1143. MANUEL.
1183. ANDRONICUS I.
1185. ISAAC II., (the Angel.)
1195. ALEXIS III.
Kings of France.
A.D.
PHILIP I.--(_cont._)
1108. LOUIS VI.
1137. LOUIS VII.
1180. PHILIP AUGUSTUS.
King of Scotland.
A.D.
1165. WILLIAM.
1147. SECOND CRUSADE, led by Louis VII. of France.
1189. THIRD CRUSADE, led by Frederick Barbarossa, Philip Augustus, and
Richard of England.
Authors.
BERNARD, (1091-1153,) BECKET, (1119-1170,) EUSTATHIUS, THEODORUS,
BALSAMON, PETER LOMBARD, WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY, (1096-1143.)
THE TWELFTH CENTURY
ELEVATION OF LEARNING--POWER OF THE CHURCH--THOMAS À-BECKETT.
The effect of the first Crusade had been so prodigious that Europe
was forced to pause to recover from its exhaustion. More than half a
million had left their homes in 1095; ten thousand are supposed to have
returned; three hundred were left with Godfrey in the Christian city
of Jerusalem; and what had become of all the rest? Their bones were
whitening all the roads that led to the Holy Land; small parties of
them must have settled in despair or weariness in towns and villages on
their way; many were sold into slavery by the rapacity of the feudal
lords whose lands they traversed; and when the madness of the time
had originated a Crusade of Children, and ninety thousand boys of ten
or twelve years of age had commenced their journey, singing hymns and
anthems, and hoping to conquer the infidels with the spiritual arms of
innocence and prayer, the whole band melted away before they reached
the coast. Barons, and counts, and bishops, and dukes, all swooped down
upon the devoted march, and before many weeks' journeying was achieved
the Crusade was brought to a close. Most of the children had died of
fatigue or starvation, and the survivors had been seized as legitimate
prey and sold as slaves.
Meantime the brave and heroic Godfrey--the true hero of the expedition,
for he elevated the ordinary virtues of knighthood and feudalism into
the nobler feelings of generosity and romance--gained the object of
his earthly ambition. Having prayed at the sepulchre, and cleansed
the temple from the pollution of the unbelievers' presence, wearied
with all his labours, and feeling that his task was done, he sank
into deep despondency and died. [A.D. 1100.] Volunteers in small
numbers had occasionally gone eastward to support the Cross Ambition,
thoughtlessness, guilt, and fanaticism sent their representatives
to aid the conqueror of Judea; and his successors found themselves
strong enough to bid defiance to the Turkish power. They carried all
their Western ideas along with them. They had their feudal holdings
and knightly quarrels. The most venerated names in Holy Writ were
desecrated by unseemly disputes or the most frivolous associations. The
combination, indeed, of their native habits and their new acquisitions
might have moved them to laughter, if the men of the twelfth century
had been awake to the ridiculous. There was a Prince of Galilee,
a Marquis of Joppa, a Baron of Sidon, a Marquis of Tyre. Our own
generation has renewed the strange juxtaposition of the East and West
by the language employed in steamboats and railways. Trains will soon
cross the Desert with warning whistles and loud jets of steam and
all the phraseology of an English line. For many years the waters of
the mysterious Red Sea have been dashed into foam by paddles made in
Liverpool or Glasgow. But these are visitors of a very different kind
from Bohemund and Baldwyn. Baldwyn, indeed, seemed less inclined than
his companions to carry his European training to its full extent. He
Orientalized himself in a small way, perhaps in imitation of Alexander
the Great, and, dressed in the long flowing robes of the country,
he made his attendants serve him with prostrations, and almost with
worship. He married a daughter of the land, and in other respects
endeavoured to ingratiate himself with the Saracens by treating them
with kindness and consideration. The bravery of those warriors of
the Desert endeared them to the rough-handed barons of the West. It
was impossible to believe that men with that one pre-eminent virtue
could be so utterly hateful as they had been represented; and when
the intercourse between the races became more unrestrained, even the
religious asperities of the Crusaders became mitigated, they found
so many points of resemblance between their faiths. There was not an
honour which the Christian paid to the Virgin which was not yielded
by the Mohammedan to Fatima. All the doctrines of the Christian creed
found their counterparts in the professions of the followers of the
Law. Allah was an incarnation of the Deity; and even the mystery of
the Trinity was not indistinctly seen in the legend of the three rays
which darted from the idea of Mohammed in the mind of the Creator.
While this community of sentiment softened the animosity of the
crusading leaders towards their enemies, a still greater community of
suffering and danger softened their feelings towards their followers
and retainers. In that scarcity of knights and barons, the value of a
serf's arm or a mechanic's skill was gratefully acknowledged. There had
been many mutual kindnesses between the two classes all through those
tedious and blood-stained journeys and desperate fights. A peasant had
brought water to a wounded lord when he lay fainting on the burning
soil; a workman had had the revelation of the true crown: they were
no longer the property and slaves of the noble, who considered them
beings of a different blood, but fellow-soldiers, fellow-sufferers,
fellow-Christians. They were not spoken of in the insulting language
of the West, and called "our thralls," "our slaves," "our bondsmen;"
at the worst they were called "our poor," and lifted by that word into
the quality of brothers and men. The precepts of the gospel in favour
of the humble and suffering were felt for the first time to have an
application to the men who had toiled on their lands and laboured in
their workshops, but who were now their support in the shock of battle,
and companions when the victory was won. Only they were poor; they had
no lands; they had no arms upon their shields. So Baldwyn gave them
large tracts of country; and they became vassals and feudatories for
fertile fields near Jericho and rich farms on the Jordan. They were
gentlemen by the strength of their own right hands, as the fathers of
their lords and suzerains had been.
But the amalgamation of race and condition was not carried on in the
East more surely or more extensively than in the West. The expenses
of preparing for the pilgrimage had impoverished the richest of the
lords of the soil. They had been forced to borrow money and to mortgage
their estates to the burghers of the great commercial towns, which,
quietly and unobserved, had spread themselves in many parts of France
and Italy. Genoa had already attained such a height of prosperity that
she could furnish vessels for the conveyance of half the army of the
Crusade. In return for her cargoes of knights and fighting-men, she
brought back the wealth of the East,--silks, and precious stones, and
spices, and vessels of gold and silver. The necessities of the time
made the money-holder powerful, and the men who swung the hammer, and
shaped the sword, and embroidered the banner, and wove the tapestry,
indispensable. And what hold, except kindness, and privilege, and
grants of land, had the baron on the skilful smith or the ingenious
weaver who could carry his skill and energy wherever he chose? Besides,
the multitudes who had been carried away from the pursuits of industry
to fall at the siege of Antioch or perish by thirst in the Desert had
given a greatly-increased value to their fellow-labourers left at
home. While the castle became deserted, and all the pomp of feudalism
retreated from its crumbling walls, the village which had grown in
safety under its protection flourished as much as ever--flourished,
indeed, so much that it rapidly became a town, and boasted of rich
citizens who could help to pay off their suzerain's encumbrances
and present him with an offering on his return. The impoverished
and grateful noble could do no less, in gratitude for gift and
contribution, than secure them in the enjoyment of greater franchises
and privileges than they had possessed before. The Church also gained
by the diminished number and power of the lords, who had seized upon
tithe and offering and had looked with disdain and hostility on the
aggressions of the lower clergy. True to its origin, the Church still
continued the leader of the people, in opposition to the pretensions
of the feudal chiefs. It was still a democratic organization for the
protection of the weak against the powerful; and though we have seen
that the bishops and other dignitaries frequently assumed the state and
practised the cruelties of the grasping and illiterate baron, public
opinion, especially in the North of Europe, was not revolted against
these instances of priestly domination, for whatever was gained by the
crozier was lost to the sword. It was even a consolation to the injured
serf to see the truculent landlord who had oppressed him oppressed in
his turn by a still more truculent bishop, especially when that bishop
had sprung from the dregs of the people, and--crown and consummation
of all--when the Pope, God's vicegerent upon earth, who dethroned
emperors and made kings hold his stirrup as he mounted his mule, was
descended from no more distinguished a family than himself. It was
the effort of the Church, therefore, in all this century, to lower
the noble and to elevate the poor. To gain popularity, all arts were
resorted to. The clergy were the showmen and play-actors of the time.
The only amusement the labourer could aim at was found for him, in rich
processions and gorgeous ceremony, by the priest. How could any fault
of the abbot or prelate turn away the affection of the peasant from the
Church, which was in a peculiar manner his own establishment? Never
had the drunkenness, the debauchery and personal indulgences of the
upper ecclesiastics reached such a pitch before. The gluttony of friars
and monks became proverbial. The community of certain monasteries
complained of the austerity of their abbots in reducing their ordinary
dinners from sixteen dishes to thirteen. The great St. Bernard
describes many of the rulers of the Church as keeping sixty horses in
their stables, and having so many wines upon their board that it was
impossible to taste one-half of them. Yet nothing shook the attachment
of the uneducated commons. Their priest got up dances and concerts
and miracles for their edification, and had a right to enjoy all the
luxuries of life. Once freed, therefore, from the watchful enmity
of lord and king, the Church was well aware that its power would be
irresistible. The people were devoted to it as their earthly defender
against their earthly oppressors, the caterer of all their amusements,
and as their guide in the path to heaven. Gratitude and credulity,
therefore, were equally engaged in its behalf. And new influences came
to its support. Romance and wonder gathered round the champions of the
Faith fighting in the distant regions of the East. Every thing became
magnified when seen through the medium of ignorance and fanaticism. The
tales, therefore, strange enough in themselves, which were related by
pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, and amplified a hundredfold by
the natural exaggeration of the vulgar, raised higher than ever the
glory of the Church. The fastings and self-inflicted scourgings of
holy men, it was believed, effected more than the courage of Godfrey
or Bohemund; and even of Godfrey it was said that his ascetic life and
painful penances caused more losses to the enemy than his matchless
strength and military skill.
It would be delightful if we could place ourselves in the position
of the breathless crowds at that time listening for the news from
Palestine. No telegraphic despatch from the Crimea or Hindostan was
ever waited for with such impatience or received with such emotion. The
baron summoned the palmer into his hall, and heard the strange history
of the march to Jerusalem, and the crowning of a Christian king, and
the creation of a feudal court, with a pang, perhaps, of regret that
he had not joined the pilgrimage, which might have made him Duke of
Bethlehem or monarch of Tiberias. But the peasants in their workshops,
or the whole village assembled in the long aisles of their church, lent
far more attentive ears to the wayfaring monk who had escaped from
the prison of the Saracen, and told them of the marvels accomplished
by the bones of martyrs and apostles which had been revealed to holy
pilgrims in their dream on the Mount of Olives. Footprints on the
heights of Calvary, and portions of the manger in Bethlehem, were
described in awe-struck voice; and when it was announced that in the
belt of the narrator, enwrapped in a silken scarf,--itself a fabric
of incalculable worth,--was a hair of an apostle's head, (which their
lord had purchased for a large sum,) to be deposited upon their altar,
they must have thought the sacrifices and losses of the Crusade
amply repaid. And no amount of these sacred articles seemed in the
least to diminish their importance. The demand was always greatly in
advance of the supply, however vast it might be. And as the mines of
California and Australia have hitherto deceived the prophets of evil,
by having no perceptible effect on the price of the precious metals,
the incalculable importation of saints' teeth, and holy personages'
clothes, and fragments of the true Cross, and prickles of the real
Crown of Thorns, had no depressing effect on the market-value of
similar commodities with which all Christian Europe was inundated.
Faith seemed to expand in proportion as relics became plentiful, as
credit expands on the security of a supply of gold. And as many of
those articles were actually of as clearly-recognised a pecuniary value
as houses or lands, and represented in any market or banking-house a
definite and very considerable sum, it is not too much to say that the
capital of the West was greatly increased by these acquisitions from
the East. The cup of onyx, carved in one stone, which was believed
to have been that in which the wine of the Last Supper was held when
our Saviour instituted the Communion, was pledged by its owner for an
enormous sum, and--what is perhaps more strange--was redeemed when the
term of the loan expired by the repayment of principal and interest.
The intercourse, therefore, between power and money showed that each
was indispensable to the other. The baron relaxed his severity, and the
citizen opened his purse-strings; the Church inculcated the equality
of all men in presence of the altar; and when the kings perceived what
merchandise might be made of privileges and exemptions accorded to
their subjects, and how at one great blow the townsman's squeezable
riches would be increased and the baron's local influence diminished,
there was a struggle between all the crowned heads as to which should
be most favourable to the commons. It was in this century, owing to
the Crusades, which made the commonalty indispensable and the nobility
weak, which strengthened the Crown and the Church and made it their
joint interest to restrain the exactions of the feudal proprietors,
that the liberties of Europe took their rise in the establishment
of the third estate. In the county of Flanders, the great towns had
already made themselves so wealthy and independent that it scarcely
needed a legal ratification of their franchise to make them free
cities. But in Italy a step further had been made, and the great word
Republic, which had been silent for so many years, had again been
heard, and had taken possession of the general mind. In spite of the
opposition and the military successes of Roger, the Norman king of
Sicily, the spirit which animated those great trading communities was
never subdued. In Venice itself--the greatest and most illustrious of
those republics, the first founded and last overthrown--the original
municipal form of government had never been abolished. At all times its
liberties had been preserved and its laws administered by officers of
its own choice, and from it proceeded at this time a feeling of social
equality and an example of commercial prosperity which had a strong
effect on the nascent freedom of the lower and industrious classes over
all the world. Genoa was not inferior either in liberty or enterprise
to any of its rivals. Its fleets traversed the Mediterranean, and,
being equally ready to fight or to trade, brought wealth and glory
home from the coasts of Greece and Asia. It is to be observed that the
first reappearance of self-government was presented in the towns upon
the coast, whose situation enabled them to compensate for smallness
of territory by the command of the sea. The shores of Italy and the
south of France, and the indented sea-line of Flanders, followed in
this respect the example set in former ages by Greece, and Tyre, and
Pentapolis, and Carthage. There can be no doubt that the sight of these
powerful communities, governed by their consuls and legislated for by
their parliamentary assemblies, must have put new thoughts into the
heads of the serfs and labourers returning, in vessels furnished by
citizens like themselves, from the conquest of Cyprus and Jerusalem,
where the whole harvest of wealth and glory had been reaped by their
lords. Encouraged by these examples, and by the protection of the King
of France and Emperor of Germany, the towns in Central and Western
Europe exerted themselves to emulate the republican cities of the
South. The nearest approach they could hope to the independence they
had seen in Pisa or Venice was the possession of the right of electing
their own magistrates and making their own laws. These privileges, we
have seen, were insured to them by the helplessness and impoverishment
of the feudal aristocracy and the countenance of the Church.