VIOLENCE OF THE POPE.

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violence, restored Gregory to liberty, and fled from Rome. Gregory, though bleeding and wounded, returned to the church and finished the service; he returned home to meditate plans of vengeance on the emperor, whom he more than suspected of having instigated the outrage.

The council of Worms by a unanimous vote deposed Gregory, and the bishops of Lombardy swore on the gospels that they never would recognize him as pope. A monk of Parma had the boldness to announce this sentence to Gregory in the presence of a synod of Italian bishops: he would have been torn to pieces had not the pope, who despised so mean a victim, rescued him from their hands. On the very next morning the enraged pontiff issued a bull of excommunication against Henry, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance. Never did the thunders of the Vatican produce so immediate or decisive an effect; the German bishops at once deserted Henry, and besought the pardon of Gregory; the princes and nobles followed their example; and Henry, passing at once from the extreme of temerity to cowardly despair, threw himself on the mercy of the pope and proceeded to Italy to beg absolution. The Lombard prelates and princes of Lombardy remonstrated with the emperor, but in vain; when they learned that he had completed his disgraceful submission, they prepared to depose him and elect his son Conrad; but in less than a fortnight Henry had become ashamed of his yielding to Gregory, and enraged at the pontiff's having procured a bequest of the estates of the countess Matilda, to which he had a stronger claim, and instigated equally by shame and rage, he once more declared open war against the pontiff. The German bishops and nobles proceeded to choose Rodolph duke of Suabia, emperor, but the presence of Henry in Italy compelled Gregory to temporize, and he ordered his legates to support the competitor for empire who would exhibit most devotion to the Holy See. But though thus

312

DEATH OF GREGORY VII.

many, he did not scruple to provoke most of the other monarchs of Europe: the king of France and the Norman Conqueror of England were threatened with ecclesiastical vengeance; the Byzantine emperor and the king of Poland were actually excommunicated; the king of Denmark was informed that his dominions formed part of the patrimony of Saint Peter; and it was announced that it would be better for Spain to remain in the hands of the Moors, than to be conquered by Christians who refused homage to the Church.

Success was to determine the indecision of Gregory; Rodolph gained a slight victory, the pope immediately repeated his excommunication against Henry, and sent his competitor a crown of gold, predicting that he would overcome all his adversaries. But the prophecy was not fulfilled; Henry summoned a council, deposed Gregory and raised his inveterate enemy, the archbishop of Ravenna, to the papacy with the title of Clement III. Soon after he encountered his rival on the banks of the Elster, and Rodolph fell by the hands of Godfrey of Bouillon, whose exploits in a far different war will soon engage our attention. Gregory in his turn experienced the reverses of fortune; Rome was taken and pillaged by the imperial forces, the pope fled to Salerno, where fatigue and mortification soon brought him to the grave. With his latest breath he protested against the Emperor and Clement, whom alone he excepted from his general absolution of those he had excommunicated during his pontificate. To the last, he maintained the rectitude of his conduct, applying to himself the celebrated words, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die an exile." (A.D. 1085.)

The spirit of Gregory seemed to animate his successors Victor III. and Urban II. The latter not only maintained the war against Henry, but excommunicated the king of France for having divorced his wife and married his mistress. After having thus insulted the monarch, he sum

THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.

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moned a general council in his dominions, without even asking his permission. In November 1095 the celebrated. council of Clermont assembled, where the resolution for attempting the recovery of Palestine from the Mohammedans was finally adopted. It was further remarkable for the renewal of the sentence of excommunication against Philip, and the French monarch was unable to resent an injury aggravated by the council being held in his own dominions.

The Normans had not only established their supremacy over southern Italy and Sicily, but, under the command of Robert Guiscard, had subdued the important island of Corfu, and invaded Illyria and Greece. Dyracchium, the key of the Greek empire on the western side, was taken after a long siege by Robert, and when he was recalled to Italy by pope Gregory, the conduct of the war was assumed by his son, the valiant but unscrupulous Bohemond, who subdued a great part of Epirus and Macedon. The death of Robert recalling Bohemond to secure his paternal inheritance, delivered the Byzantine empire from this scourge, but the feebleness produced by unsuccessful war greatly facilitated the progress of the Turks. The danger to which Eastern Europe was exposed daily became more pressing; the emperor Alexius became convinced that it could only be defended by Latin aid, not only because he had experienced the inferiority of his own soldiers, but also because a detachment of five hundred cavaliers sent to his aid by the count of Flanders had defended Nicomedia against the attacks of the Turkish Sultan more effectively than a large army of Greeks. Hoping to obtain efficient aid, he applied to pope Urban II. describing in forcible colours the evils to which Christendom would be exposed if Constantinople should fall under the power of the Mohammedans, and promising to give every assistance by land and sea to those who would engage in war with the infidels.

314

MILITARY ADVENTURES.

The Greek ambassadors appeared at the council of Placentia, to explain the unfortunate state of the Byzantine empire, and the need that the churches of the East had of aid from their western brethren. But the Italians had little sympathy for such complaints; their hearts were too much engaged in the struggle for supremacy between the pope and the emperor, to form any wish for distant enterprizes; they shrunk from the perils of an Eastern war, and the reports of the pilgrims who had visited the Holy Land were by no means calculated to overcome their reluct

ance.

But France and Germany, the theatre of sanguinary wars and religious feuds since the death of Charlemagne, were fully prepared to respond to the mingled summons of avarice, glory, and fanaticism. The thirst for war, the spirit of adventurous enterprize, pervaded every rank from the highest to the lowest; the example of the Normans, who had won by their valour the kingdoms of Sicily and England, stimulated the nobles to carve out new monarchies by the sword. "The truce of God," imperfectly as it was observed, imposed some restraint on their robberies and their private wars; they were weary of inactivity, and perhaps found it difficult to support their armed retainers. Under such circumstances, the proposal of a crusade was received with enthusiasm; it was a war that promised absolution for the past, present glory and future riches.

A rising spirit of liberty among the lower ranks, fostered by the example of the towns where associations for mutual protection had laid the foundation of self-government, rendered the great body of the French and Germans willing to engage in a war where all pilgrims would rank on an equality as soldiers of Christ. military adventurers wandering through every part of Europe in search of employment, who preferred even the most hazardous expedition to poverty and idleness. But above all, the fanatical spirit of the age, already manifested in the

There were also bands of

THE FIRST CRUSADE.

315

persecution of Jews and heretics, urged men to prove their devotion by destroying those whom they were taught to consider enemies of their God. It would therefore be an error to describe the crusades as the result of any sudden impulse; they were the full development of principles which had grown up during several centuries, and they accelerated the overthrow of these principles by hurrying them at once into excess.

CHAPTER XXII. *

The first Crusade.

(From A.D. 1074 to A.D. 1146.)

THE Crusades have been usually regarded as a kind of episode in the history of Europe; but a more minute examination of these celebrated wars will show that they are the best illustration of the religious and political principles which moulded European society into its new forms, and for ever obliterated the last traces of the Roman system of civilization. The causes and the effects of the wondrous efforts made to establish a Christian kingdom in Palestine have been and are the themes of ardent controversy, but the disputants have not arrived at a satisfactory conclusion because they have sought the origin of the movement in a single cause and laboured to trace its consequences in some one great and definite result. But there is really no such thing as an episode in history, there is no single series of events that can be detached without leaving a former series incomplete and a future unexplained. To trace all the causes of the Crusades would require a volume; it will be sufficient at present to indicate briefly the different motives of the persons engaged in them as they are severally introduced on the stage of action.

Hildebrand had scarcely ascended the papal throne with