History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0189/01893.txt

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$Title{History Of The Intellectual Development Of Europe
Chapter II. Part II.}
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$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 II. Part II.

     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.

     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 of 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 Jewish 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 Arab 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 occassions, 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.

     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."

     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.

     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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.
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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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."

     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.  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.  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.  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.'

     "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.'

     "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.

     "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?  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.  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.  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."

     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.

     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 any one 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.
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.

     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 momentary
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.  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.  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.  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!" 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.

     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.  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.

     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
installment 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.  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.  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!

     What was it that produced this barrenness, this intellectual degradation
in Constantinople?  The tyranny of Theology over Thought.