah, of Granada.

In their highest civilization and luxury they did not forget the

amusements of their forefathers--listening to the tale-teller, who never

failed to obtain an audience in the midst of Arab tents. Around the

evening fires in Spain the wandering literati exercised their wonderful

powers of Oriental invention, edifying the eager listeners by such

narrations as those that have descended to us in the Arabian Nights'

Entertainments. The more sober and higher efforts of the educated were,

of course, directed to pulpit eloquence, in conformity with the example

of all the great Oriental khalifs, and sanctified by the practice of the

Prophet himself. [Sidenote: Defects of their literature.] Their poetical

productions embraced all the modern minor forms--satires, odes, elegies,

etc.; but they never produced any work in the higher walks of poesy, no

epic, no tragedy. Perhaps this was due to their false fashion of valuing

the mechanical execution of a work. They were the authors and

introducers of rhyme; and such was the luxuriance and abundance of their

language, that, in some of their longest poems, the same rhyme is said

to have been used alternately from the beginning to the end. Where such

mechanical triumphs were popularly prized, it may be supposed that the

conception and spirit would be indifferent. Even among the Spanish women

there were not a few who, like Velada, Ayesha, Labana, Algasania,

achieved reputation in these compositions; and some of them were

daughters of khalifs. And this is the more interesting to us, since it

was from the Provencal poetry, the direct descendant of these efforts,

that European literature arose. Sonnets and romances at last displaced

the grimly-orthodox productions of the wearisome and ignorant fathers of

the Church.

If fiction was prized among the Spanish Arabs, history was held in not

less esteem. Every khalif had his own historian. The instincts of the

race are perpetually peeping out; not only were there historians of the

Commanders of the Faithful, but also of celebrated horses and

illustrious camels. In connexion with history, statistics were

cultivated; this having been, it may be said, a necessary study, from

the first enforced on the Saracen officers in their assessment of

tribute on conquered misbelievers, and subsequently continued as an

object of taste. [Sidenote: Their taste for practical science.] It was,

doubtless, a similar necessity, arising from their position, that

stamped such a remarkably practical aspect on the science of the Arabs

generally. Many of their learned men were travellers and voyagers,

constantly moving about for the acquisition or diffusion of knowledge,

their acquirements being a passport to them wherever they went, and a

sufficient introduction to any of the African or Asiatic courts. They

were thus continually brought in contact with men of affairs, soldiers

of fortune, statesmen, and became imbued with much of their practical

spirit; and hence the singularly romantic character which the

biographies of many of these men display, wonderful turns of prosperity,

violent deaths. The scope of their literary labours offers a subject

well worthy of meditation; it contrasts with the contemporary ignorance

of Europe. Some wrote on chronology; some on numismatics; some, now that

military eloquence had become objectless, wrote on pulpit oratory; some

on agriculture and its allied branches, as the art of irrigation. Not

one of the purely mathematical, or mixed, or practical sciences was

omitted. [Sidenote: Their continued inclination to the study of

medicine.] Out of a list too long for detailed quotation, I may recall a

few names. Assamh, who wrote on topography and statistics, a brave

soldier, who was killed in the invasion of France, A.D. 720; Avicenna,

the great physician and philosopher, who died A.D. 1037; Averroes, of

Cordova, the chief commentator on Aristotle, A.D. 1198. It was his

intention to unite the doctrines of Aristotle with those of the Koran.

To him is imputed the discovery of spots upon the sun. The leading idea

of his philosophy was the numerical unity of the souls of mankind,

though parted among millions of living individuals. He died at Morocco.

Abu Othman wrote on zoology; Alberuni, on gems--he had travelled to

India to procure information; Rhazes, Al Abbas, and Al Beithar, on

botany--the latter had been in all parts of the world for the purpose of

obtaining specimens. Ebn Zoar, better known as Avenzoar, may be looked

upon as the authority in Moorish pharmacy. Pharmacopoeias were published

by the schools, improvements on the old ones of the Nestorians: to them

may be traced the introduction of many Arabic words, such as syrup,

julep, elixir, still used among apothecaries. [Sidenote: Relics of the

Arab vocabulary.] A competent scholar might furnish not only an

interesting, but valuable book, founded on the remaining relics of the

Arab vocabulary; for, in whatever direction we may look, we meet, in the

various pursuits of peace and war, of letters and of science, Saracenic

vestiges. Our dictionaries tell us that such is the origin of admiral,

alchemy, alcohol, algebra, chemise, cotton, and hundreds of other words.

The Saracens commenced the application of chemistry, both to the theory

and practice of medicine, in the explanation of the functions of the

human body and in the cure of its diseases. [Sidenote: Their medicine

and surgery.] Nor was their surgery behind their medicine. Albucasis, of

Cordova, shrinks not from the performance of the most formidable

operations in his own and in the obstetrical art; the actual cautery and

the knife are used without hesitation. He has left us ample descriptions

of the surgical instruments then employed; and from him we learn that,

in operations on females in which considerations of delicacy intervened,

the services of properly instructed women were secured. How different

was all this from the state of things in Europe; the Christian peasant,

fever-stricken or overtaken by accident, hied to the nearest

saint-shrine and expected a miracle; the Spanish Moor relied on the

prescription or lancet of his physician, or the bandage and knife of his

surgeon.

[Sidenote: Liberality of the Asiatic khalifs.] In mathematics the

Arabians acknowledged their indebtedness to two sources, Greek and

Indian, but they greatly improved upon both. The Asiatic khalifs had

made exertions to procure translations of Euclid, Apollonius,

Archimedes, and other Greek geometers. Almaimon, in a letter to the

Emperor Theophilus, expressed his desire to visit Constantinople if his

public duties would have permitted. He requests of him to allow Leo the

mathematician to come to Bagdad to impart to him a portion of his

learning, pledging his word that he would restore him quickly and safely

again. "Do not," says the high-minded khalif, "let diversity of religion

or of country cause you to refuse my request. Do what friendship would

concede to a friend. In return, I offer you a hundred weight of gold, a

perpetual alliance and peace." True to the instincts of his race and the

traditions of his city, the Byzantine sourly and insolently refused the

request, saying that "the learning which had illustrated the Roman name

should never be imparted to a barbarian."

[Sidenote: Their great improvements in arithmetic.] From the Hindus the

Arabs learned arithmetic, especially that valuable invention termed by

us the Arabic numerals, but honourably ascribed by them to its proper

source, under the designation of "Indian numerals." They also entitled

their treatises on the subject "Systems of Indian Arithmetic." This

admirable notation by nine digits and cipher occasioned a complete

revolution in arithmetical computations. As in the case of so many other

things, the Arab impress is upon it; our word cipher, and its

derivatives, ciphering, etc., recall the Arabic word tsaphara or ciphra,

the name for the 0, and meaning that which is blank or void. Mohammed

Ben Musa, said to be the earliest of the Saracen authors on algebra, and

who made the great improvement of substituting sines for chords in

trigonometry, wrote also on this Indian system. He lived at the end of

the ninth century; before the end of the tenth it was in common use

among the African and Spanish mathematicians. Ebn Junis, A.D. 1008, used

it in his astronomical works. From Spain it passed into Italy, its

singular advantage in commercial computation causing it to be eagerly

adopted in the great trading cities. We still use the word algorithm in

reference to calculations. The study of algebra was intently cultivated

among the Arabs, who gave it the name it bears. Ben Musa, just referred

to, was the inventor of the common method of solving quadratic

equations. [Sidenote: Their astronomical discoveries.] In the

application of mathematics to astronomy and physics they had been long

distinguished. Almaimon had determined with considerable accuracy the

obliquity of the ecliptic. His result, with those of some other Saracen

astronomers, is as follows:

A.D. 830. Almaimon 23 deg. 35' 52"

" 879. Albategnius, at Aracte 23 deg. 35' 00

" 987. Aboul Wefa, at Bagdad 23 deg. 35' 00

" 995. Aboul Rihau, with a quadrant

of 25 feet radius 23 deg. 35' 00

" 1080. Arzachael 23 deg. 34' 00

Almaimon had also ascertained the size of the earth from the measurement

of a degree on the shore of the Red Sea--an operation implying true

ideas of its form, and in singular contrast with the doctrine of

Constantinople and Rome. While the latter was asserting, in all its

absurdity, the flatness of the earth, the Spanish Moors were teaching

geography in their common schools from globes. In Africa, there was

still preserved, with almost religious reverence, in the library at

Cairo, one of brass, reputed to have belonged to the great astronomer

Ptolemy. Al Idrisi made one of silver for Roger II., of Sicily; and

Gerbert used one which he had brought from Cordova in the school he

established at Rheims. It cost a struggle of several centuries,

illustrated by some martyrdoms, before the dictum of Lactantius and

Augustine could be overthrown. Among problems of interest that were

solved may be mentioned the determination of the length of the year by

Albategnius and Thebit Ben Corrah; and increased accuracy was given to

the correction of astronomical observations by Alhazen's great discovery

of atmospheric refraction. Among the astronomers, some composed tables;

some wrote on the measure of time; some on the improvement of clocks,

for which purpose they were the first to apply the pendulum; some on

instruments, as the astrolabe. The introduction of astronomy into

Christian Europe has been attributed to the translation of the works of

Mohammed Fargani. In Europe, also, the Arabs were the first to build

observatories; the Giralda, or tower of Seville, was erected under the

superintendence of Geber, the mathematician, A.D. 1196, for that

purpose. Its fate was not a little characteristic. After the expulsion

of the Moors it was turned into a belfry, the Spaniards not knowing what

else to do with it.

[Sidenote: Europe tries to hide its obligations to them.] I have to

deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has

contrived to put out of sight our scientific obligations to the

Mohammedans. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded

on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetuated for

ever. What should the modern astronomer say when, remembering the

contemporary barbarism of Europe, he finds the Arab Abul Hassan speaking

of tubes, to the extremities of which ocular and object diopters,

perhaps sights, were attached, as used at Meragha? what when he reads of

the attempts of Abderrahman Sufi at improving the photometry of the

stars? Are the astronomical tables of Ebn Junis (A.D. 1008), called the

Hakemite tables, or the Ilkanic tables of Nasser Eddin Tasi, constructed

at the great observatory just mentioned, Meragha, near Tauris,

A.D. 1259, or the measurement of time by pendulum oscillations,

and the methods of correcting astronomical tables by systematic

observations--are such things worthless indications of the mental state?

The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe, as, before long,

Christendom will have to confess; he has indelibly written it on the

heavens, as any one may see who reads the names of the stars on a common

celestial globe.

[Sidenote: Improvements in the arts of life.] Our obligations to the

Spanish Moors in the arts of life are even more marked than in the

higher branches of science, perhaps only because our ancestors were

better prepared to take advantage of things connected with daily

affairs. They set an example of skilful agriculture, the practice of

which was regulated by a code of laws. Not only did they attend to the

cultivation of plants, introducing very many new ones, they likewise

paid great attention to the breeding of cattle, especially the sheep and

horse. To them we owe the introduction of the great products, rice,

sugar, cotton, and also, as we have previously observed, nearly all the

fine garden and orchard fruits, together with many less important

plants, as spinach and saffron. To them Spain owes the culture of silk;

they gave to Xeres and Malaga their celebrity for wine. They introduced

the Egyptian system of irrigation by flood-gates, wheels, and pumps.

They also promoted many important branches of industry; improved the

manufacture of textile fabrics, earthenware, iron, steel; the Toledo

sword-blades were everywhere prized for their temper. The Arabs, on

their expulsion from Spain, carried the manufacture of a kind of

leather, in which they were acknowledged to excel, to Morocco, from

which country the leather itself has now taken its name. They also

introduced inventions of a more ominous kind--gunpowder and artillery.

The cannon they used appeared to have been made of wrought iron. But

perhaps they more than compensated for these evil contrivances by the

introduction of the mariner's compass.

[Sidenote: Their commerce.] The mention of the mariner's compass might

lead us correctly to infer that the Spanish Arabs were interested in

commercial pursuits, a conclusion to which we should also come when we

consider the revenues of some of their khalifs. That of Abderrahman III.

is stated at five and a half million sterling--a vast sum if considered

by its modern equivalent, and far more than could possibly be raised by

taxes on the produce of the soil. It probably exceeded the entire

revenue of all the sovereigns of Christendom taken together. From

Barcelona and other ports an immense trade with the Levant was

maintained, but it was mainly in the hands of the Jews, who, from the

first invasion of Spain by Musa, had ever been the firm allies and

collaborators of the Arabs. Together they had participated in the

dangers of the invasion; together they had shared its boundless success;

together they had held in irreverent derision, nay, even in contempt,

the woman-worshippers and polytheistic savages beyond the Pyrenees--as

they mirthfully called those whose long-delayed vengeance they were in

the end to feel; together they were expelled. Against such Jews as

lingered behind the hideous persecutions of the Inquisition were

directed. But in the days of their prosperity they maintained a merchant

marine of more than a thousand ships. They had factories and consuls on

the Tanais. With Constantinople alone they maintained a great trade; it

ramified from the Black Sea and East Mediterranean into the interior of

Asia; it reached the ports of India and China, and extended along the

African coast as far as Madagascar. Even in these commercial affairs the

singular genius of the Jew and Arabs shines forth. In the midst of the

tenth century, when Europe was about in the same condition that

Caffraria is now, enlightened Moors, like Abul Cassem, were writing

treatises on the principles of trade and commerce. As on so many other

occasions, on these affairs they have left their traces. The smallest

weight they used in trade was the grain of barley, four of which were

equal to one sweet pea, called in Arabic carat. We still use the grain

as our unit of weight, and still speak of gold as being so many carats

fine.

[Sidenote: Obligations to the Khalifs of the West.] Such were the

Khalifs of the West; such their splendour, their luxury, their

knowledge; such some of the obligations we are under to

them--obligations which Christian Europe, with singular insincerity, has

ever been fain to hide. The cry against the misbeliever has long

outlived the Crusades. Considering the enchanting country over which

they ruled, it was not without reason that they caused to be engraven on

the public seal, "The servant of the Merciful rests contented in the

decrees of God." What more, indeed, could Paradise give them? But,

considering also the evil end of all this happiness and pomp, this

learning, liberality, and wealth, we may well appreciate the solemn

truth which these monarchs, in their day of pride and power, grandly

wrote in the beautiful mosaics on their palace walls, an ever-recurring

warning to him who owes dominion to the sword, "There is no conqueror

but God."

[Sidenote: Examination of Mohammedan science.] The value of a

philosophical or political system may be determined by its fruits. On

this principle I examined in Vol. I., Chapter XII., the Italian system,

estimating its religious merit from the biographies of the popes, which

afford the proper criterion. In like manner, the intellectual state of

the Mohammedan nations at successive epochs may be ascertained from what

is its proper criterion, the contemporaneous scientific manifestation.

At the time when the Moorish influences in Spain began to exert a

pressure on the Italian system, there were several scientific writers,

fragments of whose works have descended to us. As an architect may judge

of the skill of the ancient Egyptians in his art from a study of the

Pyramids, so from these relics of Saracenic learning we may demonstrate

the intellectual state of the Mohammedan people, though much of their

work has been lost and more has been purposely destroyed.

[Sidenote: Review of the works of Alhazen.] Among such writers is

Alhazen; his date was about A.D. 1100. It appears that he resided both

in Spain and Egypt, but the details of his biography are very confused.

Through his optical works, which have been translated into Latin, he is

best known to Europe. [Sidenote: He corrects the theory of vision.] He

was the first to correct the Greek misconception as to the nature of

vision, showing that the rays of light come from external objects to the

eye, and do not issue forth from the eye, and impinge on external

things, as, up to his time, had been supposed. His explanation does not

depend upon mere hypothesis or supposition, but is plainly based upon

anatomical investigation as well as on geometrical discussion.

[Sidenote: Determines the function of the retina.] He determines that

the retina is the seat of vision, and that impressions made by light

upon it are conveyed along the optic nerve to the brain. Though it might

not be convenient, at the time when Alhazen lived, to make such an

acknowledgment, no one could come to these conclusions, nor, indeed,

know anything about these facts, unless he had been engaged in the

forbidden practice of dissection. [Sidenote: Explains single vision.]

With felicity he explains that we see single when we use both eyes,

because of the formation of the visual images on symmetrical portions of

the two retinas. To the modern physiologist the mere mention of such

things is as significant as the occurrence of an arch in the interior of

the pyramid is to the architect. But Alhazen shows that our sense of

sight is by no means a trustworthy guide, and that there are illusions

arising from the course which the rays of light may take when they

suffer refraction or reflexion. It is in the discussion of one of these

physical problems that his scientific greatness truly shines forth.

[Sidenote: Traces the course of a ray of light through the air.] He is

perfectly aware that the atmosphere decreases in density with increase

of height; and from that consideration he shows that a ray of light,

entering it obliquely, follows a curvilinear path which is concave

toward the earth; and that, since the mind refers the position of an

object to the direction in which the ray of light from it enters the

eye, the result must be an illusion as respects the starry bodies; they

appear to us, to use the Arabic term, nearer to the _zenith_ than they

actually are, and not in their true place. [Sidenote: Astronomical

refraction.] We see them in the direction of the tangent to the curve of

refraction as it reaches the eye. Hence also he shows that we actually

see the stars, and the sun, and the moon before they have risen and

after they have set--a wonderful illusion. He shows that in its passage

through the air the curvature of a ray increases with the increasing

density, and that its path does not depend on vapours that chance to be

present, but on the variation of density in the medium. [Sidenote: The

horizontal sun and moon.] To this refraction he truly refers the

shortening, in their vertical diameter, of the horizontal sun and moon;

to its variations he imputes the twinkling of the fixed stars. The

apparent increase of size of the former bodies when they are in the

horizon he refers to a mental deception, arising from the presence of

intervening terrestrial objects. [Sidenote: Explains the twilight.] He

shows that the effect of refraction is to shorten the duration of night

and darkness by prolonging the visibility of the sun, and considering

the reflecting action of the air, he deduces that beautiful explanation

of the nature of twilight--the light that we perceive before the rising

and after the setting of the sun--which we accept at the present time as

true. [Sidenote: Determines the height of the atmosphere.] With

extraordinary acuteness, he applies the principles with which he is

dealing to the determination of the height of the atmosphere, deciding

that its limit is nearly 58-1/2 miles.

All this is very grand. Shall we compare it with the contemporaneous

monk miracles and monkish philosophy of Europe? It would make a profound

impression if communicated for the first time to a scientific society in

our own age. Nor perhaps does his merit end here. If the Book of the

Balance of Wisdom, for a translation of which we are indebted to M.

Khanikoff, the Russian consul-general at Tabriz, be the production of

Alhazen, of which there seems to be internal proof, it offers us

evidence of a singular clearness in mechanical conception for which we

should scarcely have been prepared, and, if it be not his, at all events

it indisputably shows the scientific acquirements of his age. [Sidenote:

The weight of the air.] In that book is plainly set forth the connexion

between the weight of the atmosphere and its increasing density. The

weight of the atmosphere was therefore understood before Torricelli.

This author shows that a body will weigh differently in a rare and in a

dense atmosphere; that its loss of weight will be greater in proportion

as the air is more dense. [Sidenote: Principles of hydrostatics.] He

considers the force with which plunged bodies will rise through heavier

media in which they are immersed, and discusses the submergence of

floating bodies, as ships upon the sea. He understands the doctrine of

the centre of gravity. [Sidenote: Theory of the balance.] He applies it

to the investigation of balances and steelyards, showing the relations

between the centre of gravity and the centre of suspension--when those

instruments will set and when they will vibrate. He recognizes gravity

as a force; asserts that it diminishes with the distance; but falls into

the mistake that the diminution is as the distance, and not as its

square. [Sidenote: Gravity; capillary attraction; the hydrometer.] He

considers gravity as terrestrial, and fails to perceive that it is

universal--that was reserved for Newton. He knows correctly the relation

between the velocities, spaces, and times of falling bodies, and has

very distinct ideas of capillary attraction. He improves the

construction of that old Alexandrian invention, the hydrometer--the

instrument which, in a letter to his fair but pagan friend Hypatia, the

good Bishop of Ptolemais, Synesius, six hundred years previously,

requests her to have made for him in Alexandria, as he wishes to try the

wines he is using, his health being a little delicate. [Sidenote: Tables

of specific gravities.] The determinations of the densities of bodies,

as given by Alhazen, approach very closely to our own; in the case of

mercury they are even more exact than some of those of the last century.

I join, as, doubtless, all natural philosophers will do, in the pious

prayer of Alhazen, that, in the day of judgment, the All-Merciful will

take pity on the soul of Abur-Raihan, because he was the first of the

race of men to construct a table of specific gravities; and I will ask

the same for Alhazen himself, since he was the first to trace the

curvilinear path of a ray of light through the air. Though more than

seven centuries part him from our times, the physiologists of this age

may accept him as their compeer, since he received and defended the

doctrine now forcing its way, of the progressive development of animal

forms. [Sidenote: The theory of development of organisms.] He upheld the

affirmation of those who said that man, in his progress, passes through

a definite succession of states; not, however, "that he was once a bull,

and was then changed to an ass, and afterwards into a horse, and after

that into an ape, and finally became a man." This, he says, is only a

misrepresentation by "common people" of what is really meant. The

"common people" who withstood Alhazen have representatives among us,

themselves the only example in the Fauna of the world of that

non-development which they so loudly affirm. At the best they are only

passing through some of the earlier forms of that series of

transmutations to which the devout Mohammedan in the above quotation

alludes.

The Arabians, with all this physical knowledge, do not appear to have

been in possession of the thermometer, though they knew the great

importance of temperature measures, employing the areometer for that

purpose. They had detected the variation in density of liquids by heat,

but not the variation in volume. In their measures of time they were

more successful; they had several kinds of clepsydras. A balance

clepsydra is described in the work from which I am quoting. [Sidenote:

The pendulum clock.] But it was their great astronomer, Ebn Junis, who

accomplished the most valuable of all chronometric improvements. He

first applied the pendulum to the measure of time. Laplace, in the fifth

note to his Systeme du Monde, avails himself of the observations of this

philosopher, with those of Albategnius and other Arabians, as

incontestable proof of the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth's

orbit. [Sidenote: Astronomical works of Ebn Junis.] He states, moreover,

that the observation of Ebn Junis of the obliquity of the ecliptic,

properly corrected for parallax and refraction, gives for the year A.D.

1000 a result closely approaching to the theoretical. He also mentions

another observation of Ebn Junis, October 31, A.D. 1007, as of much

importance in reference to the great inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn.

[Sidenote: The Arabic numerals.] I have already remarked that, in the

writings of this great Arabian, the Arabic numerals and our common

arithmetical processes are currently used. From Africa and Spain they

passed into Italy, finding ready acceptance among commercial men, who

recognised at once their value, and, as William of Malmesbury says,

being a wonderful relief to the "sweating calculators;" an epithet of

which the correctness will soon appear to any one who will try to do a

common multiplication or division problem by the aid of the old Roman

numerals. It is said that Gerbert--Pope Sylvester--was the first to

introduce a knowledge of them into Europe; he had learned them at the

Mohammedan university of Cordova. It is in allusion to the cipher, which

follows the 9, but which, added to any of the other digits, increases by

tenfold its power, that, in a letter to his patron, the Emperor Otho

III., with humility he playfully but truly says, "I am like the last of

all the numbers."

[Sidenote: Arabian philosophy.] The overthrow of the Roman by the Arabic

numerals foreshadowed the result of a far more important--a

political--contest between those rival names. But, before showing how

the Arabian intellect pressed upon Rome, and the convulsive struggles of

desperation which Rome made to resist it, I must for a moment consider

the former under another point of view, and speak of Saracen philosophy.

[Sidenote: The writings of Algazzali.] And here Algazzali shall be my

guide. He was born A.D. 1058.

Let us hear him speak for himself. He is relating his attempt to detach

himself from the opinions which he had imbibed in his childhood: "I said

to myself, 'My aim is simply to know the truth of things; consequently,

it is indispensable for me to ascertain what is knowledge.' Now it was

evident to me that certain knowledge must be that which explains the

object to be known in such a manner that no doubt can remain, so that in

future all error and conjecture respecting it must be impossible.

[Sidenote: The certitude of knowledge.] Not only would the understanding

then need no efforts to be convinced of certitude, but security against

error is in such close connexion with knowledge, that, even were an

apparent proof of falsehood to be brought forward, it would cause no

doubt, because no suspicion of error would be possible. Thus, when I

have acknowledged ten to be more than three, if any one were to say, 'On

the contrary, three is more than ten, and to prove the truth of my

assertion, I will change this rod into a serpent,' and if he were to

change it, my conviction of his error would remain unshaken. His

manoeuvre would only produce in me admiration for his ability. I should

not doubt my own knowledge.

"Then was I convinced that knowledge which I did not possess in this

manner, and respecting which I had not this certainty, could inspire me

with neither confidence nor assurance; and no knowledge without

assurance deserves the name of knowledge.

"Having examined the state of my own knowledge, I found it divested of

all that could be said to have these qualities, unless perceptions of

the senses and irrefragable principles were to be considered such.

[Sidenote: Fallibility of the senses.] I then said to myself, 'Now,

having fallen into this despair, the only hope of acquiring

incontestable convictions is by the perceptions of the senses and by

necessary truths.' Their evidence seemed to me to be indubitable. I

began, however, to examine the objects of sensation and speculation, to

see if they possibly could admit of doubt. Then doubts crowded upon me

in such numbers that my incertitude became complete. Whence results the

confidence I have in sensible things? The strongest of all our senses is

sight; and yet, looking at a shadow, and perceiving it to be fixed and

immovable, we judge it to be deprived of movement; nevertheless,

experience teaches us that, when we return to the same place an hour

after, the shadow is displaced, for it does not vanish suddenly, but

gradually, little by little, so as never to be at rest. If we look at

the stars, they seem to be as small as money-pieces; but mathematical

proofs convince us that they are larger than the earth. These and other

things are judged by the senses, but rejected by reason as false. I

abandoned the senses, therefore, having seen all my confidence in their

truth shaken.

"'Perhaps,' said I, 'there is no assurance but in the notions of reason,

that is to say, first principles, as that ten is more than three; the

same thing cannot have been created and yet have existed from all

eternity; to exist and not to exist at the same time is impossible.'

[Sidenote: Fallibility of reason.] "Upon this the senses replied, 'What

assurance have you that your confidence in reason is not of the same

nature as your confidence in us? When you relied on us, reason stepped

in and gave us the lie; had not reason been there, you would have

continued to rely on us. Well, may there not exist some other judge

superior to reason, who, if he appeared, would refute the judgments of

reason in the same way that reason refuted us? The non-appearance of

such a judge is no proof of his non-existence.'

[Sidenote: The nature of dreams.] "I strove in vain to answer the

objection, and my difficulties increased when I came to reflect on

sleep. I said to myself, 'During sleep, you give to visions a reality

and consistence, and you have no suspicion of their untruth. On

awakening, you are made aware that they were nothing but visions. What

assurance have you that all you feel and know when you are awake does

actually exist? It is all true as respects your condition at that

moment; but it is nevertheless possible that another condition should

present itself which should be to your awakened state that which to your

awakened state is now to you sleep; so that, as respects this higher

condition, your waking is but sleep.'"

It would not be possible to find in any European work a clearer

statement of the scepticism to which philosophy leads than what is thus

given by this Arabian. Indeed, it is not possible to put the argument in

a more effective way. His perspicuity is in singular contrast with the

obscurity of many metaphysical writers.

[Sidenote: Intellectual despair.] "Reflecting on my situation, I found

myself bound to this world by a thousand ties, temptations assailing me

on all sides. I then examined my actions. The best were those relating

to instruction and education, and even there I saw myself given up to

unimportant sciences, all useless in another world. Reflecting on the

aim of my teaching, I found it was not pure in the sight of the Lord. I

saw that all my efforts were directed toward the acquisition of glory to

myself. Having, therefore, distributed my wealth, I left Bagdad and

retired into Syria, where I remained two years in solitary struggle with

my soul, combating my passions, and exercising myself, in the

purification of my heart and in preparation for the other world."

This is a very beautiful picture of the mental struggles and the actions

of a truthful and earnest man. In all this the Christian philosopher can

sympathize with the devout Mohammedan. After all, they are not very far

apart. Algazzali is not the only one to whom such thoughts have

occurred, but he has found words to tell his experience better than any

other man. And what is the conclusion at which he arrives? [Sidenote:

Algazzali's ages of man.] The life of man, he says, is marked by three

stages: "the first, or infantile stage, is that of pure sensation; the

second, which begins at the age of seven, is that of understanding; the

third is that of reason, by means of which the intellect perceives the

necessary, the possible, the absolute, and all those higher objects

which transcend the understanding. But after this there is a fourth

stage, when another eye is opened, by which man perceives things hidden

from others--perceives all that will be--perceives the things that

escape the perceptions of reason, as the objects of reason escape the

understanding, and as the objects of the understanding escape the

sensitive faculty. This is prophetism." Algazzali thus finds a

philosophical basis for the rule of life, and reconciles religion and

philosophy.

* * * * *

And now I have to turn from Arabian civilized life, its science, its

philosophy, to another, a repulsive state of things. With reluctance I

come back to the Italian system, defiling the holy name of religion with

its intrigues, its bloodshed, its oppression of human thought, its

hatred of intellectual advancement. [Sidenote: Renewal of the operation

of Mohammedan influences.] Especially I have now to direct attention to

two countries, the scenes of important events--countries in which the

Mohammedan influences began to take effect and to press upon Rome. These

are the South of France and Sicily.

Innocent III. had been elected pope at the early age of thirty-seven

years, A.D. 1198. The papal power had reached its culminating point. The

weapons of the Church had attained their utmost force. In Italy, in

Germany, in France and England, interdicts and excommunications

vindicated the pontifical authority, as in the cases of the Duke of

Ravenna, the Emperor Otho, Philip Augustus of France, King John of

England. [Sidenote: Interference of Innocent III. in France.] In each of

these cases it was not for the sake of sustaining great moral principles

or the rights of humanity that the thunder was launched--it was in

behalf of temporary political interests; interests that, in Germany,

were sustained at the cost of a long war, and cemented by assassination;

in France, strengthened by the well-tried device of an intervention in a

matrimonial broil--the domestic quarrel of the king and queen about

Agnes of Meran. "Ah! happy Saladin!" said the insulted Philip, when his

kingdom was put under interdict; "he has no pope above him. I too will

turn Mohammedan."

[Sidenote: In Spain and Portugal.] So, likewise, in Spain, Innocent

interfered in the matrimonial life of the King of Leon. The remorseless

venality of the papal government was felt in every direction. Portugal

had already been advanced to the dignity of a kingdom on payment of an

annual tribute to Rome. The King of Aragon held his kingdom as feudatory

to the pope.

[Sidenote: In England; denounces Magna Charta.] In England, Innocent's

interference assumed a different aspect. He attempted to assert his

control over the Church in spite of the king, and put the nation under

interdict because John would not permit Stephen Langton to be Archbishop

of Canterbury. It was utterly impossible that affairs could go on with

such an empire within an empire. For his contumacy, John was

excommunicated; but, base as he was, he defied his punishment for four

years. Hereupon his subjects were released from their allegiance, and

his kingdom offered to anyone who would conquer it. In his extremity,

the King of England is said to have sent a messenger to Spain, offering

to become a Mohammedan. The religious sentiment was then no higher in

him than it was, under a like provocation, in the King of France, whose

thoughts turned in the same direction. But, pressed irresistibly by

Innocent, John was compelled to surrender his realm, agreeing to pay to

the pope, in addition to Peter's pence, 1000 marks a year as a token of

vassalage. When the prelates whom he had refused or exiled returned, he

was compelled to receive them on his knees--humiliations which aroused

the indignation of the stout English barons, and gave strength to those

movements which ended in extorting Magna Charta. Never, however, was

Innocent more mistaken than in the character of Stephen Langton. John

had, a second time, formally surrendered his realm to the pope, and done

homage to the legate for it; but Stephen Langton was the first--at a

meeting of the chiefs of the revolt against the king, held in London,

August 25th, 1213--to suggest that they should demand a renewal of the

charter of Henry I. From this suggestion Magna Charta originated. Among

the miracles of the age, he was the greatest miracle of all; his

patriotism was stronger than his profession. The wrath of the pontiff

knew no bounds when he learned that the Great Charter had been conceded.

In his bull, he denounced it as base and ignominious; he anathematized

the king if he observed it; he declared it null and void. It was not the

policy of the Roman court to permit so much as the beginnings of such

freedom. The appointment of Simon Langton to the archbishopric of York

was annulled. One De Gray was substituted for him. It illustrated the

simony into which the papal government had fallen, that De Gray had

become, in these transactions, indebted to Rome ten thousand pounds.

[Sidenote: The drain of money from that country.] In fact, through the

operation of the Crusades, all Europe was tributory to the pope. He had

his fiscal agents in every metropolis; his travelling ones wandering in

all directions, in every country, raising revenue by the sale of

dispensations for all kinds of offences, real and fictitious--money for

the sale of appointments, high and low--a steady drain of money from

every realm. Fifty years after the time of which we are speaking, Robert

Grostete, the Bishop of Lincoln and friend of Roger Bacon, caused to be

ascertained the amount received by foreign ecclesiastics in England. He

found it to be thrice the income of the king himself. This was on the

occasion of Innocent IV. demanding provision to be made for three

hundred additional Italian clergy by the Church of England, and that one

of his nephews--a mere boy--should have a stall in Lincoln cathedral.

[Sidenote: Goading of Europe into a new crusade.] While thus Innocent

III. was interfering and intriguing with every court, and laying every

people under tribute, he did not for a moment permit his attention to be

diverted from the Crusades, the singular advantages of which to the

papacy had now been fully discovered. They had given to the pope a

suzerainty in Europe, the control of its military as well as its

monetary resources. Not that a man like Innocent could permit himself to

be deluded by any hopes of eventual success. The crusades must

inevitably prove, so far as their avowed object was concerned, a

failure. The Christian inhabitants of Palestine were degraded and

demoralized beyond description. Their ranks were thinned by apostasy to

Mohammedanism. In Europe, not only the laity begun to discover that the

money provided for the wars in the Holy Land was diverted from its

purpose, and in some inexplicable manner, found its way into Italy--even

the clergy could not conceal their suspicions that the proclamation of a

crusade was merely the preparation for a swindle. Nevertheless, Innocent

pressed forward his schemes, goading on Christendom by upbraiding it

with the taunts of the Saracens. "Where," they say, "is your God, who

can not deliver you out of our hands? Behold! we have defiled your

sanctuaries; we have stretched forth our arm; we have taken at the first

assault, we hold in despite of you, those your desirable places, where

your superstition had its beginning. Where is your God? Let him arise

and protect you and himself." "If thou be the Son of God, save thyself

if thou canst; redeem the land of thy birth from our hands. Restore thy

cross, that we have taken, to the worshippers of the Cross." With great

difficulty, however, Innocent succeeded in preparing the fourth crusade,

A.D. 1202. The Venetians consented to furnish a fleet of transports. But

the expedition was quickly diverted from its true purpose; the Venetians

employing the Crusaders for the capture of Zara from the King of

Hungary. [Sidenote: The crusade is used for the seizure of

Constantinople.] Still worse, and shameful to be said--partly from the

lust of plunder, and partly through ecclesiastical machinations--it

again turned aside for an attack upon Constantinople, and took that city

by storm A.D. 1204, thereby establishing Latin Christianity in the

Eastern metropolis, but, alas! with bloodshed, rape, and fire. On the

night of the assault more houses were burned than could be found in any

three of the largest cities in France. [Sidenote: Sack of that city by

the Catholics.] Even Christian historians compare with shame the

storming of Constantinople by the Catholics with the capture of

Jerusalem by Saladin. Pope Innocent himself was compelled to protest

against enormities that had outrun his intentions. He says: "They

practised fornications, incests, adulteries in the sight of men. They

abandoned matrons and virgins, consecrated to God, to the lewdness of

grooms. They lifted their hands against the treasures of the

churches--what is more heinous, the very consecrated vessels--tearing

the tablets of silver from the very altars, breaking in pieces the most

sacred things, carrying off crosses and relics." In St. Sophia, the

silver was stripped from the pulpit; an exquisite and highly-prized

table of oblation was broken in pieces; the sacred chalices were turned

into drinking-cups; the gold fringe was ripped off the veil of the

sanctuary. Asses and horses were led into the churches to carry off the

spoil. A prostitute mounted the patriarch's throne, and sang, with

indecent gestures, a ribald song. The tombs of the emperors were rifled;

and the Byzantines saw, at once with amazement and anguish, the corpse

of Justinian--which even decay and putrefaction had for six centuries

spared in his tomb--exposed to the violation of a mob. It had been

understood among those who instigated these atrocious proceedings that

the relics were to be brought into a common stock and equitably divided

among the conquerors! but each ecclesiastic seized and secreted whatever

he could. The idolatrous state of the Eastern Church is illustrated by

some of these relics. [Sidenote: The relics found there,] Thus the Abbot

Martin obtained for his monastery in Alsace the following inestimable

articles: 1. A spot of the blood of our Saviour; 2. A piece of the true

cross; 3. The arm of the Apostle James; 4. Part of the skeleton of John

the Baptist; 5.--I hesitate to write such blasphemy--"A bottle of the

milk of the Mother of God!" [Sidenote: and works of art destroyed.] In

contrast with the treasures thus acquired may be set relics of a very

different kind, the remains of ancient art which they destroyed: 1. The

bronze charioteers from the Hippodrome; 2. The she-wolf suckling Romulus

and Remus; 3. A group of a Sphinx, river-horse, and crocodile; 4. An

eagle tearing a serpent; 5. An ass and his driver, originally cast by

Augustus in memory of the victory of Actium; 6. Bellerophon and Pegasus;

7. A bronze obelisk; 8. Paris presenting the apple to Venus; 9. An

exquisite statute of Helen; 10. The Hercules of Lysippus; 11. A Juno,

formerly taken from the temple at Samos. The bronzes were melted into

coin, and thousands of manuscripts and parchments were burned. From that

time the works of many ancient authors disappeared altogether.

[Sidenote: The pope and the doge divide the spoil.] With well-dissembled

regret, Innocent took the new order of things in the city of

Constantinople under his protection. The bishop of Rome at last

appointed the Bishop of Constantinople. The acknowledgment of papal

supremacy was complete. Rome and Venice divided between them the

ill-gotten gains of their undertaking. If anything had been wanting to

open the eyes of Europe, surely what had thus occurred should have been

enough. The pope and the doge--the trader in human credulity and the

trader of the Adriatic--had shared the spoils of a crusade meant by

religious men for the relief of the Holy Land. [Sidenote: Works of art

carried to Venice.] The bronze horses, once brought by Augustus from

Alexandria, after his victory over Antony and transferred from Rome to

Constantinople by its founder, were set before the Church of St Mark.

They were the outward and visible sign of a less obvious event that was

taking place. For to Venice was brought a residue of the literary

treasures that had escaped the fire and the destroyer; and while her

comrades in the outrage were satisfied, in their ignorance, with

fictitious relics, she took possession of the poor remnant of the

glorious works of art, of letters, and of science. Through these was

hastened the intellectual progress of the West.

[Sidenote: The punishment of Constantinople.] So fell Constantinople,

and fell by the parricidal hands of Christians. The days of retribution

for the curse she had inflicted on Western civilization were now

approaching. In these events she received a first instalment of her

punishment. Three hundred years previously, the historian Luitprand, who

was sent by the Emperor Otho I. to the court of Nicephorus Phocas, says

of her, speaking as an eye-witness, "That city, once so wealthy, so

flourishing, is now famished, lying, perjured, deceitful, rapacious,

greedy, niggardly, vainglorious;" and since Luitprand's time she had

been pursuing a downward career. It might have been expected that the

concentration of all the literary and scientific treasures of the Roman

empire in Constantinople would have given rise to great mental

vigour--that to Europe she would have been a brilliant focus of light.

[Sidenote: The literary worthlessness of that city.] But when the works

on jurisprudence by Tribonian, under Justinian, have been mentioned,

what is there that remains? There is Stephanus, the grammarian, who

wrote a dictionary, and Procopius, the historian, who was secretary to

Belisarius in his campaigns. There is then a long interval almost

without a literary name, to Theophylact Simocatta, and to the Ladder of

Paradise of John Climacus. The mental excitement of the iconoclastic

dispute presents us with John of Damascus; and the ninth century, the

Myriobiblion and Nomacanon of Photius. Then follows Constantine

Porphyrogenitus, vainly and voluminously composing; and Basil II.

doubtless truly expresses the opinion of the time, as he certainly does

the verdict of posterity respecting the works of his country, when he

says that learning is useless and unprofitable lumber. The Alexiad of

Anna Comnena, and the history of Byzantine affairs by Nicephorous

Bryennius, hardly redeem their age. This barrenness and worthlessness

was the effect of the system introduced by Constantine the Great. The

long line of emperors had been consistent in one policy--the repression

or expulsion of philosophy; and yet it is the uniform testimony of those

ages that the Eastern convents were full of secret Platonism--that in

stealth, the doctrines of Plato were treasured up in the cells of

Asiatic monks. The Byzantines had possessed in art and letters all the

best models in the world, yet in a thousand years they never produced

one original. Millions of Greeks never advanced one step in philosophy

or science--never made a single practical discovery, composed no poem,

no tragedy worth perusal. The spirit of their superficial literature--if

literature it can be called--is well shadowed forth in the story of the

patriarch Photius, who composed at Bagdad, at a distance from his

library, an analysis of 280 works he had formerly read. [Sidenote: The

absurdity of its intellectual pursuits.] The final age of the city was

signalized by the Baarlamite controversy respecting the mysterious light

of Mount Thabor--the possibility of producing a beatific vision and of

demonstrating, by an unceasing inspection of the navel for days and

nights together, the existence of two eternal principles, a visible and

an invisible God!

[Sidenote: Cause of all this.] What was it that produced this

barrenness, this intellectual degradation in Constantinople? The tyranny

of Theology over Thought.

But with the capture of Constantinople by the Latins other important

events were occurring. Everywhere an intolerance of papal power was

engendering. [Sidenote: Heresy follows literature.] The monasteries

became infected, and even from the holy lips of monks words of ominous

import might be heard. In the South of France the intellectual

insurrection first took form. There the influence of the Mohammedans and

Jews beyond the Pyrenees began to manifest itself. [Sidenote: Spread of

gay literature from Spain.] The songs of gallantry; tensons, or poetical

contests of minstrels; satires of gay defiance; rivalry in praise of the

ladies; lays, serenades, pastourelles, redondes, such as had already

drawn forth the condemnation of the sedate Mussulmen of Cordova, had

gradually spread through Spain and found a congenial welcome in France.

[Sidenote: The Troubadours and Trouveres.] The Troubadours were singing

in the langue d'Oc in the south, and the Trouveres in the langue d'Oil

in the north. Thence the merry epidemic spread to Sicily and Italy. Men

felt that a relief from the grim ecclesiastic was coming. Kings, dukes,

counts, knights, prided themselves on their gentle prowess. The humbler

minstrels found patronage among ladies and at courts: sly satires

against the priests, and amorous ditties, secured them a welcome among

the populace. When the poet was deficient in voice, a jongleur went with

him to sing; and often there was added the pleasant accompaniment of a

musical instrument. The Provencal or langue d'Oc was thus widely

diffused; it served the purposes of those unacquainted with Latin, and

gave the Italians a model for thought and versification, to Europe the

germs of many of its future melodies. While the young were singing, the

old were thinking; while the gay were carried away with romance, the

grave were falling into heresy. [Sidenote: Commencing resistance of

Rome.] But, true to her instincts and traditions, the Church had shown

her determination to deal rigorously with all such movements. Already,

A.D. 1134, Peter de Brueys had been burned in Languedoc for denying

infant baptism, the worship of the cross, and transubstantiation.

Already Henry the Deacon, the disciple of Peter, had been disposed of by

St. Bernard. Already the valleys of Piedmont were full of Waldenses.

Already the Poor Men of Lyons were proclaiming the portentous doctrine

that the sanctity of a priest lay not in his office, but in the manner

of his life. They denounced the wealth of the Church, and the

intermingling of bishops in bloodshed and war; they denied

transubstantiation, invocation of saints, purgatory, and especially

directed their hatred against the sale of indulgences for sin. The rich

cities of Languedoc were full of misbelievers. They were given up to

poetry, music, dancing. Their people, numbers of whom had been in the

Crusades or in Spain, had seen the Saracens. Admiration had taken the

place of detestation. Amid shouts of laughter, the Troubadours went

through the land, wagging their heads, and slyly winking their eyes, and

singing derisive songs about the amours of the priests, and amply

earning denunciations as lewd blasphemers and atheists. [Sidenote:

Innocent III. alarmed at the spread of heresy.] Here was a state of

things demanding the attention of Innocent. The methods he took for its

correction have handed his name down to the maledictions of posterity.

He despatched a missive to the Count of Toulouse--who already lay under

excommunication for alleged intermeddling with the rights of the

clergy--charging him with harbouring heretics and giving offices of

emolument to Jews. The count was a man of gay life, having, in emulation

of some of his neighbours across the Pyrenees, not fewer than three

wives. His offences of that kind were, however, eclipsed by those with

which he was now formally charged. It chanced that, in the ensuing

disputes, the pope's legate was murdered. There is no reason to believe

that Raymond was concerned in the crime. [Sidenote: He proclaims a

crusade against the Count of Toulouse,] But the indignant pope held him

responsible; instantly ordered to be published in all directions his

excommunication, and called upon Western Christendom to engage in a

crusade against him, offering, to him whoever chose to take them, the

wealth and possessions of the offender. So thoroughly was he seconded by

the preaching of the monks, that half a million of men, it is affirmed,

took up arms.

[Sidenote: and disciplines him.] For the count there remained nothing

but to submit. He surrendered up his strong places, was compelled to

acknowledge the crimes alleged against him, and the justice of his

punishment. He swore that he would no longer protect heretics. Stripped

naked to his middle, with a rope round his neck, he was led to the

altar, and there scourged. But the immense army that had assembled was

not to be satisfied by these inflictions on an individual, though the

pope might be. They had come for blood and plunder, and blood and

plunder they must have. Then followed such scenes of horror as the sun

had never looked on before. The army was officered by Roman and French

prelates; bishops were its generals, an archdeacon its engineer.

[Sidenote: Atrocities of the Crusaders in the South of France.] It was

the Abbot Arnold, the legate of the pope, who, at the capture of

Beziers, was inquired of by a soldier, more merciful or more weary of

murder than himself, how he should distinguish and save the Catholic

from the heretic. "Kill them all," he exclaimed; "God will know his

own." At the Church of St. Mary Magdalene 7000 persons were massacred,

the infuriated Crusaders being excited to madness by the wicked

assertion that these wretches had been guilty of the blasphemy of

saying, in their merriment, "S. Mariam Magdalenam fuisse concubinam

Christi." It was of no use for them to protest their innocence. In the

town twenty thousand were slaughtered, and the place then fired, to be

left a monument of papal vengeance. At the massacre of Lavaur 400 people

were burned in one pile; it is remarked that "they made a wonderful

blaze, and went to burn everlastingly in hell." Language has no powers

to express the atrocities that took place at the capture of the

different towns. Ecclesiastical vengeance rioted in luxury. The soil was

steeped in the blood of men--the air polluted by their burning.

[Sidenote: Institution of the Inquisition.] From the reek of murdered

women, mutilated children, and ruined cities, the Inquisition, that

infernal institution, arose. Its projectors intended it not only to put

an end to public teaching, but even to private thought. In the midst of

these awful events, Innocent was called to another tribunal to render

his account. He died A.D. 1216.

[Sidenote: Establishment of mendicant orders.] It was during the

pontificate of this great criminal that the mendicant orders were

established. The course of ages had brought an unintelligibility into

public worship. The old dialects had become obsolete; new languages were

forming. Among those classes, daily increasing in number, whose minds

were awakening, an earnest desire for instruction was arising.

Multitudes were crowding to hear philosophical discourses in the

universities, and heresy was spreading very fast. But it was far from

being confined to the intelligent. The lower orders furnished heretics

and fanatics too. To antagonize the labours of these zealots--who, if

they had been permitted to go on unchecked, would quickly have

disseminated their doctrines through all classes of society--the

Dominican and Franciscan orders were founded. They were well adapted for

their duty. It was their business to move among the people, preaching to

them, in their own tongue, wherever an audience could be collected. The

scandal under which the Church was labouring because of her wealth could

not apply to these persons who lived by begging alms. Their function was

not to secure their own salvation, but that of other men.

[Sidenote: St. Dominic.] St. Dominic was born A.D. 1170. His birth and

life were adorned with the customary prodigies. Miracles and wonders

were necessary for anything to make a sensation in the West. His was an

immaculate conception, he was free from original sin. He was regarded as

the adopted son of the Virgin; some were even disposed to assign him a

higher dignity than that. He began his operations in Languedoc; but, as

the prospect opened out before him, he removed from that unpromising

region to Rome, the necessary centre of all such undertakings as his.

Here he perfected his organization; instituted his friars, nuns, and

tertiaries; and consolidated his pretensions by the working of many

miracles. He exorcised three matrons, from whom Satan issued forth under

the form of a great black cat, which ran up a bell-rope and vanished. A

beautiful nun resolved to leave her convent. Happening to blow her nose,

it dropped off into her handkerchief; but, at the fervent prayer of St.

Dominic, it was replaced, and in gratitude, tempered by fear, she

remained. St. Dominic could also raise the dead. Nevertheless, he died

A.D. 1221, having worthily obtained the title of the burner and slayer

of heretics. To him has been attributed the glory or the crime of being

the inventor of "the Holy Inquisition." In a very few years his order

boasted of nearly 500 monasteries, scattered over Europe, Asia, Africa.

[Sidenote: St. Francis.] St. Francis, the compeer of St. Dominic, was

born A.D. 1182. His followers delighted to point out, as it would seem

not without irreverence, a resemblance to the incidents that occurred at

the birth of our Lord. A prophetess foretold it; he was born in a

stable; angels sung forth peace and good-will in the air; one, under the

form of Simeon, bore him to baptism. In early life he saw visions and

became ecstatic. His father, Peter Bernardini, a respectable tradesman,

endeavoured to restrain his eccentricities, at first by persuasion, but

eventually more forcibly, appealing for assistance to the bishop, to

prevent the young enthusiast from squandering his means in alms to the

poor. On that functionary's gently remonstrating, and pointing out to

Francis his filial obligations, he stripped himself naked before the

people, exclaiming, "Peter Bernardini was my father; I have now but one

Father, he that is in heaven." At this affecting renunciation of all

earthly possessions and earthly ties, those present burst into tears,

and the good bishop threw his own mantle over him. When a man has come

to this pass, there is nothing he cannot accomplish.

[Sidenote: Authorization of these orders.] It is related that, when

application was first made to Innocent to authorize the order, he

refused; but, very soon recognizing the advantages that would accrue, he

gave it his hearty patronage. So rapid was the increase, that in A.D.

1219 it numbered not fewer than five thousand brethren. It was founded

on the principles of chastity, poverty, obedience. They were to live on

alms, but never to receive money. After a life of devotion to the

Church, St. Francis attained his reward, A.D. 1226. Two years previous

to his death, by a miraculous intervention there were impressed on his

person marks answering to the wounds on our Saviour. These were the

celebrated stigmata. A black growth, like nails, issued forth from the

palms of his hands and his feet; a wound from which blood and water

distilled opened in his side. It is not to be wondered at that these

prodigies met with general belief. This was the generation which

received as inestimable relics, through Andrew of Hungary, the skulls of

St. Stephen and St. Margaret, the hands of St. Bartholomew and St.

Thomas, a slip of the rod of Aaron, and one of the water-pots of the

marriage at Cana in Galilee.

[Sidenote: Influence derived from these orders.] The papal government

quickly found the prodigious advantage arising from the institution of

these mendicant orders. Vowed to poverty, living on alms, hosts of

friars, begging and barefoot, pervaded all Europe, coming in contact,

under the most favourable circumstances, with the lowest grades of

society. They lived and moved among the populace, and yet were held

sacred. The accusations of dissipation and luxury so forcibly urged

against the regular clergy were altogether inapplicable to these

rope-bound, starving fanatics. Through them the Italian government had

possession of the ear of Europe. The pomp of worship in an unknown

tongue, the gorgeous solemnities of the Church, were far more than

compensated by the preaching of these missionaries, who held forth in

the vernacular wherever an audience could be had. Among the early ones,

some had been accustomed to a wandering life. Brother Pacificus, a

disciple of St. Francis, had been a celebrated Trouvere. In truth, they

not only warded off the present pressing danger, but through them the

Church retained her hold on the labouring classes for several subsequent

centuries. The pope might truly boast that the Poor Men of the Church

were more than a match for the Poor Men of Lyons. Their influence began

to diminish only when they abandoned their essential principles, joined

in the common race for plunder, and became immensely rich.

[Sidenote: Introduction of auricular confession.] Not only did Innocent

III. thus provide himself with an ecclesiastical militia suited to meet

the obviously impending insurrection, he increased his power greatly but

insidiously by the formal introduction of auricular confession. It was

by the fourth Lateran Council that the necessity of auricular confession

was first formally established. Its aim was that no heretic should

escape, and that the absent priest should be paramount even in the

domestic circle. In none but a most degraded and superstitious society

can such an infamous institution be tolerated. It invades the sacred

privacy of life--makes a man's wife, children, and servants his spies

and accusers. When any religious system stands in need of such a social

immorality, we may be sure that it is irrecoverably diseased, and

hastening to its end.

[Sidenote: Development of casuistry.] Auricular confession led to an

increasing necessity for casuistry, though that science was not fully

developed until the time of the Jesuits, when it gave rise to an

extensive literature, with a lax system and a false morality, guiding

the penitent rather with a view to his usefulness to the Church than to

his own reformation, and not hesitating at singular indecencies in its

portion having reference to married life.

[Sidenote: Attitude of Innocent III.] Great historical events often find

illustrations in representative men. Such is the case in the epoch we

are now considering. On one side stands Innocent, true to the instincts

of his party, interfering with all the European nations; launching forth

his interdicts and excommunications; steeped in the blood of French

heretics; hesitating at no atrocity, even the outrage and murder of

women and children, the ruin of flourishing cities, to compass his

plans; in all directions, under a thousand pretences, draining Europe of

its money; calling to his aid hosts of begging friars; putting forth

imposture miracles; organizing the Inquisition, and invading the privacy

of life by the contrivance of auricular confession.

[Sidenote: Attitude of Frederick II.] On the other side stands Frederick

II., the Emperor of Germany. His early life, as has been already

mentioned, was spent in Sicily, in familiar intercourse with Jews and

Arabs, and Sicily to the last was the favoured portion of his dominions.

To his many other accomplishments he added the speaking of Arabic as

fluently as a Saracen. He delighted in the society of Mohammedan ladies,

who thronged his court. His enemies asserted that his chastity was not

improved by his associations with these miscreant beauties. The Jewish

and Mohammedan physicians and philosophers taught him to sneer at the

pretensions of the Church. [Sidenote: His Mohammedan tendencies.] From

such ridicule it is but a short step to the shaking off of authority. At

this time the Spanish Mohammedans had become widely infected with

irreligion; their greatest philosophers were infidel in their own

infidelity. The two sons of Averroes of Cordova are said to have been

residents at Frederick's court. Their father was one of the ablest men

their nation ever produced: an experienced astronomer, he had translated

the Almagest, and, it is affirmed, was the first who actually saw a

transit of Mercury across the sun; a voluminous commentator on the works

of Plato and Aristotle, but a disbeliever in all revelation. Even of

Mohammedanism he said, alluding to the prohibition which the Prophet had

enjoined on the use of the flesh of swine, "That form of religion is

destitute of every thing that can commend it to the approval of any

understanding, unless it be that of a hog." [Sidenote: He cultivates

light literature and heresy.] In the Sicilian court, surrounded by such

profane influences, the character of the young emperor was formed.

Italian poetry, destined for such a brilliant future, here first found a

voice in the sweet Sicilian dialect. The emperor and his chancellor were

cultivators of the gay science, and in the composition of sonnets were

rivals. A love of amatory poetry had spread from the South of France.

With a view to the recovery of the Holy Land, Honorius III. had made

Frederick marry Yolinda de Lusignan, the heiress of the kingdom of

Jerusalem. It was not, therefore, to be wondered at that Frederick's

frivolities soon drew upon him the indignation of the gloomy Pope

Gregory IX., the very first act of whose pontificate was to summon a new

crusade. [Sidenote: Refuses to go on a crusade, and then goes.] To the

exhortations and commands of the aged pope the emperor lent a most

reluctant ear, postponing, from time to time, the period of his

departure, and dabbling in doubtful negotiations, through his Mohammedan

friends, with the Sultan of Egypt. He embarked at last, but in three

days returned. The octogenarian pope was not to be trifled with, and

pronounced his excommunication. Frederick treated it with ostensible

contempt, but appealed to Christendom, accusing Rome of avaricious

intentions. [Sidenote: Presumes to rebuke the pontifical government.]

Her officials, he said, were travelling in all directions, not to preach

the Word of God, but to extort money. "The primitive Church, founded on

poverty and simplicity, brought forth numberless saints. The Romans are

now rolling in wealth. What wonder that the walls of the Church are

undermined to the base, and threaten utter ruin." For saying this he

underwent a more tremendous excommunication; but his partisans in Rome,

raising an insurrection, expelled the pope. And now Frederick set sail,

of his own accord, on his crusading expedition. On reaching the Holy

Land, he was received with joy by the knights and pilgrims; but the

clergy held aloof from him as an excommunicated person. The pontiff had

despatched a swift-sailing ship to forbid their holding intercourse with

him. [Sidenote: His friendship with the sultan,] His private

negotiations with the Sultan of Egypt now matured. The Christian camp

was thronged with infidel delegates: some came to discuss philosophical

questions, some were the bearers of presents. Elephants and a bevy of

dancing-girls were courteously sent by the sultan to his friend, who, it

is said, was not insensible to the witcheries of these Oriental

beauties. He wore a Saracen dress. In his privacy he did not hesitate to

say, "I came not here to deliver the Holy City, but to maintain my

estimation among the Franks." To the sultan he appealed, "Out of your

goodness, surrender to me Jerusalem as it is, that I may be able to lift

up my head among the kings of Christendom." [Sidenote: who gives up

Jerusalem to him.] Accordingly, the city was surrendered to him. The

object of his expedition was accomplished. But the pope was not to be

deceived by such collusions. He repudiated the transactions altogether,

and actually took measures to lay Jerusalem and our Saviour's sepulchre

under interdict, and this in the face of the Mohammedans. [Sidenote: The

pope denounces him.] While the emperor proclaimed his successes to

Europe, the pope denounced them as coming from the union of Christ and

Belial; alleging four accusations against Frederick: 1. That he had

given the sword which he had received from the altar of St. Peter for

the defence of the faith, as a present to the Sultan of Babylon; 2. That

he had permitted the preaching of the Koran in the holy Temple itself;

3. That he had excluded the Christians of Antioch from his treaty; 4.

That he had bound himself, if a Christian army should attempt to cleanse

the Temple and city from Mohammedan defilements, to join the Saracens.

Frederick crowned himself at Jerusalem, unable to find any ecclesiastic

who dared to perform the ceremony, and departed from the Holy Land. It

was time, for Rome was intriguing against him at home, a false report of

his death having been industriously circulated. He forthwith prepared to

enter on his conflict with the pontiff. [Sidenote: Frederick establishes

Saracen posts in Italy.] His Saracen colonies at Nocera and Luceria, in

Italy, could supply him with 30,000 Mussulman soldiers, with whom it was

impossible for his enemies to tamper. He managed to draw over the

general sentiment of Europe to his side, and publicly offered to convict

the pope himself of negotiations with the infidels; but his antagonist,

conveniently impressed with a sudden horror of shedding blood, gave way,

and peace between the parties was made. It lasted nearly nine years.

[Sidenote: His political institutions.] In this period, the intellectual

greatness of Frederick, and the tendencies of the influences by which

he was enveloped, were strikingly manifested. In advance of his age,

he devoted himself to the political improvement of Sicily. He

instituted representative parliaments; enacted a system of wise

laws; asserted the principle of equal rights and equal burdens,

and the supremacy of the law over all, even the nobles and the

Church. He provided for the toleration of all professions, Jewish

and Mohammedan, as well as Christian; emancipated all the serfs

of his domains; instituted cheap justice for the poor; forbade

private war; regulated commerce--prophetically laying down some

of those great principles, which only in our own time have been

finally received as true; established markets and fairs; collected

large libraries; caused to be translated such works as those of

Aristotle and Ptolemy; built menageries for natural history; founded

in Naples a great university; patronized the medical college at

Salernum; made provisions for the education of promising but indigent

youths. All over the land splendid architectural triumphs were created.

Under him the Italian language first rose above a patois. Sculpture,

painting, and music were patronized. His chancellor is said to have

been the author of the oldest sonnet.

[Sidenote: They are denounced.] In the eye of Rome all this was an

abomination. Were human laws to take the precedence of the law of God?

Were the clergy to be degraded to a level with the laity? Were the Jew

and the Mohammedan to be permitted their infamous rites? Was this

new-born product of the insolence of human intellect--this so-called

science--to be brought into competition with theology, the

heaven-descended? Frederick and his parliaments, his laws and

universities, his libraries, his statues, his pictures and sonnets, were

denounced. Through all, the ever-watchful eye of the Church discerned

the Jew and the Saracen, and held them up to the abhorrence of Europe.

But Gregory was not unwilling to show what could be done by himself in

the same direction. He caused a compilation of the Decretals to be

issued, intrusting the work to one Raymond de Pennaforte, who had

attained celebrity as a literary opponent of the Saracens. It is amusing

to remark that even this simple work of labour could not be promulgated

without the customary embellishments. It was given out that an angel

watched over Pennaforte's shoulder all the time he was writing.

[Sidenote: Outbreak of his quarrel with the pope,] Meantime an unceasing

vigilance was maintained against the dangerous results that would

necessarily ensue from Frederick's movements. In Rome, many heretics

were burned; many condemned to imprisonment for life. The quarrel

between the pope and the emperor was resumed; the latter being once more

excommunicated, and his body delivered over to Satan for the good of his

soul. Again Frederick appealed to all the sovereigns of Christendom. He

denounced the pontiff as an unworthy vicar of Christ, "who sits in his

court like a merchant, weighing out dispensations for gold--himself

writing and signing the bulls, perhaps counting the money. He has but

one cause of enmity against me, that I refused to marry to his niece my

natural son Enzio, now King of Sardinia." "In the midst of the Church

sits a frantic prophet, a man of falsehood, a polluted priest." To this

Gregory replied. [Sidenote: who rouses Christendom against him.] The

tenor of his answer may be gathered from its commencement: "Out of the

sea a beast is arisen, whose name is written all over 'Blasphemy.'" "He

falsely asserts that I am enraged at his refusing his consent to the

marriage of my niece with his natural son. He lies more impudently when

he says that I have pledged my faith to the Lombards." "In truth, this

pestilent king maintains, to use his own words, that the world has been

deceived by three impostors--Jesus Christ, Moses, and Mohammed; that of

these two died in honour, and the third was hanged on a tree. Even now,

he has asserted, distinctly and loudly, that those are fools who aver

that God, the Omnipotent Creator of the world, was born of a woman."

This was in allusion to the celebrated and mysterious book, "De Tribus

Impostoribus," in the authorship of which Frederick was accused of

having been concerned.

The pontiff had touched the right chord. The begging friars, in all

directions, added to the accusations. "He has spoken of the Host as a

mummery; he has asked how many gods might be made out of a corn-field;

he has affirmed that, if the princes of the world would stand by him, he

would easily make for mankind a better faith and a better rule of life;

he has laid down the infidel maxim that 'God expects not a man to

believe anything that cannot be demonstrated by reason.'" The opinion of

Christendom rose against Frederick; its sentiment of piety was shocked.

The pontiff proceeded to depose him, and offered his crown to Robert of

France. [Sidenote: Frederick uses his Saracen troops.] But the Mussulman

troops of the emperor were too much for the begging friars of the pope.

His Saracens were marching across Italy in all directions. The pontiff

himself would have inevitably fallen into the hands of his mortal enemy

had he not found a deliverance in death, A.D. 1241. Frederick had

declared that he would not respect his sacred person, but, if

victorious, would teach him the absolute supremacy of the temporal

power. It was plain that he had no intention of respecting a religion

which he had not hesitated to denounce as "a mere absurdity."

Whatever may have been the intention of Innocent IV.--who, after the

short pontificate of Celestine IV. and an interval, succeeded--he was

borne into the same policy by the irresistible force of circumstances.

The deadly quarrel with the emperor was renewed. To escape his wrath,

Innocent fled to France, and there in safety called the Council of

Lyons. In a sermon, he renewed all the old accusations--the heresy and

sacrilege--the peopling of Italian cities with Saracens, for the purpose

of overturning the Vicar of Christ with those infidels--the friendship

with the Sultan of Egypt--the African courtesans--the perjuries and

blasphemies. [Sidenote: Excommunication of Frederick.] Then was

proclaimed the sentence of excommunication and deposition. The pope and

the bishops inverted the torches they held in their hands until they

went out, uttering the malediction, "So may he be extinguished." Again

the emperor appealed to Europe, but this time in vain. Europe would not

forgive him his blasphemy. Misfortunes crowded upon him; his friends

forsook him; his favourite son, Enzio, was taken prisoner; and he never

smiled again after detecting his intimate, Pietro de Vinea, whom he had

raised from beggary, in promising the monks that he would poison him.

The day had been carried by a resort to all means justifiable and

unjustifiable, good and evil. For thirty years Frederick had combated

the Church and the Guelph party, but he sunk in the conflict at last.

When Innocent heard of the death of his foe, he might doubtless well

think that what he had once asserted had at last become true: "We are no

mere mortal man; we have the place of God upon earth." [Sidenote: The

triumph at his death.] In his address to the clergy of Sicily he

exclaimed, "Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad; for the

lightning and tempest wherewith God Almighty has so long menaced your

heads have been changed by the death of this man into refreshing zephyrs

and fertilizing dews." This is that superhuman vengeance which hesitates

not to strike the corpse of a man. Rome never forgives him who has told

her of her impostures face to face; she never forgives him who has

touched her goods.

[Sidenote: Power of the Church at this moment.] The Saracenic influences

had thus found an expression in the South of France and in Sicily,

involving many classes of society, from the Poor Men of Lyons to the

Emperor of Germany; but in both places they were overcome by the

admirable organization and unscrupulous vigour of the Church. She

handled her weapons with singular dexterity, and contrived to extract

victory out of humiliation and defeat. As always since the days of

Constantine, she had partisans in every city, in every village, in every

family. And now it might have appeared that the blow she had thus

delivered was final, and that the world, in contentment, must submit to

her will. She had again succeeded in putting her iron heel on the neck

of knowledge, had invoked against it the hatred of Christendom, and

reviled it as the monstrous but legitimate issue of the detested

Mohammedanism.

[Sidenote: Vitality of Frederick's principles.] But the fate of men

is by no means an indication of the fate of principles. The fall of

the Emperor Frederick was not followed by the destruction of the

influences he represented. These not only survived him, but were

destined, in the end, to overcome the power which had transiently

overthrown them. We are now entering on the history of a period

which offers not only exterior opposition to the current doctrines,

but, what is more ominous, interior mutiny. Notwithstanding the

awful persecutions in the South of France--notwithstanding the

establishment of auricular confession as a detective means, and

the Inquisition as a weapon of punishment--notwithstanding the

influence of the French king, St. Louis, canonized by the grateful

Church--heresy, instead of being extirpated, extended itself among

the laity, and even spread among the ecclesiastical ranks. [Sidenote:

St. Louis.] St. Louis, the representative of the hierarchical party,

gathers influence only from the circumstance of his relations with

the Church, of whose interests he was a fanatical supporter. So far

as the affairs of his people were concerned, he can hardly be looked

upon as anything better than a simpleton. His reliance for checking

the threatened spread of heresy was a resort to violence--the faggot

and the sword. In his opinion, "A man ought never to dispute with

a misbeliever except with his sword, which he ought to drive into

the heretic's entrails as far as he can." It was the signal glory

of his reign that he secured for France that inestimable relic,

the crown of thorns. [Sidenote: His superstition,] This peerless

memento of our Saviour's passion he purchased in Constantinople

for an immense sum. But France was doubly and enviably enriched;

for the Abbey of St. Denys was in possession of another, known to

be equally authentic! Besides the crown, he also secured the sponge

that was dipped in vinegar; the lance of the Roman soldier; also the

swaddling-clothes in which the Saviour had first lain in the manger;

the rod of Moses; and part of the skull of John the Baptist. These

treasures he deposited in the "Holy Chapel" of Paris.

[Sidenote: and crusade.] Under the papal auspices, St. Louis determined

on a crusade; and nothing, except what we have already mentioned, can

better show his mental imbecility than his disregard of all suitable

arrangements for it. He thought that, provided the troops could be made

to lead a religious life, all would go well; that the Lord would fight

his own battles, and that no provisions of a military or worldly kind

were needed. In such a pious reliance on the support of God, he reached

Egypt with his expedition in June, A.D. 1249. The ever-conspicuous

valour of the French troops could maintain itself in the battle-field,

but not against pestilence and famine. [Sidenote: Its total failure.] In

March of the following year, as might have been foreseen, King Louis was

the prisoner of the Sultan, and was only spared the indignity of being

carried about as a public spectacle in the Mohammedan towns by a ransom,

at first fixed at a million of Byzantines, but by the merciful Sultan

voluntarily reduced one fifth. Still, for a time, Louis lingered in the

East, apparently stupefied by considering how God could in this manner

have abandoned a man who had come to his help. Never was there a crusade

with a more shameful end.

[Sidenote: The Inquisition attempts to arrest the intellectual revolt.]

Notwithstanding the support of St. Louis in his own dominions, the

intellectual revolt spread in every direction, and that not only in

France, but throughout all Catholic Europe. In vain the Inquisition

exerted all its terrors--and what could be more terrible than its form

of procedure? It sat in secret; no witness, no advocate was present; the

accused was simply informed that he was charged with heresy, it was not

said by whom. He was made to swear that he would tell the truth as

regarded himself, and also respecting other persons, whether parents,

children, friends, strangers. If he resisted he was committed to a

solitary dungeon, dark and poisonous; his food was diminished;

everything was done to drive him into insanity. Then the familiars of

the Holy Office, or others in its interests, were by degrees to work

upon him to extort confession as to himself or accusations against

others. But this fearful tribunal did not fail to draw upon itself the

indignation of men. Its victims, condemned for heresy, were perishing in

all directions. The usual apparatus of death, the stake and faggots, had

become unsuited to its wholesale and remorseless vengeance. The convicts

were so numerous as to require pens made of stakes and filled with

straw. [Sidenote: Burnings of heretics.] It was thus that, before the

Archbishop of Rheims and seventeen other prelates, one hundred and

eighty-three heretics, together with their pastor, were burned alive.

Such outrages against humanity cannot be perpetrated without bringing in

the end retribution. In other countries the rising indignation was

exasperated by local causes; in England, for instance, by the continual

intrusion of Italian ecclesiastics into the richest benefices. Some of

them were mere boys; many were non-residents; some had not so much as

seen the country from which they drew their ample wealth. The Archbishop

of York was excommunicated, with torches and bells, because he would not

bestow the abundant revenues of his Church on persons from beyond the

Alps; but for all this "he was blessed by the people." The archbishopric

of Canterbury was held, A.D. 1241, by Boniface of Savoy, to whom had

been granted by the pope the first-fruits of all the benefices in his

province. His rapacity was boundless. From all the ecclesiastics and

ecclesiastical establishments under his control he extorted enormous

sums. Some, who, like the Dean of St. Paul's, resisted him, were

excommunicated; some, like the aged Sub-prior of St. Bartholomew's, were

knocked down by his own hand. Of a military turn--he often wore a

cuirass under his robes--he joined his brother, the Archbishop of Lyons,

who was besieging Turin, and wasted the revenues of his see in England

in intrigues and petty military enterprises against his enemies in

Italy.

[Sidenote: Mutiny arising in the Church.] Not among the laity alone was

there indignation against such a state of things. Mutiny broke out in

the ranks of the Church. It was not that among the humbler classes the

sentiment of piety had become diminished. [Sidenote: The Shepherds and

Flagellants.] The Shepherds, under the leadership of the Master of

Hungary, passed by tens of thousands through France to excite the clergy

to arouse for the rescue of good King Louis, in bondage among the

Mussulmen. They asserted that they were commissioned by the Virgin, and

were fed miraculously by the Master. Originating in Italy, the

Flagellants also passed, two by two, through every city, scourging

themselves for thirty-three days in memory of the years of our Lord.

These dismal enthusiasts emulated each other, and were rivals of the

mendicant friars in their hatred of the clergy. [Sidenote: The mendicant

friars are affected.] The mendicants were beginning to justify that

hesitation which Innocent displayed when he was first importuned to

authorize them. The papacy had reaped from these orders much good; it

was now to gather a fearful evil. They had come to be learned men

instead of ferocious bigots. They were now, indeed, among the most

cultivated men of their times. They had taken possession of many of the

seats of learning. In the University of Paris, out of twelve chairs of

theology, three only were occupied by the regular clergy. The mendicant

friars had entered into the dangerous paths of heresy. They became

involved in that fermenting leaven that had come from Spain, and among

them revolt broke out.

[Sidenote: Rome prohibits the study of science.] With an unerring

instinct, Rome traced the insurrection to its true source. We have only

to look at the measures taken by the popes to understand their opinion.

Thus Innocent III., A.D. 1215, regulated, by his legate, the schools of

Paris, permitting the study of the Dialectics of Aristotle, but

forbidding his physical and metaphysical works and their commentaries.

These had come through an Arabic channel. A rescript of Gregory XI.,

A.D. 1231, interdicts those on natural philosophy until they had been

purified by the theologians of the Church. These regulations were

confirmed by Clement IV. A.D. 1265.