History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0189/01891.txt

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$Title{History Of The Intellectual Development Of Europe
Chapter I. Part II.}
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$Author{Draper, John William M.D., LL.D.,}
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$Date{1876}
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Title:       History Of The Intellectual Development Of Europe
Book:        Volume II
Author:      Draper, John William M.D., LL.D.,
Date:        1876

Chapter I. Part II.

     It is in Peter Abelard that we find the representative of the insurgent
spirit of those times.  The love of Heloisa seems in our eyes to be justified
by his extraordinary intellectual power.  In his Oratory, "The Paraclete," the
doctrines of faith and the mysteries of religion were without any restraint
discussed.  No subject was too profound or too sacred for his contemplation.
By the powerful and orthodox influence of St. Bernard, "a morigerous and
mortified monk," the opinions of Abelard were brought under the rebuke of the
authorities.  In vain he appealed from the Council of Sens to Rome; the power
of St. Bernard at Rome was paramount.  "He makes void the whole Christian
faith by attempting to comprehend the nature of God through human reason.  He
ascends up into Heaven; he goes down into hell.  Nothing can elude him, either
in the height above or in the nethermost depths.  His branches spread over the
whole earth.  He boasts that he has disciples in Rome itself, even in the
College of Cardinals.  He draws the whole earth after him.  It is time,
therefore, to silence him by apostolic authority." Such was the report of the
Council of Sens to Rome, A.D. 1140.

     Perhaps it was not so much the public accusation that Abelard denied the
doctrine of the Trinity, as his assertion of the supremacy of reason - which
clearly betrayed his intention of breaking the thraldom of authority - that
insured his condemnation.  It was impossible to restrict the rising
discussions within their proper sphere, or to keep them from the perilous
ground of ecclesiastical history.  Abelard in his work entitled "Sic et Non,"
sets forth the contradictory opinions of the fathers, and exhibits their
discord and strifes on great doctrinal points, thereby insinuating how little
of unity there was in the Church.  It was a work suggesting a great deal more
than it actually stated, and was inevitably calculated to draw down upon its
author the indignation of those whose interests it touched.

     Out of the discussions attending these events sprang the celebrated
doctrines of Nominalism and Realism, though the terms themselves seem not to
have been introduced till the end of the twelfth century.  The Realists
thought that the general types of things had a real existence; the
Nominalists, that they were merely a mental abstraction expressed by a word.
It was therefore the Old Greek dispute revived.  Of the Nominalists, Roscelin
of Compiegne, a little before A.D. 1100, was the first distinguished advocate;
his materializing views, as might be expected, drawing upon him the reproof of
the Church.  In this contest, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, attempted
to harmonize reason in subordination to faith, and again, by his example,
demonstrated the necessity of submitting all such questions to the decision of
the human intellect.

     The development of scholastic philosophy, which dates from the time of
Erigena, was accelerated by two distinct causes: the dreadful materialization
into which, in Europe, all sacred things had fallen, and the illustrious
example of the Mohammedans, who already, by their physical inquiries, had
commenced a career destined to end in brilliant results.  The Spanish
universities were filled with ecclesiastics from many parts of Europe.  Peter
the Venerable, the friend and protector of Abelard, who had spent much time in
Cordova, and not only spoke Arabic fluently, but actually translated the Koran
into Latin, mentions that, on his first arrival in Spain, he found several
learned men, even from England, studying astronomy.  The reconciliation of
many of the dogmas of authority with common sense was impossible for men of
understanding.  Could the clear intellect of such a statesman as Hildebrand be
for a moment disgraced by accepting the received view of a doctrine like that
of transubstantiation?  His great difficulty was to reconcile what had been
rendered orthodox by the authority of the Church with the suggestions of
reason, or even with that reverence for holy things which is in the heart of
every intelligent man.  In such sentiments, we find an explanation of the
lenient dealings of that stern ecclesiastic with the heretic Berengar.  He saw
that it was utterly impossible to offer any defence of many of the
materialized dogmas of the age, but then those dogmas had been put forth as
absolute truth by the Church.  Things had come to the point at which reason
and theology must diverge; yet the Italian statesmen did not accept this issue
without an additional attempt, and, under their permission, Scholastic
Theology, which originated in the scholastic philosophy of Erigena and his
followers, sought, in the strange union of the Holy Scriptures, the
Aristotelian Philosophy, and Pantheism, to construct a scientific basis for
Christianity.  Heresy was to be combated with the weapons of the heretics, and
a co-ordination of authority and reason effected.  Under such auspices
scholastic philosophy pervaded the schools, giving to some of them, as the
University of Paris, a fictitious reputation, and leading to the foundation of
others in other cities.  It answered the object of its politic promoters in a
double way, for it raised around the orthodox theology an immense and
impenetrable bulwark of what seemed to be profound learning, and also diverted
the awakening mind of Western Europe to occupations which, if profitless, were
yet exciting, and without danger to the existing state of things.  In that
manner was put off for a time the inevitable day in which philosophy and
theology were to be brought into mortal conflict with each other.  It was
doubtless seen by Hildebrand and his followers that, though Berengar had set
the example of protesting against the principle that the decision of a
majority of voters in a council or other collective body should ever be
received as ascertaining absolute truth, yet so great was the uncertainty of
the principles on which the scholastic philosophy was founded, so undetermined
its mental exercise, so ineffectual the results to which it could attain, that
it was unlikely for a long time to disturb the unity of doctrine in the
Church.  While men were reasoning round and round again in the same vicious
circle without finding any escape, and indeed without seeking any, delighted
with the dexterity of their movements, but never considering whether they were
making any real advance, it was unnecessary to anticipate inconvenience from
their progress.

     Here was the difficulty.  The decisions of the Church were asserted to be
infallible and irrevocable; her philosophy, if such it can be called - as must
be the case with any philosophy reposing upon a final revelation from God -
was stationary.  But the awakening mind of the West was displaying, in an
unmistakable way, its propensity to advance.  As one who rides an unruly horse
will sometimes divert him from a career which could not be checked by main
force by reining him round and round, and thereby exhausting his spirit and
strength, and keeping him in a narrow space, so the wanton efforts of the mind
may be guided, if they cannot be checked.  These principles of policy answered
their object for a time, until metaphysical were changed for physical
discussions.  Then it became impossible to divert the onward movement, and on
the first great question arising - that of the figure and place of the earth -
a question dangerous to the last degree, since it inferentially included the
determination of the position of man in the universe, theology suffered an
irretrievable defeat.  Between her and philosophy there was thenceforth no
other issue than a mortal duel.

     Though Erigena is the true founder of Scholasticism, Roscelin, already
mentioned as renewing the question of Platonic Universals, has been considered
by some to be entitled to that distinction.  After him, William of Champeaux
opened a school of logic in Paris, A.D. 1109, and from that time the
University made it a prominent study.  On the rise of the mendicant orders,
Scholasticism received a great impulse, perhaps, as has been affirmed, because
its disputations suited their illiterate state; Thomas Aquinas, the Dominican,
and Duns Scotus, the Franciscan, founding rival schools, which wrangled for
three centuries.  In Italy, Scholasticism never prevailed as it did in France
and elsewhere, and at last it died away, its uselessness, save in the
political result before mentioned, having been detected.

     The middle of the eleventh century ushers in an epoch for the papacy and
for Europe.  It is marked by an attempt at a moral reformation in the Church -
by a struggle for securing for the papacy independence both of the Emperors of
Germany and of the neighbouring Italian nobles - thus far the pope being the
mere officer of the emperor, and often the creature of the surrounding
nobility - by the conversion of the temporalities of the Church, heretofore
indirect, into absolute possessions, by securing territories given "to the
Church, the blessed Peter, and the Roman republic" to the first of these
beneficiaries, excluding the last.  As events proceeded, these minor affairs
converged, and out of their union arose the great conflict of the imperial and
papal powers for supremacy.  The same policy which had succeeded in depriving
the Roman people of any voice in appointments of popes - which had secularized
the Church in Italy, for a while seized all the material resources of Europe
through the device of the Crusades, and nearly established a papal autocracy
in all Europe.  These political events demand from us notice, since from them
arose intellectual consequences of the utmost importance.

     The second Lateran Council, under Nicolas II., accomplished the result of
vesting the elective power for the papacy in the cardinals.  That was a great
revolution.  It was this council which gave to Berengar his choice between
death and recantation.  There were at this period three powers engaged in
Italy - the Imperial, the Church party, and the Italian nobles. For the sake
of holding the last in check - since it was the nearest, it required the most
unremitting attention - Hildebrand had advised the popes who were his
immediate predecessors to use the Normans, who were settled in the south of
the peninsula, by whom the lands of the nobles were devastated. Thus the
difficulties of their position led the popes to a repetition of their ancient
policy; and as they had, in old times, sought the protection of the Frankish
kings, so now they sought that of the Normans.  But in the midst of the
dissensions and tumults of the times, a great man was emerging - Hildebrand,
who, with almost superhuman self-denial, again and again abstained from making
himself pope.  On the death of Alexander II. his opportunity came, and, with
acceptable force, he was raised to that dignity, A.D. 1073.

     Scarcely was Hildebrand Pope Gregory VII. when he vigorously proceeded to
carry into effect the policy he had been preparing during the pontificates of
his predecessors.  In many respects the times were propitious.  The blameless
lives of the German popes had cast a veil of oblivion over the abominations of
their Italian predecessors.  Hildebrand addressed himself to tear out every
vestige of simony and concubinage with a remorseless hand. That task must be
finished before he could hope to accomplish his grand project of an
ecclesiastical autocracy in Europe, with the pope at its head, and the clergy,
both in their persons and property, independent of the civil power.  It was
plain that, apart from all moral considerations, the supremacy of Rome in such
a system altogether turned on the celibacy of the clergy.  If marriage was
permitted to the ecclesiastic, what was to prevent him from handing down, as
an hereditary possession, the wealth and dignities he had obtained.  In such a
state of things, the central government at Rome necessarily stood at every
disadvantage against the local interests of an individual, and still more so
if many individuals should combine together to promote, in common, similar
interests.  But very different would it be if promotion must be looked for
from Rome - very different as regards the hold upon public sentiment, if such
a descent from father to son was absolutely prevented, and a career fairly
opened to all, irrespective of their station in life.  To the Church it was to
the last degree important that a man should derive his advancement from her,
not from his ancestor.  In the trials to which she was perpetually exposed,
there could be no doubt that by such persons her interests would be best
served.

     In these circumstances Gregory VII. took his course.  The synod held at
Rome in the first year of his pontificate denounced the marriage of the
clergy, enforcing its decree by the doctrine that the efficacy of the
sacraments altogether depended on their being administered by hands sinless in
that respect, and made all communicants partners in the pastoral crime. With a
provident foresight of the coming opposition, he carried out the policy he had
taught his predecessors of conciliating the Normans in the south of Italy,
though he did not hesitate to resist them, by the aid of the Countess Matilda,
when they dared to touch the possessions of the Church.  It was for the sake
of this that the Norman invasion of England under William the Conqueror had
already been approved of, a consecrated standard and a ring containing a hair
from the head of St. Peter sent him, and permission given for the replacement
of Saxon bishops and other dignitaries by Normans.  It was not forgotten how
great had been the gains to the papacy, three centuries before, by changing
the dynasty of the Franks; and thus the policy of an Italian town gave a
permanent impress to the history of England.  Hildebrand foresaw that the
sword of the Italian-Norman would be wanted to carry out his projected ends.
He did not hesitate to authorize the overthrow of a Saxon dynasty by the
French-Norman, that he might be more sure of the fidelity of that sword.
Without the countenance of the pope, the Norman could never have consolidated
his power, nor even held his ground in England.

     From these movements of the papacy sprang the conflict with the Emperors
of Germany respecting investitures.  The Bishop of Milan - who, it appears,
had perjured himself in the quarrel respecting concubinage - had been
excommunicated by Alexander II.  The imperial council appointed as his
successor one Godfrey; the pope had nominated Atto.  Hereupon Alexander had
summoned the emperor to appear before him on a charge of simony, and granting
investitures without his approbation.  While the matter was yet in abeyance,
Alexander died; but Gregory took up the contest.  A synod he had assembled
ordered that, if any one should accept investiture from a layman, both the
giver and receiver should be excommunicated.  The pretence against
lay-investiture was that it was a usurpation of a papal right, and that it led
to the appointment of evil and ignorant men; the reality was a determination
to extend papal power, by making Rome the fountain of emolument.  Gregory, by
his movements, had thus brought upon himself three antagonists - the imperial
power, the Italian nobles, and the married clergy. The latter, unscrupulous
and exasperated, met him with his own weapons, not hesitating to calumniate
his friendship with the Countess Matilda.  It was also suspected that they
were connected with the outrage perpetrated by the nobles that took place in
Rome.  On Christmas night, A.D. 1075, in the midst of a violent rain, while
the pope was administering the communion, a band of soldiers burst into the
church, seized Gregory at the altar, stripped and wounded him, and, haling him
on horseback behind one of the soldiers, carried him off to a stronghold, from
which he was rescued by the populace.  But, without wavering for a moment, the
undaunted pontiff pressed on his conflict with the imperial power, summoning
Henry to Rome to account for his delinquencies, and threatening his
excommunication if he should not appear before an appointed day.  In haste,
under the auspices of the king, a synod was assembled at Worms; charges
against the pope of licentious life, bribery, necromancy, simony, murder,
atheism, were introduced and sentence of deposition pronounced against him.
On his side, Gregory assembled the third Lateran Council, A.D. 1076, placed
King Henry under interdict, absolved his subjects from allegiance, and deposed
him.  A series of constitutions, clearly defining the new bases of the papal
system, was published.  They were to the following effect: "That the Roman
pontiff can alone be called universal; that he alone has a right to depose
bishops; that his legates have a right to preside over all bishops in a
general council; that he can depose absent prelates; that he alone has right
to use imperial ornaments; that princes are bound to kiss his feet, and his
only; that he has a right to depose emperors; that no synod or council
summoned without his commission can be called general; that no book can be
called canonical without his authority; that his sentence can be annulled by
none, but that he may annul the decrees of all; that the Roman Church has
been, is, and will continue to be infallible; that whoever dissents from it
ceases to be a catholic Christian, and that subjects may be absolved from
their allegiance to wicked princes." The power that could assert such
resolutions was near its culmination.

     And now was manifest the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal
power.  The quarrel with Henry went on, and, after a hard struggle and many
intrigues to draw the Normans over to him, that monarch was compelled to
submit, and in the depth of winter to cross the snowy Alps, under
circumstances of unparalleled hardship, to seek absolution from his adversary.
Then ensued the scene at Canosa - a penitent in white raiment standing in the
dreary snow of three winter days, January 1077, cold and fasting at the gate,
seeking pardon and reconciliation of the inexorable pontiff; that penitent was
the King of Germany.  Then ensued the dramatic scene at the sacrament, in
which the gray-haired pontiff called upon Heaven to strike him dead on the
spot if he were not innocent of the crimes of which he had been accused, and
dared the guilty monarch to do the same.

     Whoever will reflect on these interesting events cannot fail to discern
two important conclusions.  The tone of thought throughout Europe had changed
within the last three ages; ideas were entertained, doctrines originated or
controverted, a policy conceived and attempted altogether in advance of the
old times.  Intellect, both among the clergy and the laity, had undergone a
great development.  But the peculiar character of the papal power is also
ascertained - that it is worldly, and the result of the policy of man.  The
outrage on Hildebrand shows how that power had diminished at its centre, but
the victory over Henry that it maintained its strength at a distance. Natural
forces diminish as the distance increases; this unnatural force displayed an
opposite property.

     Gregory had carried his point.  He had not only beaten back the Northern
attack, but had established the supremacy of the ecclesiastical over the
temporal power, and that point, with inflexible resolution, he maintained,
though in its consequences it cost Germany a civil war.  But, while he was
thus unyielding in his temporal policy, there is reason to suppose that he was
not without misgivings in his theological belief.  In the war between Henry
and his rival Rodolph, Gregory was compelled by policy to be at first neutral.
He occupied himself with the Eucharistic controversy.  This was at the time
that he was associated with Berengar, who lived with him for a year. Nor did
the pope think it unworthy of himself to put forth, in excuse of the heretic,
a vision, in which the Virgin Mary had asserted the orthodoxy of Berengar;
but, as his quarrel with King Henry went on to new excommunications and
depositions, a synod of bishops presumed to condemn him as a partisan of
Berengar and a necromancer.  On the election of Gilbert of Ravenna as
antipope, Gregory, without hesitation, pushed his principles to their
consequences, denouncing kingship as a wicked and diabolical usurpation, an
infraction of the equal rights of man.  Hereupon Henry determined to destroy
him or to be destroyed; and descending again into Italy, A.D. 1081, for three
successive years laid siege to Rome.  In vain the amorous Matilda, with more
than the devotion of an ally, endeavoured to succour her beleaguered friend.
The city surrendered to Henry at Christmas, A.D. 1084.  With his antipope he
entered it, receiving from his hands the imperial crown.  The Norman allies of
Hildebrand at last approached in strength.  The emperor was compelled to
retreat.  A feeble attempt to hold the city was made.  The Normans took it by
surprise, and released Gregory from his imprisonment in the Castle of St.
Angelo.  An awful scene ensued.  Some conflicts between the citizens and the
Normans occurred; a battle in the streets was the consequence, and Rome was
pillaged, sacked, and fired.  Streets, churches, palaces, were left a heap of
smoking ashes. The people by thousands were massacred.  The Saracens, of whom
there were multitudes in the Norman army, were in the Eternal City at last,
and, horrible to be said, were there as the hired supporters of the Vicar of
Christ.  Matrons, nuns, young women, were defiled.  Crowds of men, women, and
children were carried off and sold as slaves.  It was the treatment of a city
taken by storm.  In consternation, the pontiff with his infidel deliverers
retired from the ruined capital to Salerno, and there he died, A.D. 1085.

     He had been dead ten years, when a policy was entered upon by the papacy
which imparted to it more power than all the exertions of Gregory.  The
Crusades were instituted by a French pope, Urban II.  Unpopular in Italy,
perhaps by reason of his foreign birth, he aroused his native country for the
recovery of the Holy Land.  He began his career in a manner not now unusual,
interfering in a quarrel between Philip of France and his wife, taking the
part of the latter, as experience had shown it was always advisable for a pope
to do.  Soon, however, he devoted his attention to something more important
than these matrimonial broils.  It seems that a European crusade was first
distinctly conceived of and its value most completely comprehended by Gerbert,
to whom, doubtless, his Mohammedan experiences had suggested it. In the first
year of his pontificate, he wrote an epistle, in the name of the Church of
Jerusalem, to the Church throughout the world, exhorting Christian soldiers to
come to her relief either with arms or money.  It had been subsequently
contemplated by Gregory VII.  For many years, pilgrimages to Palestine had
been on the increase; a very lucrative export trade in relics from that
country had arisen; crowds from all parts of Europe had of late made their way
to Jerusalem, for the singular purpose of being present at the great assize
which the Scriptures were supposed to prophesy would soon take place in the
Valley of Jehoshaphat.  The Mohammedans had inflicted on these pious persons
much maltreatment, being unable to comprehend the purport of their
extraordinary journey, and probably perceiving a necessity of putting some
restriction upon the influx of such countless multitudes.  Peter the Hermit,
who had witnessed the barbarities to which his Christian brethren were
exposed, and the abominations of the holy places now in the hands of the
infidel, roused Europe, by his preaching, to a frantic state; and Urban, at
the Council of Clermont, A.D. 1095, gave authority to the Holy War.  "It is
the will of God," was the unanimous shout of the council and the populace. The
periodical shower of shooting stars was seen with remarkable brilliancy on
April 25th, and mistaken by the council for a celestial monition that the
Christians must precipitate themselves in like manner on the East.  From this
incident we may perceive how little there was of inspiration in these
blundering and violent ecclesiastical assemblages; the moment that they can be
brought to a scientific test their true nature is detected.  As a preliminary
exercise, a ferocious persecution of the Jews of France had burst forth, and
the blood and tortures of multitudes offered a tardy expiation for the crimes
that their ancestors had committed at the Crucifixion in Jerusalem, more than
a thousand years previously.

     It does not fall within my plan to give a detailed description of the
Crusades.  It is enough to say that, though the clergy had promised the
protection of God to every one who would thus come to his assistance - an
ample reward for their pious work in this life, and the happiness of heaven in
the next - Urban's crusade failed not only disastrously, but hideously, so far
as the ignorant rabbles, under Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, were
concerned.  Nevertheless, under the better-organized expeditions that soon
followed, Jerusalem was captured, July 15th, A.D. 1099.  The long and ghastly
line of bones whitening the road through Hungary to the East showed how
different a thing it was for a peaceable and solitary pilgrim, with his staff,
and wallet, and scallop-shell, to beg his way, and a disorderly rabble of
thousands upon thousands to rush forward without any subordination, any
organization, trusting only to the providence of God.  The van of the Crusades
consisted of two hundred and seventy-five thousand men, accompanied by eight
horses, and preceded by a goat and a goose, into which some one had told them
that the Holy Ghost had entered.  Driven to madness by disappointment and
famine - expecting, in their ignorance, that every town they came to must be
Jerusalem - in their extremity they laid hands on whatever they could.  Their
track was marked by robbery, bloodshed, and fire. In the first crusade more
than half a million of men died.  It was far more disastrous than the Moscow
retreat.

     But still, in a military sense, the first crusade accomplished its
object.  The capture of Jerusalem, as might be expected under such
circumstances, was attended by the perpetration of atrocities almost beyond
belief.  What a contrast to the conduct of the Arabs!  When the Khalif Omar
took Jerusalem, A.D. 637, he rode into the city by the side of the Patriarch
Sophronius, conversing with him on its antiquities.  At the hour of prayer, he
declined to perform his devotions in the Church of the Resurrection, in which
he chanced to be, but prayed on the steps of the Church of Constantine; "for,"
said he to the patriarch, "had I done so, the Musselmen in a future age would
have infringed the treaty, under colour of imitating my example." But, in the
capture by the Crusaders, the brains of young children were dashed out against
the walls; infants were thrown over the battlements; every woman that could be
seized was violated; men were roasted at fires; some were ripped open, to see
if they had swallowed gold; the Jews were driven into their synagogue, and
there burnt; a massacre of nearly 70,000 persons took place; and the pope's
legate was seen "partaking in the triumph."

     It had been expected by the politicians who first projected these wars
that they would heal the divisions of the Latin and Greek churches, and give
birth to a European republic, under the spiritual presidency of the pope.  In
these respects they proved a failure.  It does not appear that the popes
themselves personally had ever any living faith in the result.  Not one of
them ever joined a crusade; and the Church, as a corporation, took care to
embark very little money in these undertakings.  But, though they did not
answer to the original intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful
stimulus to the papal power.  Under the plausible pretences offered by them,
the pope obtained control over the person of every Christian man from the
highest to the lowest.  The cross once taken, all civil control over the
Crusader ceased - he became the man of the Church.  Under those pretences,
also, a right was imperceptibly acquired of raising revenue in all parts of
Europe; even the clergy might be assessed.  A drain was thus established on
the resources of distant nations for an object which no man dared to gainsay;
if he adventured on any such thing, he must encounter the odium of an infidel
- an atheist.  A steady stream of money flowed into Italy.  Nor was it alone
by this taxation of every Christian nation without permission of its
government - this empire within every empire - immense wealth accrued to the
projectors, while the infatuation could be kept up, by the diminished rate at
which land could be obtained.  Domains were thrown into the market; there were
few purchasers except the Church.  Immense domains were also given away by
weak-minded sinners, and those on the point of death, for the salvation of
their souls.  Thus, all things considered, the effect of the Crusades, though
not precisely that which was expected, was of singular advantage to the
Church, giving it a commanding strength it had never before possessed.

     In their resistance to the German attack the popes never hesitated at any
means.  They prompted Prince Henry to revolt against their great antagonist,
his father; they intervened, not to rebuke, but to abet him, when he threw his
father into prison and deprived him of the necessaries of life. They carried
their vengeance beyond the grave.  When the aged emperor, broken in heart,
escaped from their torment, and was honourably buried by the Bishop of Liege,
that prelate was forthwith excommunicated and compelled to disinter the
corpse.  But crimes like these, against which human nature revolts, meet with
retribution.  This same Prince Henry, becoming Henry V., was forced by
circumstances to resume his father's quarrel, and to refuse to yield his right
of granting investitures.  He marched upon Rome, and at the point of the sword
compelled his adversary, Pope Paschal II., to surrender all the possessions
and royalties of the Church - compelled him to crown him emperor - not,
however, until the pontiff had been subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment,
and brought into condemnation among his own party.

     Things seemed to be going to ruin in Rome, and such must inevitably have
been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Bernard of
Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the beater down of heresies,
theological and political.  He had been a pupil of William of Champeaux, the
vanquished rival of Abelard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and
personal hate.  He was a wonder-worker.  He excommunicated the flies which
infested a church - they all fell down dead and were swept out by the
basketful.  He has been described as "the mellifluous doctor, whose works are
not scientific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at
the basis of Abelard's philosophy - the assertion of the supremacy of reason.
Of Arnold of Brescia - who carried that principle to its political
consequences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were
inconsistent with their profession - he was the accuser and punisher. Bernard
preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, affirmed to be
not inferior to those of our Saviour; promising to him who should slay an
unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life to come.  This
second crusade was conducted by kings, and included fanatic ladies, dressed in
the armour of men; but it ended in ruin.

     It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the papacy
to visit Rome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon others.
Nicolas Breakspear - Adrian IV. - put the Eternal City under interdict,
thereby ending the republic which the partisans of Arnold of Brescia had set
up.  But in this he was greatly aided by a change of sentiment in many of the
inhabitants of Rome, who had found to their cost that it was more profitable
for their city to be the centre of Christianity than the seat of a phantom
republic.  As an equivalent for his coronation by Adrian, Frederick Barbarossa
agreed to surrender to the Church Arnold of Brescia.  With indecent haste, the
moment she had obtained possession of her arch-enemy she put him to death -
not delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom had been, but
murdering him with her own hand.  Seven centuries have elapsed, and the blood
of Arnold is still crying from the ground for retribution. Notwithstanding a
new - the third - crusade, things went from bad to worse in the Holy Land.
Saladin had retaken Jerusalem, A.D. 1187.  Barbarossa was drowned in a river
in Pisidia.  Richard of England was treacherously imprisoned; nor did the pope
interfere for this brave soldier of the Cross. In the meantime, the Emperors
of Germany had acquired Sicily by marriage - an incident destined to be of no
little importance in the history of Europe; for, on the death of the Emperor
Henry VI. at Messina, his son Frederick, an infant not two years old, was left
to be brought up in that island.  What the consequences were we shall soon
see.

     If we review the events related in this chapter, we find that the
idolatry and immorality into which Rome had fallen had become connected with
material interests sufficiently powerful to ensure their perpetuation; that
converted Germany insisted on a reform, and therefore made a moral attack on
the Italian system, attempting to carry it into effect by civil force.  This
attack was, properly speaking, purely moral, the intellectual element
accompanying it being derived from Western or Arabian influences, as will be
shown in the next chapter; and, in its resistance to this, the papacy was not
only successful, but actually was able to retaliate, overthrowing the Emperors
of Germany, and being even on the point of establishing a European autocracy,
with the pope at its head.  It was in these events that the Reformation began,
though circumstances intervened to postpone its completion to the era of
Luther.  Henceforth we see more and more plainly the attitude in which the
papacy, through its material interests, was compelled to stand, as resisting
all intellectual advancement.  Our subject has therefore here to be left
unfinished until we shall have described the Mohammedan influences making
pressures on the West and the East.