Sketches of Church History Part 15

[68] Part I., p. 159.

They had friends, too, who were ready to say anything to raise their power and greatness. Thus, about the year 800, when the popes had begun to get some land of their own, through the gifts of Pipin and Charlemagne,[69] a story was got up that the first Christian emperor, Constantine, when he built his city of Constantinople, and went to live in the East, made over Rome to the pope, and gave him also all Italy, with other countries of the West, and the right of wearing a golden crown. And this story of Constantine's gift (or _donation_, as it was called), although it was quite false, was commonly believed in those days of ignorance.

[69] See p. 178.

About fifty years later another monstrous falsehood was put forth, which helped the popes greatly. Somebody, who took the name of Isidore, a famous Spanish bishop who had been dead more than two hundred years, made a collection of Church law and of popes' letters; and he mixed up with the true letters a quant.i.ty which he had himself forged, but which pretended to have been written by bishops of Rome from the very time of the Apostles. And in these letters it was made to appear that the pope had been appointed by our Lord Himself to be head of the whole Church, and to govern it as he liked; and that the popes had always used this power from the beginning. This collection of laws is known by the name of the _False Decretals_; but n.o.body in those times had any notion that they were false, and so they were believed by every one, and the pope got all that they claimed for him.

But in course of time the popes would not be contented even with this.

In former ages n.o.body could be made pope without the emperor's consent, and we have seen how Otho the Great, his grandson, Otho III., and afterwards Henry III., had thought that they might call popes to account for their conduct; how these emperors brought some popes before councils for trial, and turned them out of their office when they misbehaved.[70]

But just after Henry III., as we have read, had got rid of three popes at once, a great change began, which was meant to set the popes above the emperors. The chief mover in this change was Hildebrand, who is said to have been the son of a carpenter in a little Tuscan town, and was born between the years 1010 and 1020.

[70] Pp. 184, 185.

PART II.

Hildebrand became a monk of the strictest kind, and soon showed a wonderful power of swaying the minds of other men. Thus, when a German named Bruno, bishop of Toul, had been chosen as pope by Henry III., to whom he was related, and as he was on his way to Rome that he might take possession of his office, his thoughts were entirely changed by some talk with Hildebrand, whom he happened to meet. Hildebrand told him that popes, instead of being appointed by emperors, ought to be freely chosen by the Roman clergy and people; and thereupon Bruno, putting off his fine robes, went on to Rome in company with Hildebrand, whose lessons he listened to all the way, so that he took up the monk's notions as to all matters which concerned the Church. On arriving at Rome, he told the Romans that he did not consider himself to be pope on account of the emperor's favour, but that if they should think fit to choose him he was willing to be pope. On this he was elected by them with great joy, and took the name of Leo IX. (A.D. 1048). But, although Leo was called pope, it was Hildebrand who really took the management of everything.

When Leo died (A.D. 1054), the Romans wished to put Hildebrand into his place; but he did not yet feel himself ready to take the papacy, and instead of this he contrived to get one after another of his party elected, until at length, after having really directed everything for no less than five-and-twenty years, and under the names of five popes in succession, he allowed himself to be chosen in 1073, and styled himself Gregory VII.

The empire was then in a very sad state. Henry III. had died in 1056, leaving a boy less than six years old to succeed him; and this poor boy, who became Henry IV., was very badly used by those who were about him.

One day, as he was on an island in the river Rhine, Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, gave him such an account of a beautiful new boat which had been built for the archbishop, that the young prince naturally wished to see it; and as soon as he was safe on board, Hanno carried him off to Cologne, away from his mother, the empress Agnes. Thus the poor young Henry was in the hands of people who meant no good by him; and, although he was naturally a bright, clever, amiable lad, they did what they could to spoil him, and to make him unfit for his office, by educating him badly, and by throwing in his way temptations to which he was only too ready to yield. And when they had done this, and he had made himself hated by many of his people on account of his misbehaviour, the very persons who had done the most to cause his faults took advantage of them, and tried to get rid of him as king of Germany and emperor. In the meantime Hildebrand (or Gregory, as we must now call him) and his friends had been well pleased to look on the troubles of Germany; for they hoped to turn the discontent of the Germans to their own purpose.

Gregory had higher notions as to the papacy than any one who had gone before him. He thought that all power of every kind belonged to the pope; that kings had their authority from him; that all kingdoms were held under him as the chief lord; that popes were as much greater than kings or emperors as the sun is greater than the moon; that popes could make or unmake kings just as they pleased; and although he had asked the emperor to confirm his election, as had been usual, he was resolved that such a thing should never again be asked of an emperor by any pope in the time to come.

PART III.

One way in which Gregory tried to increase his power was by forcing the clergy to live unmarried, or, if they were married already, to put away their wives. This was a thing which had not been required either in the New Testament or by the Church in early times. But by degrees a notion had grown up that single life was holier than married life; and many canons (or laws of the Church) had been made against the marriage of the clergy. But Gregory carried this further than any one before him, because he saw that to make the clergy different from other men, and to cut them off from wife and children and the usual connexions of family, was a way to unite them more closely into a body by themselves. He saw that it would bind them more firmly to Rome; that it would teach them to look to the pope, rather than to their national sovereign, as their chief; and that he might count on such clergy as sure tools, ready to be at the pope's service in any quarrel with princes. He therefore sent out his orders, forbidding the marriage of the clergy, and he set the people against their spiritual pastors by telling them to have nothing to do with the married clergy, and not to receive the sacraments of the Church from them. The effects of these commands were terrible: the married clergy were insulted in all possible ways, many of them were driven by violence from their parishes, and their unfortunate wives were made objects of scorn for all mankind. So great and scandalous were the disorders which arose, that many persons, in disgust at the evils which distracted the Church, and at the fury with which parties fought within it, forsook it and joined some of the sects which were always on the outlook for converts from it.

Another thing on which Gregory set his heart, as a means of increasing the power of the popes, was to do away with what was called _Invest.i.ture_. This was the name of the form by which princes gave bishops possession of the estates and other property belonging to their sees. The custom had been that princes should put the pastoral staff into the hands of a new bishop, and should place a ring on one of his fingers; but now fault was found with these acts, because the staff meant that the bishop had the charge of his people as a shepherd has of his flock, and the ring meant that he was joined to his Church as a husband is joined to his wife in marriage. For now it was said to be wrong to use things which are signs of spiritual power, when that which the prince gives is not spiritual power, but only a right to the earthly possessions of the see. Gregory, therefore, ordered that no bishop should take invest.i.ture from any sovereign, and that no sovereign should give invest.i.ture; and out of this grew a quarrel which lasted fifty years, and was the cause of grievous troubles in the Church.

Gregory had also quarrels with enemies at home. One of these, a rough and lawless man named Cencius, went so far as to seize him when he was at a service about midnight on Christmas Eve, and carried him off to a tower, where the pope was exposed all night to the insults of a gang of ruffians, and of Cencius himself, who even held a sword to his naked throat, in the hope of frightening him into the payment of a large sum as ransom. But Gregory was not a man to be terrified by any violence, and held out firmly. A woman who took pity on him bathed his wounds, and a man gave him some furs to protect him against the cold; and in the morning he was delivered by a party of his friends, by whom Cencius and his ruffians were overpowered, and frightened into giving up their prisoner.

PART IV.

In Germany many of the princes and people threw off their obedience to Henry. They destroyed his castles and reduced him to great distress; they held meetings against him, and were strong enough to make him give up his power of government for a time, and leave all questions between him and his subjects to be settled by the pope. Henry was so much afraid of losing his kingdom altogether, that, in order to beg the pope's mercy, he crossed the Alps, with his queen and a few others, in the midst of a very hard winter, running great risks among the snow and ice which covered the lofty mountains over which his road lay. In the hope of getting the pope's forgiveness, he hastened to Canossa, a castle among the Apennines, at which Gregory then was; but Gregory kept the emperor standing three days outside the gate, dressed as a penitent, and pierced through and through by the bitter cold of that terrible winter, before he would allow himself to be seen. When at last Henry was admitted, the pope treated him very hardly; some say that he even tried to make him take the holy sacrament of our Lord's body, by way of proving whether he were innocent or guilty of the charges which his enemies brought against him. And, after all that Henry had gone through, no peace was made between him and his enemies. The troubles of Germany continued: the other party set up against Henry a king of their own choosing, named Rudolf; and Henry, in return for this, set up another pope in opposition to Gregory.

After a time, Henry was able to put down his enemies in Germany, and he led a large army into Italy, where he got almost all Rome into his hands; and on Easter Day, 1084, he was crowned as emperor, in St.

Peter's Church, by Clement III., the pope of his party. Gregory entreated the help of Robert Guiscard, the chief of some Normans who had got possession of the south of Italy; and Guiscard, who was glad to have such an opportunity for interfering, speedily came to his relief and delivered him. But in fighting with the Romans in the streets, these Normans set the city on fire, and a great part of it was destroyed, so that within the walls of Rome there are even in our own day large s.p.a.ces which were once covered with buildings, but are now given up to cornfields or vineyards. Gregory felt himself unable to bear the sight of his ruined city, and, when the Normans withdrew, he went with them to Salerno, where he died on the 25th of May, 1085. It is said that his last words were, "I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore I die in exile;" and the meaning seems to be, that by these words he wished to claim the benefit of our Lord's saying, "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Of all the popes, Gregory VII. was the one who did most to increase the power of the papacy. No doubt he was honest in his intentions, and thought that to carry them out would be the best thing for the whole Church, as well as for the bishops of Rome. But he did not care whether the means which he used were fair or foul; and if his plans had succeeded, they would have brought all mankind into slavery to Rome.

CHAPTER IX.

THE FIRST CRUSADE.

A.D. 1095-1099.

PART I.

The popes who came next after Gregory VII. carried things with a high hand, following the example which he had set them. They got the better of Henry IV., but in a way which did them no credit. For when Henry had returned from Italy to his own country, and had done his best, by many years of good government, to heal the effects of the long troubles of Germany, the popes encouraged his son Conrad, and after Conrad's death, his younger son Henry, to rebel against him. The younger Henry behaved very treacherously to his father, whom he forced to give up his crown; and, at last, Henry IV. died broken-hearted in 1106. When Henry was thus out of the way, his son, Henry V., who, until then, had seemed to be a tool of the pope and the clergy, showed what sort of man he really was by imprisoning Pope Paschal II. and his cardinals for nine weeks, until he made the pope grant all that he wanted. But at length this emperor was able to settle for a time the great quarrel of invest.i.tures, by an agreement made at the city of Worms, on the Rhine, in 1123.

But before this time, and while Henry IV. was still emperor, the popes had got a great addition to their power and importance by the _Crusades_,--a word which means wars undertaken for the sake of the Cross. I have told you already, how, from the fourth century, it became the fashion for Christians to flock from all countries into the Holy Land, that they might warm their faith (as they thought) by the sight of the places where our Blessed Lord had been born, and lived, and died, and where most of the other things written in the Scripture history had taken place.[71] Very often, indeed, this pilgrimage was found to do more harm than good to those who went on it; for many of them had their minds taken up with anything rather than the pious thoughts which they professed: but the fashion of pilgrimage grew more and more, whether the pilgrims were the better or the worse for it.

[71] Part I., p. 91.

When the Holy Land had fallen into the hands of the Mahometans, as I have mentioned,[72] these often treated the Christian pilgrims very badly, behaving cruelly to them, insulting them, and making them pay enormously for leave to visit the holy places. And when Palestine was conquered by the Turks, who had taken up the Mahometan religion lately, and were full of their new zeal for it (A.D. 1076), the condition of the Christians there became worse than ever. There had often been thoughts among the Christians of the West as to making an attempt to get back the Holy Land from the unbelievers; but now the matter was to be taken up with a zeal which had never before been felt.

[72] Page 169.

A pilgrim from the north of France, called Peter the Hermit, on returning from Jerusalem, carried to Pope Urban II. a fearful tale of the tyranny with which the Mahometans there treated both the Christian inhabitants and the pilgrims; and the pope gave him leave to try what he could do to stir up the Christians of the West for the deliverance of their brethren. Peter was a small, lean, dark man, but with an eye of fire, and with a power of fiery speech; and wherever he went, he found that people of all cla.s.ses eagerly thronged to hear him; they even gathered up the hairs which fell from the mule on which he rode, and treasured them up as precious relics. On his bringing back to the pope a report of the success which he had thus far met, Urban himself resolved to proclaim the crusade, and went into France, as being the country where it was most likely to be welcomed. There, in a great meeting at Clermont, A.D. 1095, where such vast numbers attended that most of them were forced to lodge in tents, because the town itself could not hold them, the pope, in stirring words, set forth the reasons of the holy war, and invited his hearers to take part in it. While he was speaking, the people broke in on him with shouts of "G.o.d wills it!"--words which from that time became the cry of the Crusaders; and when he had done, thousands enlisted for the crusade by fixing little crosses on their dress.

All over Europe everything was set into motion; almost every one, whether old or young, strong or feeble, was eager to join; women urged their husbands or their sons to take the cross, and any one who refused was despised by all. Many of those who enlisted would not wait for the time which had been fixed for starting. A large body set out under Peter the Hermit and two knights, of whom one was called Walter the Pennyless.

Other crowds followed, which were made up, not of fighting men only, but of poor, broken-down old men, of women and children who had no notion how very far off Jerusalem was, or what dangers lay in the way to it.

There were many simple country folks, who set out with their families in carts drawn by oxen; and whenever they came to any town, their children asked, "Is this Jerusalem?" And besides these poor creatures, there were many bad people, who plundered as they went on, so as to make the crusade hated even by the Christian inhabitants of the countries through which they pa.s.sed.

These first swarms took the way through Hungary to Constantinople, and then across the Bosphorus into Asia Minor. Walter the Pennyless, who, although his pockets were empty, seems to have been a brave and good soldier, was killed in battle near Nicaea, the place where the first general council had been held,[73] but which had now become the capital of the Turks; and the bones of his followers who fell with him were gathered into a great heap, which stood as a monument of their rashness.

It is said that more than a hundred thousand human beings had already perished in these ill-managed attempts before the main forces of the Crusaders began to move.

[73] Part I., p. 45.

PART II.

When the regular armies started at length, A.D. 1096, part of them marched through Hungary, while others went through Italy, and there took ship for Constantinople. The chief of their leaders was G.o.dfrey of Bouillon, a brave and pious knight; and among the other commanders was Robert, duke of Normandy, whom we read of in English history as the eldest son of William the Conqueror, and brother of William Rufus. When they reached Constantinople, they found that the Greek emperor, Alexius, looked on them with distrust and dislike rather than with kindness; and he was glad to get rid of them by helping them across the strait to Asia.

In pa.s.sing through Asia Minor, the Crusaders had to fight often, and to struggle with many other difficulties. The sight of the hill of bones near Nicaea roused them to fury; and, in order to avenge Walter the Pennyless and his companions, they laid siege to the city, which they took at the end of six weeks. After resting there for a time, they went on again and reached Antioch, which they besieged for eight months (Oct., 1097-June, 1098). During this siege they suffered terribly. Their tents were blown to shreds by the winds, or were rotted by the heavy rains which turned the ground into a swamp; and, as they had wasted their provisions in the beginning of the siege (not expecting that it would last so long), they found themselves in great distress for food, so that they were obliged to eat the flesh of horses and camels, of dogs and mice, with gra.s.s and thistles, leather, and the bark of trees. Their horses had almost all sunk under the hardships of the siege, and the men were thinned by disease and by the a.s.saults of their enemies.

At length Antioch was betrayed to them; but they made a bad use of their success. They slew all of the inhabitants who refused to become Christians. They wasted the provisions which they found in the city, or which were brought to them from other quarters; and when a fresh Mahometan force appeared, which was vastly greater than their own, they found themselves shut in between it and the garrison of the castle, which they had not been able to take when they took the city.

Their distress was now greater than before, and their case seemed to be almost hopeless, when their spirits were revived by the discovery of something which was supposed to be the lance by which our blessed Lord's side was pierced on the cross. They rushed, with full confidence, to attack the enemy on the outside; and the victory which they gained over these was soon followed by the surrender of the castle. But a plague which broke out among them obliged them to remain nearly nine months longer at Antioch.

Having recruited their health, they moved on towards Jerusalem, although their numbers were now much less than when they had reached Antioch.

When at length they came in sight of the holy city, a cry of "Jerusalem!

Jerusalem! G.o.d wills it!" ran through the army, although many were so moved that they were unable to speak, and could only find vent for their feelings in tears and sighs. All threw themselves on their knees and kissed the sacred ground (June, 1099). The siege of Jerusalem lasted forty days, during which the Crusaders suffered much from hunger, and still more from thirst: for it was the height of summer, when all the brooks of that hot country are dried up; the wells, about which we read so much in holy Scripture, were purposely choked with rubbish, and the cisterns were destroyed or poisoned. Water had to be fetched from a distance of six miles, and was sold very dear; but it was so filthy that many died after drinking it. The besiegers found much difficulty in getting wood to make the engines which were then used in attacking the walls of cities; and when they had at length been able to build such machines as they wanted, the defenders tried to upset them, and threw at them showers of burning pitch or oil, and what was called the Greek fire, in the hope that they might set the engines themselves in flames, or at least might scald or wound the people in them. We are even told that two old women, who were supposed to be witches, were set to utter spells and curses from the walls; but a stone from an engine crushed the poor old wretches, and their bodies tumbled down into the ditch which surrounded the city. The Crusaders were driven back in one a.s.sault, and were all but giving way in the second; but G.o.dfrey of Bouillon thought that he saw in the sky a bright figure of a warrior beckoning him onwards; and the Crusaders pressed forward with renewed courage until they found themselves masters of the holy city (July 15, 1099). It was noted that this was at three o'clock on a Friday afternoon,--the same day of the week, and the same hour of the day, when our Blessed Lord was crucified.

I shall not tell you of the butchery and of the other shocking things which the Crusaders were guilty of when they got possession of Jerusalem. They were, indeed, wrought up to such a state that they were not masters of themselves. At one moment they were throwing themselves on their knees with tears of repentance and joy; and then again they would start up and break lose into some frightful acts of cruelty and plunder against the conquered enemy, sparing neither old man, nor woman, nor child.

PART III.

Eight days after the taking of Jerusalem, the Crusaders met to choose a king. Robert of Normandy was one of those who were proposed; but the choice fell on G.o.dfrey of Bouillon. But the pious G.o.dfrey said that he would not wear a crown of gold when the King of kings had been crowned with thorns; and he refused to take any higher t.i.tle than that of Defender and Baron of the Holy Sepulchre.