The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 08 - Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy

By Author	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Title	[ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z \| Other Symbols ]
By Language

Download this book: [ ASCII ]

Look for this book on Amazon

We have new books nearly every day.
If you would like a news letter once a week or once a month fill out this form and we will give you a summary of the books for that week or month by email.

Title: The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 08 - Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy
Author: Various
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.

*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 08 - Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy" ***

produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)

Transcriber’s Note: As a result of editorial shortcomings in the
original, some reference letters in the text don’t have matching entries
in the reference-lists, and vice versa.

THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

[Illustration: NÖLDEKE]

THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages:
edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers
and contributors, by

HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

[Illustration]

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME VIII--PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS
THE CRUSADES AND THE PAPACY

The Outlook Company
New York

The History Association
London

1904

_All rights reserved._

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.

Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.

Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.

Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
Prof. H. Marnali, University of Budapest.
Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.

Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
Prof. F. York Powell, Oxford University.
Dr. John P. Peters, New York.

Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.

CONTENTS

VOLUME VIII

PART XII. PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF ARABIC HISTORY.
By Dr. Theodor Nöldeke 1

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS (250
B.C.-1375 A.D.) 25

CHAPTER I

THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE (250 B.C.-228 A.D.) 47

Justin’s account of the Parthians, 47. Their customs, 48.
Seleucus and Arsaces, 49. Wars with Rome, 51. Modern accounts
of Parthia, 53. The Parthian empire, 53. Arsaces and the
Arsacids, 54. Bactria and Parthia consolidate, 55. Conquests of
Mithridates, 57. Media and Babylonia conquered, 58. Parthian
“kingdoms,” 59. Scythian conquest of Bactria, 60. The Scythians
ravage Parthia, 61. First conflict with Rome, 62. Orodes
defeats the Romans, 63. Plutarch’s account of the battle of
Carrhæ, 63. Phraates IV repels Mark Antony, 68. Anarchy in
Parthia, 70. The Romans intervene, 72. The decay of Parthian
greatness, 74. Persia conquers Parthia, 75.

CHAPTER II

THE EMPIRE OF THE SASSANIDS (228-750 A.D.) 76

Sassanian power, 77. Sapor fights Rome, 78. The war with
Palmyra, 79. A new war with Rome, 81. Ardashir II to Bahram
IV, 82. The rule of Yezdegerd I, 83. The Arabs aid in war with
Rome, 84. War with the Hephthalites, 85. Kavadh I, 86. New
conflict with Rome, 86. Exploits of Mundhir, 87. Chosroes the
Just, 88. Chosroes attacks Rome, 88. Hormuzd IV, 91. Civil war,
91. Vices of Chosroes II, 93. Conflict with Heraclius; fall of
Chosroes II, 94. Successors of Chosroes II, 95. Anarchy and
chaos, 96. Arab incursions, 97. Arab conquest, 98.

CHAPTER III

EARLY HISTORY OF THE ARABS (_ca._ 2500 B.C.-622 A.D.) 100

Arab history before Mohammed, 105.

CHAPTER IV

MOHAMMED (570-632 A.D.) 111

Mohammed ben Abdallah ben Abdul-Muttalib, 111. Religious
unrest, 111. Mohammed’s life, 113. His marriage with Khadija,
113. Mohammed as a prophet, 115. Mohammed an outlaw, 116.
The Hegira, 117. Battle of Bedr, 120. Battle of Ohod,
121. Expedition against the Jews, 123. Siege of Medina,
extermination of the Jews, 123. Mohammed’s pilgrimage to Mecca,
125. Subjection of Mecca, 126. The victory of Honain and Autas,
128. The last years of Mohammed’s life, 130. Gibbon’s estimate
of Mohammed and Mohammedanism, 132.

CHAPTER V

THE SPREAD OF ISLAM (632-661 A.D.) 145

Abu Bekr, first caliph after Mohammed, 145. The caliph
Omar, 150. The conquest of Persia, 151. The Syrian conquest
completed, 156. Egypt captured, 160. The alleged burning of the
library, 163. Othman, the third caliph, 167. Ali, 170.

CHAPTER VI

THE OMAYYADS (661-750 A.D.) 175

Foundation of the Omayyads, 175. Yazid made caliph, 176. Siege
of Mecca, 177. Abdul-Malik, caliph, 179. Siege of Mecca, 180.
The eastern caliphate, 184. Suleiman’s ambitions, 185. The last
Omayyads, 186.

CHAPTER VII

THE ARABS IN EUROPE (711-961 A.D.) 191

The invasion of France, 198.

CHAPTER VIII

THE ABBASIDS (750-1258 A.D.) 209

Founding of Baghdad, 209. Harun Ar-Rashid, 210. Al-Mamun and
his successors, 211. Baghdad under the caliphs, 213. Gradual
decline of Arabian dominion in the East, 215. The various
religious sects, 220. The Seljuk Turks, 225. Arabs and Turks
unite against the Christians, 227. Saladin and his successors
against the crusaders, 228. The Mongols under Jenghiz Khan
invade western Asia, 230.

CHAPTER IX

THE DECLINE OF THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN (961-1609 A.D.) 233

Almansor, 233. Decay of power, 235. End of the Omayyads, 238.
Independent kingdoms, 239. The Almoravids, 240. Dynasty of the
Almohads, 246. Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 247. The decline
of Arab power, 248.

CHAPTER X

ARAB CIVILISATION 260

The Koran, 260. Doctrine of Islamism, 265. The pilgrimage to
Mecca, 267. The holy war, 270. Arab culture, 271. Commerce and
industry, 273. Paper, compass, and gunpowder, 274. Influence of
the Arabs on European civilisation, 276. Scholasticism, 277.
Mathematical science, 278. Medicine, 279. Architecture, 281.
Music, 282.

CHAPTER XI

TRIBAL LIFE OF THE EPIC PERIOD 284

CHAPTER XII

THE PRINCIPLES OF LAW IN ISLAM 294

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 305

PART XIII. THE CRUSADES AND THE PAPACY

BOOK I. THE CRUSADES

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE VALUE OF THE CRUSADES IN THE LIGHT OF
MODERN HISTORY. By the Reverend William Denton, M.A. 311

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE CRUSADES (1096-1291 A.D.) 314

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES (306-1096 A.D.) 320

Early Christian pilgrimages, 322. Jerusalem under the Saracens,
324. Character of the pilgrims, 326. The Turks in power, 328.
Peter the Hermit, 330. The appeal of the emperor Alexius, 331.
Councils of Placentia and Clermont, 332. The frenzy of Europe,
334.

CHAPTER II

THE FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1147 A.D.) 338

Peter the Hermit and his rabble, 339. The leaders of the First
Crusade, 340. Alexius compels homage, 342. Numbers of the
crusaders, 343. The siege of Nicæa, 344. Battle of Dorylæum,
345. Principality of Edessa founded, 346. Siege of Antioch,
347. A typical miracle, 349. Jerusalem besieged, 351. The Arab
account, 352. Godfrey elected king, 353. Results of the First
Crusade, 356.

CHAPTER III

THE SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1189 A.D.) 358

St. Bernard, 358. Disasters of the Germans, 361. The French
failure, 362. The rise of Saladin, 364. Moslem accounts of the
battle of Tiberias, 374. The fall of Jerusalem, 376.

CHAPTER IV

THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1193 A.D.) 379

The Saladin tithe, 381. Barbarossa’s crusade and death, 382.
The siege of Acre or Ptolemais, 383. Geoffrey de Vinsauf’s
account of Acre, 383. Richard’s voyage, 386. The French sail
to Acre, 387. Dissension between the French and English kings,
388. Review of the siege, 390. The crusaders move on Jerusalem,
392. The enterprise abandoned, 396. Vinsauf’s account of
Richard at Joppa, 397. Peace between the kings, 402. End and
review of the Third Crusade, 404. Death of Saladin; Arab
eulogies, 407.

CHAPTER V

THE FOURTH TO THE SIXTH CRUSADES (1195-1229 A.D.) 410

Pope Celestine III promotes a crusade, 410. The Fourth (or
German) Crusade, 411. The Fifth Crusade, 413. Results of the
Fifth Crusade, 417. The Children’s Crusade, 419. The Sixth
Crusade, 422.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAST CRUSADES (1239-1314 A.D.) 431

Richard of Cornwall’s Crusade (the Seventh), 432. The Tatar
Crevasse, 433. The crusade of St. Louis (the Eighth), 434.
Battle of Mansura, 436. De Joinville’s account of the battle of
Mansura, 437. Results of Mansura, 441. St. Louis a prisoner,
442. Moslem account of St. Louis’ capture, 443. The Christians
quarrel among themselves, 448. History of Antioch, 449. Ravages
of Bibars, 450. Second crusade and death of Louis IX, 450.
Prince Edward leaves England, 451. Vain efforts of Gregory X,
452. Progress of the mamelukes, 453. Total loss of the Holy
Land, 454. Fate of the military orders, 456. Knights of St.
John, 456. The Templars in France, 457. In other countries,
458. Council at Vienne, 458. The order suppressed, 459. The
Crusades in the West, 459. The Teutonic Crusade, 460. The
attack on the Albigenses, 461. Western assaults on the Arabs,
463. Comparison of the two crusades, 466.

CHAPTER VII

CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES (1096-1291 A.D.) 467

Moral effects, 468. Political effects, 469. Influence upon
commerce, 471. Enrichment of cities, 472. Colonisation, 472.
Influence on industry, 474. The masons organise, 475. Gothic
architecture, 476. Sculpture and painting, 476. Herder’s
opinion of the Crusades, 477. Gibbon on the results of the
Crusades, 479.

APPENDIX

FEUDALISM (800-1450 A.D.) 481

Bryce and Hegel on feudalism, 482. Commencement of the feudal
régime, 483. Reciprocal obligations of vassal and lord, 484.
Feudal justice, 485. Ecclesiastical feudalism, 487. The Church
and the feudal army, 488. Serfs and villeins, 489. Anarchy and
violence; frightful condition of the peasants and some happy
results therefrom, 491. Geographic outlines of the kingdom
of Germany, 494. The transition from feudalism to monarchy,
494. Progress in Germany, 495. Influence of gunpowder, 497.
Monarchism in Italy, 497. In France, 498. In England, 499. The
papacy and feudalism, 500. Hegel on the rise of mankind through
feudalism, 500.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 502

BOOK II. THE PAPACY

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE PAPACY (42-1878 A.D.) 503

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY (42-842 A.D.) 519

The papacy in connection with the Frankish Empire, 524.
Gregory the Great, 531. Christian mythology, 534. Worship of
the Virgin, 535. Angels and devils, 536. Martyrs and relics,
536. Sanctity of the clergy, 537. State after death, 538.
Gregory’s successors, 539. Draper on the origin of iconoclasm,
544. Milman on iconoclasm, 545. The war of iconoclasm, 546.
Constantine Copronymus, 548. Third Council of Constantinople,
549. The war on monasteries, 550. Helena and Irene, 552. Second
Council of Nicæa, 552.

CHAPTER II

“THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY”--CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE GREAT
(740-985 A.D.) 555

Independence of the Roman bishops, 556. The appeal to the
Franks, 556. Charlemagne and the pope, 558. The donation from
Constantine, 559. Charlemagne’s third and fourth entrances into
Italy, 561. The realm of the popes, 562. The trial of the pope
and the crowning of Charlemagne, 563. Papal ambition after
Charlemagne, 565. The myth of the woman pope, 567. Rivalry
of Nicholas and Photius, 569. Synod at Constantinople, 570.
The false decretals, 571. Adrian II, 574. Pope Formosus, 577.
Theodora in power, 579. The infamous Marozia, 581. Rebellion of
Rome, 582. Pope John XII, 583. Trial of the pope, 583. Charles
Kingsley on temporal power, 587.

CHAPTER III

THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY (985-1305 A.D.) 589

The dream of Otto III, 590. The German popes, 591. The college
of cardinals, 592. Milman on the mission of the papacy, 593.
Simony, 596. Celibacy of the clergy, 596. Gregory’s synod at
Rome, 597. Bryce on the consequences of the Concordat, 602.
Rival claimants, 602. Adrian IV _versus_ Barbarossa, 603.
Adrian’s firmness, 605. Two rival popes, 606. Innocent III,
607. The influence of the crusades on papal power, 608. The
autocracy of Innocent III, 610. Universal sway of the pope,
611. Milman’s estimate of Innocent III, 612. Frederick II at
war with the papacy, 614. Council at Lyons, 616. Accession of
Boniface VIII, 618. Philip the Fair overpowers the papacy, 618.
Hallam on the climax of papal power, 620.

CHAPTER IV

FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY (1305-1513 A.D.) 623

Clement V, 624. The fate of the Templars, 625. John XXII to
Urban V, 626. The Great Schism of the West, 630. Relation of
the national churches to the state, 632. Moral condition of the
clergy, 633. The great councils of Pisa and Constance; John
Huss, 634. Milman on Nicholas V and the fall of Constantinople,
640. Popes to 1503, 642. Alexander VI, the Borgia, 644.
Estimates of Alexander VI, 645. Julius II, 647. Prevalence of
secularism in the Church, 648.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 651

PART XII

THE HISTORY OF PARTHIANS,
SASSANIDS, AND ARABS

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ABDUL-LATIF, ABUL-FARAJ, ABULFEDA, MAX DUNCKER, I. GOLDZIHER,
A. VON GUTSCHMID, WILLIAM MUIR, TH. NÖLDEKE, L. A.
SÉDILLOT, L. VIARDOT, JULIUS WELLHAUSEN,
GUSTAV WEIL

TOGETHER WITH

A CHARACTERISATION OF THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE
OF ARABIC HISTORY

THEODOR NÖLDEKE

AN ESSAY ON
THE TRIBAL LIFE OF THE EPIC PERIOD

JULIUS WELLHAUSEN

AND A STUDY OF
THE PRINCIPLES OF LAW IN ISLAM

I. GOLDZIHER

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

ARTEMIDORUS, BAILLY, BEN-HAZIL, THE HOLY BIBLE, DION CASSIUS, L. A.
SILVESTRE DE SACY, DIODORUS, R. DOZY, S. A. DUNHAM, EL-MAKIN,
ERATOSTHENES, EUSEBIUS OF CÆSAREA, EUTYCHIUS, E. GIBBON,
STANISLAS GUYARD, HAURÉAU, HERODOTUS, HUMBOLDT, JUSTIN,
HAJI KHALFA, IBN KHALDUN, KIESEWETTER, MAKRISI, AMMIANUS
MARCELLINUS, J. A. ST. MARTIN, H. H. MILMAN,
J. E. MONTUCLA, F. A. NEALE, S. OCKLEY, W.
G. PALGRAVE, PLINY, GIRAULT DE PRANGEY,
JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL,
IBN SAAD, SAMPIRO, W. C.
TAYLOR, GEORG WEBER,
JOSEPH WHITE

_All rights reserved._

PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS

[Illustration]

THE SCOPE AND INFLUENCE OF ARABIC HISTORY

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. TH. NÖLDEKE

Professor in the University of Strasburg, etc.

If there is a region in the world which constrains its inhabitants to
adopt a particular mode of life, that country is Arabia and the regions
that border it on the north, the Sinaitic peninsula and the Syrian and
Mesopotamian deserts. The great majority of the dwellers in these parts
are forced to lead a nomadic life by the fact that the spots in which
agriculture is possible are comparatively rare, and the infrequent rains,
which only extend over limited areas, provide pasture for their flocks
now in one part and now in another, but never for any length of time. The
whole character of the Bedouin is conditioned by this nomadic mode of
life (full of hardships and privations, though not laborious) with its
constant struggles with competitors for the prime necessaries of life.
The inhabitants of the oases, who are permanently settled in favoured
spots, differ from the Bedouins in many respects, but are nevertheless
strongly influenced by Bedouin modes of life and thought. Throughout
this vast area life runs its course in perpetual change, yet remains in
essentials ever the same. If one tribe perishes, migrates elsewhere, or
turns to agricultural pursuits somewhere in the vicinity of the desert,
its place is taken by another, which lives exactly as it had lived. The
course of history, however, has shown that intellectual forces were
existent in this desert race which seem to be lacking in others living
under precisely similar conditions, such as the Berbers of the Sahara.

ARABS PAST AND PRESENT

We have no certain knowledge of the relation in which the Semitic
tribes of the desert, whom we first meet with in the Old Testament
(Ishmaelites, Midianites, etc.), and who there appear as closely akin to
the Israelites, stand to the Arabs of later times. As far as we can tell,
however, they resemble them exactly. The son of the desert likes to
reap where he has not sown; he not only plunders the camels and smaller
cattle of alien tribes of Bedouins, but he devours the cornfields of
the peasants who dwell on the borders of the desert whenever he has a
chance, or carries off the garnered fruits of their toil. Thus in old
days the desert tribes on one occasion actually came across the Jordan
into central Palestine and utterly despoiled the inhabitants, until the
latter under the leadership of Gideon drove them forth and inflicted a
severe humiliation upon them (Judges 6-8). Somewhat later a horde of
Amalekite inhabitants of the Sinaitic peninsula invaded southern Judea
and Philistia, but were severely chastised by David, who was living there
in exile (1 Samuel xxx). Such tribes have often in like manner proved
extremely troublesome to the agricultural population on the margin of
the desert. But if the states to which these peasants belong will only
put forth a certain amount of exertion in defence of their territory
the danger is not serious; for at heart the Bedouins are not eminently
brave. In many cases peasants who will protect their own property can
successfully ward off these predatory incursions. The non-nomadic
settlers in the interior of Arabia, in particular, seem invariably to
have been more valiant than the nomadic tribes. The latter would find
it hard to do without the produce of agriculture and date-palm culture,
while the dwellers in the oases, if they desire to have any intercourse
with other regions, are obliged to keep on a friendly footing with the
Bedouins through whose haunts their trade routes lead. Hence treaties
are concluded in the interests of both parties, and the true Arab is an
observer of treaties.

By a lamentable process of events it has come to pass that the nomads
have extended their domain considerably at the expense of the husbandman.
Even in Palestine the Bedouin tent-dweller now pastures his camels in
many spots where formerly the Israelite farmer sat under his own vine and
his own fig-tree and tilled his land with ox and ass.

THE NAME OF ARAB

The real meaning of the name “Arab” seems to be “desert.” It is first
met with, or so it seems, in varying forms in Assyrian inscriptions of
the ninth century.[1] In the Old Testament it cannot be identified with
certainty before the time of Jeremiah.[2] In the inscriptions of King
Darius Hystaspes, Arabaya appears to mean the Mesopotamian, Syrian, and
Sinaitic desert. Amongst the Greeks we meet with the terms “Arab, Arabia”
first in Æschylus (_Persians_ 316; _Prom._ 422), but the poet’s ideas of
the situation of the country are altogether mythical. Herodotus, on the
contrary, is fully conversant with it; he is specially interested in that
district, populated by Arabs, that constitutes the connection between
Palestine and Egypt which was of such importance to the Persian kingdom,
and not to it alone. His contemporary, Nehemiah, is quite familiar with
the name of “Arab” (Ch. 2, 19; 4, 7; 6, 16) and so is Xenophon. The
latter uses the name “Arabia” of the Mesopotamian desert in particular
(_Anab._ 1, 5, 1); and this very region is called “Arab” pure and simple
by the later Syrians. The name has survived from that day to this,
especially amongst the people themselves. It has long stood for both the
nationality and the language. It is true that even in times tolerably
remote Arab was understood to mean more particularly Bedouin; as is the
case even in Sabæan inscriptions. The latter are, however, more exactly
distinguished from the settled inhabitants of the country by the use of
the plural, in its old form _A’rab_, later more frequently _Orban_.

Many scholars assume that all civilised Semitic nations actually took
their rise from Arabia and are, as Sprenger[3] phrases it “Bedouin
deposits” (“_abgelagerte Beduinen_”). The question of whether, in the
last resort, Arabia was the original home of the Semites or whether they
migrated thither from Africa in primitive times is not affected by this
assumption.[4] In any case the language of the Hebrews and Aramæans
still bears traces of the fact that their forefathers were at one time
a nomadic race, which (with regard to the former at least) is to some
extent confirmed by Old Testament tradition. It is true that wherever we
have any historic record the contrast between these civilised peoples
and the dwellers in the desert is evident. But we can imagine that the
same thing happened with them as we may observe repeatedly in Arab
tribes of later days. They press forward, gradually in part and in part
rapidly, out of Arabia proper. The Syrian and Mesopotamian deserts,
barren as they seem to us, offer the nomads certain advantages over
the regions to the south. The rainfall is somewhat more copious. The
nomads come into closer contact with settled peoples, and much as the
Bedouin (proud of his freedom and happy in his leisure) may look down
upon the industrious peasant and even upon the artisan, yet the greater
security and the certainty of obtaining daily food prompts him to take to
husbandry in the region of verdure when opportunity offers. The process
was sometimes accompanied by violence towards the earlier settlers, but
it often came about peaceably. Thus one wave of Arabs slowly overtook
another. The names which predominate in the older portions of the Old
Testament (Ishmaelites, Midianites, etc.) soon fall into the background.
The appearance of the name “Arab” may be in itself an indication of the
arrival of fresh tribes in these regions.

THE ARABS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS

In the fourth century B.C. we find the Arab tribe of the Nabatæans to the
south of Palestine, and the same tribe soon afterwards formed a settled
state which extended eastwards from the ancient territory of Israel as
far as to Damascus, rose to a considerable height of civilisation, and
maintained a position of lax dependence upon Rome until Trajan destroyed
it in the year 106; certainly not to the real advantage of the empire.
In the first century of our era we meet with princes and nobles with
Arabic names in Edessa, Palmyra, Emesa, and Hatrá. The abundant store of
inscriptions at Palmyra shows that the greater part of the population
of this Aramaic-speaking trading city, encompassed on all sides by the
desert, was of Arab origin. It seems that during the gradual decay of the
Seleucid kingdom, Arabs in several cases acquired dominion over these
districts, just as at a later period members of various Bedouin tribes
rose to eminence in Syria and Mesopotamia, during the decadence of the
caliphate dynasty. Thus numerous settled Arab tribes lived in many parts
of Syria as Roman subjects. In process of time all these Arabs who dwelt
in towns or villages grew to be Aramæans; even before that they had
always used the Aramaic language in their inscriptions--where they did
not write in Greek--because Arabic was not then regarded as a suitable
language for use in writing.

At this time two new names for the Arabs came into existence, “Saracens”
and “Taits.” Ptolemy (5, 16) mentions Σαρακηνή as a district in the
Sinaitic peninsula.[5] The inhabitants of this district, who are unknown
to Arab tradition, must have made themselves notorious in the Roman
provinces in their vicinity; we can hardly suppose by other means than
predatory incursions by hindering the march of caravans or levying heavy
tolls upon them. Thus in that region all Bedouins came to be called
Saraceni (Σαρακηνοί), in Aramaic Sarkaje, usually with no very favourable
meaning. We meet with the latter form in a dialogue concerning Fate,
written about 210 A.D. by a pupil of Bardesanes.[6] The designation then
became general; thus it occurs very frequently in Ammianus Marcellinus.
The name “Saracen” continued to be used in the West in later times
probably rather through the influence of literature than by oral
tradition, and was applied to all Arabs, and even to all Moslems, without
distinction.

In precisely the same fashion and at exactly the same time the
designation “Taits” came to be used for all Arabs by the Syrians of
Edessa and the inhabitants of Babylonia. Only, while we know nothing
of a distinct tribe of Saracens, which must very early have ceased to
exist as such, we have plentiful and trustworthy information concerning
the Tai in Arab literature. Their principal seat was in northern Nejd,
but they spread abroad in many directions. Even now their name has not
wholly passed out of remembrance.[7] By degrees the Aramæans came to
style all Arabs “Tayaye,” and the Persians adopted the name from them.[8]
Amongst the latter it is pronounced Tadjik, Tazik, in its more ancient
form (with the Persian suffix), and Tazi in the later form.[9] The Arabs
themselves reckon the Tai among the tribes which were once settled in
the south of the Arabian peninsula. We are probably right in connecting
their appearance in the north with a fresh wave which carried quite a
number of the tribes of south Arabia into the northern districts; a
tribal migration of which Arab tradition has much to tell, and some of it
authentic.

The Arabs were known at that period only as a wholly savage race.
Ammianus says of them: “_natio perniciosa_” (14, 4, 7), “_nec amici nobis
unquam nec hostes optandi_” (14, 4, 1). The whole description, which he
gives from contemporary information (14, 4), is very instructive, though
somewhat one-sided and exaggerated in certain particulars. When he says
that the Saracens live upon flesh and milk, and that most of them are
unacquainted with wheat or wine, the statement agrees with that in the
not much later Syrian _Vita_ of Simeon Stylites[10] that many “Taits”
did not know what bread was, but lived entirely upon flesh. There can be
no question that the northern Bedouins, the only ones the author had in
mind, can seldom have had an opportunity of procuring dates. Bread is
an article of luxury in Arabia even at the present time. The Bedouins of
the Sinaitic district, with whom S. Nilus (fifth century A.D.) had to do,
were quite exceptionally barbarous.[11]

ARAB CIVILISATION

We have hitherto completely ignored the seats of higher civilisation
which were to be found in ancient times in the peninsula of Arabia.
As early as the second millennium B.C. southwest Arabia, the Yemen,
the country of the Sabæans and Himyars, which was well adapted for
agriculture on account of the regular rains of its tropical summer,
had developed a civilisation which has left, in the ruins of huge
buildings and numerous inscriptions, monuments which still excite our
admiration. The Greeks and Romans were not without justification when
they spoke of a εὐδαίμων Ἀραβία, Arabia Felix, though their ideas of
the character and extent of this “rich”[12] country were for the most
part tolerably vague.[13] But several passages in the Old Testament bear
witness to the high repute of the glory and splendour of the Sabæans.
This is particularly evident in the legend of the queen of Sheba’s
visit to Solomon (1 Kings x, 1-10). Not the least part of the wealth of
the Sabæans was due to their monopoly of the trade in certain fragrant
substances, especially in the incense which in old times was used in
immense quantities at sacrifices. These perfumes, especially incense,
are mentioned in various passages of the Old Testament, together with
gold and precious stones, as amongst the treasures of the Sabæans (1
Kings x, 2, 10; Jeremiah vi, 20; Ezekiel xxvii, 22; Isaiah lx, 6). These
and other products were carried to the north by Sabæan caravans (cf.
Isaiah lx, 6; Tobit vi, 16). In the inscriptions of northern Hijaz we
now have documentary evidence to prove that the Sabæans established
permanent trading-stations at a distance from their own country. At
the height of their prosperity they must have exercised a civilising
influence of no mean importance upon the rest of Arabia, especially upon
those parts of the west which they traversed in their regular journeys.
To them the Thamudæans, with whose buildings (known before only by the
report of Arab writers) the labours of Doughty and Euting have made
us acquainted, and the Nabatæans, who were closely connected with the
Thamudæans, probably owed the first elements of their culture. Written
characters, which came to the Sabæans from the north in very early days,
were by them disseminated in every kind of transmutation over large
portions of Arabia, as far as the neighbourhood of Damascus on the one
hand and Abyssinia on the other. Nevertheless, take it all in all,
the civilisation of the ancient Yemen bore little fruit for the world
beyond. The countries about the Mediterranean received no intellectual
stimulus worth speaking of from this remote region, nor did the old
Semitic civilisation, nor Iran, receive more. And since the glory of the
land of the Sabæans has departed its influence on other Arabs has become
insignificant.

The decadence of the nation was probably due to various causes. It is
certain that the Arab tradition which sees in it the effect of a single
catastrophe--the bursting of the dam at Marib, which was indispensable
for regular irrigation--is far from being an adequate explanation. The
bursting of the dam must itself have been the consequence of neglect
on the part of a degenerate race. But there may well be some truth in
the tradition, which connects the decline of this remarkable people,
indirectly, at least, with the great migration of Yemenite tribes to the
north. At that time--about the second century A.D.--a kind of retrograde
movement seems to have set in throughout the civilisation of a large part
of Arabia. At certain periods large numbers of Arabs had been able to
write, at least in rude characters, as is sufficiently proved by numerous
brief inscriptions; about the year 600 the art of writing in Arabia was
the secret of the few. Even in Yemen tolerably trustworthy traditions of
its palmy days survived only amongst individuals. The conquest of the
country by the hated Abyssinians (525 A.D.) probably shattered the last
remnants of national vigour, and the Persian conquest (about 570 A.D.)
failed to quicken it afresh. It is true that the civilisation of Yemen
was still superior to that of the rest of Arabia; for example, it carried
on a fairly important manufacture of weapons and materials for garments.
A dim consciousness still survived of great things that the country had
wrought. But, since there were no historic records of such, the later
Yemenites endeavoured to vindicate the fame of their forefathers by
extravagant inventions and to show that they had done far greater deeds
than were done by the Koreishites at the head of the Moslems.

Nevertheless the fact remains that the civilisation of the Sabæans need
scarcely be taken into account in determining the place of Arabia in
history. It counts for less than the inferior civilisation of other
nations less remote from the main theatre of events. The principal
scene of the old quarrel of East and West, which had presented itself
so vividly to the eyes of the Greeks in the Persian wars, in the last
century before Christ was transferred to Syria and the countries about
the Euphrates and Tigris. The Arabs of the northern districts were drawn
into the struggle of the Romans with the Parthians and Persians. They
were always available for pillaging the enemy’s territory or harassing
their compatriots on the other side. It was hardly possible for the great
powers to rule the desert, and it would have been a somewhat thankless
task; but they could influence the Bedouins strongly by various indirect
methods. The Arab dynasties in the frontier districts were particularly
useful for the purpose; they occupied a position of independence none too
strict, and were invariably regarded with suspicion, but they could keep
their savage kinsmen, with whom they were constantly in touch, far more
effectually in check than regular imperial or royal officials could have
done.

In this connection the Christian phylarchs of the tribe of Ghassan are
worthy of special mention on the Roman side. Their capital was not far
from Damascus and they played a somewhat important part in the events
of the sixth century. On the Persian side there were for many years the
vassal kings of the tribe of Lakhm, which dwelt in the important city of
Hira, near the ancient Babylon. Both dynasties were respected and feared
nearly as far as the confines of Arabia. Some scattered monarchies had
likewise arisen in the interior of the country. In particular, we know
of some sovereigns of a family of the Kinda tribe, whose home was at
Hadramaut, far to the south; they ruled with vigour in various parts of
Arabia, much like the princes of the Haïl dynasty at the present day.

But this sovereignty was of no long duration. Arabia is not suited to
monarchy. The Bedouin has too strong a taste for independence; he is
averse even from peaceful enterprises for his own profit, if they call
for discipline and subordination. A government must be equally wise and
firm if it is to control the intractable nomad, with his loose ties
to the soil. The Bedouin clings to his family, his tribe, his race.
He yields willingly to the suggestions of the most distinguished and
experienced chiefs of his tribe, but only so far as he pleases. There
can be no question of a real government authority. This was the case
even in the few cities of the interior. The decisions of the heads of
families had considerable weight, but no coercive force. It might happen
that individuals or families held aloof from a campaign undertaken on
the initiative of the most distinguished men of the tribe, or turned
back before its object was attained, nor could any one prevent them
from so doing. They would perhaps have to endure scorn and mockery in
prose and verse, and to that the true Arab is as sensitive as he is
accessible to hyperbolical eulogy. In Arabia, then as now, peace never
prevailed for any length of time. Sometimes there were feuds between
large tribes or groups of tribes, sometimes quarrels within narrower
limits. Camel-lifting and the use of pasture and wells belonging to
another tribe constituted frequent grounds of quarrel. If blood were
shed (which usually happened unintentionally) it cried aloud for blood.
The Arab is not naturally blood-thirsty, but the passion of revenge for
his slaughtered kin can lash him to furious blood-thirstiness. Fear of
blood-revenge and the reflection that, in the peace which must ultimately
be concluded, wergild must be paid to the tribe that has suffered most
severely, in proportion to its losses, usually induce the combatants to
be careful not to slay too many enemies, even in the stricken field. A
murder or even a grievous injury may provoke long years of feud between
families closely akin.

A powerful corrective to lawlessness is, however, supplied by the sway of
custom and tradition. Authority (as has been intimated before) makes up
to a great extent for the lack of political restraints. Authority of this
character tells most strongly amongst a people of the aristocratic temper
which the Arabs share with other nomadic races. An alien has no natural
rights, but if any member of the tribe takes him under his protection he
gains that of the whole tribe, and consequently security for his life and
property.

THE KOREISH OF MECCA

By the year 600, and probably a considerable time before, the Koreish
of Mecca had attained a curious and exceptional position. There, in
an absolutely barren valley and near a spring of brackish water, a
sanctuary stood. Some families of the Fihr clan, which belonged to the
Bedouin tribe of Kinana, had settled round about it and established,
under the name of Koreish, a lax commonwealth of the kind frequently
found in Arabia. A considerable area in the immediate vicinity of their
sanctuary may possibly have been respected as holy ground, in which no
blood was to be shed, long before the Koreish took possession of it.
Thus secured from harm, and held in high esteem as the guardians of
the Kaaba (a small, square primitive house enclosed within a building
open to the sky), the Koreish had turned their attention to commerce.
They sent forth their caravans far and wide, as the Ishmaelites and
Sabæans had done of old.[14] Koreishites travelled as merchants to
Gaza, Jerusalem, and Damascus, to Hira on the Euphrates, to Sana in
Yemen, and even crossed the Red Sea to Abyssinia. By these means they
not only acquired considerable wealth according to Arab standards, but
what was of much greater value--a wider mental horizon than the Bedouins
and the inhabitants of the oases, and a knowledge of men and affairs.
Although they never quite attained a regular political organisation, yet
Wellhausen is right when he says, “We note something of an aristocratic
hereditary wisdom, as in the case of ancient Rome and Venice.”[15]

One consequence, it must be owned, of the practical temper and
sober-mindedness of the Koreish was that they produced no poet of any
note, while each and all of the poverty-stricken tribes of Bedouins about
them had great achievements in this field to show. Better fed than the
Bedouins (though by no means luxuriously) and not decimated by conflicts,
they increased more rapidly in numbers, and in Arabia the numerical
strength of a tribe has much to do with the esteem in which it is held.
Their prosperity allowed them to exercise a liberal hospitality, and the
hungry Bedouin appreciates highly the host who lets him for once eat his
fill. We may well conjecture that it was the Koreish who established the
connection between the annual pilgrimage to the mountain of Arafat, which
lay just beyond their holy ground and the valley of Mina, with the temple
of Mecca, which lay within it. Thus Mecca became the place where Arabs of
the most diverse tribes met together from far and near every year. Even
before the days of Islam the Koreish tribe was held in high esteem far
and wide. But, however much we may study the causes which raised them
above other Arabs, it still remains something of an enigma that this
torrid and barren eyrie should at that time have brought forth so large
a number of men, exclusive of the prophet, who, when their turn came
to be placed in circumstances wholly unfamiliar, acquitted themselves
magnificently as generals and statesmen. History sets us several problems
of a similar nature in the sudden appearance of many notable men at the
same spot.

At that time there were many survivals of barbarism among the inhabitants
of central Arabia. For instance, the practice of burying newborn
daughters alive was very general. The cost of feeding and bringing up
girls in that inhospitable country was a burden unwillingly borne;
probably the horrible manner in which they were got rid of had originally
some connection with religious ideas. In remote antiquity the Semites,
like many other nations, reckoned consanguinity only by the surest
guarantee, that of a common mother. Among the Arabs and other peoples we
find a relic of this view, otherwise abandoned long since, in the fact
that a man might regard his stepmother as part of his inheritance and
take her to wife. The father of the great Omar was the issue of such a
marriage.

ARAB POETRY

Nevertheless we cannot but observe a distinct intellectual advance among
the Arabs of the period we are now considering. This is specially marked
in the efflorescence of poetry. It is of a purely national character
and differs wholly from the poetry of northern Semitic races both in
structure and substance. We know it only in its fully developed form, the
oldest poems which have come down to us in tolerable preservation are
of precisely the same character as the later ones, but even they only
date back to the first half of the sixth century at farthest. All Arabic
poetry is rhymed, and rhyme predominates even in certain solemn modes
of speech not subject to strict metrical rule, such as the apothegms
of soothsayers. Now, seeing that this form of poetry, up to that time
everywhere unknown, springs into prominence in Latin and Greek poems of
a popular and devotional character after the fourth century, we are led
to conjecture that there may be a connection of some sort with occidental
poetry in the employment of this artistic method, which may very well
have come into use among the Arabs about the same time. The point of
common origin might be Palestine or Syria. Rhymed prose was probably the
original form. The whole matter is, however, beyond proof.

The acceptance of this conjecture would not impair the originality of
Arabic poetry. Among its great merits is the extremely fine feeling for
rhythm which the entirely illiterate Arab authors of these poems and of
the rhapsodies which were handed down orally display, by the careful
observance of metres which carry out the principle of quantity far more
strictly than those of Greek and Latin poetry. In substance these poems
generally turn upon the ordinary subjects and interests of Bedouin
life, though frequently idealising them; and loftier thoughts are not
seldom conspicuous. Some famous poets who took long journeys, sometimes
living among Christian surroundings at the courts of Arab vassal
kings, sometimes going as far as to Yemen, prepared the way for Islam
by disseminating ideas tinged with Christian thought. The spirit that
animates the noble tales of Arab heroes and worthies which originated
at this time points to an advance in culture. One singular institution
appears to have had very advantageous results; during certain months all
heathen Arabs observed a truce of God, in which arms were laid aside and
no blood was shed. During this period friends and foes met together at
certain times and places, originally, no doubt, to celebrate religious
rites. By degrees, however, the latter receded into the background;
negotiations were carried on, treaties concluded, the poets found an
audience, merriment and brisk traffic were the order of the day. Even in
the festival at Mecca, which retained more of its religious character,
the varied programme ran its round.[16]

RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT ARABS

Concerning the religion of the ancient Arabs we have no great amount of
knowledge. Wellhausen rightly entitles his admirable work on the subject
_Reste arabischen Heidenthums_. Nevertheless we can make certain of some
points of special importance with regard to our present consideration.
The heathen Arabs possessed many holy places and many ceremonial rites,
but very little earnest religious conviction. Excessively conservative
by nature, the people observed the customs of their fathers without
troubling their minds about their original significance, offered
sacrifices to the gods (rude stone fetiches for the most part), and
marched in procession round their sanctuaries, without counting much
upon their aid or standing in any great awe of them; they cried to the
dead, “Be not far from us,” without associating with the cry the idea of
a future life which alone gave it meaning. In the north the savage king
Mundhir ben Ma-assama (505-554) still sacrificed multitudes of Christian
captives in honour of the goddess of the planet Venus, even as the
Israelites had done long ago in honour of their God.[17] The Arabs of
the Sinaitic peninsula likewise offered human sacrifices to the planet
Venus,[18] and we have other accounts of similar human sacrifices among
the Arabs of the north. Possibly their close contact with Christians and
the adherents of other superior religions may have to some extent revived
the old Semitic religious zeal and fanaticism among the Arabs there.
Farther south we find only faint traces of human sacrifice and we may
regard it as practically extinct by the time of Mohammed.

In the meantime, however, the Arabs who had entered into closer relations
with the Roman Empire, and the majority of those who occupied a like
position towards Persia, had adopted at least a superficial form of
Christianity. There were also some Christians in the interior of Arabia,
while in the south Christianity had long since gained a considerable
following. It had been persecuted for a while by a Jewish ruler; it was
ultimately delivered by the Abyssinian conquest, but had made small
progress since then. Christianity as practised by the Syrians, or, worse
still, the Abyssinians, was not well adapted to win proselytes among the
Arabs. If only the disciplined strength of Rome had acted upon these
regions the case would probably have been different. There were Jews here
and there in Arabia, and like the Jews of Abyssinia most of them seem not
to have been genuine children of Israel, but native converts to Judaism.
The Arab Jews, though possessed of no great theological knowledge,
adhered strictly to their religion. The majority of Arabs was composed
of heathen who had outgrown their religion. There were probably men who
were conscious of the defects of this state of things, and recognised
that the Christians had in many points an advantage over the heathen.
We are told of certain persons from Mecca and its vicinity who adopted,
and even preached, a monotheistic faith more or less Christian, but the
details are very obscure. Certainly at the beginning of the seventh
century not even the profoundest and acutest observer could have foreseen
that in the heart of Arabia a religion was soon to arise and to result in
the establishment of an Arab empire destined to give new shape to vast
regions of the world, including the countries which had been the homes of
the oldest civilisations.

MOHAMMED

The man whose energy gave clear and practical expression to the obscure
impulse towards a purer religion arose amidst the worldly-wise Koreish.
Flouted at first by his sober-minded fellow tribesmen, he gradually won
the victory for his faith, and died the temporal and spiritual ruler of
Arabia. To the very combination of qualities to some extent contradictory
in his character, he owed his success with such a race as this. He firmly
believed in his mission and was unscrupulous in his choice of means;
he was a cataleptic visionary, and a great statesman; steadfast in his
fundamental convictions and often weak and vacillating in details, he had
great practical sagacity and was incapable of keen logical abstraction;
he had a bias towards asceticism and a temperament strongly sensuous.

We not only have the fullest accounts of Mohammed’s whole character, but
we possess his authentic work, the _Koran_, which he preached in the name
of his God; and yet the extraordinary, attractive, and repulsive man
remains in many respects an enigma. He had come across much of Judaism
and Christianity, but by verbal report only. For though it remains an
open question whether Mohammed was actually ignorant of reading and
writing, it is certain that he had neither read the Bible nor any other
books. The persons from whom he gathered his information concerning the
older monotheistic religions must have been somewhat unlettered folk.
This holds good of his Christian instructors more particularly. Certain
Judæo-Christian ideas, however, had early laid powerful hold upon him;
resurrection, judgment, heaven and hell, strict monotheism and the vanity
and culpability of all forms of idolatry. Feeling in himself the divine
call, he uttered the thought that possessed him as the word of God; that
which the prophets of Israel had done in exceptional cases became with
him the set form of his teaching. We may be but ill pleased with the
grossness of imagination, the lack of logic, the undeniable poverty of
thought, and much besides in the _Koran_, but this was not the effect
it wrought upon his hearers, especially when once their attention had
been riveted. It was all new to them, they were thrilled with terror
and delight by those gross representations of hell and heaven, to these
naïve people the weakness of the reasoning was not apparent, while
the strenuousness of assertion took full effect. Moreover they heard
only scattered fragments at a time. The revelation of the _Koran_ was
accomplished gradually, it extended over a period of more than twenty
years, and thus the monotony that repels us was not realised.

But, as has already been said, Mohammed met with small success in
his native town, although he was joined by some of the best and most
earnest-minded men, like Saad ben Abi Wakkas and Omar. It was not
until he took a step unprecedented among the Arabs, and, abandoning
his own tribe, migrated with his handful of Meccan followers to dwell
among the inhabitants of Yathreb, that he gained a firm footing. The
latter, palm-dressers and husbandmen, were a vigorous race, but not
intellectually equal to the Koreish. They had given proof of their
valour chiefly by perpetual civil broils between the two clans of which
they consisted. Through their Jewish neighbours they were at least
superficially acquainted with many of the religious ideas with which
Mohammed was occupied. The prophet soon gained a large following among
them. He established peace within their borders, they recognised him
(though not without some exceptions) as their leader, and together with
the companions of his wanderings constituted at first the bulk and
afterwards the flower of his army.

Mohammed conquered the Meccans mainly by paralysing their caravan trade.
When, in the eighth year after his departure from his native town, he
made his triumphal entry into it once more, it needed only one great
encounter with certain Bedouin tribes to bring the whole of Arabia to his
feet and to his faith. If the Bedouins had concluded binding alliances
against him in defence of the religious usages of their forefathers
and (what was still more important to them) their own independence, he
would have laboured in vain; but the inability of the pure Arab to unite
for common action and act under discipline, even for the attainment of
great ends, made it possible for him to bring one tribe after another
over to his side by force or friendly means. He even contrived to turn
to practical account the old connection between his family and the
tent-dwelling Choza’a in the neighbourhood of Mecca. He retained old
customs wherever it was possible so to do, instinctively rather than by
deliberate intention. Thus even the greater part of the heathen worship
of Mecca was adapted in externals to monotheism and incorporated _bona
fide_ into Islam. The first important successes, especially the battle
of Bedr (a great battle according to Arab notions), in which the men
of Mecca lost about seventy dead and seventy wounded, made a deep and
immediate impression: success is the test of proselytisers. The costly
presents which Mohammed gave out of his spoils to such distinguished men
as had not at once become converts at heart also wrought effectively;
in most cases a genuine conversion followed in time. One fact (among
others), by which we can estimate the striking impression the prophet
produced upon the Arabs, is that as each tribe submitted or adopted his
religion it renounced the right of retaliation for the blood shed in the
struggle. Under other circumstances this renunciation of blood-revenge,
or of wergild at least, would have seemed to the Arab the lowest depth
of humiliation. But hard as it might be for the Arabs in general to
acknowledge the prophet as their lord, there was at that time no pagan
who would have fought in earnest for his religion. At the utmost, an
old woman here and there raised a clamour when Mohammed destroyed her
idols. Compare this with the fashion in which other Semites fought for
their faith, in which the Arabs themselves afterwards fought for Islam.
Hence, it is evident that, as has been said, the Arabs of that period had
outgrown their religion.

SUCCESSORS OF MOHAMMED

But Mohammed was scarcely dead (632) before the existence of his religion
and his empire was again called in question. He had left no instructions
as to how the government was to be carried on after his death. A ruler
was indeed promptly set up to succeed him. Yathreb, now called Medinat
an nabi (the city of the prophet), or merely Medina (the city), was
the capital as before, but the simple-minded proposal of the Medinese
that they should have one sovereign and the people of Mecca another was
rejected with decision by the latter. Abu-Bekr, Mohammed’s most intimate
friend, and the father of his favourite wife, became his successor or
vicegerent (_khalifa_, caliph). This is another proof of the high esteem
the Koreish enjoyed; for it was a matter of common knowledge that the
Arabs would never submit to a non-Koreishite.

For a while, however, most of them displayed but little inclination to
remain subjects of the new ecclesiastical state. The utmost concession
they would make was to profess their willingness to continue to perform
the _salat_[19] five times a day, but they would henceforth no longer
submit to pay an annual quota of their cattle or dates in taxes. Nearly
all the old friends of the prophet, even Omar, who now wielded the
greatest authority next to the caliph, despaired of subduing the Arabs
again. And here we recognise once more the faith that moves mountains
in fullest and most effective action. Abu-Bekr was not a man of lofty
intellect, but he was firmly convinced that what Mohammed had preached
was pure truth, that his orders must be obeyed absolutely, and that
God would then give his religion the victory. And the event proved him
right. He even insisted on weakening the army of which he had such sore
need by despatching a body of troops for an expedition to the north
which was by no means urgently necessary, merely because Mohammed had
given orders for it, not foreseeing his own death. But otherwise the
difficult task of once more subjugating the Arabs was prosecuted with
the utmost vigour. Their inability to combine voluntarily for any great
object was more patent than ever. Their scattered forces could not
withstand a foe united under a single command and with a definite aim in
view. The separate tribes were speedily subdued, in most cases without
recourse to the strong arm. The inhabitants of the district of Yamama
offered frantic resistance; they were tillers of the soil and followers
of Maslama (called by the Mohammedans in scorn _Musailima_, or “little
Maslama”), who had set himself up as an opposition prophet in Mohammed’s
later years. They fought for their settled homes and their faith, and the
battle against Maslama was far more sanguinary than any previous conflict.

The second conquest of Arabia could scarcely have been achieved had not
the Koreish stood by Abu-Bekr to a man. The leaders, who for years had
striven against the prophet in the stricken field and lost their nearest
kin in the struggle, had begun to realise (some of them before the taking
of Mecca and the majority directly after) that they would gain enormously
in power and consequence by the supremacy of a Koreishite. Mohammed’s
marvellous success had made most of them to a certain extent believers.
Several of those who had been his most zealous opponents afterwards fell
or were severely wounded as champions of his religion. The commander who
bore the brunt of the battle for the subjugation of the rebel Arabs,
displaying an equal measure of sagacity and energy, was a Koreishite,
Khalid ben al-Walid, the same who had been mainly responsible for the
victory of the Koreish over the hosts of Mohammed at Mount Ohod, close by
Medina, eight years before.

MOSLEM CONQUESTS

Arabia was hardly reconquered before the great invasion of other
countries began. The prophet himself had set on foot some enterprises
against Syria, but without any particular result. The great thing now
to be accomplished was to transform the Arab hordes from recalcitrant
subjects into joyful warriors of God by the twofold prospect of earthly
spoil and heavenly rewards. Here we recognise the hand of Omar, to whom
the sovereignty passed directly on the death of Abu-Bekr soon after.
The wars of conquest which he inaugurated were crowned with brilliant
success. It is worth while to consider the subject briefly in detail.

Troublesome enemies as the Arab tribes had often proved to the subjects
of the Roman and Persian empires, no one had ever dreamed that they could
constitute a menace to either. It is true that when the Moslem inroads
began, the districts first affected were in a sorry plight. The frequent
wars between the Romans and Persians had sorely enfeebled both empires,
and this was more particularly the case with the last great war, which
had lasted from 607 to 628. Large areas of Roman territory, especially in
Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, had been frightfully ravaged and occupied
for years by the Persians. The valiant and wily emperor Heraclius,
however, succeeded in turning the tide of fortune, and ultimately
dictated terms of peace to the Persians on their own soil. After that the
Persian empire had been torn asunder by quarrels over the succession.
Both empires had lost the Arab outpost they once possessed. The Persians
had annihilated the Roman vassal kingdom of the Ghassanids, and their
own subject dynasty in Hira (which had latterly adopted the Christian
faith) had been dethroned by King Chosroes II. The folly of this was
soon apparent. The Bedouins of the Shaiban tribe utterly routed the
royal armies of Persia at Ibu Kar on the frontiers of Babylonia, probably
at the very time when the king’s forces were pursuing their victorious
progress through the distant west. It was not a great battle, and
probably its only direct consequence was that the unwarlike peasants of
neighbouring districts were pillaged by the Bedouins; but a victory over
an army composed in part of regular troops gave the Arabs confidence.
This very Shaiban tribe distinguished itself in the first Moslem advance
into Persian territory.

Nevertheless there is much that remains enigmatical in the immense
success that attended the Moslems. Their armies were not very large.
The emperor Heraclius was an able man, with all the prestige of victory
behind him. When the great struggle of Moslem and Persian began, the
civil wars of the empire were over, and it had a powerful leader--not
indeed in Yezdegerd, its youthful monarch, but in the mighty prince
Rustem, who had procured the crown for him. The great financial straits
to which both empires were unquestionably reduced must have had its
effect upon the number and efficiency of their troops, but that they were
still good for something is clear from the fact that both the decisive
battle on the river Yarmuk (August, 636) in which the Romans were
defeated, and that of Kadisiya (end of 636 or beginning of 637) in which
a like fate waited on the Persian arms, lasted for several days. The
resistance offered must have been very obstinate. The Roman and Persian
armies may have included irregular troops of various kinds, but they
certainly consisted largely of disciplined soldiers under experienced
officers. The Persians brought elephants into the field, as well as their
dreaded mounted cuirassiers. Among the Arabs there was no purely military
order of battle; they fought in the order of their clans and tribes.
This, though it probably insured a strong feeling of comradeship, was by
no means an adequate equivalent for regular military units. Freiherr von
Kremer[20] rightly sees in the salat a substitute, to some extent, for
military drill. In that ceremony the Arabs, hitherto wholly unaccustomed
to discipline, were obliged _en masse_ to repeat the formulæ with strict
exactitude after their leader and to copy every one of his movements, and
any man who was unable to perform the salat with the congregation was
none the less bound to strict compliance with the form of prayer in which
he had been instructed. But the main factor was the powerful corporate
feeling of the Moslem, the ever increasing enthusiasm for the faith even
in those who had at first been indifferent, and the firm conviction that
the warriors for the holy cause, though death in the field would prevent
them from taking a share in the spoils of victory on earth, would yet
partake of the most delightful of terrestrial joys in heaven. Thus the
masterless Arabs, who, for all their turn for boasting, had but little
stomach for heroic deeds, were transformed into the irresistible warriors
of Allah. It was the highest triumph of Semitic religious zeal, a
manifestation on a vast scale that among the Arabs the sense of religion
had only slumbered, to awaken when occasion arose with true Semitic fury.
The same thing has since come to pass again and again on a smaller scale.

For the rest, so far as we can tell, the Arab tribes were not all alike
concerned in these wars of conquest. The great camel-breeding tribes
of the highlands of the interior, in particular, seem to have taken a
much smaller share in them than the tribes of the northern districts of
Yemen. It was a point of the utmost importance that the supreme command
was almost throughout in the hands of men of the Koreish, who at that
time proved themselves a race of born rulers. They led Islam from victory
to victory, proving themselves good Moslems on the whole, but without
renouncing their worldly wisdom. Above all we are constrained to admire
the skill, caution, and boldness with which, from his headquarters at
Medina, Omar directed the campaigns and the rudiments of reorganisation
in conquered countries.

This unpolished and rigidly orthodox man, who lived with the utmost Arab
simplicity while an incalculable revenue was flowing into the treasury
of the empire, proved one of the greatest and wisest of sovereigns.
His injunction that the Arabs should acquire no landed property in the
conquered countries, but should everywhere constitute a military caste
in the pay of the state, was grandly conceived, but proved impracticable
in the long run. Some of the Christian Arabs at first fought against
the Moslem, but without any very great zeal. The majority of them soon
exchanged a Christianity that had never gone very deep for the national
religion. The great tribe of the Taghlib in the Mesopotamian desert was
almost the only one in which Christianity retained its ascendency for any
length of time, but it nevertheless fully participated in the fortunes of
the Moslem empire, and even there the older faith gradually passed away,
as it seems to have done among all Arabs of pure blood.

The victories of the Moslems under Omar were continued under his
successor Othman. Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia,[21] Assyria, the greater
part of Iran proper, Egypt, and some more of the northern parts of Africa
were already conquered. The inhabitants of the Roman provinces had almost
everywhere submitted to the conquerors without a struggle; in some cases
they had even made overtures to them. The deplorable Christological
disputes contributed largely to this result: the bulk of the Syrians and
Copts were Monophysites and were consequently persecuted in many ways by
the adherents of the Council of Chalcedon, who had gained the ascendency
at Constantinople. Moreover in other respects the Roman government
of the period was not qualified to inspire its Semitic and Egyptian
subjects with any great devotion. The rule of the Arabs, though severe,
at first was just, and above all they scrupulously observed all treaties
whatsoever concluded with them. And the inhabitants of those countries
were accustomed to subjection. It is, however, unlikely that they did the
victors much positive service beyond occasionally acting as spies, and
we must not lay too much stress upon the subjugation of what was on the
whole an unwarlike race. Even in Iran, where Islam was confronted by far
stronger opposition on national and religious grounds, the bulk of the
population, especially in rural districts, offered at most a desultory
resistance, while the victors had still many a battle to fight with the
forces of the king and the nobles.

CIVIL WARS AMONG THE MOSLEMS

This career of conquest was interrupted by the great civil wars. The
Arabs knew of nothing between entire liberty and absolute monarchy.
The latter was the form which the caliphate first took, but it was
universally assumed that the ruler was bound to abide strictly by
the laws of religion. When Othman, grown old and feeble, was led by
excessive nepotism and other causes into a breach of the latter, the
result was a rebellion, in which he ultimately perished (656). The murder
was followed by years of civil broils, and some decades later the whole
thing was enacted afresh. The war was waged under religious pretexts,
and to some extent from religious motives; but it was in the main a
struggle for sovereignty between various members of the Koreish. Tribal
animosities old and new were brought into play, and induced the tribes
to throw in their lot with one or other of the leading parties. The
outcome of the two great civil wars was that in each case the ablest man
placed himself at the head of the empire; the first to do so, after the
murder of Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, being the Omayyad Moawiya, son of
Abu Sufyan, the leader of the heathen of Mecca against Mohammed. In his
reign Damascus, where he had lived as governor for many years before,
became the capital in place of Medina. The victor in the second instance
was Abd al-Melik, of another branch of the Omayyad family. They were
both men of great capacity but essentially worldly-minded. One of the
prophet’s grandsons, a son of Ali, had made his peace, while another,
Husain by name, fell in a foolish attempt at rebellion (680); though he
was thenceforth regarded as a martyr, and much blood was shed to avenge
his death on the rulers _de facto_. The pious stood aloof, sorrowful or
indignant, but the sovereignty remained in the hands of the Omayyads.
To Europe these civil wars were nothing short of salvation. Had they
not checked the career of Arab conquest, Islam might even then have
subjugated Asia Minor, the Balkan peninsula, and the whole of Spain, and
spread beyond it to Gaul and remoter lands.

The Arabs of that period knew how to conquer and to hold fast what they
had won; for organisation they had less aptitude. Wherever they could
they left administration, and taxation more especially, as they found it.
At first the register of taxes was kept in Greek in the former dominions
of Rome, and in Persian in those of Persia; and not until after more than
half a century did the Arabic language become predominant in official
book-keeping. The Omayyads had gained the mastery by the loyalty of
the Arabs of Syria; they were tied to Syria, and the great tracts of
territory to the east were hard to rule from thence. Moreover the Moslems
of Babylonia, in many respects a more important province, were on the
whole hostile to them. And, what was worse, the old lack of discipline
among the Arabs had manifested itself strongly in a new form. Instead
of small clans being at feud with one another, as had usually been the
case in former days, they had ranged themselves in large and mutually
hostile groups. One of these was composed of the Arabs of Yemen (real or
reputed), two others of the tribes which claimed descent from Ishmael,
the Mudhar and Rabia. If a caliph or a caliph’s vicegerent sided with the
Yemen he had the Mudhar against him; if he favoured the Rabia the Mudhar
were likewise hostile, etc. In the remoter provinces the hostile Arabs
sometimes waged regular wars with one another on their own account. To
add to this, there were risings of fanatics of various kinds. None but
the ablest of the Omayyads (and on the whole they were an able dynasty)
could maintain even tolerable order in the vast empire which extended its
borders farther and farther when once the civil wars were over. The brief
reign of a weakling or a libertine was enough to spoil everything. The
purely Arab empire lacked the elements of stability.

Meanwhile, however, great masses of the conquered peoples had gone over
to Islam. Temporal advantages on the one hand, and on the other the
suitability of this coarse-grained religion to the Semites, and probably
to the less educated Egyptians too, led steadily to the abandonment of a
Christianity which in these parts was but little superior to Islam. But
in Iran also the new religion soon made great advances on its own merits,
though in some places (it must be admitted) very much at the expense of
the purity of its pristine character. The national pride of the Arabs
could not endure the practical application of the theoretical precept
of Islam that all believers should be on an absolutely equal footing.
The new converts remained Moslems of the second class, and, in certain
districts at least, they felt the distinction bitterly. Even at the time
of the second great civil war these so-called “clients” (_mawali_) had
on one occasion played a prominent part, though only as the tools of an
ambitious Arab.

The action of a “client” population of this sort was fraught with far
greater consequences when another Koreishite family--the Abbasids,
descendants of an uncle of Mohammed--rose up against the Omayyads. One
of their great emissaries placed himself at the head of the Moslem
natives of eastern Persia (Khorasan) and by the help of these Iranians
the Abbasids secured the throne (750). The change must be regarded as
in great measure a strong reaction of the Persian element against the
Arab. The long succession of great oriental empires had been interrupted
by an empire purely Arab, and the sequence was now renewed. The seat
of government was once more transferred to Babylonia; Baghdad took the
place of Babylon and Ctesiphon. The great offices of state were already
largely filled by persons of other than Arab descent. The old Arab pride
of birth was outraged by the fact that no weight was now attached to
the consideration of whether the mother of the ruler had been a free
woman or a slave, and that thus the Arab strain of the reigning dynasty
became more and more interfused with foreign blood as time went on.
A second Persian reaction is signalised by the victory won, after a
protracted struggle, by the caliph Mamun, the son of a Persian woman,
over his brother Amin, whose mother was of the stock of the Abbasids
(813). Mamun’s troops were nearly all of them Persians. Their leader, the
Persian Tahir, founded the first semi-independent sovereignty on Iranian
soil. The forms of government remained Arab to a great extent, and Arabic
likewise remained the official language, but genuine Arabdom receded more
and more into the background. Above all, professional troops recruited
from the peoples of the East, or even of the far West, had almost wholly
superseded the Arab levies.

The process of Arabisation went on apace, in the north Semitic countries,
Egypt, and even in great tracts of the “Occident” (Maghreb),[22] but
this Arab-speaking population, with its profession of Islam and its
preponderance of non-Arabic elements, differed widely in thought and
feeling from the Arabs of pure blood, who from that time forward were
represented (much as they were before the days of Islam) almost entirely
by the Bedouins and dwellers in the oases of Arabia and a few places in
Africa. The great historic rôle of the pure Arab was played out. But
this neo-Arabic nationality gave more or less of the same character to
all Islamite countries. This holds good in great measure of Iran and the
countries that bordered on it to the northeast, south and southeast,
in so far as they fell under the influence of the Arab religion.[23]
Nevertheless the eastern provinces of the caliphate no more adopted the
Arab tongue (which gained the mastery in the principal countries of the
western half and even in a great part of the Maghreb) than the eastern
half of the Roman Empire had adopted the Latin tongue at the time that
the west was almost completely Romanised. The Arab tongue exercised a
profound influence none the less upon the Persians and all such nations
as drew their culture from Persia. It was not for nothing that even
in the last-named country Arabic was long the language of government,
religion, erudition, and poetry, and so remained to some extent even
after the native language had reasserted itself. Persian (and Hindustani,
Kurdish, etc., likewise) had borrowed largely from Arabic, especially in
the department of abstract terms--a thing we should not have expected in
view of the antiquity of Persian civilisation and the newness of that of
Arabia. The influence of Arabic is apparent even in the remotest branches
of modern Persian literature, just as all Teutonic languages bear traces
of the profound influence of Latin, which formerly occupied a position in
Europe analogous in many respects to that of Arabic in Islamite countries.

INFLUENCE OF PERSIA ON THE MOSLEMS

But if the Arab spirit modified the spirit of Persia in many ways, the
converse action was no less strong, possibly stronger. Many political
institutions, the forms of polite society, nay, of town life as a whole,
luxury, art, and even the fashion of dress, came to the Arabs from
Persia. In the Omayyad period Arabic poetry remains in essentials true
to the methods of the old heathen Bedouin poets; though side by side
with them--and more particularly in the works of the best poets--we
mark the gradual growth of a more elegant style, suited to the more
cultivated tastes of the towns, and even of a courtly school of poetry.
Even in later times, however, the methods of the elder poets found many
imitators. But after the Abbasid period the writers of Arabic poems,
taken as a whole, were no longer men of pure Arab descent; many were
freedmen or of humble origin and Persian or Aramaic nationality. Thus
during the Moslem period even the native poets of Persia began by writing
in Arabic, and hence the rising school of Persian poetry adhered closely
to the traditions of the Arabic school, both in metre and all points
of structure, and in subject-matter and verbal expression. Unhappily
it showed itself equally ready to imitate the artificiality into which
Arabic poetry had sunk at that period. It is true, indeed, that from
the outset Persian poetry displayed certain distinctive features, and
that its noblest achievement, the national epic, is, broadly speaking,
original, though even there Arabic influence is potent in the details.

The lustre of Arab culture, especially as displayed in the large cities
of Babylonia, the central province, arose from a liberal intermixture of
Persian and Arab elements. In some of these cities Persian was actually
spoken by the bulk of the population, at least in the early centuries
of Islamism. The influence of Byzantine civilisation on that of Arabia,
though far slighter, should not be overlooked. For centuries the upper
classes of Babylonia, luxurious and often frivolous as they were,
maintained a high level of intellectual activity. The gift of expressing
oneself in elegant Arabic with Persian charm and Persian wit was held in
the highest esteem. Similar centres of superior culture existed in other
Arabic-speaking countries right across to Spain, and for a time even in
Sicily. Through all the wide domains of Islam men travelled much, partly
to complete their education and acquire the polish of the man of the
world, partly for pure love of travel and thirst of adventure. Public and
private societies of _beaux-esprits_ and scholars existed in every town
of any importance. A brisk trade by land and sea did much to insure the
rapid interchange of commodities between regions the most remote, even
such as lay far beyond the pale of Islamism, and the result of trade was
the accumulation of vast wealth in the great cities. Thither also flowed
the taxes levied _per fas et nefas_, upon the inhabitants of the plains.
Of course there was no lack of misery in the great cities of the Arab
world, any more than in those of Europe and America at the present day.

ARAB RECORDS AND TRADITIONS

The Moslems very early began to hand down biographical records of the
prophet, at first by oral, but in the main authentic tradition. More
important still to the whole Moslem world was the transmission and
collection of precepts covering the whole of life, which pretended to
be preserved in the exact form in which they had been uttered by the
prophet or made current by his act.[24] It is of the utmost advantage
to us to-day that the history of Mohammed’s successors, of their great
conquests, and of the empire, follows so immediately upon his own. The
several records used to be handed on with the names of those who vouched
for them, from the first eye-witness down to the last teller of the tale,
variations of statement being placed close side by side. In this way
narratives told from the point of view of absolutely different parties
have come down to us side by side, many of them dealing with the most
important events of the first centuries of Islam, so that historical
criticism is frequently in a position to ascertain the main features
of what really took place with far greater certainty than if the Arabs
themselves had proceeded to draw up a regular history and had manipulated
their authorities in their own fashion. The tradition of the deeds and
adventures of the ancient heroes of Arabia, too, was carefully cherished,
and much of it has come down to us.

ARAB LEARNING

In this, as in all branches of exact learning of the Moslems, the Arabic
language stands alone at first and even in later times occupies the
foremost place, whether the student immediately concerned was of pure
Arab descent (which was probably very seldom the case) or of mixed or
foreign blood. This holds good of the sciences related to theology,
above all, and of all branches of knowledge taught in the schools. Not
one of the sciences properly so called was evolved by the Arabs (and
the word may be taken in the most comprehensive sense) out of their own
inner consciousness, not even grammar, the first branch of learning to
assume the form of an exact science; some of the fundamental conceptions
involved in it originated in the logic of Aristotle. This science,
arising, as it did, out of the necessity of expounding the _Koran_
and ancient poetry and the desire to preserve the classic tongue of
the Bedouins, which was liable to rapid alteration in the lands they
had conquered, developed then, it is true, on very independent lines.
Above all, Arab philosophy is wholly dependent upon Greek works, most
of them translated from the original by Syrians or known through Syrian
versions.[25] Even Islamite dogmatism found itself constrained to adopt
the methods of the pagan philosophy of Greece.

The men who laid the foundations of Arab learning were for the most part
not of Arab descent, though exceptions are more numerous than is commonly
supposed. Sibawaih, who drew up the first great compendium of the Arabic
language, was a Persian; though practically all he did was to compile
what he had heard from his teachers, the chief of whom, Khalil, was in
all likelihood a pure-blooded Arab. And this work, upon which that of
later schools made little advance as far as the substance is concerned,
is very clumsy in form, and as unsystematic as though he had been of pure
Arab descent. Exact systematisation is a hard thing for the true Semite
to compass. The ascendency exercised by the Arabic language during the
centuries in which the intellectual life of Islamite countries was in its
glory is best seen from the fact that even those Persians who claimed
precedence for their own nation set forth their opinions to that effect
in Arabic works.

In this place it is of course impossible to enter upon the history
of Arab learning; we can only insist upon one single point, namely
that (at least in the branches of scholarship which were held in the
highest esteem) the culmination was reached early, and they were then
treated of in countless works--compendiums, abstracts, commentaries, and
versifications--without any particular variation in the subject-matter.
How far medicine, natural science, and mathematics were advanced beyond
the stage which the Greeks (and it may be, the Hindus) had attained by
works written in Arabic I am not in a position to say.[26] The average
standard of the very numerous chronicles in Arabic is considerably higher
than that of the Latin chronicles of the Middle Ages, because, for one
thing, the writers of the former were men in the thick of actual life,
some of them indeed men of considerable consequence, while the latter
were generally written in monasteries. We even come upon the rudiments of
historical criticism, or at least of a comprehensive historical survey.
The number of Arabic works containing the biography of eminent men,
scholars, poets, and so forth, is positively amazing, as is the wealth
of anthologies of every kind, in which poetry alternates with prose. In
their works on literary history, again, they are in the habit of giving
many specimens of the poems of the particular writers discussed. Among
these anthologies and works on the history of literature are some of
remarkable merit and of the highest value to us.

Furthermore we are much beholden to Arab authors of works on geography.
These are almost all based upon actual observation and written with a
practical aim; and thus have a great advantage over mere scholastic
works. Wherever geography assumes a strictly scientific form, however, it
is indebted to the system of Ptolemy.

Moslem philosophy (of which the most notable exponents were men of
non-Arab descent, Persians, Spaniards, etc., though they all wrote in
Arabic as a matter of course) is entirely an emanation from that of
Greece, although it rises here and there to the exposition of grand
original ideas. The same holds good even of mysticism, which is at bottom
in sharp opposition to scientific speculation. Originally an alien growth
among the Arabs, with its roots partly in neo-Platonism and Christianity,
partly in Hindu and Persian soil, it nevertheless attained a notable
development among the Moslems. All speculation was kept within strict
limits by the dominant religion. More liberal spirits (of which there
were never many) were forced to observe the utmost caution in their
utterances; although there was probably more freedom of thought in Islam
than in Christian Europe.

But whatever judgment we may pass upon Arabic scientific literature as
a whole, however readily we may concede that in proportion to its vast
bulk the part played by originality is small, while that played by the
repetition of repetitions is very large indeed, it is nevertheless, on
the whole, greatly superior to the contemporary literature of Europe.
There we should seek in vain for such works as, _e.g._, the great
_Book of Songs_, which sets before us in varied guise the course of
Arabic poetry down to late Moslem days, and the lives and doings of
the Arabs of old time and of the later courts (tenth century) alike;
or the geographical work of Mukaddasi (tenth century), the works of
Biruni (a Persian from the neighbourhood of what is now Khiva, tenth
and eleventh centuries) on chronology and other subjects, which are
equally remarkable for their keen observation and strictly scientific
temper; the geographical dictionary of Yakut (a man of Byzantine lineage
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries); the politico-historical
_Introduction to the Chronicle of Ibn Khaldun_ (of Tunis, fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries) and many others. Not until close upon the dawn of
the Renaissance does Europe gradually assert her decisive superiority
over the East in every sphere of intellectual life. Arabic literature is
of peculiar and supreme importance to ourselves because its vast store
presents to us a comprehensive and vivid picture of life and thought in
wide regions of the nearer East. Without it we should find the oriental
peoples of antiquity far harder to understand. From this point of view
the study of Arabic is of even greater importance as an aid to the right
comprehension of the Old Testament and the cuneiform inscriptions than it
is, on purely linguistic grounds, for the interpretation of the Hebrew
and Assyrian languages.

INFLUENCE OF THE ARABS UPON EUROPE

The principal effect of Arab learning upon that of Europe consists in
this--that a few Greek works which had been translated into Arabic and a
few Arabic works which had followed in the footsteps of the Greek, were
translated into Latin either from the original or through the medium
of Hebrew versions, and thus became text-books to the Europeans. The
original ideas of Arabic writers on medicine and mathematics may also
have been imparted to western nations by translations of their writings.
In all likelihood a European now and again studied medicine under the
direct guidance of an oriental physician. Translations of certain Arabic
books of tales and fables, native to India in the first instance, were
widely circulated in Europe. Arabic poetry scarcely influenced that of
Europe at all, at the utmost a few Romance verse-forms may be imitated
from those of later Arabic poetry. Generally speaking we cannot but say
that, in the region of intellectual activity, the influence of the Moslem
on the Christian world was far slighter than we should have expected,
considering the innumerable points of contact between the two in Spain,
Sicily, the scene of the Crusades, and elsewhere. On the other hand, the
Europeans borrowed many details of outward culture and luxury from the
Orientals.

LATER EVENTS OF ARABIC CIVILIZATION

During the early period of the Abbasid dynasty the Arab empire continued
to expand more and more. It is true that the perpetual wars with
Byzantium did not result in any permanent conquests in Asia Minor; but
Islam, and with it a certain process of Arabisation, advanced with giant
strides, especially in the East. This advance continued even while the
caliphate fell lower and lower and its power passed to other despots,
most of them not even of Arab descent, who usually treated the caliph
with a show of reverence as their lord, but practically took little heed
of him. Moreover, the Abbasids never ruled over Spain, whither an Omayyad
had fled to found there an empire of his own, which soon attained a high
degree of prosperity. Other empires, either absolutely independent of the
caliphate, or actually hostile to it, presently arose in their places.
But the glory of Arab civilisation suffered no great eclipse, even when
the caliphs were mere puppets in the hands of the Buids, who had come
as mercenaries from the semi-barbaric mountain tract of Gilan in Iran
and had established a mighty empire (tenth century). Even the terrible
Turkish migration, which led to the rise of the far mightier empire of
the Seljuks, left much unharmed. The brisk and joyous life of a refined
civilisation still shines forth from the pages of Hariri’s _Makamat_
(eleventh century). The Crusades did indeed bring greater misery than
ever upon the wretched land of Palestine, but on the whole they affected
the nations of Islam far less than those which adhered to the church of
Rome. The attacks of the Mongols were the first shock which destroyed
the fairest flower of Islamite civilisation. Traces of the ravages
perpetrated by these monsters are visible to this day. The destruction
of Baghdad (1258) inflicted a terrible blow upon Arab culture. At that
time the caliphate was in reality a petty state having for its capital a
metropolis with which Constantinople alone could vie in importance.

The end of the caliphate coincided with and marked the close of the
glorious period of the Arab empire. Even before it came to pass, the
Mongols had annihilated the flourishing civilisation of the East by
destroying the great cities there, and massacring their inhabitants.
A remnant of Arab culture found refuge in Egypt, whither happily the
Mongols did not penetrate.

Yet even this conquest actually promoted the spread of Islam. The Mongols
settled among the Moslems and soon went over to Islam themselves. The
greater part of Asia Minor had already been won over by the Seljuks to
Turkish nationality and the faith of Islam, and from thence arose the
empire of the Ottoman Turks, for centuries the terror of Europe. At the
very time when Islamism, after a protracted struggle, was thrust forth
from Spain, the fierce and fanatical worshippers of the God of Arabia
bore the banner of his prophet far on the way towards Europe. And while
warriors fought for the glory of Allah, Arabic learning was zealously
pursued in the theological schools of the Ottoman empire, as it had
been in the Middle Ages, and there was much instruction and literary
labour after the older Arabic and Persian model, and now and again a
work of real scientific value came into being. This mediæval pursuit
of learning still prevails wherever Islam holds sway, and its sphere,
though circumscribed in Europe, is of vast extent in Asia and Africa,
and still continues to expand. It is true that in many Islamite countries
the influence of modern Europe makes itself felt even in learning, but
it does not go deep, and the genuine Moslem scholar still treads closely
in the footprints of the true believers, his predecessors. And Mecca,
the home of the prophet, with his sanctuary and his school of theology,
is to this day the religious centre for all who admit his claims, and
recite the Arabic formulæ of the salat, and listen--though in most
cases without the faintest comprehension--to the Arabic _Book of God_.
Thither the pious pilgrim makes his way once in his life at least, if he
possibly can, nor does he neglect to visit at the same time Mohammed’s
grave at Medina. This constant gathering of pilgrims from every quarter
at Mecca, and the influence exercised upon their native countries by
the theologians who settled there, either temporarily or permanently,
are of the utmost importance to the unity and strength of Islam, or, at
least, of the creed it involves, which is that held by far the greater
number of Semitic races. The language of the Holy City is Arabic, but the
population is a mixture of the most diverse elements of nationality.[27]

LATER ISLAMITE MOVEMENTS

The Arabs of Arabia (as has been said before) have long since lost
the place in the history of the world which they once occupied under
circumstances wholly exceptional. Only twice since then has a strong
movement made itself felt in at least the nearest of Islamite lands. In
the tenth century the Karmates, a secret sect of Persian origin, hostile
to the Abbasid caliphs and, at bottom, to Islam altogether, established
themselves firmly in a part of northeastern Arabia, very difficult
of access. Their leaders succeeded in winning over many Bedouins by
the prospect of booty, and thus caravans of pilgrims were frequently
massacred or robbed of all they possessed; some of the large cities of
Babylonia were several times captured and pillaged; Mecca itself was
taken during the pilgrim festival; the sacrosanct Black Stone carried
off (930), and an end put to pilgrimages for a time. These proceedings
were accomplished by much bloodshed. The Black Stone was ultimately
restored after an interval of twenty-one years, on payment of a heavy
ransom. The Karmates were secretly in league with the Fatimites, the
anti-caliph dynasty in Africa, which claimed descent from Ali and Fatima,
the daughter of Mohammed. They sank back into insignificance by slow
degrees.[28] A connection of some sort exists between the above-mentioned
occurrences and the migration of certain Bedouin tribes, under the
auspices of the Fatimites, from Arabia to Upper Egypt and remoter parts
of northern Africa, where they committed great ravages (eleventh century).

And in the eighteenth century the puritanic movement of Abd al-Wahhab
arose in the heart of Arabia, with the object of restoring Islam to its
pristine purity and repudiating all innovations that had crept in by
lapse of time, from the veneration of the tombs of saints to the smoking
of tobacco. The Wahhabees brought the greater part of Arabia, inclusive
of the holy cities, under their influence for a while, exacted a minute
observation of the precepts of religion, bore strict rule in all things,
and established a condition of peace such as that country, predestinate
to lawlessness, had not known since the days of the caliphate. The
Wahhabees were heretics inasmuch as they did not regard the “catholic”
principle, which had won acceptance in Islam, that all things adopted
by the consensus of the whole church were binding upon all men; though
of course the fiction was kept up that this consensus was invariably in
harmony with the original character of the faith. They, on the contrary,
held in all seriousness the principle, which was universally recognised
in theory, that every innovation in the sphere of religion was wholly
reprehensible.

The great simplicity of the religion of Mohammed made it possible to
effect the restoration of its pristine purity in a far higher degree
than the mighty efforts of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries could
effect a return to primitive Christianity; and besides, the conditions
of contemporary life in Arabia were not widely different from those that
had prevailed in the time of the prophet. A few of the theologians of
the Ottoman empire actually recognised the Wahhabees as orthodox. These
fanatical zealots were, however, obnoxious to the Turkish government for
more reasons than one, and hence their power was broken by Muhammed Ali
of Egypt, after a desperate struggle. Wahhabism actually exists to this
day in the interior of Arabia, but under two mutually hostile dynasties
and (in spite of having occasionally sent its emissaries as far as India)
without any great prospect of spreading. It is firmly rooted only among
the non-nomadic Arabs. The Bedouins never obey a Wahhabee ruler except
under compulsion. They are at all times loath to serve a master, and
though animated by the Moslem spirit, they are very negligent in the
performance of their religious duties. They do not even hesitate to
extort all they possibly can from pilgrim caravans, either by openly
waylaying them or by levying toll for the privilege of passing through
their territory. Taken as a whole, the life of the Bedouin of to-day
still bears a strong resemblance to that of his ancestors long ago, but
his intellectual level seems to have sunk from the height it maintained
at the time of Mohammed. Even the number of places in Arabia suitable for
agriculture appears to have diminished through the neglect and decay of
irrigation.

The fact that a few points on the coast are of some importance to
European commerce and politics is of no consequence to the country as a
whole, at least for the present.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies_, pp. 295; 304 ff.; Schrader,
_Keilschrift und Geschichtsforschung_, pp. 202, 261.

[2] In Jeremiah iii, 2 and xxv, 24; Ezekiel xxvii, 21; xxx, 5; Jeremiah
xiii, 20 (from the end of the Captivity); Jeremiah xxi, 13, ‎ ‎‏ערב ‎‏‎
is “desert.”

[3] _Die alte Geographie Arabiens_, p. 293. Berne, 1875.

[4] Cf. S. A. Barton. _A Sketch of Semitic Origins_ (New York, 1902), Ch.
1, where the various opinions of the subject are compared.

[5] Var. Σαρακηνοί as a tribe.

[6] Cureton, _Spicilegium Syriacum_, 16 ult.

[7] The powerful Shammar of the present day, some who live in Nejd, the
ancient home of the tribe, and some in the Mesopotamian desert, belong to
the Tai.

[8] That whole peoples should be called after certain frontier tribes
by neighbouring nations is not altogether an unusual phenomenon, as
everybody knows.

[9] These forms have to a certain extent survived to our own day, as the
name of an Iranian people in Transirania and elsewhere, who accepted the
Arab religion earlier than their neighbours and were consequently called
“Arabs.” In the same way later Syrians often call all Moslems “Taits.”

[10] _Acta Martyr._ ed. St. Ev. Assemani, 2, 345, 1.

[11] Migne, _Patrol. græca_, 79, LXXIX, 611 _seqq._

[12] The proper translation of εὐδαὶμων in this connection. The usual
_felix_ or the Horatian _beatus_ (_Carm._ 1, 29, 1) is like our “happy,”
too strong.

[13] The name was extended to the whole peninsula, a country extremely
poor as a whole. Ἀραβία ἔρημος, _Arabia Deserta_, stood only for the
Syrian desert, and the Arab country to the southwest, with Petra as its
capital, is Ἀραβία Πετραία, _Arabia Petræa_, as in Ptolemy, and elsewhere.

[14] Genesis xxxvii, 25.

[15] _Reste arabischen Heidenthums_, II, 93.

[16] For a lively description of it see Wellhausen, _Reste_, II, 89
_seqq._

[17] See, for example, Joshua xi, 20; 1 Samuel xv, 33.

[18] S. Nilus in Migne, _Patrol. græca_, 79, lxxix, 611 _seqq._

[19] The translation of _salat_ by “prayer” gives rise to
misunderstandings. It is a religious exercise performed according to
strict rule, with set formulæ and ceremonies (bending of the body,
prostration, etc.). Voluntary prayer is _du’a_.

[20] The historical works of this admirable scholar deserve the strongest
recommendation, particularly his _Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den
Chalifen_, 2 vols. Vienna, 1875-1877.

[21] Babylonia (Arab Irak) should not be included, as is often done,
in the term Mesopotamia, which last should be restricted to the very
different region to the north, known in Arabic as Jezira.

[22] The portions of northern Africa west of Egypt and the Moslem parts
of western Europe (Spain).

[23] “All men are become Arabs” was said in the year 728 or 729, in
reference to an Iranian stock converted to Islam. Those who thus spoke
would have used the word _Tadjik_ for _Arab_ (_vide supra_, p. 4); the
Arabic chronicle restores _Arab_.

[24] Goldziher has rendered a most important service by proving how
slight the importance of this form is on purely historic grounds, and
how everything that passed as valid in certain circles was ascribed
without more ado to the prophet himself. See particularly Part II of his
_Muhammedanische Studien_ (Halle, 1890).

[25] But “the most precious heritage in art, poetry, and history, which
the Greek spirit has bequeathed to us was never accessible to Orientals.”
(T. J. de Boer, _Geschichte der philosophie in Islam_, Stuttgart 1901, p.
26.)

[26] The Arabs deserve great credit for the mere fact that they adopted
that brilliant invention, the Hindu numerical system, and passed it on to
the Europeans. It is singular that the latter continued so frequently to
employ the extremely inconvenient Roman numerals.

[27] Cf. Snoucke-Hurgronge, _Mekka_ (two parts, The Hague, 1888 and 1889).

[28] Cf. de Goeje, _Mem. sur les Carmathes de Bahraïn et les Fatimides_
(Leide, 1886). In this connection we may observe that in our own days the
Dutch, with de Goeje at their head, have rendered far greater services
in the elucidation of the history and geography of the Arabs than the
schools of any of the great nations.

[Illustration]

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF PARTHIANS, SASSANIDS, AND ARABS

We turn back now to the scene of the earlier history, turning back in
time also. The events of three great empires will pass quickly before
the view, the period of time involved being more than seventeen hundred
years. The territories occupied by the peoples under consideration were
wide, and the peoples themselves successively dominated the eastern
world, and contested supremacy there with Rome. Of the Parthians and
Sassanids it must be said that, while important in holding Rome back,
they had otherwise an inconsiderable influence in the West; moreover,
Rome could not have retained the Orient even had she conquered it. As
regards the culture influence of the Parthians and Sassanids in Europe,
this was virtually _nil_. The case is quite different when we come to the
Arabs. Here was a race which not only became dominant in the East, but
seriously threatened to overthrow and supplant the entire civilisation
of Europe; and which, foiled in this, retained supremacy in the East
and developed an indigenous culture that powerfully influenced all
Christendom.

It must be understood that the relations between the Parthians,
Sassanids, and Arabs is geographical and chronological rather than
ethnological. The Parthians were overthrown by the Sassanids, and the
Sassanids by the Arabs. The three peoples successively ruled over similar
territories, and their histories may advantageously be considered in
sequence; but it will be understood that they represented different
races and bore to one another merely the relation of the conquered to
the conqueror. An outline of the history of Armenia is appended, to give
completeness to the subject, much as we gave chronologies of various
other minor nations of Western Asia in a previous volume.

THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

(250 B.C.-228 A.D.)

B.C. During the reign of the Seleucid king Antiochus II,
Diodotus, viceroy of Bactria, seizes the northeastern provinces
and assumes the title of king. The formation of this kingdom is
not agreeable to the chiefs of the desert tribes who, under the
Seleucid rule, have never felt direct control, and some of them
migrate into Parthia. Among them are two brothers, Arsaces and
Tiridates, of the Parnians. In a quarrel which arises between
them and Pherecles, presumably satrap of Astauene, the latter
is slain and Arsaces is proclaimed king in Asaak, northwest of
Parthia.

250 Foundation of an independent monarchy by =Arsaces I=.
Antiochus, on account of civil and foreign wars, is unable to
proceed against Arsaces.

248 Death of Arsaces. His brother, =Tiridates=, succeeds,
taking the name of Arsaces, which is also borne by all his
successors as a throne name. They take the title of “king of
kings.”

242 After defeat of Seleucus Callinicus at Ancyra, Tiridates
invades Parthia, slays the eparch Andragores, and takes
possession of the province. He next seizes Hyrcania, and causes
a large army to oppose Seleucus.

238 Decisive victory of Tiridates over Seleucus. The latter
is obliged to return to Antioch on account of civil war, and
Tiridates is enabled to consolidate his kingdom.

211 Death of Tiridates. His son, =Arsaces II=, sometimes, but
incorrectly, called =Artabanus=, succeeds.

209 Antiochus the Great wins a victory over Arsaces on the
summit of Mount Labus. The Parthians retire to Sirynca and are
besieged by Antiochus. Surrender of Sirynca, and treaty of
peace. Arsaces retains Parthia, but is reduced to a vassal of
Antiochus. Parthia remains undisturbed for some years.

191 =Phriapatius= or =Arsaces (III) Philadelphus= succeeds
his father. Owing to the decay of Seleucid power, he acts as
protector of the Greeks in his kingdom.

176 =Phraates I= or =Arsaces (IV) Theopator= succeeds his
father. He conquers the Mardians.

171 Phraates dies, leaving the throne to his brother,
=Mithridates I= or =Arsaces (V) Epiphanes=, who at once annexes
several satrapies of Bactria to his kingdom. He holds court in
Hyrcania.

155 At death of King Eucratides of Bactria, Mithridates
continues the conquest of that country. The Hindu Kush becomes
the eastern boundary of Parthia. Mithridates turns to the west.

147 The province of Babylonia is wrested from the Seleucids.
The East is finally lost to the Macedonians.

139 Capture of Demetrius II of Syria, who has attempted to
establish himself in Mesopotamia.

138 Successful campaign in Elymais. Death of Mithridates. He
has made Parthia a great power. His son, =Phraates II= or
=Arsaces (VI) Euergetes=, succeeds. He adds Margiana to the
kingdom. The seat of the kingdom is transferred to Media.

130 Antiochus Sidetes begins a vigorous campaign against the
Parthians, whom he defeats in a great battle on the Upper Zab.
Babylon and Ecbatana are recovered.

129 The Parthians make secret terms with the Medes and attack
Antiochus, whose host is annihilated and he himself slain.
Phraates compelled to attack the Scythians, whom he had invited
to assist him against Antiochus. They have arrived too late,
and, as Phraates refuses to pay them, they begin to ravage the
country.

128 Death of Phraates in a disastrous battle with the
Scythians. His uncle, =Artabanus I= or =Arsaces (VII) Nicator=,
son of Phriapatius, succeeds. The Scythians withdraw, content
with their victory; Artabanus pays them tribute. There appear
to have been rival kings in this and the following reign.
Perhaps they are Scythians. The usurpers are suppressed.
Artabanus dies (date unknown), after a short reign, in battle
with the Tochari, and is succeeded by his son, =Mithridates
(II) the Great= or =Arsaces (VIII) Theos Euergetes=. He
wages many wars, and wins victories from the Scythians. Lost
territory is recovered. The Euphrates is fixed as the western
boundary of the kingdom.

94 Mithridates puts Tigranes II on the disputed throne of
Greater Armenia.

92 Sulla, proprætor of Cilicia, meets the ambassador of
Mithridates on the Euphrates, seeking the Roman alliance in
some connection with the Parthian schemes against Syria. First
contact of Parthia with Rome. Mithridates at war with Laodice,
queen of Commagene.

88 About this date Mithridates captures Demetrius III and his
army, dies shortly afterwards, and is succeeded by =Artabanus
II= or =Arsaces IX=. He is the last to bear title “king of
kings,” which passes to Tigranes II of Armenia.

77 =Sinatruces= or =Arsaces (X) Autocrator=, an exile living
with the Scythian tribe of the Sacarances, is placed on the
throne at the age of eighty. Continual wars with Tigranes, who
conquers Media, ravages Arbela and Nineveh, and compels the
cession of Adiabene and Nisibis.

73 Mithridates of Pontus appeals in vain to both Sinatruces and
Tigranes for help against Rome.

70 =Phraates III= succeeds his father.

69 Phraates declines to help Mithridates of Pontus, whom
Tigranes has joined. Tigranes offers to restore his Median
conquests to Phraates if he will assist. Phraates hesitates, but

66 accepts overtures of Pompey, and, with the younger Tigranes,
who has quarrelled with his father, prepares to invade Armenia.
Phraates besieges Artaxarta, but leaves the younger Tigranes
to continue. Defeat of Tigranes by his father. The former
flees to Pompey. The elder Tigranes surrenders to Pompey,
and the younger is put in chains. Phraates demands Tigranes’
deliverance, but it is refused. Phraates recovers Media and
resumes title “king of kings.”

64 While Pompey is in Syria, Phraates attacks and defeats the
elder Tigranes. Pompey refuses to interfere, but sends umpires
to settle the dispute.

57 Murder of Phraates by his two sons, who divide the kingdom.
=Orodes= or =Hyrodes I= takes Parthia, and =Mithridates III=
takes Media. The latter is soon expelled for his cruelty, and
Orodes reigns alone. Mithridates expects the Romans to restore
him, but they are compelled to go to Egypt to restore Ptolemy
XI.

55 He attacks Orodes alone, who flees, but with the help of
Surenas,

54 captures Mithridates in Babylon and puts him to death.
Crassus takes advantage of this civil strife to invade Parthia.

53 Great defeat of the Romans at Carrhæ by Surenas. Orodes
makes peace with Armenia. He puts Surenas to death through
jealousy.

52 Unsuccessful Parthian invasion of Syria.

51 Cassius defeats the Parthians at Antigonia.

50 The satrap of Mesopotamia raises a revolt in favour of
Pacorus, son of Orodes. Pacorus is recalled by Orodes and Syria
is evacuated. Orodes associates Pacorus with him on the throne.

After the battle of Philippi, Labienus, who has been sent from
Rome to obtain help from Orodes, advises him to seize Syria.

40 Pacorus, Labienus, and a large army attack Syria, which
falls into Parthian hands. All the Phœnician cities except
Tyre submit. The Parthians appear in Palestine and the country
rises against Herod and Phasael. Hyrcanus deposed and Antigonus
substituted. The cities of Asia Minor except Stratonicea open
their gates to Labienus.

39 Ventidius, Antony’s general, drives Labienus from Asia
Minor. Capture and execution of Labienus.

38 Complete rout of the Parthians and death of Pacorus at
battle of Cyrrhestica. The Parthians evacuate Syria.

37 Orodes, in grief at Pacorus’ loss, resigns crown to his son
=Phraates IV=. He at once murders his brothers and then his
father, his own son, and all possible claimants of the throne.
He removes the capital to Ctesiphon. Many of the nobles flee to
Antony, who plans a war against Parthia.

36 Antony appears in Atropatene and besieges the capital. The
expedition proves a failure.

33 Rebellion against Phraates, culminating

32 in an unknown usurper taking the throne. He is succeeded in
a few months by =Tiridates II=.

30 After battle of Actium, which draws the Roman troops from
Media, and Parthia, the Parthians seize Media and Armenia and
put Artaxes II on the Armenian throne. Phraates regains his
kingdom for a short time. Tiridates flees to Syria, where he is
protected by Octavian.

27 Tiridates, with the help of the Arabs, surprises Phraates
and compels him to flee. Phraates finally persuades the
Scythians to help him and

26 Phraates is reinstated. Tiridates flees to Augustus,
carrying Phraates’ younger son with him.

23 Augustus restores Phraates’ son to him. Civil war rages in
Parthia.

20 Augustus visits the East. Phraates, in fear, returns Roman
captives and the ensigns taken from Crassus and Antony, to
Augustus.

10 Phraates sends his family to Rome in order to remove causes
of civil strife, keeping only his favourite wife Urania,
an Italian slave girl presented by Augustus, and her child
Phraates or Phraataces.

2 About this date Urania and =Phraates V= (or =Phraataces=)
murder Phraates IV. Phraataces expels Artavasdes III from
Armenia and puts Tigranes IV on the throne. He also deposes
Ariobarzanes II of Atropatene (Media), who was established
on that throne by Augustus about 10 B.C. A line of Parthian
princes succeed in Atropatene.

A.D.

1 Augustus makes terms with Phraates, who resigns all claims on
Armenia and sends his sons to Rome as hostages.

2 Phraataces marries his mother, in consequence of which

4 he is deposed and takes refuge in Rome. The Parthians bring
back an exiled prince, =Orodes II=, and make him king. He
proves a cruel ruler, and for this reason about

9 is murdered. The Parthians apply to Rome and receive =Vonones
I=, eldest son of Phraates IV, as their king. His long
residence in Rome and foreign sympathies make him unpopular in
Parthia, and

11 =Artabanus III=, an Arsacid on his mother’s side and who
had been king of Media (Atropatene), is set up as a pretender.
He is unsuccessful at first, but finally defeats Vonones at
Ctesiphon. The latter flees and is chosen king of Armenia in
16. Tiberius persuades him to give up this throne.

19 After death of Germanicus, Artabanus begins to treat the
Romans with contempt, and places his son Arsaces on the throne
of Armenia. He makes so severe a ruler that

35 the Parthians apply to Tiberius, who finds himself compelled
to interfere. He induces Pharasmanes, king of Iberia, to put
forward his brother Mithridates as a claimant to the Armenian
throne. War results.

36 A widespread revolt instigated by Tiberius puts Tiridates,
grandson of Phraates IV, on the throne and Artabanus flees.

37 Artabanus comes to terms with Rome and is restored.

40 Death of Artabanus. His son =Vardanes= succeeds, but is
deposed

41 by =Gotarzes=, chief official of Artabanus.

42 Vardanes recovers throne, owing to Gotarzes’ cruelties.
Civil war results.

43 Vardanes captures Seleucia, and Gotarzes retires to Hyrcania.

45 Gotarzes makes unsuccessful attempt to regain throne.

46 Vardanes murdered while hunting. Gotarzes again takes throne.

47 On account of Gotarzes’ misrule, the Parthians ask Claudius
to give them Meherdates (Mithridates V) son of Vonones as king.

50 Gotarzes captures Meherdates on his way to Parthia.

51 Death of Gotarzes succeeded by =Vonones II=, formerly king
of Media and probably brother of Artabanus III.

54 Death of Vonones succeeded by his eldest son, =Vologases I=,
who is the son of a concubine; but to compensate his brothers,
Vologases puts Pacorus on the throne of Media and Tiridates on
that of Armenia--having deposed Radamistus the usurper from
the latter country. A son of Vardanes contests the throne with
Vologases and apparently has the upper hand for a while.

55 The Romans compel the Parthians to evacuate Armenia.

58 Vologases again attacks Armenia and brings on war with Rome.
Revolt of Hyrcania. Corbulo destroys Artaxarta and occupies
Tigranocerta (59).

61 Peace restored in Hyrcania.

62 War with Rome resumed. The Romans are repulsed.

63 Corbulo crosses the Euphrates, and the Parthians sue for
peace.

72 The Alani drive Pacorus of Media from his throne.

75 The Alani enter Parthia. Vologases appeals in vain to
Vespasian.

78 About this date Vologases dies. He seems to have been
succeeded by two kings, =Vologases II= and =Pacorus II=,
probably brothers, and reigning together.

81 =Artabanus IV= appears to be the king in this year. He
protects Terentius Maximus, who pretends to be Nero. Parthia is
torn with civil wars.

93 Pacorus II is sole king.

110 Pacorus sells the crown of Edessa to Abgar VII. Death of
Pacorus. His brother (or perhaps son) =Chosroes= or =Osroes=
succeeds. Vologases II reappears as a rival king, also a
=Mithridates= or =Meherdates VI=. Parthia is completely upset
with civil war which goes on until

113 Chosroes wrests Armenia from King Exedares and gives it to
Parthamariris, both sons of Pacorus.

114 The emperor Trajan, indignant at Chosroes’ act, seizes
Armenia and makes it a Roman province.

115 Trajan takes Ctesiphon and Seleucia.

116 Revolt in Parthia with Mithridates VI at its head. Death of
Mithridates, and his son Sinatruces takes his place. Chosroes
regains Nisibis, Seleucia, and Edessa.

117 Trajan crowns =Parthamaspates= king of Parthia, deposing
Chosroes. Death of Trajan. Hadrian withdraws Roman soldiers and
Chosroes recovers throne. Parthamaspates expelled.

130 About this date Chosroes dies and Vologases II rules as
sole king. The influence of Rome preserves peace in the kingdom.

148 Death of Vologases, aged ninety-six, having reigned
seventy-one years. =Vologases III= succeeds. He continues the
peace with Rome until,

162 when, after death of Antoninus Pius, Vologases enters
Armenia and expels the king. The greatest war between Rome and
Parthia ensues.

164 Aridius Cassius drives Vologases from Syria, enters
Babylonia, and burns Seleucia, the most important city of the
East.

165 Great plague, originating in Parthia, spreads over the
whole world.

166 Peace with Rome. Mesopotamia becomes a Roman province.
Parthia begins steadily to decline.

191 Death of Vologases III. =Vologases IV= succeeds.

194 Vologases permits the Medes to assist Orrhœne in revolt
against the Romans.

196 The Parthians ravage Mesopotamia.

199 Severus surprises the Parthians and takes Seleucia, Coche,
and Ctesiphon.

201 Siege of Atra by Severus, who is compelled to raise it.

209 Vologases succeeded by his son, =Vologases V=.

213 His brother, =Artabanus (IV)=, appears as a claimant of the
throne. Civil war.

215 Caracalla demands the surrender of Tiridates, brother of
Vologases IV, who has taken refuge with Vologases V. The latter
refuses to give him up. Caracalla declares war, and the exile
is delivered up. Artabanus gains the upper hand and holds
Ctesiphon. Caracalla declares war on Artabanus on the latter’s
refusal to give his daughter to the Roman emperor.

216 The Romans penetrate to Arbela.

217 On death of Caracalla an immense Parthian force invades
Mesopotamia. Macrinus defeated and purchases peace.

222 Artabanus replaces his brother over the whole of Parthia.

224 Ardashir, the Sassanian king of Persis (or Persia), invades
Parthia, taking several cities.

227 Battle of Hormizdjan. Victory of Ardashir and death of
Artabanus.

228 Ardashir completes his conquest. End of the Parthian empire.

THE EMPIRE OF THE SASSANIDS

(228-651 A.D.)

While the Arsacids were ruling their kingdom and lording it
over the minor kings of the neighbouring country, the rulers
of Persis (or Persia proper) seem to have occupied an isolated
position and not been included in the Parthian empire. At the
beginning of the third century A.D. the kings of Persia have
lost all power of keeping the empire together; all the land is
ruled by a number of local potentates. One of these is Pabak,
son and descendant of a certain Sasan of Khir. Pabak conquers
considerable territory beyond his own dominions. On his death
the succession of Shapur or Sapor, the eldest son, is disputed
by Ardashir, a younger son. Sapor dies suddenly and Ardashir
puts his other brother to death, and settles himself on his
throne in 211 or 212 A.D. About 224 he invades the land of the
“great king” Artabanus IV of Parthia, and by 228 the conquest
is complete and the title of “great king” devolves upon
Ardashir. He makes his capital at Ctesiphon.

228 Foundation of the Sassanian empire by =Ardashir=
or =Artaxerxes=. He passes his reign in extending and
consolidating his empire.

236-238 War with Rome. Nisibis and Carrhæ taken.

241 Death of Ardashir. His son =Shapur= or =Sapor I= succeeds.

242 Sapor penetrates to Antioch but is driven back by the
Romans.

244 Philippus concludes a humiliating peace with Sapor. Peace
reigns until

251 when Sapor invades Armenia and puts the king to flight. The
Persians now make repeated invasions of Syria.

258 The Roman emperor Valerian takes the field against the
Persians.

260 Capture of Valerian by Sapor. He proceeds towards Asia
Minor but is repulsed by Odenathus, king of Palmyra, who
lays siege to Ctesiphon. Sapor acquires no permanent gain of
territory. In his reign Mani preaches his doctrines tending
to the amalgamation of Christianity and Zoroastrianism, and
leading to the formation of the Manichæan sect.

272 or 273 Sapor succeeded by his son =Hormuz= (=Hormizd=) or
=Hormisdas I=.

274 Death of Hormuz and accession of his brother (?) =Bahram=
or =Varanes I=--a weak prince, given to pleasure. Mani executed
in his reign. Persecution of the Manichæans and Christians.

277 =Bahram= or =Varanes II= succeeds his father. He wars with
Rome, ending

282 with a peace with Probus.

283 After murder of Probus, Carus invades Persia, takes
Ctesiphon and Coche, and dies suddenly. There are civil
wars, probably led by a brother of the king, assisted by the
barbarous tribes in the northwest.

294 Death of Bahram. The throne seems to be contested by
=Bahram= or =Varanes III=, probably a son of Hormuz, who reigns
a short time, and =Narses= or =Narseh=, who soon gains the
upper hand.

297 Narseh occupies Armenia and defeats the Roman general
Galerius.

298 Peace with Rome after a great defeat of Narseh by Galerius.
Armenia and Mesopotamia ceded to Rome. Peace lasts forty years.

303 Abdication of Narseh in favour of his son =Hormuz II=.

310 Death of Hormuz. His son =Adharnarseh= succeeds, but is
soon deposed for cruelty. His brothers are killed or imprisoned
and the new born (or unborn) son of Hormuz, =Shapur= or =Sapor
(II) Postumus= is chosen king. He proves to be the greatest of
the Sassanians.

337 Sapor begins a long war with Rome, owing to the latter
becoming Christianised.

339-340 Terrible persecution of the Christians in Persia. The
war with Rome continues. Sapor aims to seize Nisibis and reduce
Armenia.

348 Great defeat of the emperor Constantius at the battle of
Singara.

350 Sapor almost succeeds in capturing Nisibis when troubles
with the barbarians in the East compel him to raise the siege.

350-358 War in the East causes almost complete suspension in
the conflict with Rome.

358 Peace made in the East and Romans sue for peace. Sapor
declines and war is continued.

359 Sapor captures Amida, but the Romans regain it the
following year. Hostilities are suspended until

363 when the emperor Julian attempts to strike a death-blow at
Sapor. He takes Seleucia but fails to capture Ctesiphon. Death
of Julian in battle. His successor Jovian makes a shameful
peace with Sapor, granting him the lands east of the Tigris,
and part of Mesopotamia with Nisibis and Singara. The Romans
also agree not to help Arsaces of Armenia, and Sapor proceeds
against him.

365-366 Reduction of Armenia and Iberia by Sapor.

371 The Romans attempt to recover Armenia, but fail through
breaking out of the Gothic war.

379 Death of Sapor, succeeded by his brother =Ardashir II=.

383 or 384 Ardashir deposed by the nobles towards whom he has
been very severe. =Shapur= or =Sapor III=, probably a son of
Sapor II, raised to the throne. He makes a definite treaty of
peace with Rome.

388 or 389 Murder of Sapor by the nobles. His brother (or
perhaps son) =Bahram= or =Varanes III= succeeds.

390 Division of Armenia between Persia and Rome by treaty. The
division practically lasts until Arab times.

399 Assassination of Bahram. =Yezdegerd= or =Jezdegird (I) the
Sinner=, son of Sapor I or Sapor II, succeeds. He is friendly
to Rome, and Arcadius appoints him the guardian of his son
Thedorius. He sets his son Sapor on the throne of Pers-Armenia.

420 Death of Yezdegerd, probably slain by the nobles. Sapor
hurries from Armenia to take throne, but is slain. A certain
Khosrau or Chosroes is made king, but another son of Yezdegerd,
=Bahram= or =Varanes (V) the Wild Ass=, succeeds in getting
the throne, with the help of the Arabs, among whom he has been
living in exile. This is the first intervention of the Arabs in
the affairs of Persia.

421 War breaks out with Rome, probably instigated by the nobles
hostile to the king. Persians defeated, and

422 peace is made, giving religious freedom to Christians in
Persia, and to Zoroastrians in the Roman Empire. There is
constant warfare with Hephthalites or White Huns during this
reign.

429 Bahram reduces Pers-Armenia to a province.

438 or 439 Bahram succeeded by his son, =Yezdegerd II=, who is
cruel to the Jews and Christians. He suffers severe defeats
from the White Huns.

451 A severe rebellion, due to religious persecutions, breaks
out in Pers-Armenia, and is quelled with difficulty.

457 Death of Yezdegerd, and contest for the throne, between his
two sons, =Hormuz III= and =Peroz= or =Peroses=. The latter
is finally successful, owing to assistance from the White
Huns. Peroz persecutes Jews and Christians, but favours the
Nestorians, when they are driven from Rome.

484 Defeat and death of Peroz in a great battle with the White
Huns, with whom he has been at war for some years. Revolt in
Armenia put down by Zarmihr. =Balash=, Peroz’s brother, made
king. He puts his brother, Zareh, a claimant of the throne, to
death.

488 or 489 Balash deposed by the nobles, and blinded. =Kavadh
I= or =Kobad=, son of Peroz, succeeds him. Kobad favours Mazdak
and his new communistic religion, and in consequence

496 is deposed and imprisoned. His brother, =Jamasp= or
=Zames=, is placed on the throne. Kobad escapes to the White
Huns, and with their help

498 or 499 recovers his kingdom.

502 Kobad begins an exhausting war with Rome, which opens
the way for the Arabian conquests. He seizes Theodosiopolis,
capital of Roman Armenia.

503 Fall of Amida, and terrible massacre of the inhabitants.
The Romans recover it the following year.

506 Peace concluded with Rome. The Romans build the great
fortress at Dara.

521 War renewed with Rome. Belisarius first comes to the front
as a general. Narses and his brother desert Kobad, and join the
army of Justin.

529 Mundhir of Hira invades Syria. Kobad massacres the
Mazdukites, who have become too powerful.

531 Kobad makes campaign in Syria. Belisarius compels him to
turn back. Defeat of Belisarius at Rakka. Persian successes in
Mesopotamia. Death of Kobad and truce with Rome. =Khosrau= or
=Chosroes (I) the Just=, his son, succeeds. His wise internal
government benefits the kingdom greatly.

532 “A Perpetual Peace” made with Rome.

540 Chosroes, jealous of Belisarius’ conquests in Africa and
Italy, goes to war with the empire. He invades Syria, Antioch
taken, Dara laid under tribute. Ctesiphon is captured.

541 Chosroes takes Petra in Lazistan.

546 Rome buys a truce for a large sum.

551 The son of Chosroes rebels in Susiana. He is taken and
partially blinded.

560 The Turks take the right bank of the Oxus from the White
Huns. Bactria becomes a part of Chosroes’ kingdom.

562 Fifty years’ peace made with the Romans.

570 Chosroes sends an expedition against the Christian
Abyssinians in Yemen. He puts them under tribute.

571 War breaks out with Rome, over the threatened loss of
Pers-Armenia.

573 Chosroes takes Dara. The war continues.

579 Death of Chosroes, succeeded by his son, =Hormuz= or
=Hormisdas IV=. He makes a severe but just ruler. The war with
Rome and a severe one with the Turks fill his reign.

589 The general Bahram, defeated by the Romans in the Caucasus.
He is removed by Hormuz, and revolts. The king’s son, Chosroes,
joins the rebels.

590 Hormuz is deposed, and shortly afterwards put to death.
His son, =Khosrau= or =Chosroes (II) Parvez=, succeeds. Bahram
contests the crown, and seizes it. =Bahram= or =Varanes VI=
puts down an insurrection in Ctesiphon.

591 Chosroes recovers the throne, with help of the emperor
Maurice. Bahram flees to the Turks, and is murdered. Chosroes
strengthens his position, and puts his brother, Bindoe to
death. Another brother, Bistam, escapes to Media and makes
himself king.

595 or 596 Death of Bistam.

604 War breaks out with Rome, over usurpation of Phocas. Dara
captured by Chosroes.

606-608 The Persians invade Asia Minor. They advance as far as
Chalcedon.

610 Chosroes abolishes the kingdom of Hira.

614 The Persians capture Damascus.

615 The Persians capture Jerusalem and the holy cross.

616 Persian invasion of Egypt.

617 The Persians occupy Chalcedon.

622 Heraclius proceeds in person against the Persians, and
gradually wins back the Persian conquests.

628 Heraclius reaches Ctesiphon but is unable to take it.
Rebellion in Ctesiphon. Chosroes and most of his family are
slain. His eldest son =Kavadh (Kobad) II=, or =Siroes=, is
made king. He murders most of his brothers, and sues for peace
from the Roman Empire. A terrible pestilence breaks out and
Kobad dies. His infant son, =Ardashir III=, succeeds. He is the
last male Sassanid. The throne is disputed by many claimants.
Chosroes, a son of Kobad II, makes himself king in Khorasan,
but is soon slain.

629 The holy cross is returned to Heraclius. The general
Shahrbaraz is supported in a claim to the throne by Heraclius.
He takes Ctesiphon.

630 Murder of Ardashir, followed by that of Shahrbaraz. =Boran=
or =Puran=, a daughter of Chosroes II, takes the throne. She
makes a treaty with Heraclius.

631 Boran succeeded by =Peroz (Peroses) II=, who rules but a
short time; then =Azarmidokht=, sister of Boran, takes the
throne. =Hormuz V=, grandson of Chosroes II, maintains a rule
over a portion of the country for a short time.

632 Azarmidokht dethroned by Rustem, hereditary marshal of
Khorasan. =Ferrukhzadh= reigns a short time in Ctesiphon.

632 or 633 =Yezdegerd III=, grandson of Chosroes II, is put
forward by some of the nobles and crowned. Ferrukhzadh is slain
and Yezdegerd acknowledged as sole king. He declines to accept
the Mohammedan religion at invitation of Abu Bekr, and the
Moslems invade Persia.

636 Persian defeat by the Moslems at Cadesia, or Kadisiya.

640 or 642 The “Victory of Victories” by the Arabs over the
Persians at Nehavend. The last great Persian army is shattered.
The nobles gradually yield to the Arab chiefs. Yezdegerd is
driven from place to place, continually shorn of more and more
power until he is murdered in 651, and Persia becomes part of
the Mohammedan dominions.

THE ARABS

THE PRE-MOHAMMEDAN ERA

Before the Mohammedan conquests, Arabia is divided into a
number of local monarchies. In these we recognise two distinct
origins.

(1) Those ruled by a race of southern origin--the genuine or
Kahtanee Arabs. Their monarchies form a rim around the wild and
desert centre of the peninsula.

(2) The centre of Arabia is occupied by nomadic races--the
Mustareb Arabs, of northern origin, descendants of a mythical
Adnan.

THE KAHTANEE KINGDOMS (_ca._ 380 B.C.-634 A.D.)

The kingdom of Yemen is the most important and powerful of
these. It occupies a portion of the ancient Arabia Felix.
Descendants of Kahtan and Himyar--names of African origin--its
monarchs rule over the whole of southern Arabia from about
380 B.C., with but few interruptions. The capital is first
at Mareb and then at Sana. The northern kingdoms are more or
less tributary. The Persians, Greeks, and Macedonians make no
attempts upon Arabia, if we except the frontier skirmishes of
Antigonus and Ptolemy. Rome had an eye to its conquest. Pompey,
the first to attempt it, is foiled, and it was not until

B.C.

25 when Ælius Gallus, the prefect of Egypt, undertakes an
expedition at the command of Augustus. His army is unable to
support the hardships of the desert, and the following year
the Arabs drive the remnant out. Later attempts under Trajan
and Severus do not succeed beyond the frontier, and Bosrah and
Petra mark the extreme limits of Roman dominion.

A.D.

100 Probable date of the great flood of Arem or Mareb, which
leads to the foundation of other Arab kingdoms.

529 The Abyssinians, under Aryat, invade Yemen, to avenge the
Christians persecuted by =Dhu-Nowas= the king. Dhu-Nowas is
killed, and the Abyssinians rule the kingdom until

605 when Saif, with the assistance of Chosroes the Great,
restores the Kahtanee dynasty, but it becomes dependent on
Persia.

634 Mohammedan conquest of Yemen.

THE KINGDOM OF HIRA (195-610 A.D.)

Next in importance to Yemen. It is situated in Irak. Founded
about 195 A.D. by =Malik=, it is more or less under allegiance
to the Persians, but exercises considerable control over the
Mustareb Arabs.

529 =Mundhir III=, king of Hira, who has been driven from the
throne by Kavadh I of Persia, because he is too powerful,
invades Syria, cruelly ravaging the country as far as Antioch.
He kills Harith, whom Kavadh has set over his kingdom, and is
finally himself killed, in 554, by a Roman vassal.

610 Chosroes II puts an end to the kingdom of Hira.

THE KINGDOM OF GHASSAN (300-636 A.D.)

Founded about 300 by =Thalaba=, the first to take the name
of king. His successors rule until 636, when =Djabala VI=
surrenders to the Mohammedans.

THE KINGDOM OF KINDEH

A small kingdom, of Yemenite origin, which detaches itself from
Irak in the fifth century A.D. and maintains its existence for
about 160 years, when it is absorbed by the Mustarebs.

THE MUSTAREB KINGDOMS

The northern tribes inhabiting central Arabia, or Arabia
Petræa, become consolidated into five kingdoms:

Rabiah, in the east centre of the peninsula.

Kais, or Kais-Ailan, in the north.

Hawazin, in the north.

Tamin, in the middle.

They are, from the time of their foundation, more or less
tributary to Yemen until

500 They make themselves independent, under the leadership
of Kolaib, who now tries to unite his people in a single
confederacy, but the plan is frustrated by his assassination.
The tribes now lead a warlike, disorganised existence,
encroaching slowly upon the Kahtanee kingdoms. During this
period the tribe of Koreish becomes prominent. Tradition
assigns their origin to Ishmael, and they have become the
guardians of the sacred Kaaba. This gives them pre-eminence
over all other Arabian clans, and at the beginning of the
seventh century A.D. the tribe of Koreish and its Mustareb
allies is the most powerful confederacy in Arabia, the Kahtanee
kingdoms having become more or less vassals of the Persian and
Byzantine empires.

THE KINGDOM OF NABATÆA

The Nabatæans are a famous people of ancient Arabia. Secure
knowledge of their history goes back only to 312 B.C., when
Antigonus failed to take their fortress of Petra. They are
described by Diodorus as a pastoral and trading people,
preserving their liberty in the arid country of Arabia Petræa.
At the fall of the Seleucids they extend their territory over
the fertile country east of the Jordan. They occupy the Hauran.
Pompey reduces them to vassalage, and in 105 A.D. Trajan takes
Petra and breaks up the Nabatæan nation.

MOHAMMED AND HIS SUCCESSORS (570-661 A.D.)

_ca._ 570 Birth of =Mohammed=, of a noble Koreish family, at
Mecca.

605-610 Years of meditation, during which the principles of
Mohammedanism are developed.

610 Year of the “call,” Mohammed begins to make converts.
Opposition to his doctrines increases among the Meccans until

622 he flees with a body of followers to Medina. The Hegira.
Beginning of the Mohammedan era.

623 The first mosque built. Mohammed becomes a warrior.

624 First battle for the faith with the Meccans at Bedr.
Victory of Mohammed.

625 Battle of Ohod, and victory of the Meccans.

627 War of the Fosse. The Koreish make terms with Mohammed.

628 War against the Jews of Khaibar.

629 War against the Greek subjects in Arabia.

630 Mohammed moves against Mecca. He conquers it. War with the
Hawazin. Rapid spread of Islam.

632 Death of Mohammed. He leaves the entire peninsula, with the
exception of a few tribes, under one sceptre and one creed. His
father-in-law, =Abu Bekr=, is chosen caliph, or representative.
An army under Khalid sets out against the Byzantine Empire. Abu
Bekr reduces a revolt in Nejd and Yemen, and defends Medina.

633 Khalid, on the lower Euphrates, is called to Syria.

634 Khalid captures Bosrah and overruns the Hauran. Death of
Abu Bekr. =Omar= succeeds.

635 Capture of Damascus.

636 Emesa, Heliopolis, Chalcis, Berœa, and Edessa added to the
Mohammedan empire. Battle of the Hieromax (Yermuk). Heraclius
abandons Syria to the Moslems.

637 Battle of Cadesia, or Kadisiya, and victory over the
Persians. Omar captures Jerusalem, and follows it up by taking
Aleppo and Antioch.

638 Mesopotamia is conquered by the Mohammedans, also Tarsus
and Diar-Bekr.

639 Invasion of Egypt by Amru.

641 Battle of Nehavend, and great victory of the Mohammedans
over the Persians. Most of the Persian nobility come to terms
with the Mohammedans. Yezdegerd the king flees to a remote
corner of the realm, where he holds a vestige of power until
651 or 652. Alexandria captured.

644 Death of Omar, succeeded by =Othman=, a weak ruler, who
allows the power to fall into the hands of the Koreish nobility.

647 Invasion of Africa by Abdallah. Arabian victories,
expelling the Romans.

649 Invasion of Cyprus.

650 Conquest of Aradus.

652 Conquest of Armenia.

654 Conquest of Rhodes.

655 Defeat of the emperor Constans by the Mohammedans in naval
battle off Mt. Phœnix in Lycia.

656 Murder of Othman by a party in opposition to the growing
worldliness of Islam. =Ali=, of the opposition, and son-in-law
of Mohammed, succeeds. Battle of the Camel. Ali victorious over
his opponents. Moawiyah, governor of Syria, heads the opponents
of Ali, and incites them to revenge.

657 Ali invades northern Syria. Battle of Siffin. The
theocratic faction rebels against Ali.

658 Decision of the umpires, Ali and Moawiyah; the latter wins.
Peace made with the Byzantine Empire. Egypt conquered for
Moawiyah.

660 Truce between Ali and Moawiyah, dividing the caliphate into
the East and West divisions.

661 Kharejite conspiracy to murder Ali, Moawiyah, and Amru. The
former alone falls. His son =Hassan= succeeds, but abdicates in
favour of Moawiyah.

THE OMAYYAD DYNASTY (661-750 A.D.)

661 =Moawiyah= at head of the reunited caliphate. The
opposition to him is gradually reduced. The capital is removed
to Damascus.

662-663 Great invasion of Asia Minor. Death of Amru.

668 Mohammedans advance to Chalcedon and hold Amorium for a
short time.

669 Great invasion of Sicily.

670 Foundation of Kairwan.

673-677 The Mohammedans besiege Constantinople, and are finally
driven off by means of Greek fire.

676 Yazid, son of Moawiyah, is appointed heir-apparent.
Hereditary nomination becomes a precedent.

678 Thirty years’ peace made with Constantine IV of
Constantinople.

680 Death of Moawiyah. =Yazid I= succeeds. The Ali faction
refuse recognition. Hosein, son of Ali, and his company slain.

681 Abdallah ben Zobair proclaims himself caliph.

683 Rebellion and sack of Medina. The cause of Ibn Zobair
grows. He maintains a rival court at Mecca, and rebuilds the
Kaaba.

684 Death of Yazid. His weak son, =Moawiyah II=, reigns but a
few months. =Merwan= elected to succeed.

685 Death of Merwan. His son, =Abdul-Malik=, succeeds. Peace
with the emperor Justinian II.

685-687 Rebellion of Mukhtar. He is defeated and slain.

689 Abdul-Malik has Amru put to death.

692 Death of Ibn Zobair. The Omayyad rule is recognised without
dispute.

692-693 The Mohammedans ravage Asia Minor and Armenia, but are
compelled to accept peace.

695 The peace is broken. Arabic coinage first substituted for
that of the Byzantine Empire.

697-698 Hassan’s invasion of Africa. Carthage taken. The last
remnants of the Roman Empire disappear from the southern shore
of the Mediterranean.

705 Death of Abdul-Malik and succession of his brother, =Walid
I=, already designated as heir to the caliphate. His reign
marks the culminating glory of the Omayyads. Schools founded,
and public works of all kinds promoted.

709 Conquest of Tyana by the Mohammedans.

711 Invasion of Spain at instigation of Julian, governor of
Ceuta. Battle of Xerxes. Tarik destroys the Visigothic kingdom.

712 The Mohammedans take Antioch in Pisidia. In these years
great success of the generals Kotaiba and Muhammed b. Kasim in
Asia.

715 Death of Walid and accession of =Suleiman=, the
predesignated heir.

716 The Mohammedans invade Asia Minor. Siege of Amorium. The
town is relieved by Leo the Isaurian.

717 Siege of Pergamus. Siege of Constantinople. Death of
Suleiman. The appointed heir =Omar II=, grandson of Merwan I,
succeeds.

718 Repulse of the Mohammedans from Constantinople. In revenge
the caliph excludes all Christians from service in the state.
Omar’s reign is not distinguished by any important warlike
events. It marks the beginning of the Abbasid movement in
favour of the descendants of Abbas, uncle of the prophet,
acquiring the caliphate.

720 Death of Omar. =Yazid II=, son of Abdul-Malik, succeeds.
Yazid b. Muhallab, who has been in disgrace for some years,
collects a small army and takes Basra (Bassora).

721 Death of Ibn Muhallab in battle. The Mohammedans cross the
Pyrenees and capture Narbonne, but, defeated at Toulouse, they
retire under Abd ar-Rahman.

724 Death of Yazid. His son =Hisham=, the appointed heir,
succeeds. He is a severe and pious ruler.

725 Abbasid revolt at Balkh. Abbasid troubles continue.

726 The Mohammedans invade Cappadocia.

734 Mohammedan invasion of Asia Minor.

737 Peace restored in the Abbasid faction.

739 Great Moslem defeat by the Byzantines at Acroinon. Death of
Sid (Said) al-Battal. The Saracen power ceases to be formidable
to the empire.

743 Death of Hisham. His nephew, =Walid II=, succeeds. Walid’s
debaucheries and irreligion make him hated. Yazid, son of Walid
I, assumes title of caliph, and is received at Damascus, in
absence of Walid.

744 Death of Walid in battle with his rival. =Yazid III=
succeeds. Signs of disintegration become marked. Abd ar-Rahman
b. Muhammed declares himself independent in Africa. Revolt of
Emesa over Walid’s death, and defeat of rebels at Eagle’s Pass.
Merwan, Yazid’s grandfather, attempts to obtain caliphate.
Yazid makes him governor of Mesopotamia. Death of Yazid, after
reign of six months. His brother, Ibrahim, succeeds. Merwan
marches against Damascus. Ibrahim flees, after reign of two
months, and =Merwan II= is acknowledged caliph.

746 Mohammedan invasion of Cyprus.

750 As a result of the ferment in the eastern part of the
empire, the Abbasid Abul-Abbas assumes title of caliph. War
between Omayyads and Abbasids. Battle of the Zab. Defeat of
Merwan, and downfall of the Omayyad dynasty.

THE ABBASID DYNASTY (750-1258 A.D.)

750 =Abul-Abbas= established in the caliphate. He has all
the Omayyad princes (except Abd ar-Rahman b. Moawiyah, who
escapes to Africa) put to death. Revolts break out, owing to
his cruelty, but they are suppressed. Abul-Abbas fixes his
residence at Anbar.

754 Death of Abul-Abbas. He has designated =Abu Jafar=
(=Al-Mansur=), his cousin, as his successor. Abdallah b. Ali
revolts, but is defeated at Nisibis. Several risings are
suppressed. Revolt in Africa, which hereafter only nominally
belongs to the caliphs.

755 The Mohammedans in Spain elect Abd ar-Rahman b. Moawiyah
caliph. Spain lost to the Abbasids.

756 Foundation of the western Omayyad caliphate.

756-757 Invasion of Asia Minor. Capture of Malatiya. Defeat of
the Byzantines in Cilicia. Seven years’ truce with the emperor.

762 Baghdad made the capital of the caliphate.

763 Muhammed Mahdi falls in battle, after having caused himself
to be proclaimed caliph. His brother, Ibrahim, also revolts,
and is killed in battle.

775 Death of Mansur. His son, =Muhammed= (=Al-Mahdi=),
succeeds. He busies himself at once with improving internal
conditions and restoring peace. Revolt of Hakim in Khorasan.
Continued invasion of Asia Minor.

780 Capture of Semaluos by Harun ar-Rashid.

782 Renewal of war between Moslems and Byzantines. Victory
for the latter in Cilicia. Harun ar-Rashid takes command. He
marches to the Bosporus, and compels the empress Irene to pay
large yearly tribute.

785 Rebellion of Mahdi’s eldest son, Musa, because Harun is
preferred as heir. Death of Mahdi on his way to crush the
rebellion. Musa, who takes the title Hadi, succeeds. Rising of
Hosein b. Ali suppressed.

786 Hadi attempts to exclude Harun from the caliphate, and is
smothered at instigation of his mother. =Harun ar-Rashid=, the
most celebrated of the caliphs, succeeds without opposition.

789 The Arabs invade Rumania.

792-793 Suppression of the party formed by Yahya b. Abdallah.

797-798 Continued victories over the Byzantines cause the
empress Irene to sue for peace. The Khazars driven out of
Armenia.

800 The Aglabite dynasty founded at Kairwan.

801 Harun sends an embassy to Charlemagne.

802 The emperor Nicephorus refuses to continue payment of
tribute. Harun makes such a devastating invasion of Asia Minor
that Nicephorus sues for peace. He breaks it the next year, and
the same process is repeated.

804-805 Rebellion in Khorasan.

806 Peace renewed with Nicephorus after hostilities have once
more been begun.

808 Edrisite dynasty founded at Fez.

809 Death of Harun on the way to quell disturbances in
Khorasan. His reign is a flourishing period of art and science.
His son, =Emin=, succeeds. His reign is mostly taken up with
the rebellion of his brother, Mamun, who gradually wins all the
provinces, except Baghdad, to his side.

813 Capture and assassination of Emin. =Mamun= proclaimed at
Baghdad. The civil war continues.

817 Mamun appoints Musa b. Ali heir to the throne, whereupon
the people of Baghdad declare Mamun deposed and elect his
uncle, Ibrahim, caliph. Sudden death of Musa.

820 Appointment of Tahir as governor of Khorasan, where his
descendants rule until 872--sometimes called Tahirite dynasty.

829 Euphemius invites the Mohammedans from Africa into Sicily.
They take Palermo.

831 The Mohammedans begin a long invasion of Asia Minor.

832 Capture of Heraclea.

833 Death of Mamun. His reign is the Augustan age of Arabian
literature. Works on science and philosophy translated from the
Greek. Mamun orders the measurement of a degree of the earth’s
circumference. The designated heir, his brother =Mutasim=,
succeeds. A party in favour of Mamun’s son, Abbas, is put down.
Mutasim employs Turks in his body-guard, and their excesses
cause Baghdad to revolt. The caliph removes the capital to
Samarra.

836 The emperor Theophilus destroys Zapetra in his savage war
on the Moslems.

838 Moslem victory at Dasymon. Amorium captured. Second revolt
of Abbas, who dies in prison.

841 Death of Mutasim. His son, =Wathik=, succeeds. The
caliphate begins to decline.

845 Truce with the empress Theodora.

847 Death of Wathik. The state officials elect his son,
Muhammed, to succeed, but immediately recall their choice and
substitute Wathik’s brother, =Mutawakkil=. He is noteworthy for
his atrocious cruelty, and persecutes the Jews and Christians.

852 Serious revolt in Armenia suppressed in four years.

858 A great war with the Byzantines begins in Asia Minor. The
Mohammedans capture the Byzantine commander.

860 Byzantine defeat near Melitene.

861 Murder of Mutawakkil by his Turkish guard, bribed by his
son, =Muntasir=, who takes the caliphate.

862 Death of Muntasir, probably by poison. His cousin, Akhmed,
who takes name of =Mustain=, is chosen to succeed by the
Turkish soldiery.

863 Great victory of the Byzantines over the Moslems at Amasia.
Death of the general, Omar. Peace for some years results.

866 The Turks revolt against Mustain and choose his brother,
=Motazz=, caliph. Surrender of Motazz, who is put to death. He
tries to free himself of the yoke of the Turkish soldiery.

869 The Turks besiege the caliph, who is imprisoned and dies.
=Mutahdi=, son of Wathik, is chosen caliph. He tries in vain to
reform the empire.

870 Mutahdi slain by the Turks. =Mutamid=, son of Mutawakkil,
chosen as caliph. He reduces the power of the Turkish soldiery,
and re-establishes capital at Baghdad.

872 The Tahirites overthrown in Persia, and the Saffarid
dynasty founded. War with Byzantines recommences.

878 Akhmed b. Tulun, governor of Egypt, makes himself
independent, and founds Tulunite dynasty that lasts until 905.

887-888 Mohammedan invasions of Asia Minor.

892 Death of Mutamid. His nephew, =Mutadid=, succeeds. Rise of
the Karmathian sect, inimical to the pomp of the Baghdad court.
Turkestan becomes independent under Samani, who afterwards
conquers Persia and extinguishes the Saffarid dynasty.

894 The Karmathians having ravaged Mecca, the caliph rebuilds
the city.

902 Death of Mutadid, leaving the throne to his son, =Muktafi=.
Struggles with the Karmathians. They plunder the pilgrimage
to Mecca and slay twenty thousand pilgrims. They are badly
defeated and remain quiet for a while.

904 The Mohammedans capture Thessalonica.

905 Muktafi takes Egypt from the Tulunites and gives it to the
Ikhshidites.

908 Death of Muktafi. His son, =Muktadir=, succeeds. Rebellion
in favour of Abdallah b. Motazz is put down and Abdallah
killed. Muktadir is a weak caliph, who leaves the government to
his ministers. Establishment of the Fatimite dynasty in Egypt
and Africa. It subverts the Aglabite and Edrisite dynasties.
During the remainder of Muktadir’s reign, the Byzantines invade
Mesopotamia and the Karmathians recommence their disorders. The
caliph’s inaction and indolence cause a reaction against him.

930 He is deposed and his brother, Kahir, made caliph, but he
recovers the throne. Revolt of Mosul and foundation of the
Hamdanite dynasty in Mesopotamia. The Karmathians seize Mecca
and carry off the Black Stone of the Kaaba.

932 Death of Muktadir in battle with his rebellious minister,
Munis. His brother, =Kahir=, succeeds.

933 Foundation of the Buyid dynasty in Persia. The caliphate is
reduced to the province of Baghdad.

934 Kahir deposed and blinded. His nephew, =Radhi=, succeeds.
He creates the office of emir of the emirs, corresponding to
mayor of the palace. He is the last caliph to possess any
considerable spiritual or temporal power.

939 Capture of Mosul.

940 Death of Radhi, succeeded by his brother, =Muttaki=.
Al-Baridi, the head of a Chaldean principality, besieges
Baghdad, but is repulsed.

944 Turun seizes Muttaki and puts his eyes out. =Mustafki=,
son of Muktafi, is chosen by Turun to succeed. Owing to the
unpopularity of Zirak, the emir of the emirs, the people call
upon Akhmed, the Buyid ruler, who establishes himself vizir to
the caliph with title Muiz ad-Daula. He and his successors,
under the title of emir of the emirs, absorb all political
power.

946 Mustafki conspires against Akhmed, who seizes him and puts
his eyes out. Muktadir’s son, =Muti=, is chosen to succeed.
Constant war with the Byzantines.

958 The Fatimite caliph, Muiz ad-Din, subdues all Africa and
Egypt and is acknowledged by Arabia.

961 Foundation of the principality of Ghazni.

968 Nicephorus takes Antioch from the Mohammedans.

974 Abdication of Muti. His son, =Tai=, succeeds. The Buyid
princes contend furiously for the office of emir.

991 The emir, Baha ad-Daula, compels Tai to abdicate, and
appoints =Kadir=, grandson of Muktadir, to the caliphate.

995 Aleppo taken from the Mohammedans by the emperor Basil.

997 Mahmud, of Ghazni, comes to the throne. He reigns until
1028.

1020 Firdusi, the Persian Homer, flourishes. The power of the
Seljuk Turks increases.

1030 Mohammedan victory over the Byzantines at Azaz.

1031 Death of Kadir. His son, =Kaim=, succeeds.

1038 Mohammedans regain Edessa.

1055 The caliph, oppressed by the emir, calls upon Toghril Beg,
the Seljuk. The latter enters Baghdad, overthrows the Buyids,
and takes their place.

1063 Death of Toghril, leaving the power to his nephew, Alp
Arslan.

1074 Suleiman, the Seljuk, conquers Asia Minor and founds
kingdom of Rum or Iconium.

1075 Death of Kaim. His grandson, =Muktadi=, succeeds.

1076 The Seljuk Turks conquer Syria from the Fatimites and take
Jerusalem.

1090 Hassan b. Sabba, of Nishapur, organises a band of
Karmathians, named the “Assassins.”

1092 Death of Malik Shah, successor of Alp Arslan. Decline of
Seljuk power.

1094 Death of Muktadi. His son, =Mustazhir=, succeeds.

1096 The Fatimite caliph, Mustali, takes Jerusalem.

1099 The crusaders succeed in getting the whole of Asia Minor.

1118 Death of Mustazhir. His son, =Mustarshid=, succeeds.

1135 Murder of Mustarshid by the Assassins. His son, =Rashid=,
succeeds.

1136 Rashid defends Baghdad against the Turks, but is murdered
by the Assassins. His uncle, =Muktafi=, succeeds. He is
captured by the Ghuz Turks and carried about in an iron cage,
but afterwards escapes.

1160 Death of Muktafi. His son, =Mustanjid=, succeeds. His
reign is marked by great disorders in Persia, where the
governors have all made themselves independent.

1170 Death of Mustanjid. His son, =Mustadi=, succeeds.

1171 Saladin, sultan of Egypt, destroys the Fatimite dynasty.

1180 Death of Mustadi. His son, =Nasir=, succeeds. He
recognises the usurpation of Saladin.

1183 Fall of Ghazni.

1206 Jenghiz proclaims himself khan of the Mongols.

1218-1221 Conquests of Jenghiz Khan.

1225 Death of Nasir. His son, =Dhahir=, succeeds.

1226 Death of Dhahir. His son, =Mustansir=, succeeds. The whole
of Persia is subject to the Mongols.

1245 Death of Mustansir. His son, =Mustasim=, succeeds.

1256 Hulagu, khan of the Mongols, invades Persia and extirpates
the Assassins.

1258 Hulagu takes Baghdad, and puts Mustasim to death. End of
the Abbasid dynasty.

THE MOHAMMEDANS IN SPAIN (711-1492 A.D.)

Within four years after the landing of Tarik in Spain, the
whole peninsula, except the mountainous districts in the north,
is in the hands of the Mohammedans. The first forty years of
the occupation is a period of discord, and a number of emirs
succeed each other in rapid succession. The Mohammedans fight
with the Christians in the north, and penetrate into France,
whence they are driven back by Charles Martel, in 732. The Arab
power is on the eve of falling to pieces, when Abd ar-Rahman,
the sole survivor of the Omayyad massacre in Arabia, arrives in
Spain. In 755 Abd ar-Rahman is elected king of Mohammedan Spain.

THE OMAYYAD DYNASTY (756-1031 A.D.)

756 =Abd ar-Rahman I= defeats the Abbasid emirs, and founds his
kingdom at Cordova. His reign is one of constant warfare, for
he has to suppress many revolts.

778 Destruction of Charlemagne’s army at Roncesvalles, on its
return from the invasion to restore Hosein to power.

780 Capture of Saragossa. Hosein taken and executed.

786 Suppression of the rebellion of the Beni Yusuf.

788 Death of Abd ar-Rahman. His son and appointed heir, =Hisham
I=, succeeds. He proclaims the holy war and finishes the mosque
of Cordova.

796 Death of Hisham. His son, =Al-Hakim=, succeeds. He is
victorious over his rebel uncles.

800-801 The Franks invade Catalonia and recover Barcelona from
the Moslems.

807 After continual disorders in Toledo Al-Hakim treacherously
massacres the chief citizens. Resistance is abandoned.

815 Rising in Cordova put down with great cruelty. Exile of the
inhabitants. They go to Africa.

821 Death of Al-Hakim. His son, =Abd ar-Rahman II=, succeeds.

823 A band of Cordovan exiles from Alexandria effect the
conquest of Crete. The king defeats his great-uncle, Abdallah.

832 Great defeat of the rebellious Toledans.

852 Death of Abd ar-Rahman. His son, =Muhammed I=, succeeds.
The Christian monarchs are acknowledged lords paramount over
Castile and Navarre. Revolts continue in many quarters.

862 Muhammed recovers Tudela and Saragossa after death of Musa,
the head of the rebellious Beni Casi, but the latter, with
the help of Alfonso III of Asturias and Leon, soon expel his
soldiers. Ibn Merwan forms an independent state in the west.

886 Death of Muhammed. His son, =Mundhir=, succeeds.

888 Death of Mundhir. His brother, =Abdallah=, succeeds.

890 Defeat of Omar b. Hafsan, who for many years has maintained
his independence with a large force in an impregnable fortress
in Andalusia. Other serious risings in Elvira and Seville take
place.

912 Death of Abdallah. His son, =Abd ar-Rahman III=, succeeds.
He is the greatest of the Spanish caliphs, and his reign is the
most brilliant period of the kingdom. He encourages the African
Moslems to hold out against the Fatimites.

916 Ordoño II of Leon defeats army sent to avenge a raid he has
made two years previously.

918 Brilliant victory of Abd ar-Rahman over Ordoño and Sancho I
of Navarre. Abd ar-Rahman penetrates as far as Pamplona.

921 Ordoño invades the Moslem territory as far as Cordova.
Defeat of Ordoño at battle of Val de Junquera.

923 Sancho captures Viguera. Death of Ordoño II enables Abd
ar-Rahman to complete work of internal organisation.

929 Abd ar-Rahman assumes title of caliph.

934 Ramiro II of Leon, having restored peace in his kingdom,
resumes war on the Moors. Defeat of the Moors at Simancas.

939 Great defeat of the Moors at Alhandega, but Ramiro is
compelled to abandon operations against the Moors by his
quarrel with the count of Castile.

950 The death of Ramiro enabling Abd ar-Rahman to win many
victories.

960 The caliph restores the deposed Sancho I to the throne of
Leon.

961 Death of Abd ar-Rahman. His son, =Al-Hakam II=, succeeds.
He is a great book collector and patron of literature. The most
notable event of his reign is the rise of Mohammed Ibn abi Amir.

976 Death of Al-Hakam. His ten-year-old son, =Hisham II=, after
some opposition is established on the throne. The real power is
in the hands of Ibn abi Amir, who reorganises the army.

981 Defeat of Ramiro III of Leon by Ibn abi Amir, who assumes
the name of Almansor (Al-Mansur).

982 Bermudo II, Ramiro’s successor, pays tribute to Cordova.

986 Capture and sack of Barcelona, the capital of a Spanish
fief, by Almansor.

987 Bermudo tries to free himself from Moorish sovereignty.
Almansor razes Coimbra to the ground. The next year Almansor
penetrates to the heart of Leon.

996 Capture of the city of Leon. After this Almansor takes
Compostella. In Africa the generals of Almansor gain victories
in Mauretania.

1002 Death of Almansor. His son, Abdul-Malik, succeeds to his
office of hajib. He continues his father’s successes.

1008 Death of Abdul-Malik. His brother, Abd ar-Rahman
(Sanchol), succeeds to the chief ministry. He conducts a
campaign in Leon.

1009 =Muhammed=, cousin of Hisham, revolts. Sanchol put to
death. =Muhammed Al-Mahdi= imprisons Hisham and assumes
the caliphate. Revolt of the Berbers, who occupy Cordova.
Hisham abdicates in favour of Suleiman, a relative. Muhammed
escapes to Toledo, but recovers Cordova with the help of the
Catalonians.

1010 Defeat of Muhammed; the Slavs and Berbers desert him.
Hisham recovers the throne. Murder of Muhammed.

1013 =Suleiman= takes Cordova and Hisham disappears. His fate
is one of the unsolved mysteries of history.

1016 Overthrow of Suleiman by the Slavonic element headed by
Khairan and Ali of Hammud. =Ali= made caliph.

1017 Revolt of Khairan, who sets up =Abd ar-Rahman (IV)
Mortada=, great-grandson of Abd ar-Rahman III, as anti-caliph.
Murder of Ali. His brother, =Kasim=, succeeds. Fierce civil war
results.

1023 Mortada falls in battle. =Abd ar-Rahman V=, brother of
Muhammed Al-Mahdi, succeeds, but is shortly murdered. =Muhammed
Ben Abd ar-Rahman= succeeds.

1025 Muhammed driven from Cordova. =Yahya b. Ali= is in power.
He is slain at Seville. =Hisham III=, brother of Mortada,
raised to the throne.

1031 The caliphate is so disorganised that Hisham abdicates the
empty title.

THE INDEPENDENT KINGDOMS, OR EMIRATES (1031-1091 A.D.)

Since the death of Almansor, Mohammedan Spain has been
splitting up into a number of independent emirates or
principalities. The fall of the Omayyad dynasty breaks
the last link of unity, and we have now the separate and
distinct emirates of Saragossa, Toledo, Valencia, Badajoz,
Cordova, Seville, and Granada. The Christian states seize the
opportunity to reconquer Spain. The Spanish national hero, “the
Cid,” takes part in these conquests. Without following each of
these states in detail, we note the most important events of
the period.

1032 Civil war breaks out in the emirates.

1038 Ramiro I of Aragon drives the Moors from Sobrarbe, and
annexes it to his possessions. Assassination of =Al-Mundar= of
Saragossa, at Granada.

1043 Death of =Gehwar= of Cordova. His son =Muhammed= succeeds.

1046 Ferdinand I of Castile besieges Toledo. The emir pays
tribute.

1060 =Muhammed Al-Muatedid= seizes Cordova, and then becomes
the most powerful leader of the Moorish rulers in Spain.
Muhammed Gehwar dies of grief.

1064 Last victories of Ferdinand I in Catalonia and
Valencia. Al-Mamun of Toledo captures Valencia, deposing his
brother-in-law, Al-Mudafar.

1070 Rise of the Almoravids in Africa due to Yusuf b. Tashufin.

1078 Ibn Abed of Seville takes Murcia.

1079 Conquest of Malaga by Ibn Omar, the vizir of Ibn Abed.
Alliance between Ibn Abed and Alfonso VI of Castile.

1081 Alfonso VI invades Toledo. Al-Aftas, emir of Badajoz,
drives him back.

1085 Capture of Toledo by Alfonso VI.

1086 Al-Mutamid, emir of Seville, asks Yusuf, the Almoravid
chief in Africa, for assistance. He comes, and defeats Alfonso
at Zallaka.

1087 Yusuf returns to Africa. The Cid defeats the Moors at
Al-Coraza, and captures Huesca.

1088 Yusuf recalled to Spain, but is able to accomplish
nothing, owing to discord and dissension among the emirs.

1089 The Moors besiege Alid, but are driven off by Alfonso.
Yusuf returns to Africa.

1090 Yusuf returns to Spain with a large army, and conquers
Granada.

1091 Conquest of Seville and Almeria by Yusuf. Al-Mutamin sent
to Africa a prisoner. Yusuf is now supreme in the Mohammedan
regions of Spain.

THE ALMORAVID DYNASTY (1091-1146 A.D.)

The Almoravids are a confederation of Berber sectaries who
have established a vast kingdom in Africa. The king, =Yusuf b.
Tashufin=, establishes his capital at Morocco, in 1069, and his
intrusion into the affairs of Spain is explained above.

1092 Valencia betrayed to the Almoravids. Al-Kadir, the emir,
slain.

1093 Yusuf captures Badajoz and puts the emir Al-Mutawakkil to
death.

1094 The Cid takes Valencia from the Moors.

1095 The Balearic Isles submit to Yusuf.

1099 Death of the Cid. Valencia comes under Moorish rule the
following year.

1103 Yusuf turns government over to his son =Ali=, and returns
to Africa, where he dies, 1106, at age of one hundred.
(Ninety-seven Christian years.)

1108 Victory of Ali over Alfonso VI of Castile, at Urcesia
(Ucles).

1109 Alfonso defeats the emir of Saragossa. Ali returns to
Africa after unsuccessful siege of Toledo. The centre of
government is at Morocco.

1114 The Pisans take the Balearic Isles from the Moors.

1117 Alfonso allies himself with the emir of Saragossa against
Ali. They take Lerida, and defeat the Almoravids.

1121 Rebellion of Cordova. Revolt of Muhammed b. Abdallah
(Al-Mahdi) in Africa. Rise of the Almohads (Unitarians).

1123 Siege of Morocco by the Almohads. Ali drives them off.

1130 Ali, son of Tashufin, defeated by Alfonso. Abdul-Mumin,
successor of Al-Mahdi, defeats Ali in Morocco.

1134 The Moors defeat and slay Alfonso I of Aragon at Fraga.

1138 Tashufin summoned to Spain by Ali to help him against the
Almohads.

1139 Alfonso, duke of Portugal, defeats the Moors at Ourique.

1143 Death of Ali. His son =Tashufin= succeeds. General
insurrection against the Almoravids.

1144 Abdul-Mumin totally defeats Tashufin in Africa. Death of
Tashufin in flight to Spain. His son =Ibrahim= raised to the
throne over such of his dominions as are left.

1145 Abdul-Mumin crosses into Spain.

1146 The Almohads take Seville. Castile and Aragon come to
assistance of the Almoravids. Ibrahim put to death.

THE ALMOHAD DYNASTY (1146-1232 A.D.)

1146 =Abdul-Mumin= recognised as supreme over the Moors in
Spain.

1147 Capture of Almeria by the Christian allies.

1148 Capture of Cordova by the Almohads.

1151 Abdul-Mumin continues conquests in Africa.

1156 Capture of Granada by the Almohads.

1157 The Almohads reconquer Almeria.

1158 Capture of Tunis by Abdul-Mumin.

1160 Abdul-Mumin returns to Spain.

1161 Badajoz, Beja, and Beira taken by the Almohads.

1163 Death of Abdul-Mumin. His son =Yusuf Abu Yakub= succeeds.
The war between the Christians and Moors continues.

1176 Yusuf invades Portugal.

1184 Death of Yusuf at siege of Santarem. His son =Yakub
Almansor= (Al-Mansur) succeeds.

1189 Sancho of Portugal captures Silves and Beja, but the Moors
recover them three years later.

1193 The Christian princes of Spain unite against the Moors.

1195 The Moors administer a crushing defeat to Alfonso VIII of
Castile at Alarcon.

1197 Capture of Madrid by the Moors.

1198 The Moors capture Calatrava and threaten Toledo.

1199 Death of Yakub. =Muhammed An-Nasir= succeeds. Rising of
the Almoravids which takes five years to suppress. Muhammed
makes preparations for a great conquest of Christian Spain.

1211 Muhammed besieges Salvatierra.

1212 Surrender of Salvatierra, followed by decisive defeat of
Muhammed at Las Navas de Tolosa. The fate of the Almohads is
sealed.

1213 Death of Muhammed. His infant son =Yusuf Al-Mustansir=
succeeds.

1223 Death of Yusuf. Civil war breaks out among the Almohads.

1224 =Abul-Malik=, successor of Yusuf, deposed at Murcia by
=Abdallah Abu Muhammed=, who succeeds. The Christian allies
take Huejada in Valencia.

1227 Al-Mamun succeeds Abdallah. Discontent with the Almohads
increases.

1232 Revolt of Al-Mutawakkil b. Hud, who drives Al-Mamun
to Africa. End of the Almohad dynasty. Al-Mutawakkil takes
Granada. Capture of the Balearic Isles by James I of Aragon.

1233 Great victory over the Moors by the Castilians.

1236 Capture of Cordova and part of Andalusia by Ferdinand III
of Castile. James of Aragon attacks Valencia.

1237 Murder of Al-Mutawakkil by his generals.

THE KINGDOM OF GRANADA (1238-1492 A.D.)

With Al-Mutawakkil perishes the last semblance of Moorish
unity. The emirs again become independent princes, but the
Christian encroachment has been such that none of them has any
considerable power, or territory, except =Muhammed (I) Ben
Al-Akhmar=, who in 1238 founds the kingdom of Granada.

1238 Reduction of Valencia by James I.

1245 Muhammed cedes the town of Jaen to Ferdinand III of
Castile, and becomes a tributary of Castile.

1248 Surrender of Seville to Ferdinand. Other cities follow.

1253 Muhammed founds the Alhambra at Granada.

1254 Alfonso X of Castile conquers many Moorish cities in
southern Spain.

1261 Muhammed attempts to cast off the yoke of Castile, and
encourages Andalusia and Murcia to rebel.

1264 Peace made with Castile. Granada is again tributary.

1266 Capture of Murcia by James I. All Spain is now Christian,
except Granada.

1273 The Merinids arrive in Spain, from Africa, to assist the
Moors. Death of Muhammed. His son =Muhammed II= succeeds. He
makes a treaty with Alfonso X of Castile.

1275 Abu Yusuf, king of the Merinids, brings a large army to
Spain. The Castilians and Aragonese are defeated, but Alfonso
checks the conqueror.

1278 The Merinids drive the remaining Almohads from Spain.

1281 Alfonso allies himself with the Merinids to suppress a
revolt in Castile.

1285 Death of Abu Yusuf.

1292 The Castilians take Tarifa, after defeating the Moorish
fleet at Tangiers.

1294 Unsuccessful attempt of the Moors to recapture Tarifa. The
Merinids finally withdraw from Spain.

1302 Death of Muhammed. His son =Muhammed (III) Abu Abdallah=
succeeds.

1308 Capture of Gibraltar by Ferdinand IV of Castile. Treaty
with the Granadans, who renounce some of their territory.

1309 Revolt in Granada. Muhammed is compelled to resign the
throne to his brother =Nasir Abu Abdallah=. The rebellion
continues, and

1313 Nasir is deposed by his nephew =Ismail Feraj=. He has
constant wars with the Christians.

1319 Great defeat of the Castilians in Granada.

1325 Assassination of Ismail by one of his officers. His son
=Muhammed IV= succeeds.

1328 Reduction of Baena by Muhammed.

1333 Muhammed obtains an army of Merinids from Africa, who
retake Gibraltar. Alfonso XI attempts to retake. Muhammed comes
to relieve the Merinids, but they assassinate him. His brother
=Yusuf Abul-Hagiag= succeeds.

1340 Yusuf besieges Tarifa, with the assistance of Merinid
auxiliaries. Alfonso IV of Portugal, and Alfonso XI of Castile,
relieve the town and administer a crushing defeat to the Moors,
on the river Guadacelito (Salado).

1343 Surrender of Algeciras to Alfonso of Castile, who makes
ten years’ treaty of peace with Yusuf.

1354 Assassination of Yusuf by a madman, while at prayer. His
son =Muhammed V= succeeds.

1359 Muhammed deposed by his brother =Ismail=, and retires to
Africa.

1360 =Abu Said=, Ismail’s prime minister, murders him, and
usurps the throne.

1361 Muhammed returns to Spain, and applies to Peter the Cruel
of Castile for support.

1362 Murder of Abu Said while on an appealing visit to Peter.
Muhammed regains the throne.

1370 Muhammed attacks Henry IV of Castile.

1376 Muhammed builds the great public hospital, and many other
buildings, at Granada.

1391 Death of Muhammed. His son =Yusuf (II) Abu Abdallah=
succeeds.

1392 His son attempts to dethrone him.

1396 Death of Yusuf. His younger son =Muhammed VI= succeeds,
and exiles his rebellious elder brother. Muhammed wars his
entire reign with the Christians.

1408 Death of Muhammed. His exiled brother =Yusuf III= obtains
the throne. This event marks the end of internal tranquillity
in the kingdom, and the beginning of its downfall.

1423 Death of Yusuf. His son =Muhammed (VII) Al-Haizar=
succeeds. Many revolts follow.

1426 Muhammed’s cousin =Muhammed (VIII) Az-Zaguir= deposes him
and seizes the throne.

1428 Muhammed VIII put to death by the Christians and Africans.
Muhammed VII is restored.

1431 Invasion of Granada by the Castilians. The Moors are
defeated, whereat they depose Muhammed, and declare =Yusuf
Al-Hamar= king. He dies in six months, and Muhammed is again
restored.

1435 The Castilians again invade Granada, and take Huesca.

1445 Deposition of Muhammed by his nephew =Muhammed Osmin=.
His entire reign is troubled by a rival claimant, his cousin,
Muhammed b. Ismail, who has support of Juan II of Castile.

1454 =Muhammed (X) Ismail= finally gets the throne from his
cousin. He quarrels with the Castilians, who defeat him, and
take the Ximena from him.

1466 Death of Muhammed. His son =Mulei Ali Abul-Hassan=
succeeds.

1478 War with Castile renewed when Abul-Hassan refuses to pay
tribute.

1482 Disastrous defeats of the Moors. Alhama taken.
Abul-Hassan’s son Abu Abdallah (Boabdil) revolts against him.

1483 Slight gain of Abul-Hassan over the Christians. =Abu
Abdallah=, encouraged by Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon in his
rebellion, is proclaimed king by one faction.

1484 Abul-Hassan compelled to resign his crown, and his brother
=Abdallah Az-Zagal= is made king, as rival to Abu Abdallah.
Ferdinand, taking advantage of this internal discord, makes
great progress with his arms.

1487 Surrender of Malaga to Ferdinand, after long siege and
several defeats of Abdallah. Ferdinand takes other towns.

1488 New Malaga surrenders to Ferdinand.

1489 Surrender of Guadix, Almeria, and Baza.

1490 Abdallah surrenders all his territories to Ferdinand.
Abdallah still holds Granada.

1491 Ferdinand begins siege of Granada.

1492 Surrender of Granada. Abu Abdallah is pensioned, and
returns to Africa. End of Mohammedan dominion in Spain.

THE FATIMITE DYNASTY OF EGYPT (908-1171 A.D.)

Fatimites claim descent from Mohammed through his daughter
Fatima wife of Ali, although their title to this claim is
disputed. First to claim power is

908 =Obaid Allah=, a pontiff of the Ismailian sect, who is
proclaimed Al-Mahdi. Displaces Aglabites in Kairwan. Makes his
capital at Mahdiya, on the coast, to be safe from Berbers and
to establish strong sea power. Fatimites oppose Aglabite emirs
in Sicily.

916 Fatimite and Aglabite contentions in Sicily enable Latins
and Italians, in alliance with Byzantines, to drive Saracens
out of Italy.

917 Akhmed, Aglabite emir of Sicily, defeated at sea. Fatimites
control Sicily. They attack Liguria, and take Genoa; attack
Omayyads by sea--also come in contact with Omayyads on land.

924 Fatimites conquer Fez, capital of Edrisites. Northern
Africa, with exception of Egypt, under Fatimite rule; Omayyads
kept out during life-time of Obaid Allah. When Fatimite capital
is removed to Cairo, Jusuf b. Zairi is left as governor in this
region. His descendants become independent, and rule until
displaced by Almoravids.

936 Death of Obaid Allah, succeeded by his son =Abul-Kasim=,
who had conquered Alexandria in 919, but was soon driven out
again.

945 =Al-Mansur= succeeds his father Abul-Kasim; makes friends
with Arabian Shiites in Hedjaz and Yemen.

953 =Muiz ad-Din= succeeds Al-Mansur.

969 Sends army under Jauhar against Egypt; enters Fostat.
Becomes first Fatimite caliph in Egypt. Hedjaz and Yemen
acknowledge his supremacy. Syria also added to his dominions.

972 Fatimites found New Cairo. Great mosque Al-Azhar built,
university of Egypt, still filled with students from all parts
of the Mohammedan world. Soon after, Fatimite fleet meets
Byzantine off Damascus, but no battle is fought.

973 Caliph sends embassy to Otto the Great. Egypt invaded by
Hassan, who is defeated.

975 Death of Muiz, succeeded by his son =Al-Aziz=. Jaufar sent
against Iftikir, Turkish chief in Damascus; is defeated, but
Iftikir afterwards conquered by Aziz at Ramla.

981 Fatimites take Damascus.

982 Battle between Fatimites and Otto II in Calabria. Emperor
defeated.

996 Death of Aziz, succeeded by his son =Al-Hakim=.

1006 Hisham, an Omayyad prince of Spain, invades Egypt; at
first successful, afterwards captured and put to death by
caliph.

1010 Hakim destroys Christian churches in Syria. Founds sect of
Druses. Is murdered by his sister, who becomes regent, in

1021 for his son =Dhahir=. Dhahir makes treaty with Byzantine
Romanus Argyrus, permitting him to rebuild church in Jerusalem.
From Dhahir’s reign dates decline of Fatimite power in Syria.

1023 Aleppo taken by Salih ben Mardas, and Ramla by Hassan of
the tribe of Tai.

1036 =Mustansir Abu Temim= succeeds to caliphate. Aleppo
retaken and Syria conquered.

1058 Fatimite caliph publicly recognised caliph in Baghdad by
Buyids. About this time occurs persecution of Christians in
Alexandria.

1060 Beginning of Norman conquest in Sicily.

1061 Commencement of struggle between blacks and Turks in Egypt.

1069 Great famine in Egypt, followed by pestilence. Nasir
ad-Daulah (Turk) conquers caliph, who is only nominal ruler
thereafter till death of Nasir (1072).

1071 Aleppo recognises Alp Arslan. All Syria taken by Turkomans.

1072 Assassination of Nasir. Gemali, general and governor of
Damascus, recalled.

1076 Egypt invaded by Turkomans, Kurds, and Arabs, under Aksis;
routed in second battle by Gemali.

1086 Mahdiya captured and burned by Pisans and Genoese.

1090 Last Sicilian town surrenders to Normans.

1094 Death of Mustansir, succeeded by his son =Mustali
Abul-Kasim=. Government in hands of Afdal, son of Gemali. In
his reign occurs First Crusade.

1098 Jerusalem, taken by Afdal from Turks, a few months later
yields to crusaders.

1099 Fatimite army under Afdal defeated at Askalon.

1101 Death of Mustali, succeeded by his son =Emir=, aged five
years. Country governed by Afdal until Emir reaches majority,
when he puts Afdal to death. Baldwin takes Ptolemais.

1104 Baldwin takes Tripolis.

1129 Emir put to death by partisans of Afdal, whose son Abu
Ali Akhmed usurps government, making =Hafidh=, grandson of
Mustansir, nominal caliph.

1149 =Dhafir=, son of Hafidh, succeeds to caliphate. After
short reign, on account of his licentiousness is in

1154 assassinated by his vizir. Succeeded by =Al-Faïz=, only
five years old. Reign filled with contentions of rival vizirs.

1160 Death of Faïz, succeeded by =Adid=, grandson of Hafidh,
and last of Fatimite caliphs. Contentions of vizirs continue.

1162 Adil, son of Adid, dispossesses Shawir of his government
in Upper Egypt. Shawir marches against Adil, kills him,
and makes himself vizir in his place. Is put to flight by
Al-Dirgham, and takes refuge with Nur ad-Din.

1163 Nur ad-Din sends army under Shirkuh to reinstate Shawir.
Dirgham defeated, and Shawir restored. He soon throws off
allegiance to Nur ad-Din, and allies himself with crusaders.
Shirkuh withdraws.

1165 Nur ad-Din again sends Shirkuh to Egypt with a great
army, accompanied by Saladin. Battle at Al-Babain, victory of
invaders. Alexandria falls into their hands. Crusaders oppose
them; Adid beseeches aid from Nur ad-Din. Shirkuh sent again.
Shirkuh and Saladin enter Cairo. Shirkuh appointed vizir by
Adid; on his death, succeeded

1169 by Saladin as vizir.

1171 Adid’s name suppressed in prayers, by order of Nur ad-Din.
Adid dies without knowing of his degradation.

THE KINGDOM OF ARMENIA (189 B.C.-1375 A.D.)

The Armenians throw off the Macedonian yoke in 317 B.C.,
choosing Ardvates as king. He dies about 284, and the country
returns to Seleucid rule. In 189 B.C. (according to Roman
historians), after the defeat of Antiochus the Great by Rome,
=Artaxias= or =Ardashes= and =Zadriades=, the governors
of Armenia Major and Armenia Minor respectively, become
independent kings with the connivance of Rome. Artaxias rules
at Artaxarta. Hannibal takes refuge at his court.

B.C.

166 Antiochus IV takes Artaxias prisoner, but restores him to
his kingdom.

149 According to Armenian historians Mithridates I of Parthia
establishes his brother Valarsaces (Waharshag) on the Armenian
throne and the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia is founded. Following
the Armenian king list

127 =Arshag I= succeeds his father.

114 =Artaces= succeeds his father.

94 =Tigranes I (II)= succeeds his father. He is the next king
mentioned by Roman historians. He is put on the disputed throne
by Mithridates II the Great of Parthia. Tigranes removes the
capital to Tigranocerta, and conquers Lesser Armenia and many
Parthian provinces. He assumes the title “King of Kings.”

83 Tigranes makes himself master of the whole of Syria, having
been invited by the Syrians to put an end to the civil strife
among the Seleucid princes.

76 Tigranes’ father-in-law Mithridates the Great of Pontus
instigates him to invade Cappadocia.

69 Tigranes refuses to surrender Mithridates to the Romans. War
with Rome results, and Lucullus defeats him at Tigranocerta.

66 Tigranes surrenders his conquests to Pompey. Armenia becomes
a vassal state of Rome. The Parthian monarch recovers the title
“King of Kings.”

64 Defeat of Tigranes by Phraates III of Parthia. Pompey
settles their dispute.

56 Death of Tigranes. His son =Artavasdes I= succeeds. He is
the ally of Rome in Crassus’ campaign against the Parthians.

36 Artavasdes joins the Romans in the campaign against
Artavasdes of Media. He deserts Antony and the expedition fails.

34 In revenge Antony proceeds against Artavasdes and captures
him. His son =Artaxias II= is placed on the throne. He is
defeated by the Romans and flees to Parthia. He soon recovers
the throne and massacres all the Romans in Armenia.

20 The discontented Armenians complain to Augustus about
Artaxias and ask that his brother Tigranes, then at Rome, be
made their king. Tiberius Nero is sent after Artaxias, who is
murdered by his relatives, and =Tigranes II (III)= is crowned
by Tiberius. After a short reign Tigranes is succeeded by his
son =Tigranes III (IV)=. The land is full of civil discord.

6 Augustus places Tigranes’ brother =Artavasdes II= on the
Armenian throne.

5 Tigranes recovers his kingdom. Both kings seem to rule
simultaneously. They are finally driven out.

2 =Ariobazanes= or, according to some historians, =Tigranes IV
(V)= is placed by Augustus on the disputed throne. He may have
been a Mede or perhaps an Armenian exile.

A.D.

2 Death of Ariobazanes. =Erato=, probably widow of Tigranes III
(IV), succeeds.

4 According to Armenian historians a son of Ariobazanes
(Artavasdes III) takes the throne from Erato, but she regains
it in a few months. After Erato’s death or deposition (date
uncertain) and a short interregnum,

16 =Vonones= the exiled monarch of Parthia is chosen king, but
Tiberius persuades him to retire to Syria.

18 =Artaxias III= chosen king after a short interregnum. He is
succeeded by (date unknown) =Arsaces I=, placed on the throne
by his father Artabanus III of Parthia.

35 Death of Arsaces through treachery of Mithridates, brother
of Pharasmanes king of Iberia. =Mithridates= invades Armenia,
and Tiberius gives him the throne. Caligula summons him to
Rome, imprisons him, but restores him about 47.

52 Mithridates slain by his nephew =Rhadamistus= of Iberia.

54 Vologases I of Parthia expels Rhadamistus and makes his own
brother =Tiridates I= king.

58 Corbulo drives out Tiridates I and puts Tigranes V (VI)
Herodes the Cappadocian on the throne.

61 Vologases crowns Tiridates king of Armenia and proceeds
against Tigranes.

66 Tiridates goes to Rome to receive the crown as a gift from
Nero. Meanwhile, =Erorant=, of the younger Arsacid branch, has
established himself, about 58, over a large portion of Armenia.
He is the contemporary of Tiridates, and after the latter’s
death, probably rules the whole country. He cedes Edessa and
Mesopotamia to the Romans.

78 =Exeardes=, son of Pacorus II of Parthia, is appointed to
the throne. He is several times driven out, but always manages
to recover his throne.

112 Osroes, brother of Mithridates VI of Parthia, expels
Exeardes and makes =Parthamasiris=, another son of Pacorus,
king, for which act Trajan invades Armenia. Parthamasiris is
humbled.

117 Trajan appoints =Parthamaspates=, son of Oroes, king. He
is expelled, and recovers the kingdom from Hadrian. He is
succeeded by his son, =Achæmenides=, and he in turn by =Soemus=
or =Sohæmus=.

162 Vologases III of Parthia expels Sohæmus, who is friendly to
Rome, and makes =Pacorus= king.

163 or 164 Sohæmus restored by the Romans, and is succeeded
(date unknown) by his son, =Sanatruces= or =Sanadrug=, who is
established on the throne by Septimius Severus.

212 Caracalla seizes Sanatruces.

Armenian historians speak of a Chosroes I, the Great, who rules
about this time, but the Romans do not mention him. Sanatruces
seems to have been followed by =Vologases=, his son, and he in
turn by his son =Tiridates II=, who escapes from the Romans to
Vologases V of Parthia, about 227. His successor is =Arsaces
II=, brother of Artabanus IV of Parthia. He wars against
Ardashir, the Sassanid.

258 Sapor I of Persia puts =Artavasdes III= on the Armenian
throne.

285 About this date =Tiridates III=, the rightful heir of the
throne and a Christian, is established by Diocletian. Narseh
expels him after a few years, and this brings on a war between
Persia and Rome. Tiridates is restored.

341 Probably at this date =Arsaces III= ascends the throne,
after his father, Tiridates III, has been imprisoned by Sapor
II of Persia. He assists Sapor in his wars with Rome, and then
allies himself with Rome.

363 Arsaces deserts the Romans in the siege of Ctesiphon. He is
seized by Sapor, and imprisoned. Sapor puts =Aspacures= on the
throne, but =Para=, son of Arsaces, is also acknowledged king,
with the help of the Romans.

374 or 377 Valens, dissatisfied with Para, has him put to
death. Para’s nephew, =Arsaces IV=, succeeds, together with
a brother, =Valarsaces II=, who dies soon. Arsaces proves so
weak a ruler that Theodosius the Great and Sapor III decide to
divide the kingdom.

387 or 390 Division of Armenia between Rome and Persia. Arsaces
continues to reign in the Roman dominions. Sapor gives his (the
eastern) portion to a Persian noble, =Khosrau=, or =Chosroes=.

389 Death of Arsaces IV. Theodosius confers his portion upon
his general, =Casavon=, who plots with Chosroes to bring all
Armenia under Roman dominion. Bahram IV of Persia seizes
Chosroes and

392 puts the latter’s brother, =Bahram Sapor=, on the vassal
throne of eastern Armenia.

414 Chosroes restored by Yezdegerd I.

415 Death of Chosroes. Yezdegerd’s son, =Sapor=, becomes king.

419 Death of Sapor. Interregnum until

422 when =Artasires=, son of Bahram Sapor, is appointed king by
Bahram V.

429 The Armenian nobles apply to Bahram to remove Artasires.
The Persian king decides to make Armenia a province, and
deposes Artasires. Henceforth the province is known as
Pers-Armenia.

From 429 to 632 Armenia is ruled by Persian governors, who
are remarkable chiefly for their cruel attempts to subvert
Christianity.

632 Heraclius restores Armenia to the Roman Empire, but in

636 it passes under Mohammedan rule.

885 The caliph Mutamid crowns =Ashod I=, one of the
Bagratid family, king of Armenia. He rules in central and
northern Armenia, and founds a dynasty that lasts until the
assassination of =Kagig II=, in 1079, when the kingdom is
incorporated with the Byzantine Empire.

908 The Ardzurian family, claiming to be descendants of
Sennacherib, founds a dynasty in the province of Vashpuragan,
or Van. Kagig is crowned by the caliph Mutadir, and the family
rules until 1080.

962-1080 The Bagratids found and rule a dynasty in Kars.

962 The Bagratids found a dynasty in Georgia, which continues
until that country is absorbed by Russia, in 1801.

984-1085 The Meravind dynasty of Kurds rules the country west
of Lake Van.

1080 =Rhupen=, a relative of Kagig II, the last Bagratid king
of Armenia, founds the kingdom of Lesser Armenia. It allies
itself with the crusaders. Among the kings is

1224 =Hayton I.=

Some of the kings are Latin princes, who are trying to make
their subjects conform to the Roman church, break up the
country into discordant factions, until

1375 it is conquered by the caliph of Egypt. King =Leo VI=, the
last king of Armenia, is driven out, and dies at Paris in 1393.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I. THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [250 B.C.-228 A.D.]]

The battle of Arbela (331 B.C.) made Alexander the heir of the Persian
Empire. In the volumes devoted to Grecian history we have shown how he
verified his claims of conquest, subdivided his empire among satraps of
his own appointment, and left the enormous heritage, when he died, to
“the best man.” It was further shown how no one man among the generals
of the Alexandrian school could prove himself the best man, and how, in
consequence, the empire fell into a chaos of civil wars until at last
certain major divisions assumed a particularly definite form--among
them the Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Iran of Seleucus and his family the
Seleucidæ, among whom the name Antiochus frequently appears, the city of
Antioch in Syria being taken as a capital. The degeneracy of these rulers
was the opportunity of the obscure race of Parthians, who, with qualities
and customs that in many ways remind one of the American Indian, rose to
a power so great that under the first Cæsars the Romans thought of them
as dividing the power of the world with Rome.

The only continuous ancient history of this race is that of Justin, which
ends with the year 9 B.C. and shows a gap between 94 and 55 B.C. We quote
this unique account entire; but the reader is cautioned that it is not
to be given full credence everywhere: it is introductory to the more
critical modern account that follows.[a]

JUSTIN’S ACCOUNT OF THE PARTHIANS

[Sidenote: [331-9 B.C.]]

The Parthians, who are now in possession of the empire of the East,
having, as it were, divided the world with the Romans, came originally
from Scythian exiles. This too is evident from their name: for in the
Scythian language the word _Parthi_ signifies exiles. This nation, in the
times both of the Assyrians and Medes, was the obscurest in the East.
Afterwards too, when the empire of the East was transferred from the
Medes to the Persians, they were an easy prey to the conquerors, like
a vulgar herd without a name. At last, they came under the Macedonian
yoke, when they carried their triumphant arms into these parts of the
world; so that it is really strange that they should have arrived to such
power as to rule over those nations, whose slaves they had formerly been.

Being thrice attacked by the Romans, under the conduct of their greatest
generals, in the most flourishing times of the republic, they alone of
all nations were not only a match for them, but came off victorious;
yet perhaps it was still a greater glory for them to be able to rise,
amidst the Assyrian, Median, and Persian kingdoms, so famous of old, and
the most opulent empire of Bactria, consisting of a thousand cities,
than that they defeated a people that came from so remote a part of
the world; especially when at that time they were incessantly alarmed
by the Scythians and their other neighbours, and exposed to so many
uncertainties of war. They being forced to leave Scythia by seditions
at home did, by stealth, possess themselves of the deserts between
Hyrcania, the Dahæ, the Arians, the Spartans, and Margians. After which,
their neighbours not resisting at first, they at last, in spite of their
opposition, when they came too late to hinder them, so far extended their
frontiers that they not only took possession of vast plains, but also
of craggy hills and steep mountains. And hence it comes that the heat
and cold are excessive in several provinces of Parthia; for the snow is
troublesome in the mountainous parts, and the heat in the plains.

THEIR CUSTOMS

[Sidenote: [323-250 B.C.]]

[Illustration: A PARTHIAN NOBLE]

This nation was under kingly government, after their revolt from the
Macedonian Empire. With them the chiefs of the populace were next in
power to the king. Out of them were chosen their generals in war and
their governors in peace. Their language is a mixture of the Median
and Scythian, borrowing words from both. Their habit was formerly very
particular; but after they were increased in power, it was like that of
the Medes, full flowing and thin. They are armed like the Scythians,
from whom they are descended. Their armies are not, like those of other
nations, composed wholly of freemen, but chiefly of slaves; the numbers
of which increase prodigiously, none having the power of manumitting.
They treat these with as much care as their children, and teach them
with great industry both riding and shooting. Everyone furnishes his
prince with horsemen, in proportion to his ability. To conclude, when
fifty thousand horsemen met Antony, upon his attacking the Parthians,
four hundred of them only were freemen. They are ignorant of the art of
besieging towns, or of engaging in close fight. They fight on horseback,
sometimes advancing, and sometimes turning back upon their enemies.
They often counterfeit flight, that they may have an advantage of their
pursuers, less upon their guard. The signal for battle is not given by
trumpet, but by drum. They do not hold out long in fight; and indeed it
would be impossible to stand before them, if their perseverance was equal
to the fury of their onset. For the most part, they quit the battle in
the very heat of an engagement, and on the sudden renew it with great
vehemence; so that one is in greatest danger from them when he thinks he
has conquered them. A sort of strong coats, made of little plates, in
the fashion of feathers, are used by them, to cover both them and their
horses. They use no gold nor silver, but only in their arms.

Each particular man was allowed to have several wives, for the pleasure
of variety; and they punish no crime so severely as adultery. To prevent
it, they not only exclude their women from their feasts, but forbid
them the very sight of men. They eat no flesh, but what they take by
hunting. They ride on horseback at all times; on horse they go to feasts;
pay civilities, public and private; march out, stand still, traffic,
converse. This, in fine, is the difference between slaves and freemen,
that the slaves go on foot, the freemen on horseback. Their common way of
sepulture is being devoured by dogs or birds, and after that, burying the
bare bones in the ground. In their superstition and worship of the gods,
the principal veneration is paid to rivers.

The nation is naturally proud, treacherous, seditious, and insolent; for
a boisterous rough behaviour they think manly. Gentleness, they think,
belongs to women, as their character. They are restless to be engaged in
some quarrel, at home or abroad; taciturn by temper, and more ready to
act than speak; wherefore they conceal their good or bad fortune by their
silence. They are strictly subject to their princes, not out of duty
however but through fear. They are much addicted to lust, though very
temperate in their diet; and they pay no more regard to their word, than
suits with their interest.

SELEUCUS AND ARSACES

[Sidenote: [250-155 B.C.]]

After the death of Alexander the Great, when the kingdoms of the East
were divided amongst his successors, because none of the Macedonians
would condescend to accept of the kingdom of the Parthians, it was
delivered to Stasanor, a foreign ally. And afterwards, when the
Macedonians were involved in a civil war, they, with the rest of the
nations of upper Asia, followed Eumenes; and when he was defeated, they
went over to Antigonus. After him, they were under Nicator Seleucus;
and soon after, under Antiochus and his successors; from whose grandson
Seleucus they first revolted in the First Punic War, when L. Manlius
Vulso and M. Atilius Regulus were consuls. The divisions of the two
brothers, Seleucus and Antiochus, procured them an immunity for this
revolt, who during their contentions to wrest the sceptre out of one
another’s hands, neglected to pursue the revolters. At the same time
Theodotus too, the governor of the thousand cities of Bactria, revolted,
and commanded himself to be called king; which example all the Eastern
nations soon followed, and shook off the Macedonian yoke.

There was, at this time, one Arsaces, a man of tried valour, though
of uncertain extraction. He, being accustomed to live by robbery and
plunder, having heard that Seleucus had been overthrown by the Gauls in
Asia, fearing the king no longer, entered the country of the Parthians
with a band of robbers, defeated and killed Andragoras his lieutenant,
and seized the government of the whole country. Not long after, he
likewise made himself master of Hyrcania; and being now in possession of
two kingdoms, he raised a great army, for fear of Seleucus and Theodotus
king of the Bactrians. But being soon delivered from his fears by the
death of Theodotus, he made peace and entered into an alliance with his
son, who was likewise named Theodotus: and not long after, engaging with
King Seleucus, who came to punish the revolters, he had a victory; and
this day the Parthians observe ever since with great solemnity, as the
commencement of their liberty.

Some new disturbances obliging Seleucus to return into Asia, some
respite was by this means given to Arsaces, who took this opportunity
to establish the Parthian government, levy soldiers, fortify castles,
and secure the fidelity of his cities. He built a city too, called Dara,
upon the mountain Zapaortenon; which was so situated that no city could
be stronger or pleasanter. For it was so environed with rough rocks on
all sides, that it needed no garrison to defend it; and so fertile was
the adjacent soil, that it was abundantly furnished with all necessaries
by its own riches. Then there were in such plenty woods and fountains,
that there was never any scarcity of water; and it had vast store of
game. Thus Arsaces, having at once acquired and established a kingdom,
was no less memorable among the Parthians than Cyrus among the Persians,
Alexander among the Macedonians, or Romulus among the Romans; and he
died in a good old age. To his memory the Parthians paid this honour,
that from him they called all their kings by the name of Arsaces. His
son and successor in the kingdom, who was Arsaces by name, fought with
great bravery against Antiochus the son of Seleucus, who came against him
with a hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse; and at last made
an alliance with him. The third king of the Parthians was Priapatius;
but he too was named Arsaces; for, as was said above, they called all
their kings by that name, as the Romans do theirs Cæsar and Augustus. He
died, after he had reigned fifteen years, leaving two sons, Mithridates
and Phraates, the elder of whom, Phraates, being according to the custom
of this nation heir of the kingdom, subdued by his arms the Mardians, a
strong nation, and died not long after, leaving several sons behind him,
whom he passed by, and left his kingdom to his brother Mithridates, a man
of uncommon abilities; judging that more was due to the name of king than
that of father; and that he ought to prefer the interest of his country
to the grandeur of his children.

[Sidenote: [155-54 _B.C._]]

Almost at the same time, as Mithridates among the Parthians so Eucratides
amongst the Bactrians, both princes of great merit, began to reign. But
the uncommon good fortune of the Parthians brought them, under this
monarch, to the highest pitch of greatness. The Bactrians, on the other
hand, being distressed by several wars, not only lost their sovereignty,
but their liberty; for being exhausted by wars with the Sogdians,
Drangians, and Indians, were, like a people quite enfeebled and expiring,
subdued by the Persians, who had been a little before much weaker than
they. However, Eucratides carried on many wars with great vigour; and
though his losses had much weakened him, yet being besieged by Demetrius,
king of the Indians, with only three hundred soldiers he made continual
sallies, and so fatigued the enemy, consisting of forty thousand men,
that he obliged them to raise the siege. Wherefore, being delivered
from the siege, in the fifth month he reduced India under his power;
but in his return from thence, he was assassinated by his son, whom he
had made his partner in the kingdom; who was so far from concealing the
parricide that, as if he had killed an enemy and not his father, he drove
his chariot through his blood, and ordered his body to be thrown out
unburied. During these transactions in Bactria, a war broke out between
the Parthians and the Medes. After the success of this war had for some
time been various, victory at last fell to the Parthians. Mithridates,
enforced with this addition to his strength, set Bacasis over Media,
and went himself into Hyrcania; from whence returning, he made war upon
the king of the Elymæans; and, after the conquest of him, he added
this nation likewise to his dominions; and so extended the Parthian
Empire from Mount Caucasus as far as the river Euphrates, by reducing
many nations under his yoke. After this, being seized with an illness,
he died in an honourable old age, not at all inferior in glory to his
great-grandfather Arsaces.

After the death of Mithridates, king of Parthia, Phraates his son
succeeded to the kingdom; who being resolved to revenge himself upon
Antiochus for attacking the kingdom of Parthia, was recalled by
disturbances from Scythia, to defend his own country. For the Scythians,
being invited by promises to assist the Parthians against Antiochus, king
of Syria, having arrived after the war was ended, were frustrated of
their promised reward, under the idle pretence of their coming too late;
and it made the Scythians so angry that they should have had so long a
march for nothing, that they demanded either pay for their trouble or
that some other enemy should be allotted them. The haughty reply given to
this demand so enraged them, that they began to ravage the country of the
Parthians.

Wherefore Phraates, marching against them, left one Hymerus, who had
recommended himself to his favour by prostituting the bloom of his
youth to his infamous lust, the care of his kingdom in his absence.
This governor, forgetting his past life and the trust he was charged
with, miserably harassed the Babylonians, and many other cities, by his
tyrannical cruelties. But Phraates himself carried along with him to the
war an army of Greeks, which he had taken in the war against Antiochus,
and treated with great pride and barbarity; not at all considering that
their hatred to him was so far from being lessened by their captivity,
that they were rather more exasperated against him by the indignity of
the outrages they had suffered. Wherefore, when they saw the army of the
Parthians give ground, they joined their arms with those of the enemy,
and executed their long wished-for revenge for their captivity by the
bloody havoc they made on the Parthian army, and by the death of King
Phraates himself.

Artabanus his uncle was made king in his room; but the Scythians being
content with victory, having laid waste Parthia, returned home. But
Artabanus, in a war made upon the Thogarians, received a wound in
his arm, of which he died immediately. He was succeeded by his son
Mithridates, to whom his exploits gained the surname of Great; for, being
fired with a brave emulation of his forefathers, he surpassed their
fame by the greatness of his soul. Accordingly, he carried on many wars
against his neighbours with signal gallantry, and added many provinces to
the Parthian Empire. Not satisfied with this, he often had war with the
Scythians; and by the victories he obtained over them revenged the injury
his father had received from them. At last, he employed his arms against
Ortoadistes, king of the Armenians.

WARS WITH ROME

[Sidenote: [54-36 B.C.]]

After the war of Armenia, Mithridates, king of the Parthians, was
banished his kingdom for his cruelty, by the Parthian senate. Orodes his
brother, having possessed himself of the vacant throne, besieged Babylon,
to which city this fugitive prince had fled; and after a long siege
forced the people, by famine, to surrender. Mithridates, relying upon his
being so nearly related to Orodes, voluntarily gave himself up to him;
but Orodes, considering him rather as an enemy than a brother, commanded
him to be killed in his own presence; and after these things carried on
a war with the Romans, and cut to pieces their general Crassus, together
with his son and all his army. His son Pacorus being sent to pursue the
remainder of the Roman war, after he had performed very great actions
in Syria was recalled by his father, who was become jealous of him.
In his absence, the Parthian army left in Syria was cut off, with its
commanders, by Cassius, paymaster to Crassus.

Not long after this, the civil wars between Cæsar and Pompey broke out,
in which the Parthians declared for the latter, because of the friendship
contracted with him in the Mithridatic War and because of Crassus’ death,
whose son they had heard was of Cæsar’s party, who they made no doubt
would revenge his father, if Cæsar proved conqueror. Wherefore Pompey’s
party having lost the day, they both sent assistance to Cassius and
Brutus against Augustus and Antony; and after the war was over, under
their leader Pacorus, making an alliance with Labienus, they laid waste
Syria and Asia; and with a mighty force attacked the camp of Ventidius,
who, in the absence of Pacorus, had routed the Parthian armies, as
Cassius had done before him. But Ventidius, counterfeiting fear, kept
himself a long time in his camp, and for some time suffered the Parthians
to insult him. At last, he sent out some of his legions against the
enemy, now grown secure and off their guard and full of joy, who, not
able to resist them, fled several ways. Pacorus imagining that the
victorious legions had pursued the fliers too far, attacked Ventidius’
camp, as if there had been none left to defend it. Upon this, the Roman
general drew out the rest of his legions, killed Pacorus upon the spot,
and put the whole army of the Parthians to the sword, who never received
so great a blow in any of their wars.

When this news came to Parthia, Orodes, the father of Pacorus, who a
little before had heard that his troops had ravaged Syria, and conquered
Asia, and had boasted of his son as conqueror of the Romans, hearing on
a sudden of his son’s death and entire defeat of his army, was struck
with grief that threw him into a frenzy. For during several days he would
speak to nobody; so that he seemed to be dumb; nor would he take any
refreshment. And when his grief, at last, had found a vent, he called
incessantly upon Pacorus; Pacorus he fancied to appear to him, to speak
to him, to stand with him, and be heard by him. Sometimes he mournfully
bewailed himself as lost; then, after long mourning, another care seized
this miserable old man, and that was, whom of his thirty sons he should
declare his successor in the room of Pacorus. His many concubines, by
whom he had so many sons, being each concerned for her own, laid all of
them very close siege to the king, each in favour of her own; but the
fate of Parthia, in which country it is now become customary to have
princes stained with the blood of their fathers and brothers, would so
have it that the choice fell upon the wickedest of them all, Phraates too
by name.

[Sidenote: [36-9 B.C.]]

Wherefore he immediately killed his father, thinking he would never die.
He likewise killed all his thirty brothers. Neither did his cruelty
stop there: for finding he was hated by the nobility for his daily
barbarities, he ordered his son, who was almost grown up to the years of
maturity, to be slain; that there might none be left to be proclaimed
king. Antony made war upon him with sixteen very able legions, because
he had furnished assistance against him and Cæsar; but being sadly
mauled in several battles, he fled from Parthia. This victory making
Phraates insupportably insolent and cruel, he was forced by his people
into banishment. After he had for a long time wearied the neighbouring
states, and at last the Scythians too, with his importunity, he was
restored to his kingdom by a powerful assistance from the Scythians. In
his absence, the Parthians had made one Tiridates their king, who hearing
of the approach of the Scythians, fled with a great body of his friends
to Cæsar, at that time waging war with Spain, bringing the youngest son
of Phraates as hostage to Cæsar, whom being negligently guarded he had
stolen away. Upon this news, Phraates immediately sent ambassadors to
Cæsar, and demanded that his son, together with his vassal Tiridates,
should be sent back to him.

Cæsar, having given audience to the ambassadors of Phraates and heard the
reasons of Tiridates, who desired to be restored to his crown, declaring
that the kingdom of Parthia would be in a manner subject to the Romans if
he held it from them, said that he would neither surrender Tiridates to
the Parthians, nor give assistance to Tiridates against the Parthians.
However, that he might not seem to refuse them everything they demanded,
he sent Phraates his son to him, without any ransom, and ordered a
handsome maintenance for Tiridates, so long as he had a mind to continue
amongst the Romans. After this, the Spanish War being ended, when he came
into Syria to settle the state of the East, Phraates was afraid that he
might have some designs upon Parthia. Wherefore the prisoners who had
been taken at the defeat of Crassus and Antony were gathered together,
and they, together with the military standards either of them had lost,
were sent back to Augustus. Nor was this all, but the sons and grandsons
of Phraates were likewise delivered as hostages to Augustus. And thus
Augustus did more by the terror of his name than any other general could
have done by his arms.[b]

MODERN ACCOUNTS OF PARTHIA

This is the history of the Parthians as given by Justin in his
abridgement of the lost work of Trogus Pompeius. Later investigations and
criticism have thrown a little light on various portions of the history,
and from the point where Justin grows briefest other Roman historians
took up the chronicles of the Parthians with avid interest. The study
of coins has also been of invaluable aid. It has seemed better to give
Justin’s account in its original fluency without interpolating criticisms
here and there. Now, however, we must make a brief presentation of
Parthian history from the start in a modern view.[a]

THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [261-241 B.C.]]

Hellenism made no deep impression on Iran as on the West, nor did the
loose-jointed empire attain to anything higher than a Hellenistic
reproduction of the kingdom of the Achæmenians. Even in the fragmentary
records that we possess we hear from the first of rebellions little
favourable to consolidation of the realm; Seleucus, like Alexander,
still had an army of Macedonians and Persians together, while the later
Seleucids, at least in their western wars, used natives sparingly and
only as bowmen, slingers, or the like, and preferred for these services
the wild desert and mountain tribes of Iran.

Under the weak Antiochus II northeastern Iran was lost to the empire.
While the Seleucids were busy elsewhere, probably in the long war with
Ptolemy Philadelphus, which occupied Antiochus’ later years, Diodotus,
viceroy of Bactria, took the title of king. The new kingdom included
Sogdiana and Margiana from the first, while the rest of the East, with a
single exception scarcely noticed at the time, adhered to the Seleucids.
Now the formation of a strong local kingdom, heartily supported by the
Greek colonies and likely to control the neighbouring nomads and strictly
to protect its own frontiers, was by no means agreeable to the chief
of the desert tribes who, like the modern Turkomans, had been wont to
pillage the settled lands and raise blackmail with little hindrance
from the weak and distant central authority at Antioch. Accordingly two
brothers, Arsaces and Tiridates--whose tribe, the Parnians, a subdivision
of the Dahæ, had hitherto pastured their flocks in Bactria on the banks
of the Ochus--moved west into Seleucid territory near Parthia. An insult
offered to the younger brother by the satrap Pherecles moved them to
revolt; Pherecles was slain, and Parthia freed from the Macedonians.

ARSACES AND THE ARSACIDS

Arsaces was then proclaimed first king of Parthia (250 B.C.). Such
is the later official tradition, and we possess no other account of
the beginnings of the Arsacid dynasty. But when the official account
transforms Arsaces, who according to genuine tradition was the leader of
a robber horde and of uncertain descent, into a Bactrian, the descendant
of Phriapites son of Artaxerxes II (who was called Arsaces before his
accession), and makes him conspire with his brother and five others, like
the seven who slew the false Smerdis, we detect the invention of a period
when the Arsacids had entered on the inheritance of the Achæmenians, and
imitated the order of their court. The seven conspirators are the heads
of the seven noble houses to whom, beyond doubt, the Karen, the Suren,
and the Aspahapet belonged. And further, genuine tradition does not know
the first Arsaces as king of Parthia at all, and as late as 105 B.C. the
Parthians themselves reckoned the year (autumn) 248-247 B.C. as the first
of their empire. But 248 B.C. is the year in which Arsaces I is said
to have been killed, after a reign of two years, and succeeded by his
brother; who, like all subsequent kings of the line, took the throne name
of Arsaces.

The first Arsaces must have existed, for he appears as deified on the
reverse of his brother’s drachmæ, but he was not king of Parthia. Nay,
we have authentic record that even in the epoch-year 248-247 B.C.,
the year of the accession of Tiridates, Parthia was still under the
Seleucids. These contradictions are solved by a notice of Isidore of
Charax, which names a city Asaak, not in Parthia but northwest of it, in
the neighbouring Astauene, where Arsaces was proclaimed king and where an
everlasting fire was kept burning. This, therefore, was the first seat of
the monarchy, and Pherecles was presumably satrap of Astauene, not eparch
of Parthia.

[Sidenote: [241-238 B.C.]]

The times were not favourable for the reduction of the rebels. When
Antiochus II died, the horrors that accompanied the succession of his
son Seleucus (II) Callinicus (246-226 B.C.) gave the king of Egypt the
pretext for a war, in which he overran almost the whole lands of the
Seleucids as far as Bactria. Meantime a civil war was raging between
Seleucus and his brother Antiochus Hierax, whom the Galatians supported,
and at the great battle of Ancyra in 242 or 241 B.C. Seleucus was totally
defeated and thought to be slain. At this news Arsaces Tiridates, whom
the genuine tradition still represents as a brave robber-chief, broke
into Parthia at the head of the Parnians, slew the Macedonian eparch
Andragoras, and took possession of the province. These Parnian Dahæ, in
consequence of eternal dissensions, had migrated at a remote date to
Hyrcania and the desert adjoining the Caspian. Here, and in great measure
even after they conquered Parthia, they retained the peculiarities of
Scythian nomads.

PARTHIAN CUSTOMS

The common tradition connects the migration with the conquests of the
Scythian king Iandysus, a contemporary of Sesostris [Ramses II]. It adds
that Parthian means “fugitive” or “exile” (_Zend_, _peretu_). But the
name Parthava is found on the inscriptions of Darius long before the
immigration of the Parnians. The Parthian language is described as a sort
of compound between Median and Scythian; and, since the name of the Dahæ
and those of their tribes show that they belong to the nomads of Iranian
kin, who in antiquity were widely spread from the Jaxartes as far as
the steppes of south Russia, we must conclude that the mixed language
arose by the action and reaction of two Iranian dialects, that of the
Parthians and that of their masters. Their nomad costume the Parnians in
Parthia gradually gave up for the Median dress, but they kept their old
war-dress, the characteristic scale-armour completely covering man and
horse. The founder of the empire appears on coins in this dress, with the
addition of a short mantle; and so again does Mithridates II. The hands
and feet alone are unprotected by mail; shoes with laces, and a conical
helmet with flaps to protect the neck and ears, complete the costume.

The conquerors of Parthia continued to be a nation of cavalry; to walk
on foot was a shame for a free man; the national weapon was the bow, and
their way of fighting was to make a series of attacks, separated by a
simulated flight, in which the rider discharged his shafts backwards.
Many habits of the life they had led in the desert were retained, and
the Parthian rulers never lost connection with the nomad tribes on their
frontiers, among whom several Arsacids found temporary refuge. Gradually,
of course, the rulers were assimilated to their subjects; the habitual
faithlessness and other qualities ascribed to the Parthians by the Romans
are such as are common to all Iranians. The origin of the Parthian power
naturally produced a rigid aristocratic system: a few freemen governed
a vast population of bondsmen; manumission was forbidden, or rather was
impossible, since social condition was fixed by descent; the ten thousand
horsemen who followed Surenas into battle were all his serfs or slaves,
and of the fifty thousand cavalry who fought against Antony only four
hundred were freemen.

BACTRIA AND PARTHIA CONSOLIDATE

[Sidenote: [238-206 B.C.]]

Arsaces Tiridates soon added Hyrcania to his realm and raised a great
host to maintain himself against Seleucus, but still more against a
nearer enemy, Diodotus of Bactria. On the death of the latter, the common
interests of Parthians and Bactrians as against the Seleucids brought
about an alliance between Arsaces Tiridates and Diodotus II. With much
ado, Seleucus had got the better of his foreign and intestine foes and
kept his kingdom together; and in 238 B.C., or a little later, having
made peace with Egypt and silenced his brother, he marched from Babylon
into the upper satrapies. Tiridates at first retired and took shelter
with the nomadic Apasiacæ, but he advanced again and gained a victory,
which the Parthians continued to commemorate as the birthday of their
independence. Seleucus was unable to avenge his defeat, being presently
called back by the rebellion stirred up by his aunt Stratonice at
Antioch. This gave the great Hellenic kingdom in Bactria and the small
native state in Parthia time to consolidate themselves. Tiridates used
the respite to strengthen his army, to fortify town and castles, and to
found the city of Dara or Dareium in the smiling landscape of Abévard.
Tiridates, who on his coins appears first merely as Arsaces, then as
King Arsaces, and finally as “great king,” reigned thirty-seven years,
dying in 211 or 210 B.C. His nation ever held his memory in almost divine
honour.

[Illustration: A PARTHIAN KING]

Seleucus III Soter (226-223 B.C.) died early, and was followed by
Antiochus (III) Magnus (223-137 B.C.), who in his brother’s life-time had
ruled from Babylon over the upper satrapies. Molon, governor of Media,
supported by his brother Alexander in Persis,[29] rose against him in 222
B.C. and assumed the diadem. The great resources of his province, which
followed him devotedly, enabled Molon to take the offensive and even to
occupy Seleucia, after a decisive battle with the royal general Xenœtas.
Babylonia, the Erythræan district, all Susiana except the fortress of
Susa, Parapotamia as far as Europus, and Mesopotamia as far as Dura were
successively reduced. But the young king soon turned the fortunes of the
war. Crossing the Tigris in person, he cut off Molon’s retreat. Molon was
forced to accept battle near Apollonia: his left wing passed over to the
enemy, and, after a crushing defeat, he and all his kinsmen and chief
followers died by their own hands (220 B.C.). Antiochus now marched to
Seleucia to regulate the affairs of the East. He used his victory with
moderation, mitigating the severities of his minister Hermias; but he had
effectually prevented the rise of a new kingdom in the most important
province of Iran.

[Sidenote: [206-155 B.C.]]

In 209 B.C., with one hundred thousand foot and twenty thousand horse, he
marched against the new Parthian king, Arsaces II, son and successor of
Tiridates. The war ended in a treaty which left Arsaces his kingdom, but
beyond question reduced him to a vassal. In 208 B.C. began the much more
serious war with Bactria. At length, in 206 B.C., a peace was arranged,
and Antiochus was visited in his camp by Demetrius, the youthful son of
Euthydemus, who pleased the king so well that he betrothed to him his
daughter; Euthydemus was left on his throne, and the two powers swore
an alliance offensive and defensive, which cost Bactria no more than
certain payments of money, the victualling of the Macedonian troops, and
the surrender of the war-elephants. The Bactrian Greeks were grateful
for this moderation; their memorial coins place Antiochus Nicator with
Euthydemus Theos, Diodotus Soter, and Alexander Philippi among the
founders of their political existence.

The kings of Parthia had long remained quiet after the war with Antiochus
the Great. Priapatius, successor of Arsaces II (191-176 B.C.), calls
himself on his coins “Arsaces Philadelphus,” perhaps because he had
married a sister, and was the first of all Parthian kings to call himself
“Philhellen.” By the last title he presents himself, at a time when
the Seleucid power was sinking, as the protector of his present and
future Greek subjects. His eldest son and successor, Phraates I (Arsaces
Theopater of the coins), conquered the brave Mardian highlanders and
transplanted them to Charax in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Gates, a
proof that the Parthians had already detached Comisene and Choarene from
Media, probably just after the death of Antiochus the Great.

CONQUESTS OF MITHRIDATES

About 171 B.C. Phraates died and left the crown not to his sons but
to his brother Mithridates, a prince of remarkable capacity, who made
Parthia the ruling power in Iran. His first conquests, it would seem,
were made at the expense of Bactria.

The kingdom of Bactria had made vast advances under Euthydemus, whose son
Demetrius crossed the Indian Caucasus and began the Indian conquests,
which soon carried the Greeks far beyond the farthest point of Alexander.
The object, it is plain, was to reach the sea and get a share in the
trade of the world; and it is possible that the extension of the power of
the Bactrian Greeks over Chinese Tatary as far as the Seres and Phaunians
had a similar object--to protect the trade-route with China. For the
Seres are the Chinese, and the Phauni, according to Pliny, lay west of
the Attacori (the mythical people at the sources of the Hwangho). They
occupied, therefore, the very region which, according to Chinese sources,
was then held by a nomadic pastoral people, the Tibetan No-kiang.
Demetrius, having succeeded his father, was displaced in Bactria by the
able usurper Eucratides, sometime between 181 and 171 B.C. A thousand
cities obeyed Eucratides, and both he and his rival Demetrius sought to
extend the Greek settlements. Now Justin tells us that the Bactrians were
so exhausted by wars that they at length fell an easy prey to the weaker
Parthians; but Eucratides he describes as a valiant prince, who once with
three hundred men held out during five months, though besieged by sixty
thousand men of Demetrius, king of India; and then, receiving succours,
subdued India.

This implies that besides the kingdom of Bactria and that of Demetrius
(the latter now confined to India and probably to the lands east of the
Indus) there were independent states in various districts still Seleucid
in 206 B.C. Justin’s statement is confirmed by the coins, which also
show that Eucratides came forth as victor from a series of wars with the
lesser states. Sogdiana, according to Chinese authorities, was occupied
by the Scythians in the life-time of Eucratides.

[Sidenote: [155-138 B.C.]]

On his way back from India Eucratides was murdered by his son and
co-regent, probably Heliocles [_ca._ 155 B.C.]. The date of this murder
may be fixed by that of Demetrius, who must have been born not later than
224 B.C., and may be taken to have lost his kingdom not later than 159
B.C. Eucratides cannot, according to Justin’s account, have lived many
years longer.

In the midst of the civil wars, which became more serious after the death
of Eucratides, Mithridates of Parthia began to extend his dominions at
the expense of Bactria: even in the life-time of Eucratides he succeeded
in annexing two satrapies. Another account makes Mithridates rule as
far as India, and declares him to have obtained without war the old
kingdom of Porus, or the rule over all nations between the Indus and
the Hydaspes. The two accounts are reconciled by Chinese records, which
tell that, about 161 B.C., the nomad people Sse broke into the valley
of the Cophen and founded a kingdom in the very place of the Parthian
conquests in India, which must therefore have been ephemeral. This fact
has its importance, as illustrating the way in which the internal wars
of the east Iranian Greeks helped to prepare the ground for the Scythian
invasion. After this success in the east Mithridates turned his attention
to the west, where the chances of success were not less inviting.
Demetrius had at length fallen before a coalition of the neighbouring
sovereigns, powerfully supported by the Romans through their instrument,
the exile Heraclides. A pretender, Alexander, in 145 B.C., was utterly
defeated by Ptolemy, and slain in his flight by an Arab chieftain.
Demetrius (II) Nicator, however, soon made himself bitterly hated, and
five years of fighting drove him out of the greater part of Syria.

MEDIA AND BABYLONIA CONQUERED

Such was the state of the empire when war broke out between Media
and Parthia, which was finally decided in favour of the latter. The
short-lived independence of Media was soon cut short by Mithridates, who
did not lose the opportunity afforded by the civil wars of Syria in 147
B.C. Babylonia followed the fate of Media; and the whole province, with
its capital Seleucia, fell into the hands of the Parthians. Thus the East
was finally lost to the Macedonians.

The change of rule was not well received by the new subjects of Parthia,
least of all by the Greeks and Macedonians of the upper provinces, who
sent embassy after embassy to Demetrius. In 140 B.C. he marched into
Mesopotamia, and thence by Babylon to the upper provinces. He was well
received by the natives, and even the small native states made common
cause with him against the proud barbarians, whose neighbourhood they
felt to be oppressive. He was joined by the Persians and Elymæans, and
the Bactrians helped him by a diversion, appearing now for the first time
as an independent people. At first things went well, and the Parthians
were defeated in several battles, but in Media in 139 B.C. Demetrius
was surprised by the lieutenant of Mithridates during negotiations for
peace; his forces were annihilated, and he himself was taken prisoner
and dragged in chains through the provinces that had joined his cause.
The Parthian king received his captive with favour and assigned him a
residence and suitable establishment in Hyrcania. He even gave him his
daughter Rhodogune, and promised to restore him to his kingdom, but this
plan was interrupted by death.

[Sidenote: [138 B.C.]]

Mithridates’ latest campaign was against the king of Elymais; the rich
temples yielding him a booty of ten thousand talents (£2,258,000 or
$11,290,000). The country was brought under Parthia, but continued to
have its own kings. The coins make it likely that Mithridates simply set
up a new dynasty, a branch of his own house. Mithridates died at a good
old age in 138 B.C., or a little later. His memory was reverenced almost
equally with that of the founder of his house, but his real glory was
much greater, for it was he who made Parthia a great power. He is praised
as a just and humane ruler, who, having become lord of all the lands from
the Indian Caucasus to the Euphrates, introduced among the Parthians the
best institutions of each country, and so became the legislator of his
nation.

PARTHIAN “KINGDOMS”

The divisions of the empire which he founded can be sketched by the
aid of an excerpt from the itinerary of Isidore of Charax (at the
beginning of the Christian era) and from Pliny. The empire was divided
into the upper and lower kingdoms, separated by the Caspian Gates.
The lower kingdoms were seven: (1) Mesopotamia and Babylonia, (2)
Apolloniatis, (3) Chalonitis, (4) Carina, (5) Cambadene, (6) Upper
Media, (7) Lower or Rhagian Media. The upper kingdoms were eleven: (8)
Choarene, (9) Comisene, (10) Hyrcania, (11) Astauene, (12) Parthyene,
(13) Apauarcticene, (14) Margiana, a part of Bactria, (15) Aria, (16)
the country of the Anauans, (17) Zarangiana, and (18) Arachosia, now
called “White India.” The eighteen Parthian kingdoms thus correspond to
six old satrapies. The Parthians gave much less attention to the west
than did their predecessors, and they still left Mesopotamia as the only
great satrapy. We note also that they cared little for reaching the
sea, which they can have touched only for a little way at the mouth of
the Euphrates; and even here they allowed the petty Characene quite to
outstrip them in competing for the great sea trade.

As compared with the older Macedonian Empire, the Parthian realm lacked
the east Iranian satrapies, Bactria with Sogdiana, and the Paropanisadæ,
and also the three Indian ones, which, with Parætacene, or as it was
afterwards called Sacastane, remained under the Bactrian Greeks and their
successors. In the north they lacked Lesser Media, which had long been
an independent state, and in the south they lacked Susiana, which now
belonged to Elymais, and the satrapies of Persis and Carmania, which the
Persians held along with the western part of Gedrosia. In the extreme
west they lacked Arebelitis proper, which formed a small kingdom under
the name of Adiabene, first mentioned in 69 B.C. The kingdom of Mannus
of Orrha in northern Mesopotamia, which according to Isidore reached a
good way south of Edessa, seems also to have been independent, and, like
Adiabene, probably existed before the Parthian time.

From these small kingdoms the Parthians asked only an acknowledgment of
vassalship. When Parthia was vigorous the vassalship was real, but when
Parthia was torn by factions it became a mere name. The relation was
always loose, and the political power of Parthia was therefore never
comparable to the later power of the Sassanians. Arsaces Tiridates and
his successors called themselves “great king.” Mithridates, as overlord
of the minor kingships, first bore the title “great king of kings.” The
title seems to have been conferred, not assumed in mere boastfulness.

The nobility had great influence in all things, and especially in the
nomination of the king, who, however, was always an Arsacid. Next to
the king stood the senate of _probuli_, from whom all generals and
lieutenant-governors were chosen. They were called the king’s kin, and
were no doubt the old Parnian martial nobility. A second senate was
composed of the magians and wise men, and by these two senates the king
was nominated. The Parthians were, in fact, very pious, conscientious in
observing even the most troublesome precepts in Zoroastrianism as to the
disposal of dead bodies, which were exposed to birds of prey and dogs,
the bare bones alone being buried. When the Parthian prince Tiridates
visited Nero he journeyed overland that he might not be forced to defile
the sea when he spat, and his spiritual advisers the magians travelled
with him. The magians were not, indeed, so all-powerful as under the
Sassanians, but it is quite a mistake to think that the Parthians were
but lukewarm Zoroastrians.

SCYTHIAN CONQUEST OF BACTRIA

[Sidenote: [177-130 B.C.]]

The complete annihilation of the Macedonian Empire in Iran was closely
followed by the destruction of Greek independence in eastern Iran. The
last mention of independent Bactria is in 140 B.C.; no king of Bactria
and Sogdiana is known from coins after the parricide Heliocles. Classical
writers give only two laconic accounts of the catastrophe. Strabo says
that the nomadic peoples of the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacaraucæ,
dwellers in the land of the Sacæ, beyond the Jaxartes, opposite to the
Sacæ and Sogdians, came and took Bactria from the Greeks. Trogus names
the Scythian peoples Saraucæ and Asiani. Fortunately the lively interest
taken by the Chinese in the movements of the nomads of central Asia
enables us to fill up this meagre notice from the report of the Chinese
agent in Bactria in 128 B.C., as recorded a little later by the oldest
Chinese historian, and from other notices collected by the Chinese after
the opening of the regular caravan route with the West, about 115 B.C.,
and embodied in their second oldest history.

According to these sources the Yue-chi, a nomad people akin to the
Tibetans, lived aforetime between Tun-hoang (Sha-cheu) and the
Kilien-shan Mountains, and about 177 B.C. were subjugated, like all
their neighbours, by the Turkish Hiung-nu. Between 167 and 161 B.C.
they renewed the struggle without success; Lao-shang, the great khan
of the Hiung-nu, slew their king Chang-lun, and made a drinking-cup
of his skull, and the great mass of the vanquished people (the great
Yue-chi) left their homes and moved westward, and occupied the land on
Lake Issyk-kul, driving before them another nomad race, the Sse. The Sse
took the road by Utch and Kashgar, ultimately reaching and subduing the
kingdom of Kipin (the Kabul valley), while their old seats were occupied
by the great Yue-chi, till they in turn were soon attacked by the Usun,
who lived west of the Hiung-nu, and forced to move further west (160 or
159 B.C.). In 159 B.C. they moved straight on Sogdiana, reaching that
land just at the time when internal wars were undermining the might of
Eucratides. The conquest, however, may have been gradual, since Bactria
is still named as independent in 140 B.C.

[Sidenote: [130-128 B.C.]]

Phraates II, who succeeded his father in 138 B.C. and continued his
work, wresting Margiana from the Scythians of Bactria in an expedition
commemorated on extant coins, had also to meet the last and most
formidable attempt to restore the sovereignty of the Seleucids. Antiochus
VII, one of the ablest kings of his race, marched eastward at the head
of a force of eighty thousand combatants, swollen by camp-followers to a
total of three hundred thousand. Many of the small princes, on whom the
hand of Parthia lay heavy, joined him as they had joined his brother; the
enemy was smitten on the great Zab, and in two other battles; Babylon
and then Ecbatana opened their gates to the conqueror; and the subject
nations rose against the Parthians, who, when Antiochus took up his
winter quarters in Media, were again confined to their ancient limits.
When the snows began to melt, an embassy from Phraates appeared to
ask for peace; but the terms demanded by Antiochus (the liberation of
Demetrius, the surrender of all conquests, and the payment of tribute
for the old Parthian country) were such as could not be accepted
without another appeal to the fortunes of war. Antiochus was met by the
Parthian with a superior force of 120,000 men; he refused the advice of
his officers to fall back to the neighbouring mountains, and accepted
battle on a field too narrow for the evolution of his troops. The Syriac
soldiers, enervated by luxury, were readier to imitate the flight of
Athenæus than the valour of his master; the whole host was involved in
the rout and annihilated. Antiochus himself escaped wounded from the
fray, and cast himself from a rock that he might not be taken alive. This
catastrophe (February, 129 B.C.) freed the Parthians forever from danger
from Syria.

THE SCYTHIANS RAVAGE PARTHIA

[Illustration: A SCYTHIAN WARRIOR]

Phraates paid funeral honours to the fallen king, and afterwards sent
his body to Syria in a silver coffin. He entertained his captive family
royally, married one of the two daughters, and sent the eldest son,
Seleucus, to Syria to claim the sovereignty, and to serve future plans
of his own; for an attempt to follow and recapture Demetrius, made
immediately after the battle, had proved too late. But dangers in the
east soon turned the Parthian’s attention away from enterprises in the
west. In his distress he had bribed the Scythians to send him help; as
they arrived too late he refused to pay them, and they in turn began to
ravage the Parthian country. Phraates marched against them, leaving his
charge at home to his favourite, the Hyrcanian Euhemerus, who chastised
the countries that had sided with Antiochus, made war with Mesene, and
treated Babylon and Seleucia with the utmost cruelty. But the Scythian
war proved a disastrous one; the enemy overran the whole empire, and for
the first time for five hundred years Scythian plunderers again appeared
in Mesopotamia; in a decisive battle Phraates was deserted by the old
soldiers of Antiochus, whom he had forced into his service and then
treated with insolent cruelty; the Parthian host sustained a ruinous
defeat, and the king himself was slain in the spring of 128 B.C., or
somewhat later.

[Sidenote: [128-64 B.C.]]

Artabanus I (third son of Priapatius), who now became king, was an
elderly man. The Scythians, according to the too favourable account
by our chief authority, were content with their victory, and moved
homewards, ravaging the country. But we know from John of Antioch that
the successor of Phraates paid them tribute; and the southern part of
Drangiana must now have been permanently occupied by the Scythian tribes.
Finally, the coins reveal the existence of Arsacids who were rival kings
to Artabanus I and Mithridates II, and perhaps borrow from individual
successes against the Scythians the proud titles which so strongly
contrast with the really wretched condition of the empire. Meanwhile
it would appear that the men from Seleucia, driven to desperation, had
seized the tyrant Euhemerus and put him to a cruel death. Artabanus,
when they sought his pardon, threatened to put out the eyes of every man
of Seleucia, and was prevented only by his death, in battle with the
Tochari, after a very short reign.

Mithridates II, the Great, his son and successor, was the restorer of the
empire. We are briefly told that he valiantly waged many wars with his
neighbours, added many nations to the empire, and had several successes
against the Scythians, so avenging the disgrace of his predecessors. His
successes, however, must have been practically limited to the recovery
of lost ground, and the eastern frontier was not advanced. It has been
common to connect with his successes the appearance of Parthian names
among the Indo-Scythian princes of the Kabul valley; but this must be
false. On the other hand, Mithridates, if not the first to conquer
Mesopotamia, was the first to fix the Euphrates as the western boundary
of the empire, and towards the end of his reign he was strong enough to
interfere with the concerns of Great Armenia and place Tigranes II on the
throne in a time of disputed succession (94 B.C.), accepting in return
the cession of seventy Armenian valleys.

FIRST CONFLICT WITH ROME

Now, too, the Parthians, as lords of Mesopotamia, came for the first time
into contact with Rome, and in 92 B.C., when Sulla came to Cappadocia
as proprætor of Cilicia, he met on the Euphrates the ambassador of
Mithridates seeking the Roman alliance. This embassy was no doubt
connected with the Parthian schemes against Syria. Demetrius III, the
Seleucid, who reigned at Damascus, was compelled to surrender with
his whole army and ended his life as a captive at the Parthian court.
Mithridates the Great seems to have died just after this event; there is
no reason to suppose that he lived to see the disasters which followed so
close on his great successes.

[Sidenote: [64-53 B.C.]]

Artabanus II was the next monarch, but after him the title of king of
kings was taken by the Armenian Tigranes, one of the most dangerous foes
Parthia ever had. In 86 B.C. it was still a reason for choosing Tigranes,
as king of part of Syria, that he was in alliance with Parthia; but very
soon the latter state was so ruined by civil and foreign war, that it was
no match for Armenia. In 77 B.C. the Arsacid Sinatruces took the throne.
Tigranes conquered Media, ravaged the country of Arbela and Nineveh, and
compelled the cession of Adiabene and Mesopotamia. Phraates III succeeded
his father, Sinatruces, after a period of hesitating neutrality, accepted
the overtures of Pompey, and prepared to invade Armenia (66 B.C.), guided
by the younger Tigranes, who had quarrelled with his father and taken
refuge in Parthia, where he wedded the daughter of the king. Tigranes
the elder fled to the mountains; and Phraates turned homeward, leaving
young Tigranes with part of the army to continue the war. The latter,
who alone was no match for his father, fled after an utter defeat to
Pompey, who was just preparing to invade Armenia, and to whom the elder
Tigranes presently surrendered at discretion. The Roman, however, gave
him very good terms, altogether abandoned his son’s cause, and even put
him in chains. Meantime Phraates had occupied the Parthian conquests of
Tigranes, which the Romans had promised him, and sent an embassy to
Pompey to intercede for his son-in-law. But the Romans had no further
occasion for Parthian help; and, instead of granting his request, sent
Afranius to clear the country and restore it to Tigranes. Immediately
afterwards Pompey’s officer marched into Syria through Mesopotamia, which
by treaty had been expressly recognised as Parthian; and it was another
grievous insult that Pompey in writing to Phraates had withheld from him
the title of king of kings. About 57 B.C. Phraates, the restorer of the
empire, was murdered by his two sons, one of whom, Orodes or Hyrodes I,
took the throne, while his brother Mithridates III got Media; but the
latter ruled so cruelly that he was expelled by the Parthian nobles, and
Orodes reigned alone.

ORODES DEFEATS THE ROMANS

A Parthian embassy appeared in Syria in the spring to remonstrate against
the faithlessness of Rome, but at the same time the Parthians were ready
for war. Surenas, with Silaces, satrap of Mesopotamia, was pressing the
Roman garrisons, and prepared to confront Crassus with an army wholly
composed of cavalry, while Orodes in person invaded Armenia. In the
spring of 53 B.C., Crassus and his son Publius crossed the Euphrates at
Zeugma with seven legions and eight thousand cavalry and light troops,
making up a total of forty-two or forty-three thousand men, and was
persuaded by Abgar of Orrhoene to leave the river and march straight
across the plains to Surenas. Surenas kept the mass of his troops
concealed by a wooded hill, showing only the not very numerous vanguard
of cataphracts till the Romans were committed to do battle. The Roman
cavalry charged the enemy to prevent a threatening flank movement, and
were drawn away from the mass of the army by the favourite Parthian
manœuvre of a simulated flight.[c]

So vivid a picture of the ferocity of this battle is given in Plutarch’s
_Life of Crassus_, that we may well quote it here.[a]

PLUTARCH’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF CARRHÆ

[Sidenote: [53 B.C.]]

The enemies seemed not to the Romans at the first to be so great a
number, neither so bravely armed as they thought they had been. For,
concerning their great number, Surenas had of purpose hid them, with
certain troops he sent before; and to hide their bright armours he
had cast cloaks and beasts’ skins upon them, but when both the armies
approached near the one to the other, and that the sign to give charge
was lift up in the air: first they filled the field with a dreadful noise
to hear. For the Parthians do not encourage their men to fight with the
sound of a horn, neither with trumpets nor hautboys, but with great
kettle-drums hollow within, and about them they hang little bells and
copper rings, and with them they all make a noise everywhere together,
and it is like a dead sound, mingled as it were with the braying or
bellowing of a wild beast, and a fearful noise as if it thundered,
knowing that hearing is one of the senses that soonest moves the heart
and spirit of any man, and makes him soonest beside himself.

The Romans being put in fear with this dead sound, the Parthians straight
threw the clothes and coverings from them that hid their armour, and
then showed their bright helmets and cuirasses of Margian tempered
steel, that glared like fire, and their horses barbed with steel and
copper. The bowmen drew a great strength, and had big strong bows,
which sent the arrows from them with a wonderful force. The Romans by
means of these bows were in hard state. For if they kept their ranks,
they were grievously wounded: again if they left them, and sought to
run upon the Parthians to fight at hand with them, they saw they could
do them but little hurt, and yet were very likely to take the greater
harm themselves. For, as fast as the Romans came upon them, so fast did
the Parthians fly from them, and yet in flying continued still their
shooting: which no nation but the Scythians could better do than they,
being a matter indeed most greatly to their advantage. For by their
flight they best did save themselves, and fighting still they thereby
shunned the shame that their flying would have brought down upon them.

The Romans still defended themselves, and held it out, so long as they
had any hope that the Parthians would leave fighting, when they had spent
their arrows or would join battle with them. But after they understood
that there were a great number of camels laden with quivers full of
arrows, where the first that had bestowed their arrows fetched about to
take new quivers: then Crassus, seeing no end of their shot, began to
faint, and sent to Publius his son, willing him in any case to charge
with desperate power upon the enemies, and to give an onset, before they
were compassed in on every side.

But they, seeing him coming, turned straight their horse and fled.
Publius Crassus seeing them fly, cried out, “These men will not abide
us,” and so spurred on for life after them. They thought all had been
won, and that there was no more to do, but to follow the chase: till
they were gone far from the army, and then they found the deceit. For
the horsemen that fled before them suddenly turned again, and a number
of others besides came and set upon them. Whereupon the Romans halted,
thinking that the enemies, perceiving they were so few, would come and
fight with them hand to hand. Howbeit they set out against them their
men at arms with their barbed horse, and made their light horsemen wheel
round about them, keeping no order at all: who galloping up and down the
plain, whirled up the sand hills from the bottom with their horses’ feet,
which raised such a wonderful cloud of dust, that the Romans could scarce
see or speak one to another.

For they, being shut up into a little room, and standing close one to
another, were sore wounded with the Parthians’ arrows, and died of a
cruel lingering death, crying out for anguish and pain they felt: and
turning and tormenting themselves upon the sand, they brake the arrows
sticking in them. Again, striving by force to pluck out the forked arrow
heads, that had pierced far into their bodies through their veins and
sinews: thereby they opened their wounds wider, and so cast themselves
away. Many of them died thus miserably martyred: and such as died not,
were not able to defend themselves.

Then when Publius Crassus prayed and besought them to charge the men at
arms with their barbed horse, they showed him their hands fast nailed
to their targets with arrows, and their feet likewise shot through
and nailed to the ground: so as they could neither fly nor yet defend
themselves. Thereupon himself encouraging his horsemen, went and gave
a charge, and did valiantly set upon the enemies, but it was with too
great disadvantage, both for offence and also for defence. For himself
and his men with weak and light staves brake upon them that were armed
with cuirasses of steel, or stiff leathern jackets. And the Parthians in
contrary manner with mighty strong pikes gave charge upon these Gauls,
which were either unarmed or else but lightly armed.

[Illustration: A PARTHIAN PEASANT]

Yet those were they in whom Crassus most trusted, having done wonderful
feats of war with them. For they received the Parthians’ pikes in their
hands, and took them about their middles, and threw them off their
horse, where they lay on the ground, and could not stir for the weight
of their harness: and there were divers of them also that, lighting from
their horse, lay under their enemies’ horses’ bellies, and thrust their
swords into them. Their horse flinging and bounding in the air for very
pain threw their masters under feet, and the enemies one upon another,
and in the end fell dead among them. Moreover, extreme heat and thirst
did marvellously cumber the Gauls, who were used to abide neither: and
the most part of their horse were slain, charging with all their power
upon the men at arms of the Parthians, and so ran themselves in upon the
points of their pikes.

At length, they were driven to retire towards their footmen, and Publius
Crassus among them, who was very ill by reason of the wounds he had
received. And seeing a sand hill by chance not far from them, they
went thither, and setting their horse in the midst of it, compassed it
round with their targets, thinking by this means to cover and defend
themselves the better from the barbarous people: howbeit they found it
contrary. For they that were behind, standing higher, could by no means
save themselves, but were all hurt alike, as well the one as the other,
bewailing their own misery and misfortune, that must needs die without
revenge or declaration of their valiancy. There were two Grecians who
counselled P. Crassus to steal away with them. But Publius answered them,
that there was no death so cruel as could make him forsake them that
died for his sake. When he had so said, wishing them to save themselves,
he embraced them, and took his leave of them: and being very sore hurt
with the shot of an arrow through one of his hands, commanded one of his
gentlemen to thrust him through with a sword, and so turned his side
to him for the purpose. It is reported Censorinus did the like. But
Megabacchus slew himself with his own hands, and so did the most part of
the gentlemen that were of that company.

And for those that were left alive, the Parthians got up the sand hill,
and fighting with them, thrust them through with their spears and
pikes, and took but five hundred prisoners. After that, they struck off
Publius Crassus’ head, and thereupon returned straight to set upon his
father Crassus, who was then in this state. Crassus the father, after
he had willed his son to charge the enemies, retired the best he could
by a hill’s side, looking ever that his son would not be long before he
returned from the chase. But Publius seeing himself in danger, had sent
divers messengers to his father, to advertise him of his distress, whom
the Parthians intercepted and slew by the way: and the last messengers
he sent, escaping very hardly, brought Crassus news that his son was
but cast away, if he did not presently aid him, and that with a great
power. These news were grievous to Crassus in two respects: first for the
fear he had, seeing himself in danger to lose all; and secondly for the
vehement desire he had to go to his son’s help. Thus he saw in reason all
would come to nought, and in fine determined to go with all his power to
the rescue of his son.

But in the meantime the enemies were returned from his son’s overthrow,
with a more dreadful noise and cry of victory than ever before: and
thereupon their deadly sounding drums filled the air with their wonderful
noise. The Romans then looked straight for a hot alarm. But the Parthians
that brought Publius Crassus’ head upon the point of a lance, coming
near to the Romans, showed them his head, and asked them in derision if
they knew what house he was of, and who were his parents: for it was not
likely (said they) that so noble and valiant a young man should be the
son of so cowardly a father as Crassus.

The sight of Publius Crassus’ head killed the Romans’ hearts more than
any other danger they had been in at any time in all the battle. For
it did not set their hearts on fire as it should have done with anger
and desire of revenge: but far otherwise, made them quake for fear, and
struck them stark dead to behold it. Yet Crassus’ self showed greater
courage in this misfortune than he before had done in all the war beside.
For riding by every band he cried out aloud: “Our ancestors in old time
lost a thousand ships, yea in Italy divers armies and chieftains for the
conquest of Sicilia: yet for all the loss of them, at the length they
were victorious over them by whom they were before vanquished. For the
empire of Rome came not to that greatness it now is at by good fortune
only, but by patience and constant suffering of trouble and adversity,
never yielding or giving place unto any danger.”

Crassus, using these persuasions to encourage his soldiers for
resolution, found that all his words wrought none effect: but contrarily,
after he had commanded them to give the shout of battle, he plainly
saw their hearts were done, for their shout rose but faint, and not
all alike. The Parthians on the other side, their shout was great, and
lustily they rang it out. Now when they came to join, the Parthians’
archers on horseback compassing in the Romans upon the wings shot an
infinite number of arrows at their sides. But their men at arms, giving
charge upon the front of the Romans, battled with their great lances,
compelled them to draw into a narrow room, a few excepted, that valiantly
and in desperate manner ran in among them, as men rather desiring so to
die than to be slain with their arrows, where they could do the Parthians
almost no hurt at all. So were they soon despatched, with the great
lances that ran them through, head, wood, and all, with such a force that
oftentimes they ran through two at once.

Thus when they had fought the whole day, night drew on, and made them
retire, saying they would give Crassus that night’s respite, to lament
and bewail his son’s death. So the Parthians, camping hard by the Romans,
were in very good hope to overthrow him the next morning. The Romans
on the other side had a marvellous ill night, making no reckoning to
bury their dead, nor to dress their wounded men, that died in miserable
pain; but every man bewailed his hard fortune, when they saw not one of
them could escape, if they tarried till the morning. But Crassus went
aside without light, and laid him down with his head covered, because he
would see no man, showing thereby the common sort an example of unstable
fortune; and the wise men, a good learning to know the fruits of ill
counsel and vain ambition, that had so much blinded him that he could not
be content to command so many thousands of men, but thought (as a man
would say) himself the meanest of all, and one that possessed nothing,
because he was accounted inferior unto two persons only, Pompey and Cæsar.

Notwithstanding, Octavius, one of his chieftains, and Cassius the
treasurer, seeing him so overcome with sorrow and out of heart that he
had no life nor spirit in him, they themselves called the captains and
centurions together, and sat in council for their departure, and so
agreed that there was no longer tarrying for them. Thus of their own
authority at the first they made the army march away without any sound of
trumpet or other noise.

But immediately after, they that were left hurt and sick, and could
not follow, seeing the camp remove, fell a-crying out and tormenting
themselves in such sort that they filled the whole camp with sorrow, and
put them out of all order with the great moan and loud lamentation; so
that the foremost rank that first dislodged fell into a marvellous fear,
thinking they had been the enemies that had come and set upon them. Then
turning oft, and setting themselves in battle array, one while loading
their beasts with the wounded men, another while unloading them again,
they were left behind.[d]

After getting dangerously entangled in marshy ground, Crassus had almost
reached the mountains when he was induced, by the despair of his troops
rather than by error of his own judgment, to yield to treacherous
proposals of Surenas and descend again into the plain. As he mounted the
horse which was to convey him to the meeting with the enemy’s general,
the gestures of the Parthians excited suspicions of treachery, a struggle
ensued, and Crassus was struck down and slain. Scarcely ten thousand out
of the whole host reached Syria by way of Armenia; twenty thousand had
fallen and ten thousand captives were settled in Antioch, the capital of
Margiana.

[Sidenote: [53-40 B.C.]]

The token of victory, the hand and head of Crassus, reached Orodes in
Armenia just as he had made peace with Artavasdes and betrothed his
eldest son Pacorus to the daughter of the Armenian king. The Roman
disaster was due primarily to the novelty of the Parthian way of assault,
which took them wholly by surprise, and partly also to bad generalship;
but the Romans always sought a traitor to account for a defeat, and in
the present case they threw the blame partly on Andromachus of Carrhæ,
who really did mislead Crassus in his retreat, and was rewarded by the
Parthians with the tyranny of his native town, but had no great influence
on the disaster; and partly on Abgar, whose advice was no doubt bad, but
not necessarily treacherous.

Surenas, the victor of Carrhæ, whose fame was now too great for the
condition of a mere subject, was put to death a little later, the victim
of Orodes’ jealousy; the victory itself was weakly followed up. Not till
52 B.C. was Syria invaded, and then with forces so weak that Cassius
found the defence easy.

Orodes avoided a threatened breach with his son Pacorus, by associating
him in the empire; but the Parthians took little advantage of the civil
wars that preceded the fall of the Roman Republic. They occasionally
stepped in to save the weaker party from utter annihilation, but even
this policy was not followed with energy, and Orodes refused to help
Pompey in his distress because the Roman would not promise to give him
Syria. Labienus was with Orodes negotiating for help on a larger scale
when the news of Philippi arrived, and remained with him till 40 B.C.,
when he was at last sent back to Syria, together with Pacorus and a
numerous host. The Roman garrisons in Syria were old troops of Brutus and
Cassius, who had been taken over by Antony; those in the region of Apamea
joined Labienus; Antony’s legate Decidius Saxa was defeated, and fled
from the camp afraid of his own men.

[Sidenote: [43-36 B.C.]]

Apamea, Antioch, and all Syria soon fell into the hands of the Parthians,
and Decidius was pursued and slain. Pacorus advanced along the great
road and received the submission of all the Phœnician cities save Tyre.
Simultaneously the satrap Barzaphranes appeared in Galilee; the patriots
all over Palestine rose against Phasael and Herod; and five hundred
Parthian horse appearing before Jerusalem were enough to overthrow
the Roman party and substitute Antigonus for Hyrcanus. The Parthian
administration was a favourable contrast to the rule of the oppressive
proconsuls, and the justice and clemency of Pacorus won the hearts of the
Syrians. Meantime Labienus had penetrated Asia Minor as far as Lydia and
Ionia. The Roman governor Plancus could only hold the islands; most of
the cities opened their gates to Labienus, the “Parthicus imperator.”

But Rome even in its time of civil divisions was stronger than Parthia;
in 39 B.C. Ventidius Bassus, general for Antony, suddenly appeared in
Asia and drove Labienus and his provincial levies before him without
a battle as far as the Taurus. Here the Parthians came to Labienus’
help, but, attacking rashly and without his co-operation, they were
defeated by Ventidius and Labienus’ troops were involved in the disaster;
Phranipates, the ablest lieutenant of Pacorus, fell, and the Parthians
evacuated Syria. Before Ventidius had completed the resettlement of the
Roman power in Syria and Palestine, and while his troops were dispersed
in winter quarters, the Parthians fell on him again with a force of
more than twenty thousand men and an unusually large proportion of free
cavaliers in full armour. A battle was fought near the shrine of Hercules
at Gindarus in Cyrrhestica, on the anniversary, it is said, of the defeat
of Crassus (9th of June, 38 B.C.); the Parthians were utterly routed and
Pacorus himself was slain. His head was sent round to the cities of Syria
which were still in revolt, to prove to them that their hopes had failed.
There was no further resistance save from Aradus and Jerusalem.

Orodes, now an old man and sorely afflicted by the death of his favourite
son, nominated his next son, Phraates, as his colleague, and the latter
began to reign by making away with brothers of whom he was jealous,
and then strangling his father, who had not concealed his anger at the
former crime (37 B.C.). The reign of Orodes was the culminating point of
Parthian greatness, and all his successors adopted his title of king of
kings, “Arsaces Euergetes.” It was he who moved the capital westward to
Seleucia, or rather to Ctesiphon (Taisefún), its eastern suburb.

PHRAATES IV REPELS MARK ANTONY

[Sidenote: [36-9 B.C.]]

Phraates IV continued his reign in a series of crimes, murdering every
prominent man among his brothers, and even his own adult son, that the
nobles might find no Arsacid to lead their discontent. Many of the nobles
fled to foreign parts, and Antony felt encouraged to plan a war of
vengeance against Parthia. Antony had no hope of forcing the well-guarded
Euphrates frontier; but since the death of Pacorus, Armenia had again
been brought under Roman patronage, and he hoped to strike a blow at the
heart of Parthia. Keeping the Parthians in play by feigned proposals of
peace while he matured his preparations, he appeared in Atropatene in
36 B.C. with sixty thousand legionaries and forty thousand cavalry and
auxiliary troops, and at once formed the siege of the capital Phraaspa.
The Median king Artavasdes, son of Ariobarzanes, had marched to join
Phraates, who looked for the attack in another quarter. Phraates had
only forty thousand Parthians, including but four hundred freemen who
never left the king, and probably ten thousand Median cavalry; but these
forces were well handled, and the two kings had reached the scene of war
before Antony was joined by his baggage and heavy siege-train, and opened
the campaign by capturing the train and cutting to pieces its escort
of seventy-five hundred men under the legate Oppius Statianus. Antony
was still able to repel a demonstration to relieve Phraaspa; but his
provisions ran short, and the foraging parties were so harassed that the
siege made no progress. As it was now October, he was at length forced to
open negotiations with Phraates.

The Parthians promised peace if the Romans withdrew; but when Antony
took him at his word, abandoning the siege-engines, he began a vigorous
pursuit, and kept the Romans constantly on the defensive, chastising one
officer who hazarded an engagement by a defeat which cost the Romans
three thousand killed and five thousand wounded. Still greater were
the losses by famine and thirst and dysentery; and the whole force was
utterly demoralised and had lost a fourth part of its fighting men, a
third of the camp-followers, and all the baggage when, after a retreat
of twenty-seven days from Phraaspa to the Araxes by way of Mianeh (276
miles), they reached the Armenian frontier. Eight thousand more perished
of cold and from snow-storms in the Armenian mountains; the mortality
among the wounded was terrible; the Romans would have been undone had not
Artavasdes of Armenia allowed them to winter in his land.

The failure of the expedition was due partly to the usual Roman ignorance
of the geographical and climatic conditions, partly to a rash haste
in the earlier operations; but very largely also (as in the case of
Napoleon’s Russian campaign) to the lack of discipline in the soldiers of
the Civil War, which called for very severe chastisement even during the
siege of Phraaspa, and culminated at length in frequent desertions and
in open mutiny, driving Antony to think of suicide. The Romans laid the
whole blame on Artavasdes, but without any adequate reason. At the same
time, the disaster of Antony following that of Crassus seemed to show
that within their own country the Parthians could not safely be attacked
on any side, and for a century and a half Roman cupidity left them alone.

Media and Armenia fell before the Parthians; the Romans who were still in
the country were slain, and Artaxes II was raised to the Armenian throne
(30 B.C.). In the very next year, however, the course of the Parthian
affairs led Artaxes to make his peace with Rome. Phraates’ tyranny had
only been aggravated by his successes, and open rebellion broke out in 33
B.C. We have coins of an anonymous pretender dated March to June 32 B.C.
To him succeeded Tiridates II, whose rebellion was at a climax during
the war of Actium. Phraates was taken by surprise and fled, slaying his
concubines that they might not fall a prey to his victor. Tiridates
seated himself on the throne in June, 27 B.C., and Phraates wandered
for some time in exile till he persuaded the Scythians to undertake his
cause. Before the great host of the Scythians Tiridates retired without
a contest. In June, 26 B.C., as the coins prove, Phraates again held
the throne. In 10 or 9 B.C. Phraates took the precaution of sending his
family to Rome so that the rebels might have no Arsacid pretender to put
forward, keeping only and designating as heir his youngest son by his
favourite wife Thea Musa Urania, an Italian slave girl presented to him
by Augustus. This was mainly a scheme of Urania’s, and she and her son
crowned it by murdering the old tyrant.

ANARCHY IN PARTHIA

[Sidenote: [9 B.C.-40 A.D.]]

Phraates V, or as he is usually called Phraataces (diminutive), was
thus the third Arsacid in successive generations to reach the throne by
parricide. Phraates V, whose first coin is of 2 B.C., tried an energetic
policy, expelling Artavasdes III, and the Roman troops that supported
him from Armenia, and seating on the throne Tigranes IV, who had been a
fugitive under Parthian protection. As Augustus did not wish to extend
the empire, and Phraates was not very secure on his throne, neither
party cared to fight, and an agreement was patched up after some angry
words, Phraates resigning all claim on Armenia and leaving his brothers
as hostages in Rome (1 A.D.). Phraates now married his mother, a match
probably meant to conciliate the clergy, as he knew that the nobles hated
him. In fact he was soon driven by a rebellion (after October, 4 A.D.) to
flee to Roman soil, where he died, it seems, not long afterwards.

The Parthians called Orodes II from exile to the throne. Of him we have
a coin of autumn, 6 A.D.; but his wild and cruel temper soon made him
hated, and he was murdered while out hunting. Anarchy and bloodshed now
gaining the upper hand, the Parthians sent to Rome (before 9 A.D.), and
received thence as king Vonones, the eldest of the sons of Phraates IV,
a well-meaning prince, whose foreign education put him quite out of
sympathy with his country. A strong reaction of national feeling took
place, and the main line of the Arsacids being now exhausted by death or
exile, Artabanus, an Arsacid on the mother’s side, who had grown up among
the Dahæ and had afterwards been made king of Media (Atropatene), was
set up as pretendant in 10 or 11 A.D. Artabanus was defeated at first,
but ultimately gained a great and bloody victory and seated himself in
Ctesiphon. Vonones fled to Armenia and was chosen as king of that country
(16 A.D.); but Tiberius, who was anxious to avoid war, and did not wish
to give Artabanus III any pretext to invade Armenia, persuaded Vonones to
retire to Syria. Later he was interned in Cilicia, and in 19 A.D. lost
his life in an attempt to escape.

Amidst such constant rebellions Artabanus III, shrewd and energetic,
not merely held his own but waged successful foreign wars, set his son
Arsaces on the throne of Armenia, and challenged Rome still more directly
by raising claims to lordship over the Iranian population of Cappadocia.
Through the whole first century of the Roman Empire all relations to
Parthia turned on the struggle for influence in Armenia, and, much as he
loved peace, Tiberius could not suffer this disturbance of the balance of
power to pass unnoticed. Much as Artabanus hated the Romans, his insecure
position at home drove him in 37 A.D. to make an accommodation on terms
favourable to them and send his son Darius as hostage to Tiberius.

[Sidenote: [40-81 A.D.]]

In Artabanus’ life-time the second place in the empire had been held
by one Gotarzes, who appears to have been his colleague in the upper
satrapies, and perhaps his lieutenant in his flight to Adiabene. But
there is monumental evidence that he was not, as Josephus says and
Tacitus implies, Artabanus’ son (except by adoption), and so we find that
the succession first fell to Vardanes, who coined money in September, 40
A.D. But in 41 A.D., Gotarzes gave Vardanes an opportunity to return; in
two days he rode 345 miles, and taking his rival by surprise he forced
him to flee, and occupied the lower satrapies, where he coined regularly
from July, 42 A.D., onwards. The renewal of civil war enabled the emperor
Claudius, with the aid of the Iberians, to drive the Parthian satrap
Demonax from Armenia and reseat Mithridates on the throne. Meantime
Gotarzes and Vardanes were face to face in the plain of western or
Parthian Bactria, but an attempt on the life of the latter having been
disclosed by his foe they made peace, and Gotarzes withdrew to Hyrcania;
while Vardanes, confirmed in his empire, returned to Seleucia and took it
in 43 A.D. after a siege of seven years.

That Vardanes was a great king is plain from the high praise of Tacitus
and the attention which the greatest of Roman historians bestows on a
reign which had no direct relations to Rome. Vardanes, whose last coin is
of August, 45 A.D., was murdered while hunting--a victim, we are told,
to the hatred produced by his severity to his subjects. But in judging
of the charges brought against him and his two predecessors, we must
remember that the rise of a new dynasty like that of Artabanus is always
accompanied by deeds of violence, and that the oppressed subjects are
simply the utterly unruly Parthian nobles who had lost all discipline in
the long civil wars, and could only be controlled by force.

Gotarzes died of a sickness, not before June, 51 A.D., and was followed
by Vonones II, who had been king in Atropatene, and was probably a
brother of Artabanus III. According to the coins his short reign began
before September, 51 A.D., and did not end before October, 54 A.D. He was
succeeded by his eldest son, Volagases I, the brothers acquiescing in
his advancement, although his mother was only a concubine from Miletus;
and receiving their compensation by being nominated to kingdoms which
gave them the second and third places after the king of kings--Pacorus to
Media or Atropatene, and Tiridates to Armenia. The Armenians now offered
no resistance to the Parthians, but the Romans were not content to lose
their influence in the land. Open war with Rome, however, was still
delayed by negotiations. Finally Rome refused to confirm a treaty, and
war was declared. The first year of the war (62 A.D.) was unfortunate
for the Romans. Next year the war was resumed, and Corbulo, crossing the
Euphrates at Melitene, had penetrated into Sophene when the Parthians
earnestly sought peace. It was agreed that Tiridates should lay down his
diadem and go to Rome in person to receive it again from the emperor,
which was done accordingly in 66 A.D. The real advantage of the war
lay more with Parthia than with Rome; for if the Roman suzerainty over
Armenia was admitted, the Parthians had succeeded, after a contest which
had lasted a generation, in placing an Arsacid on the Armenian throne.
After Nero’s death Volagases (Vologeses) formed very friendly relations
with Vespasian, which endured till 75 A.D.

Volagases I died soon after the Alan wars, leaving a just reputation
by his friendly relation to his brothers (a relation so long unknown),
his patient steadfastness in foreign war and home troubles, and his
foundation of a new capital. Perhaps also he has the merit of collecting
from fragments or oral tradition all that remained of the Avesta. From
June, 78 A.D., we find two kings coining and reigning together, Volagases
II and Pacorus II, probably brothers. From 79 A.D. there is a long break
in the coins of the former, and Artabanus IV takes his place with a coin
struck in July, 81 A.D. This Artabanus appears as the protector of a
certain Terentius Maximus, who pretended to be Nero; he threatened to
restore him and displace Titus by force, and though the pretender was at
length given up, the farce, which was kept up till 88 A.D., might have
ended in earnest but for the disorders of the times--indicated by a break
in the Parthian coinage between 84 and 93 A.D., in which latter year
Pacorus appears as sole king.

[Sidenote: [88-116 A.D.]]

At this time the political horizon of Parthia was very wide, and its
intercourse with the farthest East was livelier than at any other date.
In 90 A.D. the Yue-chi had come to war with the governor of Chinese
Tatary and been reduced to vassalship: in 94 A.D. a Chinese expedition
slew their king, and advancing to the “North Sea” (Lake Aral) subdued
fifty kingdoms. The Tochari, one sees, like the Greeks before them, had
neglected the lands north of the Hindu-Kush in their designs on India;
even of Ooemo-Kadphises no coins are found north of that range. In 97
A.D. Chinese envoys directed to Rome actually reached the Mediterranean,
but were dissuaded from going further from Parthian accounts of the
terrors of the sea voyage; and in 101 A.D. Muon-kiu, king of An-si
(Parthians), sent lions and gazelles to the emperor of China. Muon-kiu
reigned in Ho-to--_i.e._, Carta or Zadracarta in Hyrcania; he was
therefore a king of the Hyrcanians, who also held the old Parthian lands
east of the Caspian Gate, and may be identical with a king, rival to
Pacorus, who struck copper coins in 107 and 108 A.D., if the latter is
not identical with the later monarch Osroes.

But at any rate the representative of the Parthian power in the West
was still Pacorus II, who in 110 A.D. sold the crown of Edessa to Abgar
VII, bar Izat, and died soon after, making way for his brother Osroes,
who had to reckon with two rivals--Volagases II from 112 A.D. onwards,
and Meherdates (Mithridates) VI. The latter was a brother of Osroes,
and so probably was the former. None of the three was strong enough to
conquer the others, and continual war went on between them till Osroes
was foolish enough to provoke Roman intervention by taking Armenia from
Exedares, son of Pacorus, to whose appointment Rome had not objected, and
transferring it to another son of Pacorus called Parthamasiris.

THE ROMANS INTERVENE

Trajan, who had quite thrown over the principle of the Julii and Flavii
(that the Danube and the Euphrates were the boundaries of the empire)
and was fully embarked on the old Chauvinist traditions of the republic,
would not let such an occasion slip; and refusing an answer to an embassy
that met him at Athens, he entered Armenia and took Arsamosata without
battle, after receiving the homage of western Armenia (114 A.D.).
Parthamasiris submitted himself to the emperor, but Trajan declared that
Armenia must be a Roman province, appointed an escort to see the Parthian
over the border, and when he resisted and tried to escape ordered his
execution--a brutal act, meant to inspire terror and show that the
Arsacids should no longer be treated with on equal terms. Armenia and the
neighbouring kings to the north having given in their submission, Trajan
marched back to Edessa, receiving the homage of Abgar. The campaign of
115 A.D. was in Mesopotamia. At its close Mesopotamia was made a Roman
province; the Cardueni and the Marcomedi of the Armenian frontier had
also been reduced, and Trajan received the title of “Parthicus.” In 116
A.D. the Tigris was crossed in the face of the enemy, and a third new
province of Assyria absorbed the whole kingdom of Mebarsapes. Once more
the Tigris was crossed and Babylonia invaded, still without resistance
from the Parthians.

[Sidenote: [116-166 A.D.]]

A Roman fleet descended the Euphrates and the ships were conveyed across
on rollers to the Tigris, to co-operate with the army; and now Ctesiphon
fell and Osroes fled to Armenia, the northeast parts of which cannot
have been thoroughly subdued. The Roman fleet descended the Tigris and
received the submission of Mesene; but now, while Trajan was engaged in a
voyage of reconnaissance in the Persian Gulf, plainly aiming at Bahrein,
all the new provinces revolted and destroyed or expelled the Roman
garrisons. The rebellion was at length put down, but Trajan now saw what
it would cost to maintain direct Roman rule over such wide and distant
conquests, and Parthamaspates was solemnly crowned in the great plain by
Ctesiphon in the presence of Romans and Parthians (winter of 117 A.D.).
An unsuccessful siege of Atra (Hatrá) in the Mesopotamian desert was
Trajan’s next undertaking; illness and the revolt of the Jews prevented
him from resuming the campaign, and after Trajan’s death (7th of August,
117 A.D.) Hadrian wisely withdrew the garrisons from the new provinces,
which would have demanded the constant presence of the imperial armies,
and again made the Euphrates the limit of the empire. Parthamaspates,
too, had soon to leave Parthia, and Hadrian gave him Orrhoene. Thus
Trajan’s Chauvinist policy had no other result than to show to the world
the miserable weakness to which discord had reduced the Parthians. Osroes
died soon after, and Volagases II became sole monarch, dying in November,
148 A.D., at the age of about ninety-six, after a reign of seventy-one
years.

Volagases III, who succeeded, had designs on Armenia, and in 162 A.D.
expelled the Arsacid Sohæmus, who was a client of Rome, and made Pacorus
king. The destruction of a Roman legion under the legate of Cappadocia
(Ælius Severianus), who fell on his own sword, laid Cappadocia and Syria
open to the Parthians. When late in the year Ælius Verus arrived from the
capital he found the troops so demoralised by defeat that he was ready to
offer peace; but when Volagases refused to treat, the able lieutenants
whom Verus directed from Antioch soon changed the face of affairs.

The war had two theatres, and was officially called the Armenian and
Parthian War. Armenia was regained and Sohæmus restored (163, 164 A.D.),
while Avidius Cassius drove Volagases from Syria in a bloody battle at
Europus, and entering north Mesopotamia, took Edessa and Nisibis, though
not without serious opposition. At length, deserted by his allies (the
local kings, who were becoming more and more independent), Volagases
abandoned Mesopotamia, and Cassius entered Babylonia, where, on a
frivolous pretext, he gave up to rapine and the flames the friendly city
of Seleucia, still the first city of the East, with four hundred thousand
inhabitants.

The destruction of Seleucia was a hideous crime, a mortal wound dealt
to Eastern Hellenism by its natural protectors; that Cassius next,
advancing to Ctesiphon, razed the palace of Volagases to the ground may,
on the other hand, be defended as a symbolical act calculated more than
anything else to impair the prestige of the Parthian with his oriental
subjects. Cassius returned to Syria in 165 A.D., with his victorious army
much weakened through the failure of the commissariat and by the plague,
which, breaking out in Parthia immediately after the fall of Seleucia,
spread over the whole known world. In the same year Martius Verus won
hardly less considerable successes in Media Atropatene, then apparently a
separate kingdom. The peace which followed in 166 A.D. gave Mesopotamia
to Rome.

This was the greatest of all wars between Rome and Parthia, alike in
the extent of the lands involved and the energy of attack shown by
the Parthians. Parthia, after this last effort, continued steadily to
decline.

THE DECAY OF PARTHIAN GREATNESS

[Sidenote: [166-217 A.D.]]

The Romans at the same time made an effort to compete with Parthia for
the Chinese trade (especially in silk), which the latter had jealously
kept in their own hands, and in 166 A.D. an envoy of An-thun (M.
Antoninus) reached the court of the emperor Huan-ti, _via_ the sea and
Tongking. But the effort to establish a direct trade with China was
unavailing, and the trade still flowed in its old channels when a second
Roman agent reached China in 226 A.D., a little before the fall of the
Parthian Empire. The Chinese tell us that with India also the Parthians
drove a considerable trade.

Volagases III died in 191 A.D., having reigned forty-two years without
civil war, and was succeeded by Volagases IV, who fought several vain
battles with Rome. In 199 A.D. a fleet on the Euphrates co-operated with
the Roman army, and Severus, taking up an unaccomplished plan of Trajan,
dredged out the old Naarmalca canal, through which his ships sailed into
the Tigris, and took the Parthians wholly by surprise. Seleucia and Coche
were deserted by their inhabitants; Ctesiphon was taken by the end of the
year with terrible slaughter, one hundred thousand inhabitants being led
captive and the place given up to pillage, for the Great King had fled
powerless at the approach of the foe. Severus, whose force was reduced
by famine and dysentery, did not attempt pursuit, but drew off up the
Tigris. The army was again in its quarters by the 1st of April, 200 A.D.,
and for some time thereafter Severus was occupied in Armenia. But in 201
A.D. he undertook a carefully organised expedition against Atra, from
whose walls the Romans had been repulsed with great loss when Severus,
returning from the Tigris in the previous year, had attempted to carry
it by a _coup de main_. This city, which in Trajan’s time was neither
great nor rich, was now a wealthy place, and the sun temple contained
vast treasures. The classical authors call it Arabian, but the king’s
name is Syriac--Barsenius, _i.e._, Bar Sín, son of the moon, and we may
suppose that it was really an Aramæan principality, which like Palmyra
had its strength from the surrounding Arab tribes that it could call
into the field. Severus lay before Atra for twenty days, but the enemy’s
cavalry cut off his foraging parties, the admirable archers galled the
Roman troops, a great part of the siege-train was burned with naphtha;
and when, in addition, two assaults had been repulsed with tremendous
loss on two successive days, the emperor was compelled to raise the
siege--a severe blow to Roman prestige in the East, and one that greatly
exalted the name of Atra and its prince, but did not help in the least
the decaying power of Parthia.

In 209 A.D. Volagases IV was succeeded by his son Volagases V, under
whom in 212 A.D. the fatal troubles in Persia began; while in 213 A.D.
his brother Artabanus rose as rival claimant of the kingship, and the
civil war lasted for many years. A fresh danger arose when Tiridates,
a brother of Volagases IV, who had long been a refugee with the Romans
and had accomplished Severus’ campaign of 199 A.D., escaped, in company
with a Cilician adventurer, the cynic Antiochus, to the court of his
nephew Volagases; for the emperor Antoninus (Caracalla) demanded their
surrender, and obtained it only by a declaration of war (215 A.D.).
About the same time Artabanus gained the upper hand, and in 216 A.D.
he held Ctesiphon and its district; but Volagases still held out in
the Greek cities of Babylonia, as his tetradrachms prove (till 222
A.D.). Artabanus’ strength lay in the north; the Arab histories of the
Sassanians make him king of the Median region. Presently Artabanus had
a war with Rome on his hands. An overwhelming Parthian force fell
on Mesopotamia and refused to be appeased by the restoration of the
captives of the previous year; Macrinus was beaten in two engagements and
compelled to retire to Syria, abandoning the Mesopotamian plain; and in
the winter of 217-218 A.D. he was glad to purchase peace for an indemnity
of 50,000,000 denarii (£1,774,298 or $8,871,490). In or about 222 A.D.
Artabanus must also have displaced his brother in Babylonia.

PERSIA CONQUERS PARTHIA

[Sidenote: [217-228 A.D.]]

Persia, which dealt the last blow to the Arsacids, had through the whole
Parthian period held an isolated position, and is so seldom mentioned
that our knowledge of its history and native princes is almost wholly due
to recently found coins. The emblems on the coins show that Persia was
always loyally Zoroastrian, and at Istakhr stood the famous Fire temple
of the goddess Anahedh. Its priest was Sassan, whose marriage with a
Bazrangian princess, Rambehisht, laid the foundation of the greatness of
his house, while priestly influence, which was very strong, doubtless
favoured its rise. Pabak, son of Sassan, and Ardashir, son of Pabak,
begin the history of the Sassanian dynasty, which occupies the next
chapter. Artabanus did nothing to check the rise of the new power till
Ardashir had all Persia in his hands (224 A.D.) and had begun to erect
a palace and temple at Gor (Firuzabad). Nirofar, king of Elymais, was
then sent against him, but was defeated, and now Ardashir passed beyond
Persia and successively reduced Ispahan (Farætacene), Ahwaz (Elymais),
and Mesene.

After this victory Ardashir sent a challenge to Artabanus himself; their
armies met by appointment in the plain of Hormizdjan, and Artabanus fell
(the 28th of April, 227 A.D.). Ctesiphon and Babylonia must have fallen
not much later, though Volagases V seems to have re-established himself
there on his brother’s death, and a tetradrachm shows that he held the
city till autumn 227 A.D. The conquest of Assyria and great part of Media
and Parthia is assigned by Dion expressly or by implication to the year
228 A.D. And so the Parthian Empire was at an end.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[29] [Persia, or rather Persis, is the latinised form of a name which
originally and exclusively designated only the country bounded on the
north by Media and on the northwest by Susiana, which of old had its
capital at Persepolis or Istakhr, and for almost twelve centuries since
has had it at Shiraz.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II. THE EMPIRE OF THE SASSANIDS

[Sidenote: [228-652 A.D.]]

Of the countries whose sovereigns were subject to the dominion (sometimes
actual and sometimes merely nominal) of the Parthian “king of kings,”
Persia proper itself was one. The names of some of the lesser kings of
that country during the Arsacid period are known to us, partly through a
reference here and there in literature, partly from their coins; but we
do not know whether they all belong to one and the same dynasty. About
the beginning of the third century after Christ, the country presented a
scene of confusion. The power of the local kings had fallen very low, and
the mountainous regions, cleft asunder by natural divisions, were full of
petty tyrants. Papak or Pabak, a son or descendant of Sassan, was one of
these. He came originally from the village of Khir on the southern shore
of the great salt lake east of Shiraz, and succeeded in overthrowing
the last prince of that dynasty, Gozihr by name, in whose service he
had been, and gaining dominion first over the district of Istakhr, the
ancient Persepolis. On coins and inscriptions his son gives him the title
of king. According to tradition, which in this instance is certainly
trustworthy, his lawful successor would have been his son Sapor, to
whom the Arsacid king is said to have granted the crown at his father’s
request during the life-time of the latter.

After his death, however, another of his sons, named Ardashir, refused
to submit to his brother, and rose in revolt; about which time Sapor
died--we can hardly suppose by accident. That Ardashir found his brothers
in his way and slew them, is so definitely affirmed by well authenticated
tradition that we cannot entertain a doubt that such was the case.
The empire of the Sassanids begins with Ardashir, just as that of the
Achæmenides begins with Cyrus, whose forefathers had likewise been kings.
His name, of which Artachshathr is the older form, is the same as that
which the Greeks rendered by Artaxerxes. It is a remarkable fact that in
the native home of the Achæmenides, who are otherwise unknown to genuine
Persian tradition, the ancient royal names should have survived in
common use; for several princes of the pre-Sassanid period were named
Artaxerxes and Darius (Darjaw, Darao, Dara). According to a fairly
probable estimate, Ardashir’s first appearance as king should be assigned
to the year 211-12 A.D.

[Sidenote: [211-233 A.D.]]

That he had hard work to exalt himself from prince of Persis to “king
of the kings of Iran” is recognised by tradition. He first made himself
master of the province of Carmania, which lies east of Persis, then of
Susiana, then of the small kingdom about the mouth of the Tigris. The
resistance which he had to overcome in the first instance was offered by
local sovereigns, not by the Parthian king, whose power was restricted
to an enormous extent by his nobles and vassals. Ultimately, however,
Ardashir came into conflict with him also.

According to Dion Cassius,[c] a contemporary, we are led to believe that
Ardashir defeated the Parthians in three battles. His decisive encounter
with Ardavan (Artabanus), the last Parthian Great King, probably took
place on April 22nd, 224 A.D.[30] Ardavan fell in the battle, and from
that time forward Ardashir assumed the title of “king of kings,” which
from ancient days had been borne by the ruler of the empire of anterior
Asia. All the evidence points to the decisive battle having taken place
in Babylonia or Susiana. This would fit in with Dion’s statement that
the first expedition afterwards undertaken was directed against Atra, in
the midst of the Mesopotamian desert, where a small independent state
had come into being in the near neighbourhood of the Parthian capital.
At first Ardashir beat in vain upon the walls of Atra, whose strength
can still be seen from the mighty ruins that remain, but the place was
soon taken and destroyed either by him or his successor. He succeeded in
conquering Media, where he was opposed by a scion of the Arsacid family,
and the greater part of the Iranian highlands; but not Armenia, whither
sons of Ardavan had fled.

The Romans had watched the rise of Ardashir with apprehension. There is
no question that he cherished the design of seizing upon as many of their
Asiatic possessions as he could. He gained some successes at first, but
was forced to give ground when Alexander Severus marched against him. The
history of the empire of the Sassanids was conditioned from the outset
by its relations with Rome. Peace was again and again concluded between
the two, but they invariably looked upon each other as adversaries, and
as adversaries of equal rank. Under capable rulers and tolerable internal
conditions Rome (that is Byzantium) maintained the ascendency of the
European over the Asiatic, but circumstances were frequently adverse, and
the Persians heaped disgrace upon the Roman name. This struggle fills the
chief place in the political history of the Sassanids.

SASSANIAN POWER

[Sidenote: [236-260 A.D.]]

Istakhr remained the capital in theory, as Persepolis had formerly been.
There stood the Fire temple of the royal house, in which the heads of
vanquished foreign kings were hung up among other trophies. But the real
metropolis was Ctesiphon, the capital of the Arsacids, and Seleucia,
which was divided from it only by the Tigris and which Ardashir restored
under the name of Veh-Ardashir (good Ardashir). The rich country in which
this double city lay was neither geographically nor ethnographically a
part of Iran, for the deep valley was peopled principally by Semites;
the choice of it as the seat of government was due to the precedent set
by the elder empire and in part, probably, to its nearness to Roman
territory. We cannot in all cases be sure over which countries Ardashir
ruled at the end of his life, for the national tradition tells of some
conquests really made by his successors, and others which the Sassanids
never made at all. But Ardashir won and consolidated a great empire that
held together for four centuries, giving a powerful blow to the system
of vassal states, which had become more and more prevalent under the
Arsacids, and reducing most of these states to provinces.

SAPOR FIGHTS ROME

The statement that he associated his son Sapor with him in the government
gains a degree of confirmation from the existence of coins bearing a
youthful head beside his own. He died at the end of 241 or the beginning
of 242. Sapor I (older form Shahpur; among Occidentals Sapor or Sapores)
was in all likelihood solemnly crowned on March 20th, 242. The mythical
statement that his mother was an Arcadian princess whom Ardashir took
to wife at the conquest of Ctesiphon is incompatible with the probably
more correct tradition that he had distinguished himself in the decisive
battle against Ardavan; nor is it likely that a child of thirteen or
fourteen would have taken so energetically in hand the war against Rome.
For Ardashir had resumed the struggle in his later years (in the reign
of Maximin, between February, 236, and about May, 238), and had taken
Nisibis (Nesibin) and Carrhæ (Haran), the two fortresses round which so
many battles were fought in the course of these wars.

In 242 Sapor had pressed forward to Antioch; but there he was met by the
emperor Gordian, and the latter, or rather his father-in-law Timesitheus,
drove him back and retook the two Mesopotamian strongholds. He defeated
the Persians at Reshaina, and purposed to march upon the Persian capital.
Like Julian after him, he chose the way along the Euphrates; and somewhat
below the junction of the Chaboras with the Euphrates, nearly on the
frontier between the two empires, Gordian was slain by the commander of
the guard, Philip the Arab (beginning of 244). The murderer had himself
proclaimed emperor and hastily concluded a shameful peace with Sapor, by
which he is said to have resigned Armenia and Mesopotamia to him.

There seems then to have been a breathing space of several years,
but in 251 or 252 Sapor made a fresh beginning. This time he really
occupied Armenia, which he had not been able to conquer before, and
forced the king to take refuge in Roman territory. From the isolated and
contradictory rumours that have come down to us we can hardly gather how
many times the Persians invaded Syria during this period. Nothing but the
frightful decrepitude of Rome could have rendered such a thing possible.
On one occasion Cyriades, a Syrian, led the Persians right to Antioch,
and under their protection assumed the title of emperor! At last the
emperor Valerian marched against them. For a while the war was waged on
Mesopotamian soil, but fortune turned against the Romans in the end; and
the bitterest of all humiliations befell them, for the emperor himself
was taken prisoner by Sapor (260). Under what circumstances this came to
pass we cannot tell; it was certainly preceded by negotiations in which
Valerian vainly tried to secure an unmolested retreat for himself and his
army on payment of a sum of money. The Romans laid the blame of it on
treachery or breach of faith.

THE WAR WITH PALMYRA

[Sidenote: [260-293 A.D.]]

After taking Valerian captive, Sapor pressed on towards Asia Minor, but
there was met by successful resistance. Many Persians were slaughtered by
Ballista, the Roman general. But the heaviest blow was dealt to the king
by the hand of a romanised Oriental. Odenathus (Odhenat), the chieftain
of the great trading city of Palmyra in the heart of the Syrian desert,
is said to have offered to enter into alliance with him, and to have been
completely repulsed. This is quite possible, for though Palmyra was a
part of the Roman Empire, yet since the emperor was a prisoner and Rome’s
dominion over the East was apparently broken, an ambitious Oriental might
easily have conceived the idea of playing an independent part as an ally
of the Great King. However that may be, Odenathus, on the watch for a
favourable place and opportunity, joined forces with Ballista, attacked
the Persians on their retreat, and inflicted a severe defeat upon them.
Part of the royal harem fell into his hands, and he even besieged
Ctesiphon once, if not twice.

Towards the end of Sapor’s reign a great change took place in the
oriental dominions of Rome. He appears to have supported Zenobia, the
widow of Odenathus, against Rome, though without lasting success. By the
time the emperor took Palmyra (273) and restored Roman supremacy over
those regions, Sapor was presumably already dead.

His son Hormuzd (Ohrmazd) I began to reign at the end of 272 or 273. As
a prince he appears to have fought gallantly against the Romans, and is
known to tradition by the surname of “the hero.” Among other legends of
all kinds he is said to have been satrap of Khorasan (which included all
the northeastern provinces) before his accession. As a king he had hardly
a chance of doing great deeds, for he reigned only one year.

According to the evidence of an inscription, his successor Bahram
(Varahran) I was not his son, as tradition has it, but his brother. He
is reported to have been an indolent and voluptuous sovereign. Manes
ventured to approach him, but by the machinations of the priests of
Zoroaster he was slain and his skin was stuffed and hung up to public
view. Bahram I reigned from about 274 to about 277.

Of his son, Bahram II (about 277-294), Persian tradition knows
practically nothing. Two large rock inscriptions, unfortunately much
defaced, probably date from his reign; they are religious, even hortatory
in substance, and strongly hierarchical in tendency. The emperor
Probus (276-282) concluded a peace with him on one occasion; of the
struggles which preceded it we have no knowledge. Probus himself was
assassinated before he could resume hostilities, but Carus carried out
his design (283), advanced to the very capital of the enemy’s empire,
and took Ctesiphon and Coche (a part of Seleucia). The sudden death of
the emperor, who is said to have been struck by a flash of lightning,
wrought deliverance for the Persians, for after it the Romans appear to
have withdrawn without much fighting. It is expressly stated that the
arms of Carus were favoured by civil broils among the Persians. Of such
the period was undoubtedly prolific, but we have no exact information
on the subject. In the year 291 a rhetorician referred to the revolt of
Prince Hormuzd (Ormies) against his brother the king, in conjunction with
barbarian tribes.

The youthful son whom Bahram II caused to be figured opposite his consort
upon his coins probably never came to the throne. It seems likely that
after his death two claimants fought for the succession, Bahram III,
presumably a son of Hormuzd, and Narseh, according to an inscription the
son of Sapor I. At all events Bahram III, who as prince had been satrap
of Sakenland (Sagastan, now Sistan) in the southeast of the empire, and
consequently bore the surname of Sagan Shah (Saken-king), reigned, or at
least held possession of the capital, for a very short time only.

[Sidenote: [293-339 A.D.]]

Narseh reigned about 293-303. He trod in the footsteps of Sapor, and
conquered Armenia. Cæsar Galerius took the field against him (probably
in 297) but was defeated in Mesopotamia, between Carrhæ and Callinicus
(Rakka). Under the wise direction of Diocletian, however, Galerius soon
restored the lustre of the Roman arms. He completely overthrew Narseh in
Armenia and took his wives and children prisoners. The negotiations for
peace, concerning which we have somewhat more definite information, ended
in a brilliant triumph; for Persia resigned all pretensions to Armenia
and Mesopotamia, and even ceded certain districts on the left of the
Tigris, extending as far as Kurdistan. The king willingly gave up the
provinces in return for the restoration of his family. This peace (dating
from 298) lasted for forty years. Narseh was succeeded by his son Hormuzd
II (about 303). Of his reign we know nothing.

After his death his son Adharnarseh ascended the throne (beginning of
310), but after a very short time was deposed--on account of his cruelty
it is said--and probably slain. The nobles, who then had the power in
their own hands, disqualified for rule another (unnamed) son of Hormuzd
II by putting out his eyes, and flung Hormuzd, the third son, into
prison. They then nominated for the kingship the newborn or still unborn
son of the queen Ifra--Hormuzd. All these events took place in the course
of the year 310. The royal infant was named Sapor II, oppressor of
Christians.

The state of things under the rule of his mother and the great nobles may
easily be imagined. But the child developed early into a man capable of
governing alone; he was one of the most famous sovereigns of the dynasty.
Before he had grown to manhood Hormuzd escaped from captivity and fled
to the Romans (323), amongst whom he remained till his death, fighting
with them against Sapor, his half-brother, down to the year 363. Persian
tradition, which has little of a historical nature to tell of Sapor II,
gives us accounts of his adventurous campaigns against the Arabs, who
had occupied or devastated various parts of Persian territory during his
minority. These legends are highly exaggerated, not without an anti-Arab
intention; but there can be no doubt that Sapor zealously devoted himself
to the task of keeping the rapacious Bedouins out of civilised regions--a
very serious problem for the rulers of countries bordering on the desert.
The restoration of the ancient city of Susa is notable amongst the
cities which he founded. The inhabitants had rebelled against him, and
in retaliation he had them put to death and their city trodden into the
dust by elephants; after which he built it afresh. Nishapur (properly
Nev-Shahpuhr), one of the largest cities of the East down to late
mediæval times, was founded either by him or by Sapor I.

During Sapor’s youth the mighty change had taken place by which
Constantine procured for Christianity the victory over paganism in the
Roman Empire. The Christians in the Persian Empire immediately recognised
in Rome the Christian state _par excellence_, and were strongly disposed
in its favour. When Sapor went to war with the Romans (337 or 338) they
openly displayed their own sentiments; at least a homily of Aphraates,
a Syrian bishop in the Persian Empire, written about this time, speaks
on the subject in no ambiguous tone. In addition to this, Simon, bishop
of the capital, indulged in such defiant utterances as no oriental
monarch was likely to let pass, least of all a young and energetic
sovereign like Sapor II. It was the signal for conflict, and a frightful
persecution of the Christians began almost simultaneously with the Roman
War (339-40). We have an animated picture of these events in the Syrian
_Acts of the Martyrs_, which throw much light on other things and persons
in the empire. The king was not actuated by religious fanaticism. The
Jews were as obnoxious to his priests as the Christians, but he left
them unmolested. Even in the _Acts of the Martyrs_ he repeatedly appears
as a man wholly without bias in purely religious matters. But, like
Diocletian, he wished to annihilate that state within the state--the
organisation of the church; and he therefore destroyed church buildings
and took the most vigorous measures against both the superior and the
inferior clergy.

A NEW WAR WITH ROME

[Sidenote: [337-363 A.D.]]

According to Roman assertions, the Persians began the war by an invasion
of Mesopotamia. Constantine died before he could take the field against
them (the 22nd of May, 337). But the king’s great preparations date from
the year which begins with the autumn of 337. On the first and longer
half of the war, which lasted with many vicissitudes and long pauses for
twenty-five years, our information is but scanty. On parts of the second,
on the contrary, we possess very full reports by contemporaries and even
eye-witnesses. The king’s object was to deprive the Romans of their
possessions on the upper Tigris, where it must have been exceedingly
inconvenient for the Persians to have them on account of their nearness
to Ctesiphon. Above all, he aimed at taking the strong fortress of
Nisibis; and he further desired to bring Armenia, that old apple of
discord between the Eastern and Western empires, into subjection to
himself once more. Three times he closely besieged Nisibis (in the years
338, 346, and 350), but in vain. Sieges, on the whole, play a very great
part in this war.

If Sapor did not in the long run succeed in gaining great advantages,
it was through no merit of the emperor Constantine, who was invariably
defeated when he took command in person, as, for example, in the famous
battle by night at Singara (Shingar, Arabic Sinjar) (348 A.D.). The
main reason was that the great emperors Diocletian and Constantine had
put the fortresses into admirable condition and taken other excellent
measures for the protection of the provinces exposed to attack. It was a
great thing gained that the Persians, even when victorious, could hardly
penetrate into western Mesopotamia. Moreover the king’s forces were not
large enough for him to leave garrisons in all the fortresses which
he took. Thus in 360 Amida (Amid), which Sapor had taken after a long
siege and with heavy loss in the previous year, was found by the Romans
unoccupied. The Romans were also favoured by the circumstance that the
king was at the same time engaged in conflict with several barbarous
tribes. The third siege of Nisibis had almost come to a successful
conclusion when he was obliged suddenly to depart to Khorasan, where his
presence was urgently required.

The wars in the East brought about a long truce (from 350 to 358),
interrupted only by small predatory excursions. But by the time
negotiations were opened on the Roman side (356-358) Sapor had concluded
peace with his enemies in the East, and offered terms which it was quite
impossible to accept. In 359 and 360 hostilities were resumed with
energy, and Sapor took several important fortresses. Another interval of
repose ensued; but in 363 a change came over the whole conduct of the
war.

[Sidenote: [363-379 A.D.]]

Vigorous, ambitious, and proved in arms, Julian, now sole emperor,
determined to follow the example of Trajan, Septimius Severus, and Carus,
and march straight upon the enemy’s capital. On the 5th of March he left
Antioch, went first to Mesopotamia, and thence proceeded rapidly down the
Euphrates. He ravaged Persian territory with fire and sword, took several
cities after a short siege, among them Mahoz Malka, one of the royal
cities close to Ctesiphon. He even reached Seleucia; but realising that
he was not able to take the strongly fortified city of Ctesiphon on the
far side of the Tigris by storm, he turned to retreat along the left bank
of the river. Here for the first time Sapor’s troops began to annoy him
seriously. None the less he would certainly have led the army back into
Roman territory without heavy loss, but he was mortally wounded in an
engagement on the 26th of June, 363.

Jovian, who was chosen emperor by the army after Julian’s death, was
by no means equal to the difficult position in which he found himself,
and conducted both the war and the negotiations in such a manner as
ultimately to bring about a shameful peace. After the death of his
dreaded enemy, Sapor behaved with equal adroitness and moderation. He
obtained the retrocession of the districts to the left of the Tigris,
which Galerius had won, and part of Mesopotamia, including Nisibis and
Singara. The Romans with much difficulty secured permission for the
inhabitants of these cities to depart elsewhere. The cession of Nisibis
was the heaviest blow of all, for in all subsequent wars it was a strong
point of departure to the Persians for offensive and defensive purposes.

More shameful even than these cessions was the stipulation that the
Romans should withdraw their support from King Arsaces of Armenia, who
had sided with them and given him up to Sapor. The king, however, did not
find Armenia easy to conquer. He got Arsaces into his power, but that did
not give him possession, still less permanent possession, of the country,
split up as it was by many natural divisions and ruled by numerous and
almost independent feudal lords. The Christians of Armenia inclined
in the main to the Romans; the Zoroastrians, of whom there were still
large numbers, to the Persians; while the varying private interests of
the great barons, who would have preferred to have no master over them,
constituted a third factor in the situation. The Romans supported, first
secretly and then openly, Papa, the son of Arsaces, who had taken refuge
with them, but only that they might use him as a tool to convert Armenia
into a Roman province. In Iberia (north of Armenia) the adherents of the
two empires likewise came into collision. At the end of five years the
country was practically once more in a state of war. In 371 the Persian
king came to open hostilities with the Roman troops in Armenia, both
parties trying to acquire the country by force or fraud. But however
often the negotiations between them came to naught, the pressure of
circumstances (in the case of the Romans, the troubles with the Goths)
and the dictates of reason prevented the outbreak of a general war.

ARDASHIR II TO BAHRAM IV

[Sidenote: [379-420 A.D.]]

Sapor II, who by even late tradition is held in honour as a mighty king,
died towards the end of the summer of 379, and was succeeded by his
brother, Ardashir II. The elevation of this old man to the throne may
have been due to the same kind of motives as had prompted the coronation
of the infant Sapor. As prince-satrap of Adiabene (a part of ancient
Assyria) he had taken an active part in the suppression of Christianity
as long before as 344, and again in 376. After his accession, however,
the persecution ceased, perhaps by deliberate intention, perhaps out of
mere oriental indolence. Even the capital could have its bishop again.
But, having taken forcible action against the great nobles and put
several of them to death, Ardashir was deposed by them in 383 or 384.

His successor, Sapor III, the son of Sapor II, had no sooner ascended
the throne than he despatched ambassadors to Constantinople, and there
concluded a settled peace (384). He reigned only a short time, being
murdered by the nobles in 388 or 389.

His son (or possibly brother) and successor, Bahram IV, who bore the
surname of Kerman Shah, “king of Carmania,” because as prince he had
ruled that province, remained on friendly terms with the Romans and was
clement towards the Christians. In 390 the two empires divided Armenia
between them by treaty, in such a manner that by far the greater part
became a vassal state to Persia and the remainder to Rome. There were
many complications still to come, but this division nevertheless remained
in force down to Arab times. Bahram IV also died a violent death, being
slain by the arrows of “evil-doers,” in the summer of 399.

THE RULE OF YEZDEGERD I

His successor, Yezdegerd I, a son of Sapor II or Sapor III, seemed to
have been designated as heir to the throne or otherwise invested with
some sovereign dignity even during the life-time of Bahram IV, for his
name appears on coins in conjunction with the king’s.

For all that he was far from being a Christian, and did not scruple to
visit with severe chastisement the blind zeal which led Bishop Abda of
Susiana to violate Zoroastrian sanctuaries. But the measure of toleration
which he extended to Christianity was enough to rouse the hatred of
the Persian priesthood, while the warlike nobility were probably ill
pleased by his earnest desire to maintain peace with Rome. In the summer
of 408 he concluded a firm treaty of peace and alliance, by which he
seems to have undertaken a formal guarantee for the reign of the emperor
Theodosius II, then a minor. He set a trustworthy vassal king over
Persian Armenia in the person of his son Sapor. We have every reason
to regard him as a skilful ruler for his time and country. But he was
not well pleasing to the god of Persia. Wherefore he caused him to die
suddenly in marvellous wise in far Hyrcania. We prosaically interpret
this miracle to mean that he was murdered by the despotic nobles
(probably late in the summer of 420); even as his three predecessors had
been violently deprived of their sovereignty, and two of them murdered.

After his death, his son Sapor hastened from Armenia to the capital, no
doubt intending to become king of the empire, but was murdered by the
great nobles, for the latter were so exasperated against Yezdegerd that
they resolved to exclude his sons from the succession. They chose a
distant relative of his, Chosroes by name, to be their king. But another
son of Yezdegerd, Bahram by name, contested his claim to the throne.
During his father’s life-time this son had lived, presumably in a sort of
banishment, with al-Mundhir (Alamundaros) the Arab king of Hira (west of
the Euphrates and on the borders of the desert), a powerful vassal king.
The latter supported Bahram’s pretensions with all his might, and this
is probably the first time that the Arabs effectively interfered in the
course of Persian history.

THE ARABS AID IN WAR WITH ROME

[Sidenote: [420-457 A.D.]]

Mundhir, with vast hordes of Arabs behind him, was soon at the gates of
the capital, which lay only three or four days’ journey distant from
Hira, and no doubt the rightful heir to the throne could count upon a
party among the Persians. A compromise was therefore effected between
the disputants, Chosroes withdrew his claim, and Bahram ascended the
throne, but under promise to rule differently from his father and to do
the will of the nobles and priests. Bahram V, who bears the surname of
Gor, “the wild ass,” is a favourite with Persian tradition, which tells
absolutely fabulous stories of him. He was young when he became king,
and to the end of his days he was jovial and much addicted to women. The
change of policy was immediately signalised by two things--the outbreak
of a systematic persecution of the Christians, and a war with Rome. Both
sides could easily find pretexts for war, but it is most likely that the
Persian nobles urged it on; the Romans would certainly not have entered
on the struggle merely on account of the persecution.

The main theatre of war was in Persian Mesopotamia and the mountain
tracts that bounded it on the north. The Persian commander was Mihr
Narseh, one of the most powerful nobles. A vainglorious Persian tradition
relates that he made a victorious entry into Constantinople, but we know
that, on the contrary, he suffered a severe defeat at the very beginning
of the war (August, 421). The Romans besieged Nisibis for a long time,
but the approach of a fresh force compelled them hastily to raise the
siege. Mundhir, to whom Bahram owed his throne, was eager to devastate
Syria with his Arabs, but was forced to retreat with great loss. The
war, concerning the progress of which we have no adequate information,
enfeebled both sides to such an extent that they quickly became anxious
to end it. In the terms of peace (422) the Persians promised to allow the
Christians the free exercise of their religion, and the Romans undertook
to do likewise to the Zoroastrians.

The desire of the Persians for peace was most likely due to the fact that
they were again involved in warfare with the rulers of the Bactria of
that day and the neighbouring countries, the tribe of the Kushan, Haital
(Hephthalites), or “white Huns.” To this perpetual conflict the Romans
probably owed their rest from Persian invasion in the fifth century.
We are not bound to take the word of Persian tradition for Bahram’s
brilliant victory over the Hephthalites.

In Persian Armenia yearnings after independence had asserted themselves
during the war with Rome, but when peace was concluded Bahram could
again install a vassal king there; the selfish Armenian nobles, however,
went to such lengths that the Persians were finally driven to do away
with the Armenian monarchy altogether and to convert the country into a
province (429), as the Romans had long since done with their portion of
it. In this the Persians had the assistance of a strong party among the
Armenians themselves, though as a matter of fact the Persian satraps had
no less trouble with the barons and priests than with the kings before
them.

After the death of Bahram (438 or 439) his son Yezdegerd II became
king. He persecuted both Christians and Jews, nor is there much to be
set to his credit in other respects. He abolished the audiences, on
the first day of every month, in which any man of consequence was free
to lay grievances or petitions before the king. The story goes that he
married his own daughter (though that was no crime in the opinion of the
Zoroastrians, who considered such marriages positively meritorious) and
afterwards killed her.

WAR WITH THE HEPHTHALITES

[Sidenote: [457-489 A.D.]]

Upon the death of Yezdegerd II (457) a quarrel seems to have broken
out immediately between his sons, Hormuzd III, king (that is to say,
“prince-satrap”) of Sagastan, and Peroz, who were the children of one
mother, Dinak by name. Hormuzd, the elder, held his ground for a while,
but at the end of two years Peroz supplanted him by the help of the
Hephthalites and the active exertions of Raham, of the noble house of
Mihran. He caused three others of his nearest kinsmen to be put to death,
as well as his brother. He, again, was hostile to Christians and Jews,
but he had political insight enough to favour the conversion of his
Christian subjects to the doctrines of Nestorius, which had been banished
as archheresy from the Roman Empire. At the synod held at Beth Lapat in
the year 483 or 484, the ancient Christian church of the Persian Empire
adopted the Nestorian confession; and being thenceforward separated
by a great gulf from the Roman Christians, was consequently even less
dangerous to the state than it had been before.

But, as a matter of fact, Christianity in Persia had never been really
much of a menace to the country. The Armenians on the other hand joined
the monophysites, who had a large party in the Roman Empire and often had
the upper hand there.

Whether the Hephthalites wanted heavier payment for their assistance
than had been previously agreed upon, or whether Peroz did not keep
promises he had actually made, the end was that great conflicts ensued
between them and the Persians. Peroz won some victories; but in the
desert country east of the Caspian Sea the conduct of war is hampered
by enormous difficulties. Twice he was compelled to conclude peace on
unfavourable terms, once at least he himself fell into the hands of his
enemies, and for two years his son Kavadh had to remain in the enemy’s
camp as a hostage for the payment of his heavy ransom. Nevertheless
Peroz was perpetually breaking the pledges he had given. In 484 he
took the field with a large army. A tremendous battle ensued, in which
Peroz perished among the unrecognised slain. His daughter was among the
prisoners, and the king of the Hephthalites took her into his harem.

Evil days were now in store for Persia. The victors overran the
country. For a time there was no king. Presently, however, Zarmihr, of
the powerful house of the Karen, succeeded in restoring order in the
empire. At the time of Peroz’s death this man had been in Armenia, which
had rebelled again, and had almost completed its subjugation. He then
hastened to the capital and installed Balash, a brother of the late
ruler, as king. In all probability he afterward entered into negotiations
with the victorious enemy, and bought him off with a yearly tribute.

A brother of Balash, Zareh by name, who likewise aspired to the crown,
was defeated and slain. The king, however, had but little authority. He
was obliged to induce the Armenians to submit by allowing them to exclude
the state religion of Persia from their country altogether. The praise
which the Syrians and the Armenians render to Balash’s clemency may
perhaps have no other foundation than his disagreements with the priests
of Zoroaster. The enmity thus aroused proved fatal to him. His treasury,
of course, was empty, so that he could neither form a party among the
nobles nor attach an army to himself; and in 488 or 489 the priests went
so far as to have him blinded and so made incapable of governing. For
according to the law of Persia no man could be king who was not whole and
sound in body and mind.

KAVADH I

[Sidenote: [489-506 A.D.]]

His nephew, Kavadh I, the son of Peroz, was set in his place. He found
the empire in a state of great disorder. We hear of revolts of savage
mountain tribes, and of another rebellion in Armenia. Kavadh, who had no
inclination to play the obedient servant to the tyrants who had raised
him to the throne, adopted a dangerous method of weakening the power
of priests and nobles; for he favoured Mazdak, a zealous preacher of
religious-socialistic doctrines, who demanded in the name of justice that
he who was blest with riches and possessed of many wives should give of
his superfluity to those who were in want. Nor did he rest satisfied with
the theory, for many of his disciples distributed their wives and goods.
But the nobles and clergy united to depose Kavadh, imprisoned him in the
“castle of oblivion,” and bestowed the crown on his brother Jamasp (about
496). Kavadh, however, escaped, and fled to the Hephthalites, among whom
he had formerly lived as a hostage. The king gave him his daughter to
wife, the child of that sister of Kavadh who had been taken in battle;
and by the help of the barbarian prince he succeeded in overthrowing
Jamasp and once more becoming king of Persia (498 or 499). His flight and
restoration appear to have been favoured by some of the most powerful
nobles. According to Persian tradition Zarmihr actually accompanied him
into exile, but such testimony as we have concerning this man and the
flight to the Hephthalites is so confused that we can place no reliance
upon it. Certain it is that after his return the king visited his enemies
with severe chastisement. Presumably he abandoned Zarmihr about that
time, for he handed him over to his most formidable rival, Sapor, of the
house of Mihran. It is not likely that Kavadh then resumed his experiment
with the Mazdakites.

NEW CONFLICT WITH ROME

He had certainly reduced the empire to tolerable order by the time the
war with the Romans began. There had been much treating over terms, both
parties had violated compacts more or less, and the only question was
whether either of them was desirous of finding a _casus belli_. This was
the case with Kavadh. In the summer of 502 he inaugurated that era of
hideous strife which so reduced the strength of both Persia and Eastern
Rome as to make possible the subsequent victories of the Arabs. In August
he took Theodosiopolis (Karin or Erzerum), the capital of Roman Armenia,
without a blow. On the 10th of January, 503, Amida fell after a three
months’ siege, and was frightfully punished for its resistance. Myriads
of the inhabitants were slaughtered, as we know from the good accounts we
have in existing contemporary Syrian sources.

In this war, of which very full contemporary accounts have come down to
us, especially from Syrian sources, the Roman operations were conducted
without the necessary energy, and lacked the direction of a single
commander. Mesopotamia was fearfully ravaged. In 504 the Romans regained
possession of Amida, after a long siege, by treaty, or more correctly
speaking by purchase. After many battles and sieges peace was concluded
in the August of 506, a peace which left everything _in statu quo ante_.
The Romans once more undertook to pay an annual contribution towards the
maintenance of the fortifications in the Caucasus. The Persians are said
to have been induced to conclude peace by a war with the “Huns.”

[Sidenote: [506-554 A.D.]]

From the vague fashion in which the Greek authors of that time use the
word “Huns” we cannot tell which of the tribes of northern barbarians is
here meant. That Kavadh was at this time involved in serious difficulties
at home or abroad may be inferred from the fact that he did not forcibly
prevent a gross violation of the treaty of peace on the part of the
emperor Anastasius, who converted the little village of Dara, close upon
the frontier, into a great fortress intended to keep Nisibis in check.
There was no further outbreak of hostilities during the life-time of
Anastasius; but Justin I (July the 9th, 518-August the 1st, 527) appears
to have intermitted the payment of the moneys stipulated to Persia.

In return Kavadh incited the Arabs to make predatory raids into Roman
territory, and Roman troops once more invaded and ravaged Armenia. In
addition, violent quarrels arose about the Caucaso-Pontic districts,
over which both sides claimed dominion. This time, however, Kavadh was
little disposed towards war; perhaps he had realised that he could
hardly hope to gain any permanent advantage. In the perpetual renewal
of negotiations he had only one main object in view; he was anxious to
procure the succession for Chosroes, the best beloved of his sons and
certainly the most capable of ruling the empire, although he was not the
eldest; and for this purpose he wished for a kind of guarantee from the
emperor, which should take the form of an adoption of Chosroes by the
latter. Negotiations concerning this and other matters were carried on at
Nisibis. If matters went as they are represented to have gone, the Romans
acted most perversely; in any case the negotiations had no other result
than to put both parties out of humour. The chiefs of the Roman embassy
escaped with no worse than degradation, the Persians were executed,
though personally they deserved well of the king. These negotiations took
place in 525 or 526; the war began again before the death of Justin.
There was hard fighting on the frontier as early as the summer of 527,
the Romans making a vain assault on Nisibis, and the Persians an equally
fruitless attempt on Dara.

EXPLOITS OF MUNDHIR

In these many years of war, with frequent pauses for negotiation,
Belisarius first comes into prominence as a commander. One noteworthy
event, among others, is Mundhir’s great invasion of Syria. This Mundhir
was the Arab vassal-prince of Hira, of the same line as the prince of the
same name. He seems before this to have grown so powerful as to rouse
Kavadh’s apprehensions, and the latter therefore deprived him, either
wholly or in part, of his dominions for a time, in favour of Harith, a
member of the much-ramified family of the Kinda kings. The statement
that this event bore some relation to the Mazdakite troubles is hardly
probable.

On the outbreak of the war with Rome, however, Kavadh restored the whole
of his former dominions to the tried warrior Mundhir. In the spring of
529 the latter invaded Syria, laid the whole country waste as far as
Antioch, and carried off troops of captives that he might secure their
ransom. He was a savage who in one day slaughtered four hundred nuns from
a Syrian nunnery in honour of his goddess Zuhara (the planet Venus). In
the same year his rival Harith went to war with him, and Mundhir caused
a number of members of the princely family of Kinda, who had fallen into
his hands, to be put to death at Hira. For half a century he was the
terror of Roman subjects, troubling himself little to inquire whether
peace prevailed or not, till at length he fell in battle against the
Roman prince of the Arabs, Harith, the son of Jabala (June, 554), whose
captive son he had likewise sacrificed to Zuhara.

[Sidenote: [531-540 A.D.]]

It was Mundhir who induced Kavadh, after an interval, to undertake a
campaign in Syria itself (531). The Persians advanced far to the north
along the right bank of the Euphrates, but were compelled to retreat by
Belisarius. A battle was fought at Callinicus (Rakka), near the frontier
that is, in which Belisarius was totally defeated; but the Persian
commander was nevertheless obliged to return home. The Persians gained
some successes in Mesopotamia the same year, and had almost reduced the
great fortress of Martyropolis (Maiferkat, Arabic Mayafarikin) when
tidings came of the death of the king, and brought about a truce.

A few years before his death Kavadh had brought the Mazdakites to a
horrible end. The sect seems to have grown so powerful that it could
no longer be tolerated; for, in spite of all its theoretic idealism it
threatened to subvert the foundations of society and the state. The
catastrophe, which was accompanied by lavish bloodshed, took place in 528
or 529, under the orders of Prince Chosroes, acting in agreement with the
king.

Kavadh died on the 13th of September, 531, aged eighty-two. He certainly
destined Chosroes for his successor; and according to a report we may
well credit, he had him crowned on his death-bed. Chosroes I (Chosrau),
who bears the surname of _Anosharvan_, “the blessed,” was undoubtedly
a great king. It is true that he was by no means the ideal king that
Orientals make him out to have been, but neither does he bear the title
of “the just” without due reason.

CHOSROES “THE JUST”

The negotiation taken in hand on his accession led in the course of a
year to an “eternal peace” (September, 532). The Romans agreed to make
a large annual payment and other concessions, the Persians gave up some
castles in Lazistan (the ancient Colchis, at the eastern extremity of
the Black Sea). The conclusion of peace was evidently a matter of great
moment to the Persian king. He probably availed himself at once of this
breathing space to protect his frontiers from barbarians of all kinds.
Tradition is certainly right in attributing to him comprehensive measures
for the defence of the Caucasus and northeastern frontier, among which
was the forcible transplantation of unruly tribes.

In a few years he felt himself strong enough to take up hostilities
against the Romans once more. Perhaps he really feared that the result of
the success of Justinian’s arms in Italy and Africa would be to make the
Roman Empire too strong for him. No doubt the messengers sent by Witiges,
king of the Goths, had painted the perils which would ensue to Persia
from them in the liveliest colours. He probably found an incitement even
more powerful in the fact that the Armenian nobles, who had rebelled in
consequence of many acts of injustice, applied to him for aid although
they were Christians.

CHOSROES ATTACKS ROME

[Sidenote: [540-551 A.D.]]

There was no lack of petty violations of the treaty by one side or the
other; the Arabs on both sides alone took good care of that. At all
events Chosroes was this time eager for war, and he therefore started
early in the year 540 to invade Syria as Sapor I had done. He passed
by the strongly fortified cities which bought him off by the payment
of large sums, those which offered resistance he took. This fate fell
heaviest upon Antiochia, the metropolis. The army left it laden with
booty, which included many works of art. He burned the city and carried
off its inhabitants. After advancing to the shores of the “Roman” Sea, he
continued his victorious progress through northern Syria and Mesopotamia,
from west to east. The fortress of Dara, which had always been an eyesore
to the Persians because it had been built in contravention of the treaty,
was obliged to purchase safety at a price. None went free without payment
except the inhabitants of Carrhæ, who, being still heathen, might be
supposed to entertain sympathy for the non-Christian empire. At the end
of the summer he reached Ctesiphon again, without having encountered any
open resistance in the field.

In the second year of the war Chosroes marched to Lazistan at the request
of the inhabitants, penetrated to the Black Sea, and there took the
strong fortress of Petra. The struggle was continued for several years
in Mesopotamia with variable fortune. In 546 a truce was concluded for
five years on payment of a large sum of money by the Romans. But Lazistan
territory was excluded from the operation of the truce, both then and in
553, when the armistice was prolonged for a further period of five years.
The Arabs of the two empires also continued to fight with one another.
Not until 556 was the armistice extended to Lazistan, the Roman arms
having made some progress in the meantime, and about Christmas, 562, a
peace was concluded for fifty years.

The Romans again pledged themselves to pay a considerable sum every
year, the Persians resigned their claims to Lazistan, but the question
of who should possess the neighbouring province of Suania remained
undecided. Our information concerning the articles of this peace happens
to be exceptionally detailed; one important provision is that, though
stipulating for full religious liberty for Persian Christians, the Romans
recognise that they are prohibited from proselytising among Zoroastrians;
and consequently that severe punishment inflicted for the infringement of
this prohibition does not constitute a violation of the articles of peace.

In the attempt to conquer Yemen (about 570) we have in actual fact a
somewhat wild undertaking. The country had been occupied in 525 by the
Christian Abyssinians. A prince of Yemen besought Chosroes to aid him in
delivering the country from the negroes. After some hesitation the king
despatched a small force under Vahriz by sea, which actually succeeded
in overcoming the feeble resistance of the Abyssinian army and bringing
the country into subjection to the king. It remained nominally under
the sovereignty of Persia until it became Moslem, but the empire reaped
no advantage from this remote province beyond a certainly scanty and
probably irregular tribute.

A country to which the sea offered the only convenient approach could be
of no use to a race so utterly ignorant of navigation as the Persians,
and we find no vestige of sea-borne traffic between Yemen and Persia.
Chosroes may indeed have had some idea of diverting commercial advantages
from the Romans and procuring them for the Persians, just as in other
respects commercial interests play their part in the hostile and amicable
relations of the empire; as was done, for instance, and to a very great
extent, by the silk trade with the interior of Asia.

[Sidenote: [551-578 A.D.]]

The king was not exempt from strife within the borders of his dominions.
About 551 his son Anoshazadh, who for some offence had been banished to
Susiana, hearing that his father was seriously ill, proclaimed himself
king and persisted in his rebellion. He relied upon the Christians, his
mother’s co-religionists, but was soon overcome and taken prisoner. He
was not executed, but merely rendered ineligible for the throne by a
slight facial disfigurement.

In the later years of his life Chosroes was again involved in war with
the Romans, who this time allied themselves with the Turkish chagan, now
a formidable foe of Persia. The Persians did all they could to prevent
intercourse between him and the Romans. The Romans likewise complained
of the destruction of the Christian kingdom of Yemen. But these were
secondary considerations. Even the refusal of the emperor, Justin II
(November 14th, 565-6, to October, 578), to pay to Persia the sum
stipulated by treaty would probably not have led to a direct rupture.

But the Persians could not tamely submit to see the whole of Armenia
become Roman. Armenian nobles were once more contemplating rebellion;
the clergy and the fanatical mob raised a tumult when it was proposed to
erect a temple of Fire at Dovin, the capital, and Suren, a Persian, was
slain (spring of 571). The rebels turned to Constantinople; the king of
Iberia (to the north of Armenia) did likewise. The incompetent emperor
imagined that both countries might fall to Rome again, and took them
under his protection. It was the signal for war. Excellent as are the
contemporary reports of this war which have come down to us, we have no
complete and chronologically exact summary of its progress. At the very
beginning Nisibis was besieged to no purpose by the Romans; Chosroes,
on the other hand, took Dara after a six months’ siege (573), while
his general, Adharmahan, invaded Syria by way of the right bank of the
Euphrates, and there perpetrated ravages similar to those for which his
master had been responsible in 540. He destroyed Apamea and carried the
inhabitants away into captivity. After marching through Mesopotamia he
joined forces with the king before Dara. Some of the captives he settled
in New Antioch.

Tiberius, who directed the government at Constantinople in concert with
the empress Sophia and was formally appointed co-regent on the 7th of
December, 574, was anxious for peace. But even the conclusion of a truce
for three years did not bring about real tranquillity, as Armenia was not
included in the armistice. Early in the year 575 Chosroes marched through
Armenia and penetrated a long way towards Cappadocia. He was obliged to
withdraw before the Roman troops, who actually plundered his camp, but
could not prevent him from burning Sebastia and Melitene and getting
safely home. His Roman pursuers occupied a great part of Persian Armenia
and wintered there, but were driven out of it in the following year.

That the Romans displayed no more humanity than the Persians is clear
from the fact that they carried off even the Christian inhabitants of
the Persian border-provinces of Arzanene, and considered it a singular
favour to assign dwelling-places to them in Cyprus (577). Negotiations
for peace were set on foot again and again. After recent experiences the
Roman claims to Persian Armenia and Iberia were readily renounced at
Constantinople. On the point of honour that the temporal and spiritual
nobles of Armenia who had taken refuge at Constantinople should not be
handed over to the vengeance of the Persians, an understanding might
also have been arrived at. Dara was still a great stumbling-block, the
Romans insisting on its restoration, with excellent reason. For all that,
peace would probably have been concluded if Chosroes had not died (about
February, 579) shortly after Tiberius had become sole monarch (October
4th or 6th, 578).

HORMUZD IV

[Sidenote: [578-590 A.D.]]

The new king, Hormuzd IV, son of Chosroes and the daughter of the
Turkish chagan, was haughty and enterprising. It produced an unpleasant
impression at Constantinople that he sent no notification of his
accession thither, for even in time of war announcements of this sort
had been ceremoniously made by both courts. Altogether Greek authors
criticise Hormuzd very unfavourably, and even Persian tradition testifies
that he was spiteful and shed much blood. We know on the evidence of
a contemporary that he put his brothers to death when he came to the
throne, but the same authority states that this was a barbarous custom
among the Persians. On the other hand, Persian tradition reports that he
exercised strict justice without respect of persons, and zealously took
the part of the common man against the noble. The weight of his severity
fell upon the great. This agrees with the fact that he took thought
for the soldiers in the ranks and treated the aristocratic cuirassiers
with slight regard. He also incurred the wrath of the priests by a
decision which does him the highest honour, for he ironically rejected
their petition that he should place Christians at a disadvantage. In
many points he seems to have resembled the first Yezdegerd, whose fate
he likewise shared. It was his misfortune that he did not possess the
intellectual superiority which enabled his father to control the nobles,
both temporal and spiritual.

The war with Rome lasted through the whole of his reign, and the
repeated attempts at negotiations came to nought. Sometimes one side was
victorious, sometimes the other. To this war was added an unfortunate
war with the Turks. Against them Hormuzd despatched Bahram Chobin. He
succeeded in gaining a brilliant victory over them, or rather over one
of their vassals, and took much booty; and even, as the story goes,
converted the Persian tribute to the Turks into a Turkish tribute to the
Persians. The victorious general was next sent (589) to the countries
south of the Caucasus, there to aim a mighty blow at the Romans. Bahram,
however, was totally routed. Hormuzd was then guilty of the folly of
dismissing this experienced commander, the head of the house of Mihran,
with ignominy.

CIVIL WAR

[Sidenote: [590-592 A.D.]]

Bahram retaliated by open rebellion. His army took his part. He very
likely knew how disaffected the nobles were, and could count upon
malcontents among the rest of the troops. The army in Mesopotamia, which
had retreated to Nisibis after being defeated by the Romans and dreaded
the vengeance of the king, mutinied and joined Bahram, though without
resigning its independence. Bahram had advanced as far as the great Zab
(not far from the Mosul of to-day) on his way to the capital, when he was
confronted by a royal army. But this army likewise rebelled, not, indeed,
in Bahram’s favour, but in favour of Chosroes, the king’s son. Some of
these troops reached Ctesiphon soon after, whither Hormuzd had hurried
from Media on receipt of the fatal tidings. The city was given over to
tumult. Bindoe, whose sister was Chosroes’ mother, was imprisoned there
(a fate most liable to befall an oriental noble); his brother Bistam
(Vistahm) liberated him by force, and the nobles proceeded to depose
Hormuzd and proclaim Chosroes king (summer of 590). He was on bad terms
with his father, and the movement certainly did not come upon him as a
surprise. How far he was implicated in the assassination of Hormuzd,
which soon followed, we cannot tell with any degree of certainty; most
likely he let that happen which he could not well prevent.

Chosroes II, surnamed _Parvez_, “the victorious,” tried in vain to win
Bahram over to his side. The latter himself wished to reign either in
the name of a prince who was not of age, or preferably in his own.
Chosroes marched against him, but his army was not loyal. The famous
general commanded more respect than the faint-hearted king, whose troops
deserted him after the first serious engagement. Chosroes, with his
family and a few faithful followers, fled into Syria, to the Romans. When
he had reached the frontier city of Circesium, he wrote to implore the
aid of the emperor Maurice (who had been on the throne since the 14th
of August, 582). The latter was not adroit enough to take advantage of
this extraordinarily favourable situation for the benefit of his empire,
for he undertook to restore Chosroes without stipulating for a fair
equivalent. A man of mean origin himself, he probably felt flattered by
the mere fact of being called upon to reinstate a legitimate king of
ancient lineage and being able to declare himself “father” of such a one.

Meanwhile Bahram, after some hesitation, had caused himself to be
proclaimed king and had struck coins in his own name. He had also been
fortunate enough to get Bindoe into his power. But Bahram’s was but a
tottering throne from the outset. The nobles would not submit to a man
who had been their equal. Even in the Parthian Empire, however, often
kings were deposed and raised to the throne; it had always been accounted
right that none but an Arsacid should wear the crown, and in the empire
of the Sassanids the legitimist sentiment was much stronger. In the
popular mind the “ancient royal majesty” (_farrahi kayanik_) was bound up
with the house of Ardaschir, and no other could reign.

There was a rising even in Ctesiphon itself, which was put down by
Bahram, though Bindoe escaped during the tumult, further to exert himself
on his nephew’s behalf. By the beginning of 591 an imperial army was in
the field to reinstate Chosroes. Martyropolis, which had fallen into the
hands of the Persians through treachery, and had already been blockaded
for a considerable time, was given over to the Romans by Chosroes; so was
Dara. The Persian army at Nisibis went over to him, and increased from
day to day by the arrival of Persian nobles, among whom were barons from
Armenia. Bistam collected an army at Aderbaijan to march against Bahram;
the main Romano-Persian army advanced upon him to the left of the Tigris,
but before ever they came into touch with the enemy, a royal force which
had been sent in advance straight through the Mesopotamian desert had
taken the capital cities of Ctesiphon, Seleucia, and New Antiochia.

All men took the part of their lawful sovereign, and in the great battle
that was fought near the Zab, Bahram was completely routed (summer of
591). He fled to the Turks, by whom he was received with honour, but
soon afterwards assassinated. Chosroes was escorted to Ctesiphon by the
Romans, and as a matter of course peace was concluded between Rome and
Persia. Equally of course the payment of tribute was dropped; but the
frontiers remained as they had been before the war, and Nisibis was left
in the hands of the Persians.

Chosroes still felt so insecure on his throne that he begged the emperor
to leave him a body-guard of one thousand Romans. His first thought was
to rid himself of all dangerous characters, and especially of those who
had compassed his father’s fall and his own elevation to the throne.
Among others he had his uncle, Bindoe, put to death; but Bindoe’s
brother Bistam was beyond his reach. When the latter saw that his death
was determined upon, he followed Bahram’s example, assumed the title of
king in Media, and had coins struck. He too was of ancient lineage, and
he too could not gain the prestige of the legitimate line. He seems to
have relied upon the remnants of Bahram’s forces, and to have entered
into alliance with the Turks and Delamites. He withstood Chosroes’ troops
for nearly six years, till he fell by treachery (probably at the end of
595 or the beginning of 596).

VICES OF CHOSROES II

[Sidenote: [592-610 A.D.]]

These disorders must have sadly distracted the empire, which had been
sufficiently enfeebled before by the long wars in the east and the west.
Nor was Chosroes II the sagacious, strong, and humane ruler whom it
required under these circumstances. At best he was a very ordinary type
of oriental prince. Weak at bottom, he was at the same time boastful
and cowardly, and to ostentation and luxury he added the much more
harmful fault of avarice. At his death the royal treasuries, which he
had found empty, were full, while his dominions were impoverished by
war. Some excuse may be found in the circumstances of the time for his
conduct towards those who had helped him to the throne. In war he never
distinguished himself, his victories are only those of his generals. He
did indeed protect the Christians, he even treated them with distinction,
and built churches for them; but he did it partly on account of the
impression made upon him by the help of the Romans and (as he himself
thought) the assistance of St. Sergius, the patron saint of the Syrians
and Arabs in the Roman Empire, partly at the instigation of Shirin, his
favourite wife, who was an ardent Christian, and of others, such as
his Christian physician in ordinary, Gabriel. In later days Chosroes’
friendship for the Christians was turned into the opposite sentiment. And
we know that he was a man of gross character.

After Maurice had been overthrown by a mutiny and slain, and the vile
Phocas elevated to the imperial throne (November, 602), Chosroes looked
upon himself as in a state of war against the Romans, in the capacity
of avenger of his “father” Maurice, and protector of his putative son
Theodosius, who had taken refuge with him. Furthermore Narses, who
was in command at Edessa, appealed to him against Phocas. Chosroes,
therefore, made a beginning by imprisoning the ambassadors by whose hand
Phocas informed him of his accession. The actual war probably commenced
at the beginning of 604. For twenty years the Roman Empire was overrun
by Persian armies as it never had been before, so disordered was it
by Phocas, so harassed by Avars and other barbarous tribes. Chosroes
was present in person at the taking of Dara, after which he took no
active part in the war. In a few years the Persian armies had pressed
forward far on the road to Asia Minor, even reaching Chalcedon, opposite
Constantinople.

The fact that the power of the Persian Empire was not very firmly based
for all that, is shown by an event, in itself insignificant, which
falls within this period (between 604 and 610), the battle of Dhu Kar.
Chosroes had abolished the kingdom of Hira, and caused Nohman, the last
king, to be put to death. By this means the empire was quit of a vassal
state which had often proved troublesome; but, on the other hand, it
was henceforward far more difficult to gain an ascendency over the
savage tribes of the desert, and prevent them from making raids upon
the cultivated regions. After the fall of Nohman, the Bedouin tribes
of Bekr ben Wail succeeded in inflicting a total defeat on an imperial
army consisting of Arabs and Persian regular troops at Dhu Kar, not far
from the Euphrates and a few days’ march from Ctesiphon, and holding the
territory out of which the Persians wished to drive them. This victory
of Arabs over Persians, magnified by national vanity, greatly encouraged
the former in their self-esteem, and strengthened the confidence of the
Moslems when they attacked the empire.

CONFLICT WITH HERACLIUS; FALL OF CHOSROES II

[Sidenote: [610-628 A.D.]]

The war with the Romans continued to make successful progress, after
Phocas had been overthrown, by his able successor Heraclius (October,
610). The latter, seeing himself hard pressed on all sides, sued in
vain for peace. Damascus was taken in 613. The surrounding country,
which had never been trodden by Persian feet since the founding of the
empire, was laid so utterly waste that to this day countless ruins bear
witness to these ravages. In the June of 614 Jerusalem was taken. The
whole of Christendom was horrified by the tidings that, together with the
patriarch, the Persians had carried off the “Holy life-giving Cross” of
Christ. Egypt was next conquered, and Asia Minor again overrun as far as
to Chalcedon. Not till 622 was Heraclius able to take the field against
the Persians. He took ship for the Bay of Issus, thence pressed forward
to Armenia and the regions about the Pontus, and for the first time in
the campaign inspired the enemy with respect for the Roman arms. The
loss of church treasures must be reckoned as a heavy item in the cost of
the war. On the 15th of March, 623, Heraclius at length started upon the
great military expedition which led him again and again into the heart
of Persian territory. The almost extravagant daring of his cross-marches
and transverse marches, in which he was generally deprived of all
communication with his base and must have had great difficulty in feeding
his troops, prove him a great commander and a great statesman.

In the first year of the campaign he destroyed one of the most sacred
sanctuaries of the Persians, the Fire temple of Ganjak, not far from the
Lake of Urumiyeh; it was his reply to the destruction of Jerusalem. We
find him now in the vicinity of the Caucasus, now in the east of Asia
Minor, now, again, in Mesopotamia, never vanquished, often victorious,
more often still, it may be, weakening or deluding superior forces by
skilful movements. Chosroes, who felt the emperor disquietingly near at
Ganjak, sent Shahrbaraz, the most famous of his generals, with a great
army direct to Chalcedon to draw him off (626).

It was an anxious time for Constantinople, with the Persians on this
side and the Avars on that (in the summer of 626), and the emperor
almost beyond knowledge in the remote parts of Asia. But the Avars soon
withdrew, seeing that the Persians, having no fleet, could not undertake
concerted operations with them on the far side of the Bosporus. In
retaliation Heraclius brought the savage Khazars, from the north of the
Caucasus, into Persian territory. At length, in 627, he ventured into the
chief province of the monarchy. He kept the “feast of lights” (January
6th, 628) at Dastagerd, only about three days’ journey from Ctesiphon,
where Chosroes had held his court regularly for the last twenty years.

[Sidenote: [628-629 A.D.]]

The king had fled in terror, not feeling safe till he and his harem
had the bridge of the Tigris at Ctesiphon behind them. Heraclius had
naturally accomplished his tremendous march from the Caucasus with
comparatively few troops, and was in no position to attack the capital,
strongly fortified and protected by waterways as it was. On the contrary,
before the king had collected a large army he withdrew, but only to
Ganjak, thus remaining on the enemy’s soil; and in February and March
traversed the Alps of Kurdistan amidst perpetual snow-storms, a feat
which has not often been matched in the annals of war.

Meanwhile important events had been taking place at Ctesiphon. Chosroes’
tyranny and extortion had exasperated high and low alike; by his cowardly
flight he had forfeited the respect of his people. In addition, he had
designated Mardanshah--his son by Shirin, who still governed him wholly
in spite of her years and his thousands of other wives--as his successor,
to the exclusion of Kavadh. The latter was imprisoned in a fortress with
most of his brothers. Some nobles, among whom was a Christian, Shamta,
son of the deceased farmer-general Ezdin, now set Kavadh at liberty and
proclaimed him king (February 25th, 628). Chosroes, deserted by all
men, was dragged out of his hiding-place, put in prison, and, after
a few days, executed (the 29th of February, 628). Thus miserably and
horribly perished the man whose camps extended almost to the borders of
the Achæmenid Empire. No hand was raised to defend or avenge him. The
Christians above all--who, apart from other things, had suffered deadly
insult at his hands by the carrying away of the True Cross--hailed with
acclamations the parricide Kavadh, in whose elevation one of themselves
had played no small part.

SUCCESSORS OF CHOSROES II

The first thing that Kavadh (II) Seroes did was to murder all his
brothers (probably to the number of eighteen); the second was to send the
emperor an urgent entreaty for peace. A truce was quickly concluded, but
no peace as yet, Heraclius being in no hurry for it, since he was now to
some extent master of the situation. All Persian troops received orders
to evacuate Roman territory. Heraclius seems next to have introduced such
order as he could into the affairs of the provinces so recovered, and
of Mesopotamia in particular. On reaching Syria he learned that Kavadh
Seroes was already dead. The wretched man had only reigned for about half
a year. His reign was marked by a dreadful pestilence.

The party in power set his son Ardashir III, a child of seven, in his
place; and an epoch of unspeakable confusion ensued, in which the
children and women on the throne served only as a pretext for the
ambitions of contesting nobles. During Ardashir’s reign the cross, which
had been sent back from Ctesiphon to Heraclius through the head of the
Nestorian church, was solemnly set up again by him in Jerusalem. The
festival of the Elevation of the Cross on the 14th of September still
keeps that joyful day in remembrance (629).

The government at Ctesiphon was powerless. The Khazars invaded and
ravaged the empire. Possibly it was at this time that Chosroes, the son
of Kavadh and grandson of Hormuzd IV, who had grown to manhood among the
Turks, first tried to establish his throne in Khorasan. He was killed in
a few months, but a mightier than he, the victorious general Shahrbaraz,
grasped at the crown. In a personal interview at Arabissus in Cappadocia
(June, 629) he seems to have secured the assent of Heraclius, who must
have been deeply interested in weakening the hostile empire by fostering
internecine discord. Shahrbaraz then marched with a small force upon
Ctesiphon, and the famous defender of the empire took the city of its
kings by the treasonable aid of some of the principal inhabitants. The
city was given over to plunder, murder, and horrors of every kind; and
the boy Ardashir was slain on April 27, 630. But on the ninth of June,
Shahrbaraz himself fell a victim of the jealousy and legitimism of his
compeers. His corpse was dragged through the street; and tradition heaps
grotesque irony on the man who would be king and could not, because he
was not of the legitimate line.

[Sidenote: [630-633 A.D.]]

A woman, Boran, the daughter of Chosroes II, was next raised to the
throne. She seems to have formally concluded peace with Heraclius at
last; on what terms we do not know, but probably the peace with Maurice
was simply ratified anew. At all events, Nisibis remained Persian.

Boran only reigned until about the autumn of 631. She was succeeded at
Ctesiphon, probably after the brief intermediate reign of a prince, Peroz
by name, by her sister Azarmidokht. At Nisibis, however, the troops of
the murdered Shahrbaraz set up Hormuzd V, a grandson of Chosroes II,
who held his ground in that district for some time (in the years 631
and 632). Azarmidokht was overthrown by Rustem, the mighty hereditary
crown-general of Khorasan, whose father she had caused to be put to
death. From the confused accounts of this time of confusion we cannot
gather with any certainty who was king or who pretender in the capital or
provinces, nor determine the date or even the sequence of these “reigns.”

It is certain that after Azarmidokht one Ferrukhzadh (or Khorrezadh)
Chosroes was for some time accounted king at Ctesiphon. He was probably
a child, and according to some authorities was the only son of Chosroes
II who had escaped the general butchery. But others of the men in power
set up another child at Persis, Yezdegerd III, son of Shahriyar and
grandson of Chosroes II, and crowned him in the Fire temple of Ardashir
(in the second half of 632 or the first half of 633). He was presently
acknowledged in the capital, Chosroes having been put to death. No
lasting resistance appears to have been encountered in other provinces.

ANARCHY AND CHAOS

No one could now dream of a real restoration of the fearfully distracted
empire; but at least a grandson of Chosroes, who did not trace his
descent from the parricide Sheroe, was sole king once more. He was
consecrated at Istakhr, the home of the dynasty; and the mighty Rustem
stood at his side. A change for the better seems really to have ensued,
but it was no more than a brief respite. A foe destined to prove more
formidable than Julian or Heraclius was already knocking at the gates of
the empire. In the internal disorders which had distracted Ctesiphon,
the loss of Yemen, and a few of the empire’s possessions in northeastern
Arabia to the Moslems, had probably passed almost unnoticed.

The Moslems, however, were soon close at hand. The Bekr Bedouins had made
raids upon the royal dominions several times since the battle of Dhu Kar.
After a while Muthanna, one of their bravest chiefs, became a convert to
Islam, and with that force behind them their attacks grew bolder. Then
(probably in 633) the mighty Khalid, after subduing the insurrections in
Arabia, appeared with a small force on the lower Euphrates to conduct
the operations of these same Bedouins. Persian Arabs and imperial
troops were defeated in small engagements, and soon a number of border
forts were in the hands of the Moslems. The inhabitants of the regions
west of the Euphrates, who were all Christians, and, like all the
Christians about the Euphrates and Tigris, felt little loyalty to the
empire, submitted to the victors and even undertook to supply them with
information.

ARAB INCURSIONS

[Sidenote: [633-637 A.D.]]

The Arabs were already beginning to rove on the far side of the
Euphrates; they plundered Baghdad, then a village, while a fair was being
held there, as well as other places on the right bank of the Tigris.
But Khalid presently received orders (the commencement of the summer of
634) to start for Syria, the conquest of which was at the time a matter
of greater consequence to the caliph. His successor, Abu Obaid of Taif,
brought some reinforcements with him; but when at length a regular
Persian army came on the scene, the Moslems, in spite of their heroic
valour, were completely defeated in the “battle of the Bridge,” on the
Euphrates, November 26th, 634. After their leader had fallen Muthanna
had great difficulty in extricating the remains of his army. Most of the
Moslem conquests were lost without further ado. After some hesitation
Omar (caliph since August 23rd, 634) resolved to send more troops to
Irak. He appealed simultaneously to the greed and piety of the Arabs,
urging them in the same breath to win the treasures of Chosroes and the
joys of paradise. A larger Persian army was now defeated for the first
time (at Buwaib, 635 or 636); the commander, a member of the house of
Mihran, was among the slain.

The Arabs were once more masters of the country west of the Euphrates.
They found an energetic and cautious leader in Saad, son of Abu Wakkas,
one of the first followers of the prophet. The lords at Ctesiphon now
realised the great danger that impended over the empire. The news of
the battle on the Yarmuk (August 20th, 636) which cost Heraclius, the
conqueror of Persia, the whole of Syria, probably contributed to their
fears. Rustem, therefore, took the head of a great army in person. As a
token of the gravity of the struggle he bore with him the sacred banner
of the empire (_dirafshi Kaviyan_), which was supposed to have come
down from time immemorial. He also took with him a number of elephants,
according to the Persian usage in war. At the approach of the advanced
guard of the Persian army Saad evacuated his position and retreated
to Kadisiya, on the verge of the desert (south or southwest of Hira).
For months the armies confronted one another, with only a little space
between. The Arabic force was certainly much the smaller of the two; they
could not have fed a large army in that place, for they were dependent on
the produce of their raids and such provisions as the caliph sent after
them from Medina.

At length the great battle of Kadisiya (end of 636 or 637) was fought.
It lasted for several days; Saad was ill, but nevertheless took the
command. The Persians were, for the most part, much better armed than the
Arabs, but the courage of the latter was wound up to the highest pitch.
They were terrified by the elephants at first, but as they pressed on
gallantly for all their fears, the animals appear to have got beyond
control and to have become a source of confusion to the Persian ranks.
The great majority of the Persians certainly behaved with cowardice,
after their ancient fashion; but the Arabs had hard work before the foe
was defeated, Rustem himself slain, and the banner of the Persian Empire
taken.

ARAB CONQUEST

[Sidenote: [637-652 A.D.]]

The battle of Kadisiya practically decided the fate of the provinces
on the Tigris. There were a few other fights, some of them in the vast
territory of ancient Babylon, but the Arabs soon afterwards reached
Seleucia, took it after a protracted siege, crossed the rapid stream of
the Tigris, and quickly forced their way into Ctesiphon. The young king
Yezdegerd had already fled to Holwan (on the border between Babylonia and
Media). On their way thither, at Jalula, the Arabs won another victory
over the Persians under Khorrezadh, Rustem’s brother, and Yezdegerd
fled further into the interior. Meanwhile other Arabs had conquered
the delta of the stream and thence advanced into Susiana. A very able
resolute commander might still have saved the actual land of Iran for
the Persians. Omar, who was very cautious in spite of his energy, was
apprehensive lest the Arabs should extend their forces too far, and at
first would not give orders for an advance into the highlands. At length
he did so. A great Persian army had been collected at Nehavend, a little
to the south of the ancient highway from Babylon to Ecbatana. Here a
great battle was fought (in 640, 641, or 642), in which the Arabs--first
under the command of Nohman and, after he had fallen, under Hudhaifa the
Meccan--won a brilliant victory.

With good reason the Moslems called the triumph of Nehavend the “victory
of victories.” It completely shattered the empire of Persia. The Arabs
had a long contest before them, until they had really conquered all the
provinces of the vast monarchy, but it consisted of isolated struggles in
which there could be no doubt of the ultimate issue, as their enemies had
lost all cohesion. Many towns and districts had to be subjugated again
and again, because they were constantly rebelling. The most obstinate
resistance appears to have been offered in Persia proper, especially
about Istakhr, the cradle of the empire of the Sassanidæ and the centre
of its religion. Many of the great provincial nobles and some of the
lesser entered into friendly agreement with the Arabs. They one and all
met them on the footing of independent sovereigns.

King Yezdegerd meanwhile led a wretched life. He could not summon up
courage to set his life on the stake for his crown and empire. He fled
from one satrap to another. He seems to have stayed longest at Istakhr,
the home of his race. The outward pomp of royalty was left him, coins
were still struck in his name, but as soon as he became a troublesome
guest he was sent away. At length he took refuge in the extreme
northeast, and there he was miserably murdered, in the neighbourhood of
Merv. The circumstances of his death, which took place in 651 or 652, are
not exactly known, but it seems tolerably certain that Mahoe, satrap of
Merv, had a hand in it. [For the traditional account see page 154, this
volume.]

The similarity of the circumstances under which the Achæmenid and
Sassanid empires perished forces itself upon our notice, a similarity
which, though apparently fortuitous, indicates a great correspondence
in character. As the battle on the Granicus first fully showed the
formidable nature of the enemy, as Issus cost the king his western
provinces and Gaugamela rent the empire asunder without thereby making
the victor master of all its several provinces, so it came to pass nearly
one thousand years later, with the battles of Buwaib, Kadisiya, and
Nehavend. And as the fugitive Darius was slain, in the northeast, not
by enemies but by treacherous nobles, so it was with Yezdegerd, who was
no more a hero than he. The Persian nobility did not exhibit so gross a
lack of patriotism and loyalty in the case of the Arabs as in that of
Alexander; the vivid consciousness of religious differences and the ruder
manners of the Arabs made adherence to them more difficult; but there
was no lack of traitors of high rank nor of renegades among the greater
and lesser nobles. The complete subjugation of the Persian monarchy took
the Arabs much longer than it had taken the great Macedonian, but on the
other hand its effects were much more lasting; Hellenism touched the
mere surface of Persia, but Iran has been thoroughly permeated by Arab
religion and Arab characteristics.

[Sidenote: [652-750 A.D.]]

A fragment of the Sassanid empire continued to exist for some time
longer. The hereditary crown-generals (Shahpat, Ispehbedh) of Khorasan,
of the house of Karen, withdrew into the mountain country of Tabaristan
(Mazanderan) and there reigned for more than one hundred years, though
they occasionally found themselves under the necessity of paying tribute
to the caliph. They remained faithful to the religion of Zoroaster.
The era which they struck upon their coins begins, in all probability,
with the death of Yezdegerd, and they thus seemed to have looked upon
themselves as the direct succession of the last Sassanid king.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[30] [Or according to Von Gutschmid, 227; see chapter I.]

[Illustration: BRONZE HINGE FROM ANTIQUE CHEST]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III. EARLY HISTORY OF THE ARABS

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2500 B.C.-622 A.D.]]

The Arabian peninsula is Africa reduced in size and of more moderate
proportions, but without a river-valley like that of the Nile. The heart
of the country is a tableland, sparely watered under a burning sun, and
forming a depression in the midst of sandy deserts, rocky plains, peaks,
and naked cliffs. Thus, despite its great extent of over a million square
miles, Arabia presents, especially in the interior, but few stretches
of land suitable for cultivation. It is in the south, where the plateau
slopes down to the Indian Ocean in a series of declivities, that fertile
valleys lie; and on the mountain terraces, where cool winds from the
ocean temper the tropic heat, the richest fruits abound. This district of
Arabia is the land of frankincense, of sugar-cane, and coffee tree, of
pomegranates, figs, dates, of maize, and wheat.

Herodotus,[b] who like all other historians of antiquity applies the
name Arabia to regions lying even beyond Sinai and the Syrian deserts,
gives us but meagre information concerning the inhabitants of this vast
land. “The Arabs,” he says, “wear long garments, carry at their right
side great bows with double strings, and ride on swift camels. They
worship two gods, Dionysus whom they call Urotal, and Urania whom they
call Alilat, the latter also being called by the Babylonians Mylitta.
Compacts are made in the following manner; a third person cuts each of
the parties to the agreement in the hand near the thumb, and with the
blood thus obtained smears seven stones that lie on the ground between,
at the same time calling on Urotal and Alilat. Compacts thus sealed are
held sacred by the Arabs, and are kept with a fidelity rarely found in
other nations.” Artemidorus[c] of Ephesus calls Arabia rich in animals
of all sorts; lions, panthers, wolves, wild asses, and camels; and the
inhabitants, according to him, were wandering herdsmen who travelled
about and did their fighting on the backs of camels, and lived on the
camels’ milk and flesh. He withholds from us the names of these tribes on
account of their obscurity and unmusical sound. Diodorus[d] also tells
us that parts of Arabia on the Syrian side were inhabited by tribes who
lived by trading and agriculture; but the tracts adjoining were for the
most part barren and without water, and the Nachabæans who occupied them
led the life of bandits, plundering their neighbours far and wide; no
other tribe had succeeded in conquering them. In the interior and in the
west of Arabia were sand plains of immense extent, across which it was
only possible to travel by taking, as on the sea, the Great Bear as a
guide.

Pliny[e] remarks: “Wonderful to say, the Arabians live about equally by
robbery and by trade; what they obtain from their forests (meaning the
products of the date-palms and the fruit-trees of the south) and from the
sea they sell, yet they never buy anything in return.”

“The Arabs,” says Ammianus Marcellinus[f] “cover the territory that
reaches from the Euphrates to Egypt. They wear no clothing save a sort
of apron around the body, and a voluminous cloak. Every man among them
is a warrior, and on their camels and swift, fine-limbed horses they
are everywhere to be seen. They cannot endure to remain long in any one
locality; without permanent dwelling-place they wander restlessly about,
and their whole life is nothing but a flight. Of bread and wine the
majority of Arabs have never even heard.”

Different information is given us regarding the southern coast of Arabia.
Herodotus[b] remarks that the greatest blessings are showered upon the
extreme limits of the earth, and that this seems to be true of Arabia,
the most southern point of the inhabited world. Here only in all the
earth grow frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and ladanum; here only are raised
sheep with tails so bushy that wagons have to be bound beneath them to
support them. But the trees bearing frankincense are guarded by winged
serpents and those bearing cassia by bats.

Thoroughly informed in matters relating to this district by reason of
Alexandria’s wide trade connections, Eratosthenes[g] could name the
different tribes that inhabited the south. “In the interior,” he adds,
“were thick forests formed by tall frankincense and myrrh trees; and
besides these there were cinnamon trees, palm and calmus, and other
trees of a similar nature, sending forth the sweetest odours. Out of
so many it is not possible to name every species; it is enough to say
that the perfumes they diffused were delicious beyond all words. Even
people going by this land in ships at some distance from the shore, have
the odours wafted to them on the breeze. For here the aroma does not
proceed from spices old, stale, and laid away, but is sent forth in full
strength and freshness, so that sailors along the coast believe they are
enjoying ambrosia, no other name expressing the extraordinary strength
and richness of the perfume they inhale. Among the Sabæans the monarchy
is hereditary, and it is here that the king lives, dispensing justice to
the people, but never venturing to leave his palace. Should he once show
himself outside he would be stoned by his subjects, who would thus be
fulfilling an ancient oracle. The Sabæans are the richest people in the
world. In exchange for their few wares silver and gold flow in to them
from all sides, and owing to the remoteness of their situation no other
tribe has ever conquered them.”

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2500-645 B.C.]]

The Hebrew Scriptures have preserved for us information concerning
the populations of Arabia, that is older by a thousand years than
that of Pliny, and by five hundred than that of Herodotus. According
to Genesis[h] the tribes fall into four main groups; the Joktanites,
among whom the tribes of the south and east are the most prominent; the
Keturites, which include certain tribes of the east and northwest; the
Ishmaelites, among whom can be counted tribes of the north and of the
tableland of the interior; and finally the group of tribes who wandered
and settled near the eastern frontiers of Canaan--the Amalekites,
Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites. The Hebrews ascribe to the Arabs the
same origin as their own.

From the genealogies it is plain that the Hebrews regarded the Arabian
tribes as close kinsmen of their own, and kinsmen of a far more ancient
branch. The Arabs of the south traced their origin back to the fifth
generation after Shem, the common forefather, while the Hebrews descended
from the second son of Isaac. Most closely related to them are the
Ishmaelites, who are divided into twelve tribes--the descendants of the
sons of Ishmael, the “twelve princes”; then follow the Edomites, the
Ammonites, and the Moabites.

The tradition of the Arabs scarcely goes back to the beginning of the
Christian era. What their writers, who began after Mohammed to tell
the early history of their race, knew of those ancient periods is
either derived from the accounts of the Hebrews, or is the work of pure
imagination. They represent the Amalekites, whom they found in Hebrew
Scriptures, as the founders of their race, and place their dwelling
variously in Canaan and Damascus, and the district of Mecca and Oman, and
cause them at one time to rule over Egypt. These Amalekites, the Tasmites
and Jadi, Aadites and Jorhomites, they look upon as the true Arabian
stock, to whom God taught Arabic after the confusion of tongues. But the
Tasmites and Jadi are as little to be accepted historically as Amalek,
their names signifying “the extinct,” and “the vanished”; the Aadites are
a purely fabulous people, and the Jorhomites (near Mecca) are a tribe
of by no means ancient origin. The progenitor of the tribes of Yemen in
the south is, according to the Arabians, Kahtan, the son of Eber, and
great-grandson of Noah; this is the Joktan of Genesis. This founder of
the Sabæan monarchy left two sons, Himyar and Kahtan. Himyar was the
progenitor of the Himyarites, and their abode is placed on the southern
coast of Arabia, between Mareb (Saba) and Hadramaut.

To the kingdom of Mareb, founded by Abd Shams-Sabah, is ascribed by Arab
tradition a long succession of rulers. But even if we were to allow to
each name a reign of more than thirty years, Kahtan’s period would not
be carried back beyond 700 B.C. Abd Shams-Sabah is supposed to have
built not only Mareb but a great dam for the irrigation of the land. The
well-built dams, canals, and sluices at Sana (the Uzal of the Hebrews, to
the west of Mareb) are said to have been erected by Asad. The castles of
Sahlin and Bainun (near Sana) were built by dæmons, at Solomon’s bidding,
for Belkis, queen of Sheba. Towards the end of the year 700 B.C. Harith,
at the head of the Himyarites, gained possession of the kingdom of the
Sabæans, who were thus driven from their own land, and the Himyarites
who supplanted them (the Homerites of western nations) became the ruling
people in Yemen. Arab tradition had somewhat prepared the way for this
change by making Himyar the oldest son and successor of Abd Shams-Sabah.

If we trace the genealogies given by Arab tradition to the rulers of the
tribes descended from Ishmael backwards for twenty generations till we
reach Adnan, his grandson, we do not arrive at an earlier period than the
second century B.C., even if we allow thirty years for each generation.

There have been handed down to us no consistent accounts of these people.
We learn that Egypt, at some period later than 3000 years B.C., gained a
foothold in the west of the Sinai peninsula, but we are unable to obtain
any certainty of the origin of the invading tribes. The inscriptions of
Egypt of the time of Tehutimes and the first Ramses,[i] tell of victories
achieved over the Shasu and over the Punt, that is, the Arabs; but we
cannot learn the extent of these victorious operations, nor the names of
the tribes against which they were directed, hence we conclude that they
were of but a transitory nature. The Hebrews relate that the queen of
the Sabæans, ruler over that fruitful, spice-bearing land, journeyed to
Jerusalem to lay before King Solomon rich presents of spices and gold.

It would surprise us to learn that an Arabian monarchy was in the hands
of a woman, did not the inscriptions of the Assyrian kings[j] reveal
that even the tribes of the deserts frequently had women as rulers.
These same inscriptions also furnish us with information concerning
certain early Arabian tribes, and make known to us their great wealth
in cattle. The third Tiglathpileser relates that in the year 735 B.C.
he received tribute from Zabibieh, queen of Arabia (Aribi). In the year
734 he marched on Samshi, queen of Arabia, and took from her as spoils
thirty thousand camels and twenty thousand oxen, afterwards subjugating
the people of Saba, the Sabæan city. King Sargon makes boast that he
conquered the people of Thamud, the Thamudenes of western writers; also
those of Tasid, Ibadid, Marsiman, Chayapa, the distant Arbæans, the
inhabitants of the lands of Bari, “which the learned and the scribes knew
not,” and that Samshi, queen of the Arabs and Yathamic, the Sabæan, paid
him tribute of spices, camels, and gold (715 B.C.). Sennacherib took
from the Pecod, the Hagarites, the Nabatæans, and certain other tribes,
5330 camels, and 800,600 head of small cattle (703 B.C.). During the
reign of Asshurbanapal, Adija, queen of the Arabs, and Ammuladin, king
of the Kedarites, were conquered and brought in chains to Nineveh; and
the “innumerable warriors” of another prince, Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda, were
put to rout and his tents were burned. A third chief, Abiyate, with his
allies, Yauta-ben-Hazael, Natnu (Nathan) king of the Nabatæans, and the
worshippers of Istar, was defeated in 645 B.C.

The position of Arabia between the river valleys of the Nile, the
Euphrates, and the Tigris, which had been the seats of the oldest
industries and where agriculture and civilisation had early begun to
flourish, brought the Arabs, who were continually wandering about the
frontiers of their land, into close connection with Egypt and Babylon.
What robbery failed to supply could be obtained by barter. The wandering
herdsmen had need of corn, tools, and weapons; the Egyptians and
Babylonians, of horses, camels, skins, and wool. By giving in exchange
for what they required cattle and skins, the Arabs kept the Egyptians and
Babylonians supplied with raw materials for their industries. According
to Hebrew tradition Abraham went into Egypt, and the sons of Jacob bought
grain in Egypt when “there was a famine in the land.” The fact that the
Egyptians gained possession, in 3000 B.C., of the valley of Maghara in
the Sinai peninsula, and that a thousand years later certain nomad tribes
of the northwest of Arabia obtained supremacy over Egypt, served but to
strengthen the later relations between the two countries. That there had
long been intercourse is certain; and contact with the superior culture
of Egypt had so multiplied the wants of the Arabs as greatly to increase
their trading relations. They could offer not alone their cattle to the
Egyptians in barter but the costly products of their southern coasts, the
frankincense and perfumes that had already attained a high celebrity in
Egypt as early as 2500 B.C.

It is no wonder then, in view of this ancient and active trade, that
Queen Ramaka (Maat-ka-Ra or Hatshepsu) of Egypt made the attempt to
import the products of southern Arabia direct by way of the Red Sea; and
it must have been this same intention that caused Ramses II to project
a canal that should connect the Nile with the Red Sea. Later, Ramses
III caused ships to be built especially for the trade with “the land
of Punt” (Arabia) and “the land of the gods” (the far East). Great as
was the demand of Egypt for incense and perfumes, that of Babylon seems
to have been no less. Herodotus[b] tells us that at the annual feast of
Belos a thousand talents of incense was burned on the altar of the great
Babylonian temple.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1225 B.C.-100 A.D.]]

The demand for Arabian products must have greatly increased when the
Phœnician cities planted along the coast of Syria, grew to be important
trade centres.

That the Babylonian talent was current among the Sabæans is evidence of
the extent and activity of Babylonian trade. First passing their goods
from one to another of their own tribes until the market at Damascus was
reached, or the Euphrates and the Nile for shipping, the Arabs permitted
or refused passage to the caravans of the Babylonians and the Phœnicians.
They lay in wait for the merchant-trains, and either plundered them or
forced them to pay for safe passage and convoy.

[Illustration: AN ARAB ARCHER]

The beauty and fertility of the portion of Arabia occupied by the Sabæans
and the Chatramites must have early served to fix them there as permanent
settlers, and their constantly growing commerce with Egypt, Syria,
and Babylonia unquestionably resulted in a great influx of wealth to
these tribes. Thus even the tales current among western nations of the
splendour of their cities--the sixty temples of Sabbatha, and the gold
and silver vessels, pillars, and couches of Mareb--must have had strong
foundation in fact. Ruins of mighty aqueducts, dams, and basins remain,
which are the wonder and admiration of our tourists for the excellence
of their plan and the solidity of their construction. They reveal to us
not only the skill of the ancient Sabæans and Chatramites in erecting
important works, but their complete understanding of the subject of
irrigation; since the whole system of canals and basins was evidently
designed to utilise upon their own lands the streams rushing down from
the mountains. Remains of magnificent structures, not alone near Mareb
but near Nejran, Ghorab, Nakb-el-Hajara, go far towards confirming what
western and Arab tradition tell us of the glories of ancient times; and
inscriptions on these and other ruins in the southwest of Yemen give us,
though they do not go back further than the year 120 B.C., an insight
into the life and culture of the tribes of South Arabia. We also learn
the earlier forms of their spoken and written language, and discover that
their alphabet was derived from that of the Phœnicians, developing later
independently side by side with it. Of a more recent date (the first
century A.D.) are inscriptions on the rocks of the Sinai peninsula in
the extreme northwest of Arabia, which are written in the north Arabian
language and characters.

A glance at the meagre array of facts made known to us reveals the basis
of the religious conceptions of the Semitic tribes in Arabia to be
almost the same as that of the Semitic tribes in Syria, or those by the
Euphrates and Tigris. It can readily be believed that the rites of those
tribes nearest Syria partake somewhat of the character of the Syrian
rites and that the worship of the southern tribes is closely allied to
that of the Babylonians.

That the tribes of the desert should pay particular reverence to the
stars cannot occasion much wonder. With the refreshing dews of night came
not only Venus and the moon but the entire splendour of the firmament, to
dazzle the eye and touch the spirit of the Arab. High above the silent
desert, the tents, and sleeping flocks, looking down on the midnight ride
and the waiting ambuscade, the stars swung on their glittering way. They
were the source of a varied knowledge to the Arab; they marked out his
path through the trackless desert, foretold the coming of the rain for
which he had prayed, indicated the change of the seasons and the time for
breeding in his flocks. Since these stars could at one time provide good
pasturage and all that was needful for flocks, and at another dry up the
wells and grass, why could they not also bring joy and pain, happiness
and sorrow to mankind? Thus to the tribes of the desert the stars that
shone brightest became living spirits, that ruled supreme over nature and
the destinies of men.

The life of the nomad tribes of the interior (included by the Arabs
under one name, Badawi [Bedouins] “children of the desert”) has suffered
but few changes; up to the present day there have been no very radical
departures from the customs and conditions of the olden time, which are
fully described elsewhere.

In the Arabs the qualities peculiar to the Semitic character have
attained their soundest and most strongly marked development. Their
wandering life in the desert, exposed to burning sun and tempests of
wind and sand, has steeled and strengthened them. In a land of trackless
wastes, surrounded by beasts of prey and hostile tribes, each man was
dependent for safety on his own watchfulness and keenness of vision,
on his own courage and resolution, on his horse and lance. Soberly and
frugally nourished, the body became lean and spare, but supple, sinewy,
and capable of great endurance, and within these hardened frames dwelt a
spirit of indomitable resolution. Thus the Arabs are characterised by a
freer bearing, a more steadfast good faith, a more umbrageous pride, a
greater love of independence, and a bolder daring than any other tribes
of their race. The nature of their country and of their life has saved
them from the excesses of greed of luxury and sensuality into which the
Semitic populations on the Euphrates and the Tigris, as well as those on
the Mediterranean, frequently fell, though they share in the cruelty and
blood-thirstiness common to their race. It was the Arabs on whose unused
strength it was possible to found an empire, a new Semitic civilisation
in the Middle Ages, after Babel and Asshur, Tyre and Carthage, Jerusalem
and Palmyra, had long passed away.[k]

ARAB HISTORY BEFORE MOHAMMED

[Sidenote: [380 B.C.-634 A.D.]]

The history of Arabia and its inhabitants naturally divides itself
into two distinct and even dissimilar periods, that, namely, which
preceded the era of Mohammed, and that which followed it. Each of these
two periods, though comprising in its extent several minor phases and
fluctuations, now of advance, now of retrogression, bears, however, a
well-marked general character of its own. The first of the two periods
is distinguished as one of local monarchies and federal governments; the
latter commences with theocratic centralisation dissolving into general
anarchy.

The first dawning gleams of anything that deserves to be called history
disclose Arabia wholly, or nearly so, under the rule of a race of
southern origin; the genuine, or, as they are sometimes termed from a
mythical ancestor Kahtan, the Kahtanee Arabs. These, again, we find
subdivided into several aristocratic monarchical governments, arranged
so as to form a broad framework or rim around the central wilds of the
peninsula.

Oldest and chiefest among the Arab monarchies was that of Yemen; its
regal residence is said to have been in the now abandoned town of
Mareb, in the extreme south. After a devastating inundation, referred
with some probability to the first century of the Christian era, the
seat of government was removed from the ruins of Mareb to Sana, a city
which has continued the metropolis of Yemen to the present day. The
Yemenite kings, descendants of Kahtan and Himyar (the dusky), a name
denoting African origin, and each adorned with the reiterated surname
of “Tobba,” a word of African etymology, and signifying “powerful,”
are said to have reigned, with a few dynastic interruptions and palace
revolutions, for about twenty-five hundred years, during which long
period they commanded the direct obedience of the entire southern half
of the peninsula; while, by their tribute-collectors, and by chiefs of
kindred or delegated authority, they indirectly governed the northern.
One of these monarchs is asserted, though historical criticism will
hardly admit the assertion for fact, to have subdued the whole of central
Asia, and even to have reached the boundaries of China; while another
anticipated, so runs the story, the later and more authentic conquests
of his race on the north African continent. In both these cases Arab
chroniclers seem to have appropriated for their own rulers, not without
some additional exaggerations, the glories and exploits of the Egyptian
kings. But that theirs was a vigorous and in some respects a civilised
government is attested alike by the literary and the architectural relics
of their time. Their sovereignty was at last overthrown, 529 (A.D.) by an
Abyssinian invasion, and was re-established in 603 A.D. as a dependency
of the Persian Empire, till in the year 634 it was finally absorbed by
Mohammedan conquest.

[Sidenote: [100-500 A.D.]]

Next in importance to the kingdom of Yemen came the subsidiary monarchy
of Hira, or more correctly Heerah, situated in the northeasterly
province of Arabian Irak. Its kings, a collateral branch of the royal
race of Sana, governed the western shore of the lower Euphrates, from
the neighbourhood of Babylon down to the confines of Nejd, and along
the coast of the Persian Gulf. The duration of their empire, founded
in the second century after Christ, was 424 years. This kingdom paid
an uncertain allegiance to their more powerful neighbours, the Persian
despots; and from time to time exercised considerable influence over the
turbulent tribes of central Arabia, till, like Yemen, it sank before the
rising fortunes of Mohammed and his followers.

A third monarchy, that of Ghassan, lorded it on the northwest over lower
Syria and the Hedjaz; its independence was somewhat tempered with unequal
alliances with the Roman, and subsequently the Byzantine Empire. It was
founded in the first century of the Christian era, shortly after the
flood of Mareb; and its duration, till subdued by the all-conquering
prophet, exceeded six hundred years.

A fourth government, that of Kindeh, detached itself from Irak early in
the fifth century, and united under its sceptre the tribes of northerly
Nejd and even those of Oman, for about 160 years. Its kings were, like
those before mentioned, of Yemenite origin; but their rule was weak and
disturbed by frequent wars.

Much has been written by Arab authors regarding the great inundation,
as they term it, of Arem or Mareb, possibly a tropical cyclone of more
than ordinary destructiveness, like that of 1867 in the West Indies; and
this event they love to assign as the proximate cause which dispersed the
families of Yemen over northern Arabia, and led to the foundation of the
kingdoms of Irak and Ghassan. But the reality of the events, physical or
political, symbolised by the “flood of Arem” (a counterpart, after its
fashion, of the biblical flood) cannot now be well deciphered.

This is however certain--in that the Yemenite Arabs, and especially those
who tenanted the south of the peninsula, had, during the period now
cursorily sketched, attained a very fair degree of civilisation--that
arts and commerce flourished, that wealth was accumulated, literature
cultivated, and talent held in esteem. On all these points we have not
only the uncertain and distorted testimony of foreign authors, such as
Strabo, Pliny, Diodorus, Ptolemy, and the like, but the more positive
though fragmentary evidence afforded by the national writings, chiefly
verse, that have survived to our day. In its general character and
institutions the kingdom of Yemen seems to have borne a considerable
resemblance to the neighbouring one of the Nile valley, on the other
side of the Red Sea, and, like it, to have reached at a very early
epoch a relatively high degree of prosperity and social culture, from
which, however, it had long declined before its final extinction in the
seventh century. But the daughter-kingdom of Hira had, as was natural,
something of a Persian tinge; while that of Ghassan took a more Byzantine
colouring. Lastly, the nomadic element predominated in the ill-cemented
monarchy of Kindeh.

But while the sceptre of Yemen was yet, in one form or other,
outstretched over the length and breadth of the land, and its children,
the genuine or African Arabs, formed a complete and dense circle of
population all around, the centre of Arabia remained the stronghold
of a different though kindred race, in their mode of living wild and
ferocious; less susceptible of culture, but gifted with greater energy
and concentration of purpose than their southern cousins. The latest
recorded emigration of this branch of the Arab stock had been not from
the south but the north; and instead of the mythical Kahtan, they
claimed a no less mythical Adnan, or his supposed grandson Nezar, for
their ancestor; their language, though radically identical with that
spoken by the genuine Arabs, was yet dialectically different in several
respects, and nearer to the Syriac or Hebrew. Lastly, unlike the Arabs
from the south, they had little disposition for agriculture, and even
less for architecture and the fine arts; their instincts leading them
to a pastoral and consequently a nomadic life. The almost infinite
ramifications of these “Mustareb” or “adscititious Arab” tribes lead
ultimately up to five principal stocks. These were Rabiah, which,
however, laid some claim to a Yemenite kinsmanship in the east centre of
the peninsula; Koreish, on the west; Kais, or Kais-Ailan, and Hawazin, on
the north; and Tamin in the middle.

[Sidenote: [500-570 A.D.]]

History has left unrecorded the exact date of their arrival in Arabia;
nor has she defined the period during which they remained tributaries,
though often refractory, of the kings of Yemen. But in the fifth century
of the Christian era there appeared among the Mustareb tribes a leader
of extraordinary talent and energy named Kolaib, sprung from the tribe
of Rabiah, who having, in the fashion of William Tell, slain with his
own hand the insolent and licentious tax-gatherer sent them from Sana,
raised the banner of general revolt in Nejd; and, in the battle of Hazat
(500 A.D.), broke forever the bonds of Yemen from off the neck of the
northern Arabs. This done, Kolaib aspired to unite his countrymen into
one vast confederacy, over which he himself exercised for a time an
almost kingly power; but the scheme was prematurely broken off by his
own assassination. Left now without a master, but also without a ruler,
the Mustareb tribes found themselves involved in a series of wars that
lasted during the whole of the sixth century, their heroic period. Yet
in spite of severe losses sustained in battle by this or that particular
clan, their power as a whole went on increasing, till at the dawn of the
seventh century they had wholly absorbed the feeble kingdom of Kindeh,
and encroached yearly more and more on the narrowing bounds of Yemen,
Irak, and Ghassan.

[Illustration: AN ARAB CHIEF]

Nor, probably, would they have stayed till they had become absolute
lords over the whole, or nearly the whole, of the peninsula, had there
not developed itself from among themselves a still more energetic
element which, before many years had passed, reduced both northern
and southern Arabs alike to common obedience, then raised them to an
unexpected height of common glory, and at last plunged them, along with
itself, into one comprehensive decline and ruin. This new and potent
element was the well-known clan of Fihr or Koreish. Its families, of
Mustareb descent, had at an early period, which subsequent and Mohammedan
chroniclers have tried to identify with the fortunes of the mythical
Ismail, established themselves in the southerly Hedjaz, near the town
of Mecca, a locality even then the principal religious and commercial
centre of Arabia. Already, at the beginning of the fifth century,
the chiefs of Koreish had, by a mixture of violence and craft very
characteristic of their race, rendered themselves the masters and the
acknowledged guardians of the sacred “Kaaba.” This square stone temple,
or rather shrine, itself of unknown antiquity, was situated within the
precincts of the town of Mecca; and to it the Arabs were in the habit
of bringing yearly offerings, and of making devout pilgrimages, for
centuries before Mohammed had adopted it into the new ritual of Islam
as the house of the true God. The keys of the consecrated building had
originally been in possession of delegates appointed by the monarch of
Yemen; but the Koreish Arabs, having once obtained them, held them fast
forever after, and successfully repelled every effort, both of their own
pagan competitors and of the invading Christian Abyssinians (570 A.D.),
to recapture or to seize them. Their possession of the temple keys not
only gave the tribe of Koreish a semi-religious pre-eminence over all the
other clans of Arabia, but also placed at their disposal the treasures of
gold, silver, jewels, and other offerings accumulated by the pagan piety
of ages in the temple of Mecca.

[Sidenote: [500-600 A.D.]]

A more important, as also a more creditable, source of wealth to the
Koreish clan was their Red Sea coast traffic, particularly with the
ports of Yemen and Abyssinia. Jiddah has been always the chief westerly
seaport, and Mecca, which is only a few leagues distant, the principal
inland emporium, of Arab trade; and under the dominating influence of
the clever and active merchants of Koreish, both places acquired special
prosperity and importance.

Lastly, only a day’s journey distant from Mecca, was held, in the
pre-Islamitic times, the great yearly fair and gathering of Okad, so
called from the name of the plain where it used to assemble--a national
meeting, frequented by men of all conditions, from all quarters of the
Arab peninsula, and lasting through the entire month of Dhul-kaadeh,
which in pagan, as subsequently in Mohammedan reckoning, immediately
preceded the ceremonies of the annual pilgrimage. Here horse races,
athletic games, poetical recitals, and every kind of public amusement,
diversified the more serious commercial transactions of an open fair,
that, in its comprehensiveness, almost assumed the proportions of a
national exhibition. Here, too, matters of the highest import, questions
of peace and war, of treaty and alliance, of justice and revenge, were
habitually treated by the chiefs of the northern Arabs; the “children of
Mezar,” to give them their favourite Mustareb patronymic, assembled in a
sort of amphictyonic council, not less ancient, but while it lasted much
more influential throughout Arabia, than that of Thebes ever had been in
classic Greece. In this assembly the immediate local proximity of the
Koreish chiefs, joined to their personal wealth, courage, and address,
assigned them a predominant position.

Of their pedigree, which, as is well known, includes that of Mohammed
himself, we have a carefully (too carefully, indeed, for authenticity)
constructed chronicle, bringing the family tree up in due form to
Ishmael, the son of Abraham, of whom the Koreish figure as the direct
descendants. In the same artificial annals the Yemenite, or genuine
Arabs, appear under the cousinly character of the children of Joktan,
the son of Eber. On these points all Mohammedan annalists are equally
positive and distinct; all other Arab testimony is equally adverse or
silent. That a fable so utterly defiant of reasonable chronology, and
even of the common sense of history itself, should have been adopted as
matter of fact by Arab vanity and ignorance, is less surprising than that
it should have found favour in the eyes of not a few, indeed of most, of
our own European writers. Enough here to say that Mohammedan chroniclers,
by adopting as irrefragable historical authority the Jewish records, and
then retouching them here and there in accordance with their own special
predictions and tenets, have succeeded in concealing the truth of their
own national identity and story from themselves and even from others,
under an almost hopeless incrustation of childish fiction.

To sum up, at the opening of the seventh century of our era, and
coincidently with the first appearance of the prophetic autocrat and
destined remodeller of Arabia, the overteeming life and energy of the
great peninsula was, broadly taken, thus divided: Foremost stood the
tribe of Koreish, with their allies, a powerful confederacy composed of
tribes belonging to the Mustareb or northern stock, and occupying the
upper half of the westerly coast and region. Next in importance came the
countless independent, and, thus far, uncentralised clans of the centre
of the peninsula; they, too, are mostly of Mustareb origin; though a
few claimed the more ancient and aristocratic kinsmanship of Yemen, but
without, however, paying any allegiance to its rulers. Lastly, to the
south, east, and north, still existed the noble but enfeebled relics of
the old Yemenite kingdoms of Sana, Hira, and Ghassan, half-sunk into
Persian or Byzantine vassalage, and exerting little authority, even
within their own ancestral limits.

[Sidenote: [25 B.C.-632 A.D.]]

But, however important to the country itself and in their ultimate
results to the world at large might be the events that took place within
Arabia during the pre-Islamitic epoch, they had small bearing on the
nations outside the peninsula. The Yemenite queen of Sheba’s ambassage
to Solomon, even if an historical event, led at least to no historical
results; and with other coeval rulers and nationalities, Greek, Persian,
and Macedonian, the Arabs rarely came into any other contact than that of
distant and desultory traffic. Nor do the frontier skirmishes by which
an Antigonus or a Ptolemy attempted, without success, to gain a footing
in Arabia, deserve more than a passing notice; and Pompey himself,
victorious elsewhere, was foiled on its frontiers.

At last during the reign of Augustus, Ælius Gallus, the Roman prefect
of Egypt, undertook a military expedition against Yemen itself, with
the view of annexing that region, which report enriched with immense
treasures, to the Roman Empire. With an army composed of ten thousand
Roman infantry, five hundred Jews, and one thousand Nabatæans, he crossed
the Red Sea in two hundred and ten galleys, and landed at Moilah, or
Leuce Come, in 25° N. lat., near the modern Yambo. After some delay, the
consequence of disease and disorganisation among his troops, he marched
southward until he reached the inland district and city of Nejran, on the
nearer frontier of Yemen. The town of Nejran he is said to have taken by
assault, as well as a few neighbouring places, probably mere villages, of
little note.

Meanwhile a large force of Arabs had assembled to oppose him, but Gallus
easily defeated them, and advanced to Mareb itself, then, we may suppose,
the capital of Yemen. But the Roman soldiers, unaccustomed to the heat
of the tropical climate, and much reduced in numbers, were incapable of
laying siege to that town; and their general thus found himself forced
to retreat, and recrossed the sea to Egypt without having effected any
permanent settlement on the Arab side. Later attempts, made by Roman
governors or generals under Trajan and Severus, were restricted to the
neighbourhood of the Assyrian frontier; and the ruined cities of Bosrah
and Petra yet indicate the landmarks of the extreme southerly limits
reached by imperial dominion over Arab territory.

More serious, and more lasting in its consequences, was the great
Abyssinian invasion of Yemen in 529, when Aryat, son or lieutenant of
the king of Abyssinia, landed in Aden with an army of seventy thousand
men, to avenge his co-religionists, the Christians, who had been cruelly
persecuted by Dhu-Nowas, king of Yemen, himself a proselyte to and an
ardent propagator of the Jewish code. The expedition was successful;
Dhu-Nowas perished, Christianity was proclaimed, and for seventy-six
years the Ethiopian conquerors retained subject to their rule the
southern and richer half of the peninsula. Their king Abraha even
advanced, in 570 A.D. (the year of the birth of Mohammed) as far as
Mecca; but beneath its walls suffered a repulse, which has been magnified
by the _Koran_ and Mohammedan tradition into the proportions of a
miracle. Persian assistance, furnished by the great Chosroes, ultimately
enabled the Arabs under Seif, son of Yezen, last direct lineal descendant
of the old kings of Sana, to liberate their territory from its dusky
usurpers (605 A.D.).

The seventh century had now commenced, and before long the wonderful
successes of Mohammed (622-632 A.D.), while they closed in one great
centralising effort the era of Arab progress and development within the
land, opened a marvellous phase of new activity and almost boundless
extension without.[l]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV. MOHAMMED

MOHAMMED BEN ABDALLAH BEN ABDUL-MUTTALIB

[Sidenote: [570-632 A.D.]]

While the poets in their stories were moulding the language to a more
uniform character, another work was going on in men’s minds which
contributed to found Arab nationality in a more decisive manner; there
was no more belief in the idols which had, at an early date, taken the
place of the one God, Allah; religious sentiment burst out on every side.
Already wide schisms were apparent; entire tribes had abandoned the
former worship. Besides idolatry, several religions were to be found in
Arabia. The Jews, driven from their country by the Assyrians, the Romans,
and the Greeks, had been warmly welcomed by the children of Ishmael,
who found in the traditions of the exiles a deep respect for the God
of Abraham; by means of these souvenirs skilfully evoked, Judaism had
made converts. It was principally seen spread throughout Hedjaz, in the
neighbourhood of Khaibar and Yathreb, where powerful tribes, those of the
Koraizas and the Nadhirites, had long been naturalised. A large portion
of the tribes of Yemen had also adopted it; and some of the Tobbas had
favoured the introduction of the faith of Moses into their states,
principally towards the years 225, 310, and 495 A.D. Sabaism or magianism
was also practised by the Himyarites and on the coast of the Persian
Gulf; some disciples of Brahmanism were even to be found in the midst of
the inhabitants of Oman.

RELIGIOUS UNREST

[Sidenote: [520-580 A.D.]]

Christianity, successfully preached in several parts of Arabia, was
professed by the Ghassanides in the year 330, and by various Arab tribes
of Irak, Mesopotamia, Bahrein, the desert of Faran, and Damut-Jandal.
The combined efforts of the negus of Abyssinia and of the emperor of
Constantinople had contributed to spread the Gospel in Yemen. The
Christian colony of Nejran had been honoured by persecution under
Dhu-Nowas towards 523; fifty years later, Abraha sought to make of the
church of Sana the goal of Arab pilgrimages. Lastly several kings of
Hira had been favourable to the religion of Christ.

In the midst of the new ideas which preaching had spread throughout the
peninsula, idolatry nevertheless remained the dominant religion. The
intermediary divinities which certain tribes adored bore no resemblance
to those creations of the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped moral beings
clothed in bodily forms; they were, as with the ancient Egyptians,
animals and plants, the gazelle, the horse, the camel, palm trees,
vegetables, or inorganic bodies, rocks, stones, etc. All the Arabs
acknowledged one supreme God, Allah; but some of them worshipped under
the figure of their idols, the angels Benat-allah (the daughters of God);
others, the planets or stars such as Aldebaran, Sirius, Canope, etc.
They believed in genii, _Jinn_, in ogres, _Ghol_, in witchcraft, _Shir_,
in divination, _Kehana_, in sacrifices, in oracles; fate was consulted
by means of arrows without points, _kidah_ or _azlam_, and the most
blamable superstitious rites were still almost universally practised. A
great number of tribes had their special idols, Hobal, Lat, etc., who
were honoured by rich offerings, and in whose honour victims were slain;
however, no temple had the fame of the Kaaba, whose pre-eminence was
universally admitted.

This temple, which Abraha al-Ashram had wished to destroy, had been
throughout the ages the object of the greatest veneration; it was looked
on as a present made by Jehovah to the Arab race to bear witness to its
condition privileged beyond all others. It was the oratory of Abraham and
of Ishmael, the house of Allah; on receiving the 360 idols, subordinate
powers accepted by the Arabs, it included all their divinities and became
the Pantheon of the nation; the traditions connected with it were dear
to all. They made the Kaaba a place of pilgrimage. They laboured to
adorn it, to beautify it; they would have liked it to surpass in riches
all the monuments of the universe; they hung the _Moallakat_ in it,
as if to connect with it every form of illustration. The Sabians, the
fire-worshippers, sent their offerings to it; even the Jews showed a deep
respect for this revered spot. The guardians of the temple, the Koreish
clan, had a sort of religious authority which was willingly recognised by
all; for instance, they had the right to name the sacred months during
which, after the pilgrimage, a suspension of arms should reign throughout
Arabia. So those who could attend the fair of Okad placed their weapons
in the hands of the Koreish chiefs before entering the meeting, which,
without this wise precaution, would often have degenerated into bloody
fights. It was therefore necessary to have influence at Mecca and with
the Koreish chiefs if one wished to found a uniform and national religion
in Arabia, and Mohammed saw this perfectly.

Abdul-Muttalib, the son of Hashim, born in 497, exercised supreme
authority in Mecca, from 520 to 579; he had the glory of delivering his
country from the invasion of the Abyssinians, and he saw a Himyarite
prince drive the foreigners from Yemen with the help of the king of
Persia. Father of eighteen children, he believed himself bound by a rash
vow to sacrifice one of his sons, in 569, before the idols of the Kaaba;
fate fixed on one he loved the most, Abdallah, about twenty-four years
of age. At the moment of the sacrifice, some of the Koreish chiefs rose
against so barbarous an action and so fatal an example; by their advice a
witch, _arrafa_, was consulted, who declared that Abdallah’s life might
be purchased by means of the _dia_ (price of human blood), and by drawing
lots. The _dia_ consisting of ten camels, the number ten was inscribed
on a pointless arrow, and on another the name of Abdallah; nine times
the name of Abdallah appeared, and it was only the tenth time that the
camels were condemned. So a hundred were killed instead of Abdallah, and
this number became thenceforth among the Koreish chiefs the price of the
_dia_.

A few days later Abdallah married Amina, daughter of Wahb, chief of the
family of the Zohri, and from this marriage was born Mohammed, “the
glorified,” about the month of August, 570.[b]

MOHAMMED’S LIFE

[Sidenote: [570-595 A.D.]]

Mohammed (properly Muhammad, “the much praised”; and not Mahomet),
was born in Mecca five years after the death of Justinian. The small
inheritance which his father left him consisted of five camels and a
faithful female slave. The biographers inform us that according to the
custom which prevailed among the upper classes in Mecca, his mother
Amina put the child out to nurse in the country. Halima, the wife of a
herdsman, was his foster-mother and nurse till his third year, and the
sacred legend tells us of many wonders with which the divine favour
surrounded Mohammed’s childhood. Halima’s flocks and herds increased
tenfold; her fields bore a superabundant harvest; angels cleansed
the child’s heart from all sins and filled it with faith, knowledge
and prophetic gifts. As, however, the child suffered from fits of
convulsions, at the end of two years Halima brought him back to his
mother. With her he remained till his sixth year. She then went with him
to Yathreb (Medina), to visit her relatives, but died on the way back in
the town of Abwa.

Mohammed now entered the house of his grandfather, Abdul-Muttalib, and
when two years later the latter also died, his uncle Abu Talib took him
into his family and watched over him with paternal affection. The story
that in his twelfth year he accompanied his foster-father on a caravan
journey to Syria, and that on this occasion a Christian monk foretold the
boy’s future greatness, appears, like many other details of his life,
to be a later legend. As he grew older, after having spent some time in
guarding the flocks, Mohammed took his share in the business and manner
of life of his relatives. He accompanied several of his uncles on warlike
and commercial expeditions, in which he learned to know his country and
his nation, and beheld the desert with its terrors and its poetry, where
he heard the legends and traditions of the wandering tribes and gathered
information concerning the teachings of the beliefs of Jew and Christian.
He did not himself understand the language of writing, but Mecca as the
pilgrim city of the East was one of the world’s centres, a school of
culture containing much instruction for a thoughtful youth. The Christian
religion, indeed, appears to have been known to him only by a few legends
and distorted doctrines; but on the other hand the Jewish sect of the
Hanifs, who lived scattered over the oases of the desert, had preserved
and handed down Judaism in its original purity and simplicity, together
with the belief in divine revelations at the mouth of inspired prophets.

HIS MARRIAGE WITH KHADIJA

[Sidenote: [595-612 A.D.]]

In his twenty-fifth year Khadija, the wealthy widow of a merchant, who
like himself was descended from Kussai, intrusted him with the conduct
of some caravans going to Syria and southern Arabia. In the execution
of these commissions Mohammed showed so much circumspection, skill, and
honesty, that Khadija though already forty years old permitted him to
make application for her hand. The wedding was solemnly performed and
it founded Mohammed’s fortune. Khadija was an intelligent and virtuous
woman, and a faithful companion to her husband in good and evil days.
“She was his first convert, she comforted him when he was mocked, she
encouraged him when he suffered under persecution, she strengthened him
when he was wavering.” But for the love and faith of Khadija, Mohammed
would never have become the prophet of his nation.

“Although poor in goods which are but transient possessions, inconstant
shadows,” said Abu Talib at the marriage feast, “my nephew Mohammed
exceeds all the men of the Koreish in nobility of soul, virtue, and
understanding.”

The marriage was blessed with children, but the sons died at a tender
age; and of the four daughters only the youngest, Fatima, continued the
race. Mohammed recognised and valued Khadija’s superior qualities. In
spite of his great fondness for the female sex he remained faithful to
her so long as she lived, and after her death held her memory in high
honour. Aisha, his beloved wife of later days, said she was never so
jealous of any of his other wives as she was of the dead Khadija whom he
always declared to be a model for all women.

For more than a decade after his marriage Mohammed continued his life as
a merchant, but with little success and little content. He was often seen
to be deep in thought; he withdrew more and more into solitude, spending
many days and generally the whole of the month Ramadhan in a cave in
Mount Hira, not far from Mecca. Sometimes he went into this retirement
alone, sometimes with Khadija.

There in that gloomy neighbourhood, full of naked rocks, yawning
precipices, and grim ravines where no shade affords protection from
the blazing sunlight, where no grass, no vegetation, no sound of
falling water refreshes the spirit, he gave himself up to religious
contemplations and considered how he might save his nation from its
degradation. In the city of Mecca, all alive as it was with people, as
well as on his journeys, he had been brought much in contact with Jews
and Christians; he had not only absorbed their teaching and traditions,
but from the effects of their religion on life and character he had
perceived the superiority of the belief in one God over the idolatrous
heathenism of his own nation; and he had also learned that both religious
fraternities still waited for the completion of their religion; the Jews
looking for the advent of a messiah, the Christians for the return of
Jesus or the appearance of the promised “comforter” (_paraclete_). Thus
there gradually awoke in him the conviction that his people stood in
need of a purer revealed religion, that the idols were but vain trifles,
and that their worship excited the anger of God; that a new and divinely
inspired prophet must come forward, who should overturn the kingdom of
darkness and idolatry, and his fiery imagination filled him with the
belief that the one God had sent him to convert mankind that they might
become participators in the joys of heaven, and escape the fearful
chastisements of hell. His nervous, hysterical nature, the violent
convulsions and cataleptic fits which seized him from time to time, the
vivid dreams and mental delusions produced by his feverish and excited
fancy, might well engender in himself and others the belief that he had
relations with angels and spirits, and was a sharer in divine visions
and inspirations. Mohammed had already passed his fortieth year when he
“began to feel the travail of new ideas.”

MOHAMMED AS A PROPHET (610 OR 612 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [610-612 A.D.]]

Once when he was dwelling in the gloomy cavern he had a vision, in which
the angel Gabriel approached him and commanded him to publish abroad the
revelations which the Lord and Creator had sent. Mohammed felt his spirit
illuminated with a divine light; but doubting lest a demon should be
playing him an evil trick, he came to Khadija, his face streaming with
perspiration and utterly discomposed. She believed in the divine message,
and in union with her learned cousin Waraka, who had already denied the
pagan beliefs of the fathers, she laboured to dispel his doubt.

Soon the angel appeared to him a second time, and gave him an assurance
that he was not possessed by demons but called of God to spread the
revelations of heaven. Mohammed now believed and announced that Allah,
the lord of heaven and earth, had chosen him as his ambassador to inform
men of his holy will; he now believed and taught that the Lord spake by
him, and that his utterances were inspirations and revelations from the
only and most high God, and being written down separately and eventually
put together in the sacred book _Koran_,[c] they were so regarded by the
faithful and accepted with reverence. Thus began Mohammed’s prophetic
career in the year 610 or 612 of our era. Like the seers of old, like
the prophets in Israel, he took the enthusiasm which dwelt in him as a
“charge from the Lord,” and the words which issued from his mouth as the
outpourings of the divine spirit.

Convinced of the truth of his prophetic mission, Mohammed now entered on
his office of teacher. But with all his devotion to the holy cause he
went to work with great caution. He first turned to his kinsmen that he
might be recognised by them as the messenger of God. His wife Khadija,
his daughters, his cousin Ali, the ten-year-old son of Abu Talib, his
friend Abu Bekr, a well-to-do merchant of upright character and clear
discernment, and his former slave Zaid to whom he had given his liberty
were his first converts. In like manner he avoided anything which might
have irritated his compatriots.

“He sought to bring his teaching into harmony with their prejudices and
to lead them gradually to a better knowledge. He did not venture to
attack the sanctity of the Kaaba, joined in the ceremonies of the pilgrim
festival, and sanctioned the adoration of the Black Stone.”

Thus three years went by, during which the number of Mohammed’s adherents
did not exceed forty, for the most part young men, foreigners or slaves.
It was not till the fourth year that in accordance with another vision
he attempted to appear publicly in the character of a prophet. He first
addressed himself to the men of his own race, the Koreish; and in the
name of the one God who had sent him as his apostle, threatened them with
the fire of hell if they did not renounce their unbelief.

“One day ye shall die and rise again; then must ye give account of your
deeds and shall be rewarded for your virtue in paradise and punished for
your vices in hell.”

But far from winning a hearing he reaped mockery and scorn. Already in
the first assembly his uncle Abu Lahab had lifted a stone against him;
and although the rest of his kinsmen protected him from ill-treatment,
the hatred and opposition of the Koreish increased with each new oration.
The more clearly they perceived that Mohammed’s claims as a prophet
might endanger their priestly position and their lucrative privileges
as guardians of the holy temple, the more fiercely did their anger
burn, and the more vehement became their threats and abuse. His chief
opponents were the Koreish of the line of the Abd Shams, under the
leadership of Abu Sufyan and Abu Hakam, called by Mohammed, Abu Jahl (the
father of folly), two bitter enemies of the new prophet. It was only to
the protection of his nearest relatives that Mohammed owed his rescue
from the violence of his enemies and persecutors. On the other hand
the position of his adherents of humble rank, who had no such powerful
protectors to stand by them, especially of the slaves and freedmen, grew
daily more insecure; so that in order that they might escape torture and
scourging the prophet allowed some of his followers to deny him outwardly
“if only the heart remained steadfast in the faith,” and on his advice a
number of believing men and women, amongst them his daughter Rokayyah and
her husband Othman, took ship for Abyssinia, where the king, a Nestorian
Christian, assured them a refuge. In vain did the Koreish through Amru
and another ambassador, offer the prince rich gifts for the delivery of
the refugees; the Abyssinian kept his hands pure of any injury to those
who had sought his protection. He may have perceived that the persecuted
stood nearer to the true faith than the idol worshippers of the Kaaba.

MOHAMMED AN OUTLAW

[Sidenote: [612-620 A.D.]]

The invective and ill-treatment which Mohammed had to suffer increased
the number of his followers, whilst indignation at the abuse and insults
to which he was daily exposed without any fault of his own led certain
brave men of chivalrous disposition to take his part. Amongst them were
Mohammed’s uncle Hamza, “the lion of God,” and Jahl’s nephew Omar. Having
been sent by his relatives to kill the prophet for a great reward, on the
way to the latter’s dwelling Omar was suddenly and miraculously converted
by hearing his sister Fatima read a passage of the _Koran_, and from
being a persecutor he became an earnest believer. Omar, then twenty-six
years old, was a man of gigantic stature, of fabulous strength, and great
courage. His wild aspect terrified the boldest, and his staff struck more
fear into the beholder than would have been inspired by another man’s
sword.

But the more devotees “Islam” _i.e._, “submission” (to the will of God)
acquired, the more eagerly did its enemies seek to stifle the work in
the blood of its author. New persecutions increased the number of the
emigrants; only Mohammed and his most faithful worshippers were protected
by Abu Talib from the rage of the sons of Shams and Naufal. He hid them
in a strong castle without the city, in the depths of an impassable
ravine, and when their powerful enemies laid a ban on all the followers
of the prophet and the whole race of Hashim and solemnly declared in a
roll which was hung up in the interior of the Kaaba that until he was
given up they would treat his protectors as enemies, the faithful uncle
betook himself to the rocky fortress with many of his kinsmen. For three
years they lived in the barren desert, cut off from all communication
with the city, whither they could venture only in the sacred months, and
often they were in want of the most necessary means of existence. Finally
the ban, which had excited the greatest discontent in Mecca, and of which
even the sons of Shams were beginning to grow weary, was removed. The
parchment roll disappeared from the Kaaba, according to the legend, by
a miracle. Mohammed now returned to Mecca (_circa_ 620); but soon the
death of his paternal friend and protector, Abu Talib, who was followed
to the grave a few days later by his faithful wife Khadija, exposed him
to fresh dangers. Abu Talib died in the religion of his fathers; he had
always honoured his nephew as an upright and god-fearing man, but he had
never believed in his prophetic mission. Mohammed sincerely mourned them
both.

[Sidenote: [620-622 A.D.]]

“Never was there a better wife than Khadija,” he said once to the
youthful and beautiful Aisha; “she believed in me when men despised
me; she relieved my wants when I was poor and despised by the world.”
Nevertheless he soon consoled himself for her loss by his marriage to
Sauda and his betrothal to Aisha, the seven-year old daughter of Abu Bekr.

While the prophet was leading a melancholy existence under scorn and
ignominy, sometimes in Mecca, sometimes in the society of a few friends
in Taif, a place lying in a fruitful region on the borders of the hill
country, hiding himself with difficulty from the snares and persecutions
of his enemies, his soul felt itself comforted and exalted by new
visions. He saw in the spirit how he was borne on a winged horse to the
temple at Jerusalem and thence to the seventh heaven to the presence of
God, where the patriarchs, the earlier prophets, and the hosts of angels
yielded him precedence, and the Lord himself proclaimed him as the crown
and aim of creation. He needed this self-confidence, this firm belief in
his high message, to keep him from wavering and succumbing to the storms
and dangers which gathered over his head.

But whilst the inhabitants of Mecca hardened their hearts against the
doctrine of the one God, revealing himself through the new prophet,
Mohammed won eager devotees from a host of pilgrims from Yathreb,
afterwards called Medina, _i.e._, the city, to whom he unfolded the
principles of Islam on the “mount of homage,” Akaba. They belonged to
the distinguished tribe of the Khazraj who, in conjunction with the
tribe of Aus had, in the fifth century, wrested the lordship of Medina
from the Jews; and on their return to their native city they worked in
secret for the new faith for which, in consequence of their relations
with the numerous Jewish tribes in the neighbourhood, they were better
prepared than the Meccans. In spite of the jealousy of the tribes of Aus
towards the Khazraj, by the energy of the learned Masab, whom Mohammed
sent to Medina as his forerunner and as reader of the _Koran_, Islam
soon obtained a firm foothold in the city; so that two years later his
adherents could venture to invite the prophet to visit them. With this
object seventy-three believers journeyed to Mecca and in an assembly held
at night on that same hill of homage they made a covenant with Mohammed.
They vowed, and gave their hands on the promise, to pray only to the one
God and to none other gods, to honour the prophet, to obey him in joy
and sorrow, and always confess the truth without fear of man. Under the
guidance of twelve leaders, whom Mohammed selected from amongst them, the
men of Medina (who thenceforth bore the name of Ansar, _i.e._, those who
give aid) returned to their own city in the company of many believers.

THE HEGIRA (622 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [622 A.D.]]

But Mohammed, with his most faithful adherents Abu Bekr and Ali,
remained in Mecca three months longer. Only when he was informed by a
secret worshipper that the Koreish had determined to murder him, did
he depart on his flight with Abu Bekr, both mounted on swift camels.
Whilst the enemy was surrounding his house, the craft and fidelity of
Ali, who occupied the prophet’s bed and assumed his garments, enabled
him and his friend to flee secretly in the darkness of the night and
conceal themselves in a cave. Next morning, when the Koreish discovered
the deception, they set a price of a hundred camels on the head of the
fugitive and sent in pursuit of him. But Mohammed’s destiny was not yet
fulfilled. After having spent three days and nights in the cave of Mount
Thaur, he succeeded in escaping with his companion by by-paths to Medina.
With this flight, which was afterwards assigned to the 16th of July of
the year 622 according to our reckoning, begins the Hegira, the era of
the Mohammedans or Moslems (Mussulmans), _i.e._, the “submissive.” [Ali
remained three days after his master had left. Considerable property had
been entrusted to Mohammed for safe keeping; and it was Ali’s duty to
restore this to its owners.]

The people of Medina received Mohammed with joyous enthusiasm; his
entrance into the town resembled that of a triumphant prince rather than
a poor fugitive. Soon the rest of his friends and followers gathered
round him, amongst them Ali whom the Koreish had allowed to go unharmed,
Omar, with his beautiful daughter Hafsa, whom some time afterward the
prophet included in the number of his wives, and Othman with his wife
Rokayyah. When the last-named died in the following year, Mohammed gave
his second daughter Um Kolthum in marriage to his faithful comrade. The
case containing the inspired sayings of the _Koran_ was entrusted to the
care of Hafsa.

[Sidenote: [622-624 A.D.]]

The prophet’s presence had the most beneficial results for Medina. The
two tribes of the Khazraj and the Aus, who in former years had often
engaged in bloody conflicts, were united in the new faith as the faithful
“helpers” of God’s messenger, and in conjunction with the emigrants from
Mecca (Mohajira) formed the kernel of the Moslems. At first Mohammed
attempted to win over the numerous Jews of Medina to his cause, and
for this reason paid attention in many respects to the Mosaic law; he
continued the observance of the Sabbath, and made Jerusalem the Kibla,
_i.e._, the holy place, towards which the faithful had to turn their
faces when they prayed. But when the Jews refused to recognise him as the
expected Messiah as they had formerly refused to recognise Jesus, but
rather made the new prophet an object of their scorn, he once more turned
to the old Arab faith. He removed the Kibla to Mecca, appointed Friday
as the day of devotion and religious observance, and eventually wielded
the scourge of religious persecution over Jews and heathens without
distinction.

Many of the emigrant Meccans were overtaken by illness and homesickness
in this foreign land, and in order to make up to them for the loss of
their relatives and belongings, Mohammed founded a system of brotherhood
among fifty-four believers from Mecca and a like number from Medina, so
that two men united in this “brotherhood of faith” should stand closer to
each other, even in the matter of inheritance, than blood relations,--an
institution which lasted, however, only until the foreigners had settled
into the new life.

A second period in the history of the development of Islam begins in
Medina. But however brilliantly and successfully Mohammed’s prophetic
labours might continue from this time forward, his character during the
period of his fortune was less spotless, his conviction less sincere, his
motives less pure than in the dark and suffering time of persecution and
oppression. His revelations, which he received from the angel Gabriel as
occasion arose, were circulated as inspired sayings amongst the people,
partly through oral tradition, partly in fly-leaves until they were put
together in one whole as the holy writing (_Koran_). They were not drawn
up without occasional adjustment to the circumstances of the moment
and to his own appetites, a transformation which reveals itself even in
the form and the language. For whilst in the parts drawn up in Mecca
poetic enthusiasm prevails to an undue extent, in Medina the oratorical
element is more in the foreground; for Mohammed, all too closely bound
to material things, was no longer able to disengage himself from them.
In the lack of personal conviction which now supervened, if he wished to
rise above the commonplace he had to supply the inner impulse by affected
vividness, and the truth firmly believed by empty sophistry; and from his
manner of writing it is easy to see that his thoughts no longer spring
from a warm heart, but are the products of a cold intellect. No longer
following the suggestions of his mind can he allow his discourse to
pursue its natural course; all must now be thought out beforehand, for it
is no longer guided by the spirit of God but by his own _ego_. The first
mosque, a simple, artless building made of the wood of date trees, which
was erected soon after his arrival in Medina, became a sacred centre of
his teaching. From its roof, five times each day, the steadfast devotee
Bilal summoned the faithful to prayer.

[Illustration: ARAB CHIEF IN THE TIME OF MOHAMMED]

Hitherto Islam had been a religion of peace and love, and Mohammed had
inculcated no precept as he had that of gentleness in word and deed. But
now that he found himself at the head of a submissive host of followers
and in a position to oppose his enemies by force of arms, he declared
the struggle against the infidel, the spread of his doctrines by fire
and sword, to be the sacred duty binding on all Moslems, a precept which
gave Islam an aggressive direction and had in its results a world-shaking
significance. Not to bring peace, but a sword, had he, the last and
greatest of the prophets, appeared on earth; the struggle against the
enemies of Islam was a sacred struggle; he who fell in the contest would
pass, free from all sin and punishment, safely into paradise, that abode
of the blessed which he had painted to his converts with all the ardour
of his imagination as a place of earthly pleasures and all the joys of
sense; and still further to inflame their courage he planted in their
souls the contempt of death by teaching them that the duration of life
as well as the destiny and end of mankind had been fixed beforehand by a
divine decree, by an unchangeable fate; if the hour of death had come,
none could escape his destiny, if the end of life had not yet approached,
he might unhesitatingly venture the utmost.

Relying on the warlike impulse which such doctrines must have engendered
in the fiery soul of the Arab, Mohammed, at the head of his fellow
tribesmen, allies, and believing followers, now undertook warlike
expeditions against the Koreish who had driven him from his native
city. He knew that he could not more effectively punish the haughty
merchant princes of Mecca than by lying in wait for their caravans and
robbing them of the valuable wares which they were accustomed to take
to Syria. At the same time he could absolutely rely on the assistance
of his new fellow-citizens in these struggles, for the merchants of
Mecca looked down with contempt on the agricultural people of Medina.
He himself generally marched into the field more to fire the courage of
the combatants by his prayers and promises of heavenly support than for
the purpose of himself bearing the white standard, which he generally
entrusted to the valiant Omar, or the heroic Ali, the “father of the
dust.”

Ali, to whom Mohammed gave his favourite daughter Fatima in marriage at
Medina, is the purest and noblest figure among the followers of Mohammed,
the “Siegfried of Islam,” as a modern writer has designated him. All his
life he adhered to the prophet and the faith of his youth with complete
submission and eager admiration. If his fiery, pure, and magnanimous
character made him the boast and ornament of the Moslems, he was also by
his heroism and bravery the bold vindicator of Islam, the trumpet of the
strife in struggle and danger.

If at first warfare was suspended during the sacred months, according to
the practice of former generations, Mohammed soon tore down this barrier.
For instance, Abdallah ben Jash fell on the Koreish in the valley of
Nakhla during the sacred month of Rajab, robbed their wagons, and slew
some of the escort and took others prisoners; and when the prophet, who
had himself recommended this act to the leader in a dubiously worded
document, perceived that it had excited general indignation, he issued a
proclamation by which war against the infidel was declared to be lawful
at any period--a proof “that he was no longer acting according to the
will of God but according to his own will”; and that the utterances of
the _Koran_ were so many “pictures reflecting” his own position. In the
second year of the Hegira the fight of Bedr took place; and here was
manifested for the first time how the hope of a blessed hereafter had
filled the believing Moslems with an enthusiasm which defied death and
despised pain.

THE BATTLE OF BEDR (624 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [624 A.D.]]

In order to rescue a large caravan from danger and distress, the Koreish
marched into the field a thousand strong, with seven hundred camels and
one hundred horses. The train of merchandise escaped the ambush by the
clever management of Abu Sufyan, but nevertheless Abu Jahl persisted in
the conflict. At Bedr, a camping ground and market, noted even at the
present day for its plentiful supply of water, the Meccans encountered
the hostile bands, who were not half so strong, and made ready for
battle. Three Meccans, kinsmen of those who had fallen at Nakhla, came
forward and challenged three of the opposite party to single combat.
Hamza, Ali, and Obaida opposed themselves to them and slew them,
whereupon the fight became general. Mohammed, who was watching the
encounter from a leafy hut on a rising ground and praying to God with
great ardour and excitement that he would not allow his faithful few to
be destroyed, suddenly declared that victory had been promised him in a
vision, and flinging a handful of dust after the Koreish, he called out,
“Shame on their faces!”

Soon confusion seized the enemy and the battle ended with a complete
defeat of the Koreish. Seventy heads of distinguished houses were slain
during the battle or on the flight. Amongst the fallen were Otba and
Shaiba, and, above all Abu Jahl (called the enemy of God), Mohammed’s
bitterest opponent; amongst the prisoners were his uncle Abbas and
Abul-Aas, the husband of his eldest daughter Zainab. Both were ransomed
and returned to Mecca. Abbas probably henceforth served his nephew as
a spy and Abul-Aas had to send his wife back to her father. Two other
prisoners, Al-Nadr and Okba, who had belonged to Mohammed’s most eager
adversaries in Mecca, were executed. But the prophet, always inclined
to mildness, deplored the rash act when he heard the touching lament of
the former’s daughter, a lament which is still preserved to us. For the
rest, the battle of Bedr was of the greatest importance for the victory
of Islam, and in consequence all the combatants whose names were entered
in the lists henceforth formed the highest nobility of the Moslems. The
spoil and the ransoms were equally divided, but soon after a saying of
the _Koran_ commanded that in future the fifth part of all spoil should
go to the prophet, for himself, his kinsmen, for the poor, orphans, and
wanderers.

BATTLE OF OHOD (MARCH, 625 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [625 A.D.]]

The battle of Bedr was the first step of Islam to dominion. Whilst the
inhabitants of Medina and the Bedouin tribes of the neighbourhood drew
from the prophet’s success a belief in his divine mission and gathered
round him with enthusiasm, in Mecca there was great despair. Abu Lahab,
Mohammed’s uncle and enemy, died seven days later of a disease resembling
smallpox, full of affliction and anger at the success of his nephew; and
Okba’s daughter Hind, the passionate wife of Abu Sufyan, cried day and
night in ungoverned fury for revenge for her fallen kinsmen. Her lord
actually went against Medina with two hundred Koreish; but their belief
in their own cause was shaken, and when Mohammed marched against them
they fled home in such haste that they left their stock of meal behind.

In the months after this “meal-campaign,” certain Jews in Medina, having
made a mock of Mohammed in their verses, were put to death, and their
co-religionists who had refused to go over to Islam, in particular
the Beni Kainoka, the most skilful of the wealthy goldsmiths in the
country, were driven into banishment in Syria. Abu Sufyan now marched
a second time to the fight, on this occasion with a force of three
thousand Koreish, at whose head stood three brave men, Akrama a son of
Abu Jahl, Khalid, and Amru, afterwards the most distinguished heroes of
the faithful. In the rearguard was the terrible Hind, with fifteen other
women and certain poets who roused the spirit of vengeance in the army by
laments over those slain at Bedr.

Mohammed wished to await the enemy in the city, but the young men, in
their eagerness for war, demanded a pitched battle. The prophet yielded
to their demand with inward misgivings. On the mount Ohod, whose solitary
granite mass, bare of tree or bush, rises about a league to the north
of Medina, he ranged his warriors, who did not exceed seven hundred, as
he had disdained the help of the Jews and thus so deeply offended their
patron, the Khazrayite Abdallah ben Obayyah, who apart from this was a
secret envier and opponent of Mohammed, that he too had withdrawn with
his army. Mohammed himself fought in the front rank; wearing a red fillet
round his head and waving “the sword of God and his envoy,” he encouraged
his men with axioms of the new faith. Here, too, victory seemed first to
incline to the Moslems; strenuously as Hind and her women, “the daughters
of the stars, with cloudy hair and pearl-ornamented necks,” might
encourage the combatants, promising loving embraces to the victors, and
threatening the flying with shame and death, the ranks of the Meccans
nevertheless gave way. Seven members of the family of Abd ad-Dar, who
each in turn performed the hereditary office of standard-bearer, rolled
in the dust. Then the bowmen, fearing to be too late for the spoil,
left the secure position which Mohammed had assigned them behind the
mountain, and thus gave Khalid an opportunity to fall with his cavalry on
the Moslem rear. The battle now suddenly took a new turn; the superior
numbers of the Koreish carried the day, Mohammed was wounded and fell,
face downwards, into a trench. His standard-bearer Mussab, fell, and as
he resembled Mohammed in appearance the rumour, “Mohammed is dead,” was
quickly disseminated and proved as encouraging to the infidels as it
was destructive to the Moslem. The defeated were already hurrying away
towards Medina, when the poet Kaab, the son of Malik, recognised the
prophet amongst the wounded, in his helmet and coat of mail.

[Illustration: ARAB WARRIOR, TIME OF MOHAMMED]

Encouraged by the joyful tidings that Mohammed was still alive, ten or
twelve of his trusty followers, including Abu Bekr and Omar, collected
round him and carved themselves a way with the sword towards a rocky
height, where they defended themselves bravely until the enemy, who,
supposing the prophet to be dead, had paid no special heed to this little
band, had begun their homeward march after insulting and mutilating the
dead. Hind and her companions took the severed noses and ears of the
enemy, strung them together like pearls, and wore them as necklaces and
bracelets. The former even carried her rage so far that she tried to tear
the heart out of the corpse of Hamza whom the Abyssinian slave Washi had
slain in the midst of the fight, and to rend it in pieces.[31] The fall
of the faithful Hamza touched Mohammed nearly; he frequently bewailed
him, and the women of Medina raised a general lament over the fallen
hero, whose name was henceforth mentioned in every death-song.

[Sidenote: [625-627 A.D.]]

After the retreat of the Koreish, Mohammed returned with his men to
Medina. Hard as the blow had been it could not shake his belief and
confidence in a successful issue. Whilst he consoled the relatives of the
slain with the thought of the happy life hereafter, he prohibited the
customary mourning usages, the striking of the visage, the shaving of the
hair, the rending of the garments, only permitting weeping because “tears
give relief to the afflicted heart”; at the same time he took judicious
measures for defence, in case the Koreish, hearing that the prophet
was still alive, should come back. But they did not venture to expose
their weakened army to fresh dangers; they contented themselves with the
victory they had won, and hoped that in time they might get the better of
religious innovations if they preserved the sacred city with the Kaaba
from all pollution, slew all Moslems who fell into their hands, and all
the readers of the _Koran_ who should proclaim Islam to the inhabitants
of the hill country, and if they permitted no Mohammedan to enter the
Kaaba. For years the followers of the prophet might not take part in the
pilgrimage to Mecca, which in the sacred months the rest of the Arabs
made for the sake of prayer and festival joys. But the time drew slowly
near when in Mecca also the consideration of the old heathen gods was to
sink in the dust, and even the Koreish would bow the knee before the name
of him against whom they now nourished so deadly a hatred and whom they
now persecuted in so bloody a fashion.

EXPEDITION AGAINST THE JEWS (626 A.D.)

Mohammed, from the very character of his religion, could not let the
sword rust in its sheath so long as Islam had not attained supremacy.
Consequently he continued to lead his followers on warlike expeditions
against both Jew and heathen. The fact that he himself took part in all
the fights was a great spur to the spirit and courage of his troops; more
than once his life was in danger, but a higher power protected God’s
envoy; the sword fell from a hostile leader who waved it above his head.

Since the battle of Ohod most of the attacks had been directed against
the Jews, who showed themselves more and more hostile to the new
religion. They found a protector in Abdallah ben Obayyah, the chief
of the Khazraj, who, jealous of Mohammed’s growing power amongst his
followers, toiled against the prophet. The Beni Nadir were driven from
their strong castles, after their date palms had been cut down, in
defiance of the usages of Arabian warfare; and they owed their lives
solely to the powerful intercession of Abdallah, but were nevertheless
compelled to quit the Arabian country like the Beni Kainoka before them.
But the “hypocrites” continued to work against Mohammed’s power after
a victorious campaign against the powerful tribe of the Beni Mustalik;
Abdallah excited a quarrel between the “helpers” and the immigrant
believers, which was only adjusted by the skill and prompt decision of
the prophet. A saying of the Koran gave warning against hypocrites,
but this time also Abdallah escaped punishment. Even the evil reports
concerning Aisha’s virtue and marital fidelity, which he and others put
into circulation about that time because she was left behind on a night
march and entered the camp on the second day in the company of a man,
were overlooked. Mohammed, in accordance with a revelation, declared the
rumours to be slanders, punished the calumniators who, like the poet
Hassan, maintained her guilt, and cherished Aisha with fresh tenderness;
but Abdallah remained unpunished. Mohammed dreaded the revenge of the
Khazraj.

SIEGE OF MEDINA, EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS (627-628 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [627-628 A.D.]]

Soon after the Koreish and other Arab tribes made alliance with the
Jewish Beni Koraiza against the Moslems, and marched on Medina with a
force of ten thousand men. Mohammed did not venture to meet the superior
strength of the enemy in the open field for fear lest he should be
overtaken by a fate such as he had suffered at Ohod. He had recourse to a
method of defence hitherto unknown in Arabia. He drew a trench round the
city. By means of this defence he kept off the enemy by small skirmishes
for a time, until by crafty negotiations he succeeded in sowing mistrust
and division among the allies. The consequence was that the Arabs, who
besides this had been disheartened by the wintry weather and cold showers
of rain, retreated after an ineffectual blockade of five weeks; thus
abandoning their Jewish allies to Mohammed’s vengeance. Besieged in their
strong castles the Beni Koraiza had to surrender at discretion. Thereupon
in spite of the intercession of their ancient allies the Aus, according
to the harsh decision of the chief Zaid ben Muadh, who had been selected
as arbitrator, all the men of the tribe, seven hundred in number, were
executed on the market-place of Medina, the women and children were led
into slavery, and their flocks, lands, and goods were divided among the
victors.

“God drove the keepers of the Scriptures (the Jews) from their strong
places and put fear in their hearts. One half of them has he slain, the
other taken prisoners; he has given you their lands, their dwellings,
their goods, for an inheritance. God is almighty.”

In these words a saying of the _Koran_ announced this horrible event, the
darkest deed of Mohammed’s life. Zaid died soon after the cruel sentence.
Irritated by the continual perfidy and the hostile temper of the Jews,
Mohammed had allowed himself to be drawn into a course in which the
messenger of God gave way to the passionate Arab, in which not the temper
of a prophet but the revenge of the passionate Arab and the cruelty of an
oriental despot were manifested, in which “earthly mire choked the sacred
flame of prophecy.” And in order finally to destroy the power of the Jews
in Medina and the neighbourhood, Mohammed in the following year (628)
marched with fourteen hundred believers against their chief fortress of
Khaibar.

“We pray to thee, oh Almighty! against the goods of these places and
all that they contain,” cried the prophet with a loud voice, when they
entered the territory of their strong citadels, “and we implore thee to
preserve us from the evil of these places and their inhabitants.”

Mohammed’s prayer was heard. By the bravery of the Moslems, especially of
Ali, to whom before the battle the prophet had given his own sword--“Ali,
the man who loves God and his envoy, the man who knows no fear and never
yet turned his back on the enemy”--the castles were broken into, their
treasures and goods carried off, the inhabitants, when they escaped the
sword, made tributary so that they had to hold their rich estates and
date plantations as hereditary tenants and pay the half of the produce to
the new owners. The Mohammedans were roused to these warlike enterprises
no less by the greed of spoil than by religious fanaticism. The Jewish
chief Kinana was stretched on the rack to make him betray hidden
treasures, and when he remained dumb he was beheaded. Mohammed himself
not only appropriated the fifth share of the spoil, but also landed
property, and he increased the number of his wives by two beautiful
Jewish prisoners, Safiya and Zainab. The first was converted to Islam and
became a tender wife to the prophet, who celebrated the bridal with her
in his tent; on the other hand the second, whose nearest relatives had
met their death in the battle, meditated a dark act of vengeance. She
placed a poisoned meal before Mohammed. It is true that he ate little
of it (in consequence of a miraculous warning, as the legend recounts),
but still it was enough to undermine his health for the remainder of his
life. Even in his dying hour he is reported to have said that he felt the
poison of Khaibar[32] in his veins.

MOHAMMED’S PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA (629 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [629 A.D.]]

Even before this war Mohammed had made a pilgrimage to Mecca with a
considerable following, to try whether under shelter of the sacred month
he could approach the Kaaba, acting under the just conviction that it
would be of great advantage to the spread of his doctrines if he could
associate himself with the ancient sanctuary of his people. This time
indeed he failed to attain his object; the gates of Mecca remained
closed to the Mohammedans; nevertheless by the Peace of Hodaibiya he
won a ten years’ truce from the Koreish and the concession that he and
his believers should perform their prayers in the Kaaba for three days
annually. The zealous Omar was indignant at this agreement. “Art thou not
the messenger of the Lord? Are the Meccans not infidels and we believers?
Wherefore should we permit our faith to endure such an insult?”

But Mohammed preferred the lesser advantage to the uncertain issue of an
armed conflict, convinced that greater successes would soon follow from
small beginnings. He was not mistaken. In consequence of this treaty and
shortly after the fall of Khaibar, he undertook (March, 629) a pilgrimage
to Mecca, together with a party of his faithful followers, and great
was the joy of the exiles when for the first time they again trod their
native soil. Mohammed, mounted on his camel, accomplished the usual seven
circuits of the Kaaba and the pacing to and fro between the hills Safa
and Merwa and the rest followed him.

On this occasion Mohammed was united to Maimuna, a widow of fifty-one
years. As his former marriages since the death of Khadija were decided by
his sensuality and fondness for women and had at times been so scandalous
that, as in the case of Zainab, the divorced wife of his adopted son
Zaid, the indignation of the faithful at a hitherto unheard of and
forbidden alliance had to be quieted by a new command in the _Koran_
concerning relationship; so on the contrary this last marriage was like
his first, an act of wisdom, policy, and practical consideration. By this
marriage Maimuna’s kinsmen, Khalid and Amru, two distinguished warriors,
were won over to the cause of Islam--a victory of greater importance than
many a victorious battle.

[Illustration: AN ARAB WARRIOR]

The converts soon had an opportunity of increasing on a wider
battle-field the warlike renown which they had acquired in petty
quarrels. Mohammed had already turned his eyes to the frontiers of
Arabia. Encouraged by the growing numbers and enthusiasm of his devotees,
he believed that the time was not far off when Islam would acquire
the dominion of the world. The Jews had been compelled to pay dearly
for refusing to recognise him as their messiah; but, since they lived
scattered and held in contempt amongst other nations he could well
dispense with their homage if he succeeded in bringing the two most
powerful religious associations of the time, namely the Christians and
the fire-worshippers of Iran, to acknowledge his prophetic mission. With
this object he addressed documents to various foreign rulers, calling
on them to worship the one true God who had revealed himself through
Mohammed. Amongst the Christians especially he might have expected a
great welcome, since he not only owned Jesus to be a prophet but also
recognised the latter’s mother as a spotless virgin. In one of the
finest passages of the _Koran_ it is related how Mary, after the angel
of God had informed her that she should bear a “pure son,” had brought a
child into the world under a palm tree; how this child had spoken even
in the cradle and revealed himself as the “servant of God,” destined
to exercise every virtue of life and bring peace to men. According to
the Moslems, the ordinances of Mohammed’s religion found a favourable
reception amongst Christian princes. The king of Abyssinia, who had
always shown himself favourable to the adherents of the new prophet,
and the Christian general at Yemen are said to have gone over to Islam;
the prefect of Egypt requested time for consideration, but sent costly
gifts, among them two fair Coptic slaves for the voluptuous prophet. The
messengers of Mohammed invited the princes and nations of the earth to
join in the recognition of Islam, and one of them was even received by
the emperor Heraclius in a gracious and friendly manner. On the other
hand Chosroes II, then at the height of his power, tore the documents
unread and at the same time the ruler of Bosrah slew an Arabian envoy
who had endeavoured to win new converts for Islam. Against the former,
Mohammed launched a prophecy of evil, against the latter sent an army
under his former slave Zaid, whom on account of his faithfulness and
submission he had taken in the place of a son.

At Muta in Syria the Arabian hosts under the sacred standard had their
first encounter with the Græco-Roman legions. Zaid fell like a warrior
in the foremost ranks; in his place the brave and handsome Jafar, Ali’s
brother, seized Mohammed’s banner. Soon after he lost his right hand;
then he waved the standard in his left, and when this too was severed
from his body he held the sacred ensign in his bleeding arms till he
received the deathstroke. Abdallah ben Rawaha, the poet, now took the
standard from the dying hero, crying, “Forward! Either victory or
paradise is ours!” And when he too sank under the enemy’s lances Khalid,
the new convert of Mecca, grasped the banner and guided the battle to
a finish. It was not a decisive victory; but Khalid had given such
brilliant proofs of valour that in the nocturnal council of war held in
the camp he was chosen commander-in-chief and henceforth bore the famous
surname of “Sword of God.” Mournfully, though laden with glory and spoil,
the warrior host returned to Medina with the cherished corpses. Mohammed
extolled the lot of the fallen martyrs, but with Zaid’s young daughter he
mourned in secret for the beloved dead. “These are friendship’s tears at
the loss of a friend,” he said in excuse when someone coming in expressed
his astonishment that he should weep for him who had secured paradise by
his death.

SUBJECTION OF MECCA (630 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [630 A.D.]]

All therefore that Mohammed could hope was that his teaching might
obtain general recognition throughout Arabia, if he could once get the
sacred city of Mecca into his power. When he first led his armed host of
pilgrims into its neighbourhood he had assured his companions that God
had lent him the victory. Yet they had been compelled to withdraw, after
concluding an inglorious peace without marching round the Kaaba. Nor was
the chagrin of the believers relieved in the next year by their having
to approach the sanctuary during three days as suppliants; the disgrace
could only be wiped out by a brilliant victory. The Koreish themselves
played into Mohammed’s hands. They violated the treaty of peace by taking
part in a hostile attack on a tribe which had made a defensive alliance
with Mohammed. Then when they heard that an expedition for reprisals was
being prepared at Medina they were alarmed and sent Abu Sufyan, the proud
chief of the race, to the angry prophet, to excuse what had passed and
implore his forgiveness.

But Mohammed dismissed the suppliant without an answer and secretly
pushed on the preparations for war with great zeal. Suddenly ten
thousand watchfires on the neighbouring mountain betrayed the arrival
of a powerful enemy to the astonished Meccans. Abu Sufyan hastened out
to reconnoitre; Abbas brought him as a prisoner into the camp, where
Mohammed protected him from Omar’s anger as soon as he had declared
himself ready to honour the son of Abdallah as the messenger of God and
to pass to the ranks of Islam. He noted with admiration the excellent
discipline and bearing of the Mohammedan army, the multiplicity of
weapons and banners, the “helpers” and “refugees” enveloped in iron,
the enthusiastic veneration of the holy commander. “None can withstand
this man!” Sufyan said to Mohammed’s uncle, Abbas, who was conducting
him through the ranks, “by God, the kingdom of thy nephew is grown
great!” And he hastened back to his people to persuade them to peaceful
submission. In this he was successful. The most part shut themselves
up in their houses, as Mohammed had commanded, so that the Moslem army
was able to take possession of the city almost without resistance. Only
Khalid had to carve a way for himself into the lower city through a host
of unbelievers whom Akrama, the son of Abu Jahl, had collected under his
banner.

When Mohammed saw the chiefs of the Koreish in the dust at his feet, his
pride was satisfied and the nobler feelings of mildness and magnanimity
reigned in his breast. The people declared themselves ready to abjure
their gods, to honour Mohammed as God’s messenger and obey his behests,
whereupon the victor, now throned in his native city as prince and
prophet after eight years of banishment, proclaimed a general amnesty.
Even of the twelve men and six women whom, after his entry into the city,
Mohammed had condemned because in former years they had excited his anger
by apostasy, treachery, or mocking ballads, the majority were pardoned.
Amongst them was Akrama, the son of Abu Jahl, who had fought so bravely
at Ohod and had offered resistance to Khalid’s entrance; his uncle the
satirical poet Harith; Safwan, son of Omayyah and Hind, the passionate
wife of Abu Sufyan; the poet Kaab; Abdallah, Mohammed’s scribe, who was
accused of having defaced the sacred fly-leaves of the _Koran_ and in
order to escape punishment had fled as an apostate to Mecca; and many
others. They all went over to Islam, and Akrama soon exhibited the same
heroism in battle for the new faith which he had formerly displayed
against Mohammed. For Abdallah, his kinsman Othman made intercession;
Mohammed hesitated for some time over the pardon, in the hope that one of
his adherents would kill the traitor; then unwillingly let him go.

When order had been restored in the city Mohammed presented himself at
the temple. He went round the Kaaba seven times on his camel, each time
touching the sacred stone with his staff, and then broke in pieces the
idols, 360 in number, which were placed round the sanctuary. After this
he had the doors of the temple thrown open, cleansed the house of the
Lord from all images, and commanded Bilal to proclaim to the multitude
the call to prayer from the summit.

From the time of the prophet’s entry into Mecca the victory of Islam in
Arabia was only a question of time. But no religious organisation is
destroyed without some of its adherents contending for it with their
hearts’ blood. The old Arabian gods too had their steadfast worshippers,
who did not shrink from a martyr’s death for the religion of their
youth. When Mohammed’s hosts under fanatical leaders penetrated to
the surrounding tribes, the idols were thrown down and the ancient
sanctuaries destroyed, and then the infuriated pagans put themselves
on the defensive and many a sacrifice bled to the religious frenzy.
On one such expedition into the district of Teyma, the zealous Khalid
proceeded with such harshness and cruelty that Mohammed shuddered at it,
and lifting his hands to heaven cried out, “I have no share in these
deeds.” He then endeavoured to appease the sufferers through the medium
of Ali’s mildness and magnanimity, offered expiation for those slain, and
announced that Mecca and all the country should be as inviolable in the
future as in the past.

THE VICTORY OF HONAIN AND AUTAS

[Illustration: AN ARAB WARRIOR]

The religious frenzy of the Moslems roused the heathen tribes of the
mountain districts southeast of Mecca to take arms for the defence of
their belief, their life, and their property against the new religious
society. The Takifites, who had once driven away the ambassador of the
Lord with stones, and the Hawazin tribes headed the alliance of the
heathen faith. To animate their courage they took wives, children, and
all their possessions into the field with them. At this news Mohammed
started with his hosts to subdue his last obstinate enemy. But as they
marched through the valley of Honain without taking the necessary
precautions, they suddenly beheld the height occupied with bowmen. In
a short time the ranks of the Moslems gave way; flight and disorder
spread through them; the prophet’s cry, “I am Mohammed, the prophet of
God, the proclaimer of the truth; stand fast ye faithful!” was unheeded;
the Koreish who had followed the army were already giving vent to their
malicious joy in mocking words. At this moment Abbas, Mohammed’s uncle,
with his loud voice brought the flying and wavering to their senses. At
the cry of need the bravest and most spirited again collected round the
holy prince and won a complete victory.

In the valleys of Honain and Autas the power of the infidels was forever
broken. Seventy were slain, amongst them the old hero Duraid, and the
rest took to flight. Women, children, and spoil fell into the hands of
the victors. But Mohammed’s endeavour to conquer the strong city of Taif
was thwarted by the bravery of the inhabitants and the strength of the
walls; it was in vain that, contrary to his own command, he caused the
fruit trees to be felled and the vineyards to be dug up; in vain had the
soldiers marched to the storming of the town; after a siege of twenty
days’ duration he had to withdraw, having effected nothing. An enormous
booty rewarded and consoled the Moslems, but at Mohammed’s instance the
prisoners were restored to the newly converted tribes. Of his own fifth
he presented the greater part to those among the Koreish who had shown
themselves steadfast and faithful, and by this means he won over many
influential men to his cause. Abu Sufyan and his two sons each received
a hundred camels and forty ounces of silver. The Ansars, who murmured
at the favour thus shown to their adversaries, were appeased by an
affectionate appeal:

“Be not angry if I seek to win the hearts of a few waverers with
perishable goods. Your faith and submission have another reward. The
messenger of God intrusts you with his own life and fortune; in your
midst he returns to Medina; and as ye were the companions of my exile
and believed in me in my abasement, so shall ye be the companions of my
royalty and shall share in paradise with me.” They cried out weeping, “We
are content with our lot!”

The rest of the idolatrous tribes now no longer withstood a religion
which Mohammed’s envoys offered them, the _Koran_ in one hand and a sword
in the other. Even the Takifites soon after bought peace and security by
the sacrifice of their ancient gods, and opened the gates of their city
of their own free will.

The Takifites sent ambassadors to inform the prophet that they would go
over to Islam if he would exempt them from prayer and would leave them
their idol Lat but for three years more.

“Three years of idolatry is too long; and what is the worship of God
without prayers?” said Mohammed. The ambassadors then abated their
demands and finally an agreement was arrived at by which the Takifites
were to pay no taxes and were to keep their idol Lat for another year.
Thereupon he began to dictate the record with the words:

“In the name of God the merciful and long-suffering! By this document an
agreement is concluded between Mohammed, the messenger of God and the
Takifites, that the latter shall neither pay taxes nor take part in the
holy war.” But shame and the reproach of conscience arrested his tongue.
“Nor throw themselves on their faces in praying,” added the ambassador;
and as Mohammed persisted in his silence the Takifites repeated, as he
turned to the scribe:

“Write this; it is agreed upon.”

The scribe looked at Mohammed, waiting for his orders. At this moment the
fiery Omar, who had hitherto been a dumb witness of this scene, rose, and
drawing his sword, cried out:

“Thou hast defiled the heart of the prophet, and may God fill yours with
fire.”

“We speak not to thee, but to Mohammed,” answered the ambassador with
composure.

“Good,” said the prophet at this; “I will not hear of such a treaty. Ye
have your choice between an unconditional acceptance of Islam and war.”

“At least grant us,” said the thunderstruck Takifites, “the worship of
Lat for six months longer!”

“No!”

“Then for but one month!”

“Not for an hour!”

On which the ambassadors went back to their city in the company of
Mohammedan soldiers, who broke Lat to pieces amid the lamentations of the
women.

THE LAST YEARS OF MOHAMMED’S LIFE (630-632 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [630-632 A.D.]]

Mohammed returned to Medina like a victorious king; from all sides came
ambassadors and believing followers, to offer their homage and worship,
whilst far to the south his envoys on the seacoast won fresh devotees for
Islam.

“We are the helpers of God and the soldiers of his messenger,” said the
poet Thabit in a rhetorical contest; “we make war on all men until they
believe; only he who believes in God and his messenger saves his goods
and his blood; we are at feud with all infidels and our victory is always
easy.”

The Arab writers linger affectionately over the different scenes of
homage which the chiefs of the desert tribes, as well as the inhabitants
of the cities, paid to the prophet, the prince of the faithful, in these
first years of youthful enthusiasm. Yet adversities and misfortune
troubled the end of his life. A hostile party under the leadership of
Abdallah still subsisted in Medina. This was especially prominent when
the prophet was arranging a fresh expedition against the Greeks in Syria
in an oppressive heat, just when the Arabs were busied with the date
harvest. Consequently many evaded the order and Abdallah turned back with
his men soon after the start. A severe verse of the _Koran_ rebuked the
delay.

“Ye say, ‘go not out during the heat’; but God says by Mohammed, ‘the
fire of hell is more scorching.’ Your laughter is but of short duration
and ye shall one day weep long for your behaviour. Ye shall go forth no
more with me and fight no more by my side.”

At Tabuk, between Medina and Damascus, the army came to a halt, that
they might recover in that fertile neighbourhood from the toilsome,
painful march. Here Mohammed received the submission of the chiefs of
some of the Syrian border towns and the homage of a Christian prince.
They purchased peace at the price of an annual tribute. Nevertheless
Mohammed did not deem it advisable to advance further into the enemy’s
country with his small following; he set out on the return march, and
through many hardships and perils arrived at Medina after an absence of
twenty days. For a time the disobedient were excluded from the circle
of the believers; but when with penitence and contrition they sued
for forgiveness they were received back into favour. Soon after this,
death freed the prophet from his most dangerous adversary, Abdallah ben
Obayyah. This event, as well as the homage of more and more Arab tribes,
restored his spirits, which had been deeply affected by the death of his
two daughters, Zainab and Umm Kolthum. The ninth Sura of the _Koran_,
the symbol of the religion of the sword which he imparted to a host
of pilgrims in a reading at the site of the holy temple at Mecca, may
be taken as the outpouring of this exalted state of mind. In this he
renounced peace with all unbelievers, heathen, Jews, and Christians,
forbade them ever to set foot in the sanctuary, and declared perpetual
war against them to be a sacred duty. In it he also reiterated the
threats and curses against the hypocrites and loiterers who delayed to
march to the holy war. Ali’s delivery of this declaration before all
the people had the desired effect. The ambassadors, who in the name of
the princes and tribes declared the latter’s accession to Islam, were
as numerous “as the dates which fall from the palm tree in the time
of ripeness.” From the frontier of Syria to the southern end of the
peninsula and to the mountains bordering on the Indian Ocean and the
Persian Gulf, tribes of all tongues and religions hastened to find the
key of paradise in the faith in the “One God who has no fellow.” When in
the tenth year of the Hegira, Mohammed, with his nine wives, proceeded
on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, which was to serve the Moslems for all
future times as a pattern and example, 40,000 (or according to some
accounts as many as 114,000) of the faithful accompanied him.

On this pilgrimage the suffering condition of the prophet first became
manifest. With great effort he passed seven times round the Kaaba, and
as he did so he prayed: “O Lord, prosper us in this life and the next,
and preserve us from the pains of hell.” The unnatural agitations and
paroxysms of his soul, the great physical exertions, the insidious poison
of Khaibar, and finally his grief at the loss of his young son Ibrahim,
whom, to his extreme joy, the Egyptian slave Maria had borne to him in
the previous year and on whom he had set all his hopes--all these things
undermined his health and hastened his end. The laments into which he
broke out at sight of the child’s corpse already contained a foreboding
of his own approaching end.

“I am grieved at thy loss,” he said, “mine eye weeps and my heart is sad,
yet will I utter no lament which may anger the Lord; were I not convinced
that I should follow thee, my grief would be inconsolable, but we are
God’s and shall return to him.”

[Sidenote: [632 A.D.]]

Three months after his return Mohammed was overtaken in the house of his
spouse, Aisha, by an illness which lasted from eight to fourteen days.
Often a fierce fever would rob him of consciousness, but often again
he had hours of lucidity which he spent in converse with Aisha, his
favourite daughter Fatima, the only one of his children who survived her
father, and with the friends and relatives who visited him. Besides this,
although already extremely ill, he would still go into the neighbouring
mosque and speak words of admonition and farewell to the assembled
people. As his weakness increased he allowed the prayers to be spoken
by Abu Bekr, but was still always present. On the last day he seemed
better, so that all save Aisha left him. But soon his illness returned
with renewed severity. Before he lost consciousness he gave his slaves
their freedom, caused the six or seven dinars[33] which he had in his
house to be given to the poor, and then prayed, “God support me in the
death struggle.” Aisha had sent for her father and his other followers,
but before they arrived he expired in the arms of his favourite wife. His
last words were: “To the glorious comrades in paradise.”

He died in the eleventh year of the Hegira in the three-and-sixtieth year
of his life, “the prophet, poet, priest, and king of Arabia.” On the news
of his departure a great wailing was raised in Aisha’s dwelling, and
the people thronged round the door in wild excitement, which was still
further increased by Omar’s assurances that the messenger of God was not
dead, but would shortly return to his people. Finally the judicious words
of Abu Bekr succeeded in calming the crowd:

“O ye people,” he said, “let him amongst you who served Mohammed know
that Mohammed is dead; but let him who served God continue in his
service, for Mohammed’s God lives and never dies.” Then he read them a
verse of the _Koran_: “Mohammed is only a messenger, many messengers are
already gone before him; whether he died a natural death or was slain,
shall ye turn on your heels? He who does this (forsakes his faith), can
do no harm to God, but the grateful shall be rewarded.” Despair now
passed into quiet grief; Omar himself was so moved that he fell to the
earth and acknowledged that Mohammed was really dead.

Three days later Mohammed was lowered into the earth at the spot where he
had died. His tomb at Medina was subsequently included within the bounds
of the sanctuary by the enlargement of the mosque, which stood next to
the house, and like the Kaaba of Mecca it has remained up to the present
time to be a place of pilgrimage much resorted to by pious Moslems.
Osama, the youthful son of that Zaid who had fallen at Muta, was absent
on a new campaign against Syria at the moment when he received tidings of
the prophet’s death. He at once led his soldiers back to Medina, and full
of sadness set up his banner before the house.[f]

The personal traits of Mohammed are preserved to us in wonderfully minute
details and illustrated by numberless anecdotes, many of which are of
course apocryphal. We may quote a brief and vivid picture from the
_Sirat_ or _Biography of Mohammed_, written by Ibn Saad,[g] the secretary
of the Arab historian Wakidi. The translation is from unpublished
manuscript notes by Sir William Muir,[e] the modern biographer of
Mohammed.[a]

“He was fair of complexion with a measure of redness; eyes intensely
black; his hair not crisp but depending; beard bushy and thick; cheeks
not fat; his neck shone like a vessel of silver; he had a line of hair
from his breast to his navel like a branch, but besides this he had no
hair on his belly or chest. His hands and feet were not hollow, but
filled up. When he walked it was as though he walked from a higher to a
lower place; and when he walked it was as though he pulled (or wrenched)
his feet from the stones; when he turned he turned round entirely. The
perspiration on his face was like pearls, and the smell thereof was
pleasanter than musk of pure quality. He was neither long nor short; he
was neither weakly nor vile; the like of him I never saw before or after.

“Mohammed had a large head, large eyes, large eyelashes; his colour
bright and shining; large joints of his limbs; a long narrow line of hair
from his chest to his belly. He was not very tall, but above the middle
height. When he approached with his people he appeared to cover them
(shutting them out of view). His hair was neither crisp nor frizzled;
curly nor quite smooth and plain. It was like that of a curly-haired man
combed out. His face was neither very fat nor very lean; it was round; he
had large joints and a broad chest. His body was free from hair. Who ever
saw him for the first time would be awe stricken at his appearance, but
on close intimacy this would give way to love. His pupil was intensely
black; his back large.”[g]

GIBBON’S ESTIMATE OF MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM

[Sidenote: [622-632 A.D.]]

At the conclusion of the life of Mohammed, it may perhaps be expected
that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide
whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to
that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of
Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain:
at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade
through a cloud of religious incense; and could I truly delineate the
portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply
to the solitary of Mount Hira, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the
conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have
been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition; so soon as
marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the
paths of ambition and avarice; and till the age of forty, he lived with
innocence, and would have died without a name. The unity of God is an
idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation
with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the
idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the
doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and
error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object, would
convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestions
of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the inspirations of
heaven; the labour of thought would expire in rapture and vision; and the
inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be described with the form
and attributes of an angel of God.

From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the
demon of Socrates affords a memorable instance how a wise man may
deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience
may slumber in a mixed middle state between self-illusion and voluntary
fraud. Charity may believe that the original motives of Mohammed were
those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is
incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims,
despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might forgive his
personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies of God; the stern
passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the bosom of Mohammed,
and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the destruction of the
rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of Mecca and the choice of
Medina transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into
the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by the example of
the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful world with pestilence
and earthquakes might inspire for their conversion or chastisement the
valour of his servants. In the exercise of political government he was
compelled to abate the stern rigour of fanaticism, to comply, in some
measure, with the prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ
even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use
of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient
to the propagation of the faith; and Mohammed commanded or approved the
assassination of the Jews and idolaters who had escaped from the field of
battle.

By the repetition of such acts, the character of Mohammed must have been
gradually stained; and the influence of such pernicious habits would be
poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social virtues,
which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a prophet among his
sectaries and friends. Of his last years, ambition was the ruling
passion; and a politician will suspect that he secretly smiled (the
victorious impostor!) at the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of
his proselytes. A philosopher would observe that their credulity and his
success would tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his divine
mission, that his interest and religion were inseparably connected, and
that his conscience would be soothed by the persuasion that he alone was
absolved by the Deity from the obligation of positive and moral laws. If
he retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mohammed
may be allowed as the evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth,
the arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal; and he would
have started at the foulness of the means, had he not been satisfied of
the importance and justice of the end. The decree of Mohammed that, in
the sale of captives, the mothers should never be separated from their
children, may suspend or moderate the censure of the historian.

The good sense of Mohammed despised the pomp of royalty; the apostle
of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the
fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands
his shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of
a hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of
an Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his companions
with rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life many weeks
would elapse without a fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet.
The interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was
appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread; he delighted in the
taste of milk and honey, but his ordinary food consisted of dates and
water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his
nature required and his religion did not forbid; and Mohammed affirmed
that the fervour of his devotion was increased by these innocent
pleasures. The heat of the climate inflames the blood of the Arabs; and
their libidinous complexion has been noticed by the writers of antiquity.
Their incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious laws of the
_Koran_; their incestuous alliances were blamed; the boundless license
of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or concubines; their
rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably determined; the freedom of
divorce was discouraged; adultery was condemned as a capital offence; and
fornication, in either sex, was punished with a hundred stripes.

Such were the calm and rational precepts of the legislator; but in his
private conduct Mohammed indulged the appetites of a man and abused the
claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws
which he had imposed on his nation; the female sex, without reserve,
was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the
envy rather than the scandal, the veneration rather than the envy of
the devout Mussulmans. If we remember the seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty
of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives;
eleven are enumerated, who occupied at Medina their separate apartments
round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their turns the favour
of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they were all widows,
excepting only Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bekr. She was doubtless a
virgin, since Mohammed consummated his nuptials (such is the premature
ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age. The
youth, the beauty, the spirit of Aisha, gave her a superior ascendant:
she was beloved and trusted by the prophet; and after his death the
daughter of Abu Bekr was long revered as the mother of the faithful. Her
behaviour had been ambiguous and indiscreet; in a nocturnal march she was
accidentally left behind, and in the morning Aisha returned to the camp
with a man.

The temper of Mohammed was inclined to jealousy; but a divine revelation
assured him of her innocence; he chastised her accusers, and published
a law of domestic peace, that no woman should be condemned unless four
male witnesses had seen her in the act of adultery. In his adventures
with Zainab, the wife of Zaid, and with Maria, an Egyptian captive,
the amorous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house
of Zaid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld in a loose undress the
beauty of Zainab, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and
desire. The servile, or grateful, freedman understood the hint, and
yielded without hesitation to the love of his benefactor. But as the
filial relation had excited some doubt and scandal, the angel Gabriel
descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to annul the adoption, and
gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence of his God.
One of his wives, Hafsa, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on her own
bed in the embraces of his Egyptian captive; she promised secrecy and
forgiveness, he swore that he would renounce the possession of Maria.
Both parties forgot their engagements, and Gabriel again descended with
a chapter of the _Koran_, to absolve him from his oath and to exhort him
freely to enjoy his captives and concubines, without listening to the
clamours of his wives. In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he laboured,
alone with Maria, to fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and
revenge were satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven wives,
reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and threatened them
with a sentence of divorce, both in this world and the next--a dreadful
sentence, since those who had ascended the bed of the prophet were
forever excluded from the hope of a second marriage.

[Illustration: A SARACENIC CANDLESTICK]

Perhaps the incontinence of Mohammed may be palliated by the tradition of
his natural or preternatural gifts; he united the manly virtue of thirty
of the children of Adam, and the apostle might rival the thirteenth
labour of the Grecian Hercules. A more serious and decent excuse may be
drawn from his fidelity to Khadija. During the twenty-four years of their
marriage her youthful husband abstained from the right of polygamy, and
the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by
the society of a rival. After her death he placed her in the rank of the
four perfect women, with the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and
Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters. “Was she not old?” said Aisha,
with the insolence of a blooming beauty, “has not God given you a better
in her place?” “No, by God,” said Mohammed, with an effusion of honest
gratitude, “there never can be a better! she believed in me when men
despised me; she relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the
world.”

In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion and
empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous posterity and a
lineal succession. The hopes of Mohammed were fatally disappointed. The
virgin Aisha, and his ten widows of mature age and approved fertility,
were barren in his potent embraces. The four sons of Khadija died in
their infancy. Maria, his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the
birth of Ibrahim. At the end of fifteen months the prophet wept over his
grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery of his enemies, and
checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems, by the assurance that
an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by the death of the infant.
Khadija had likewise given him four daughters, who were married to the
most faithful of his disciples; the three eldest died before their
father; but Fatima, who possessed his confidence and love, became the
wife of her cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny.

From his earliest youth, Mohammed was addicted to religious
contemplation; each year, during the month of Ramadhan, he withdrew
from the world and from the arms of Khadija; in the cave of Hira, three
miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose
abode is not in the heavens but in the mind of the prophet. The faith
which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is
compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction--that there is
only one God, and that Mohammed is the apostle of God.

The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a
semblance of paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to
the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East; the throne
of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and
angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics,
who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary
with the name and honours of a goddess. The creed of Mohammed is free
from suspicion or ambiguity; and the _Koran_ is a glorious testimony
to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of
idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational principle that
whatever rises must set, that whatever is born must die, that whatever
is corruptible must decay and perish. In the author of the universe,
his rational enthusiasm confessed and adored an infinite and eternal
being, without form or place, without issue or similitude, present to
our most secret thoughts, existing by the necessity of his own nature,
and deriving from himself all moral and intellectual perfection. These
sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the prophet, are firmly
held by his disciples, and defined with metaphysical precision by the
interpreters of the _Koran_. The first principle of reason and revelation
was confirmed by the voice of Mohammed; his proselytes, from India to
Morocco, are distinguished by the name of Unitarians; and the danger of
idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction of images. The doctrine
of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is strictly embraced by
the Mohammedans; and they struggle with the common difficulties, how to
reconcile the prescience of God with the freedom and responsibility of
man; how to explain the permission of evil under the reign of infinite
power and infinite goodness.

The liberality of Mohammed allowed to his predecessors the same credit
which he claimed for himself; and the chain of inspiration was prolonged
from the fall of Adam to the promulgation of the _Koran_. During that
period, some rays of prophetic light had been imparted to 124,000 of
the elect, discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and
grace; 313 apostles were sent with a special commission to recall their
country from idolatry and vice; 104 volumes had been dictated by the holy
spirit; and six legislators of transcendent brightness have announced
to mankind the six successive revelations of various rites, but of one
immutable religion. The authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Christ, and Mohammed rise in just gradation above each other;
but whosoever hates or rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with
the infidels. The writings of the patriarchs were extant only in the
apocryphal copies of the Greeks and Syrians; the conduct of Adam had
not entitled him to the gratitude or respect of his children; the seven
precepts of Noah were observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the
proselytes of the synagogue, and the memory of Abraham was obscurely
revered by the Sabians in his native land of Chaldea; of the myriads of
prophets, Moses and Christ alone lived and reigned; and the remnant of
the inspired writings was comprised in the books of the Old and the New
Testament. The miraculous story of Moses is consecrated and embellished
in the _Koran_; and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of imposing
their belief on the nations whose recent creeds they deride. For the
author of Christianity, the Mohammedans are taught by the prophet to
entertain a high and mysterious reverence. “Verily, Christ Jesus, the
son of Mary, is the Apostle of God, and His word, which He conveyed unto
Mary, and a spirit proceeding from him are honourable in this world,
and in the world to come; and He is one of those who approach near to
the presence of God.” The piety of Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the
assurance of a future prophet, more illustrious than themselves; the
evangelic promise of the Paraclete, or Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the
name, and accomplished in the person, of Mohammed, the greatest and the
last of the apostles of God.

The inspiration of the Hebrew prophets, of the apostles and evangelists
of Christ, might not be incompatible with the exercise of their reason
and memory; and the diversity of their genius is strongly marked in the
style and composition of the books of the Old and New Testament. But
Mohammed was content with a character, more humble yet more sublime, of
a simple editor; the substance of the _Koran_, according to himself or
his disciples, is uncreated and eternal; subsisting in the essence of the
Deity, and inscribed with a pen of light on the table of his everlasting
decrees. A paper copy, in a volume of silk and gems, was brought down to
the lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy,
had indeed been despatched on the most important errands; and this trusty
messenger successively revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian
prophet. Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will,
the fragments of the _Koran_ were produced at the discretion of Mohammed;
each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion;
and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of
Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of
God, and of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm
leaves and the shoulder bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or
connection, were cast into a domestic chest in the custody of one of his
wives.

Two years after the death of Mohammed the sacred volume was collected
and published by his friend and successor Abu Bekr. The work was revised
by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the
various editions of the _Koran_ assert the same miraculous privilege of a
uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity,
the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book,
audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a
single page, and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this
incomparable performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to
a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture, whose ear
is delighted by the music of sounds, and whose ignorance is incapable of
comparing the productions of human genius. The harmony and copiousness
of style will not reach, in a version, the European infidel; he will
peruse with impatience the endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and
precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea,
which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds.
The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his
loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job,
composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language.
If the composition of the _Koran_ exceed the faculties of a man, to what
superior intelligence should we ascribe the _Iliad_ of Homer or the
_Philippics_ of Demosthenes?

In all religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of his
written revelation; the sayings of Mohammed were so many lessons of
truth, his actions so many examples of virtue; and the public and private
memorials were preserved by his wives and companions. At the end of two
hundred years the _sunna_, or oral law, was fixed and consecrated by the
labours of Al-Buchari, who discriminated 7,275 traditions, from a mass of
300,000 reports of a more doubtful or spurious character. Each day the
pious author prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions
with the water of Zemzem; the pages were successively deposited on the
pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been approved
by the four orthodox sects of the Sunnites.

The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses, and of Jesus, had been
confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mohammed was repeatedly urged
by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina to produce a similar evidence of
his divine legation; to call down from heaven the angel or the volume
of his revelation, to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a
conflagration in the unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by the
demands of the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of
vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and
shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs and
wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith and aggravate the guilt
of infidelity. But the modest or angry tone of his apologies betrays his
weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal establish, beyond
suspicion, the integrity of the _Koran_.

The votaries of Mohammed are more assured than himself of his miraculous
gifts, and their confidence and credulity increase as they are further
removed from the time and place of his spiritual exploits. They believe
or affirm that trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by
stones; that water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry,
cured the sick, and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a
camel complained to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him of its
being poisoned; and that both animate and inanimate nature were equally
subject to the apostle of God. His dream of a nocturnal journey is
seriously described as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious
animal, the borak, conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of
Jerusalem; with his companion Gabriel he successively ascended the seven
heavens, and received and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the
prophets, and the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the
seventh heaven, Mohammed alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the
veil of unity, approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt
a cold that pierced him to the heart when his shoulder was touched by
the hand of God. After this familiar, though important conversation, he
again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the borak, returned to Mecca,
and performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand
years. According to another legend, the apostle confounded in a national
assembly the malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless word
split asunder the orb of the moon; the obedient planet stooped from her
station in the sky, accomplished the seven revolutions round the Kaaba,
saluted Mohammed in the Arabian tongue, and suddenly contracting her
dimensions entered at the collar, and issued forth through the sleeve of
his shirt. The vulgar are amused with these marvellous tales; but the
gravest of the Mussulman doctors imitate the modesty of their master,
and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation. They might speciously
allege that, in preaching the religion, it was needless to violate the
harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with mystery may be excused
from miracles; and that the sword of Mohammed was not less potent than
the rod of Moses.

[Illustration: AN ARAB CHIEF]

The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of
superstition; a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven
with the essence of the Mosaic law, and the spirit of the Gospel had
evaporated in the pageantry of the church. The prophet of Mecca was
tempted, by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to sanctify the rites
of the Arabians and the custom of visiting the holy stone of the Kaaba.
But the precepts of Mohammed himself inculcate a more simple and rational
piety; prayer, fasting, and alms are the religious duties of a Mussulman;
and he is encouraged to hope that prayer will carry him half-way to God,
fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms will gain him
admittance.

(1) According to the tradition of the nocturnal journey, the apostle,
in his personal conference with the Deity, was commanded to impose on
his disciples the daily obligation of fifty prayers. By the advice
of Moses, he applied for an alleviation of this intolerable burden;
the number was gradually reduced to five; without any dispensation of
business or pleasure, or time or place, the devotion of the faithful
is repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening, and
at the first watch of the night; and in the present decay of religious
fervour our travellers are edified by the profound humility and
attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness is the key of prayer;
the frequent lustration of the hands, the face, and the body, which was
practised of old by the Arabs, is solemnly enjoined by the _Koran_;
and a permission is formally granted to supply with sand the scarcity
of water. The words and attitudes of supplication, as it is performed
either sitting, or standing, or prostrate on the ground, are prescribed
by custom or authority, but the prayer is poured forth in short and
fervent ejaculations; the measure of zeal is not exhausted by a tedious
liturgy; and each Mussulman, for his own person, is invested with the
character of a priest. Among the theists, who reject the use of images,
it has been found necessary to restrain the wanderings of the fancy by
directing the eye and the thought towards a _kibla_, or visible point of
the horizon. The prophet was at first inclined to gratify the Jews by the
choice of Jerusalem, but he soon returned to a more natural partiality;
and five times every day the eyes of the nations at Astrakhan, at Fez,
at Delhi are devoutly turned to the holy temple of Mecca. Yet every spot
for the service of God is equally pure; the Mohammedans indifferently
pray in their chamber or in the street. As a distinction from the Jews
and Christians, the Friday in each week is set apart for the useful
institution of public worship; the people are assembled in the mosque;
and the imam, some respectable elder, ascends the pulpit, to begin the
prayer and pronounce the sermon. But the Mohammedan religion is destitute
of priesthood or sacrifice; and the independent spirit of fanaticism
looks down with contempt on the ministers and the slaves of superstition.

(2) The voluntary penance of the ascetics, the torment and glory of their
lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his companions a rash vow
of abstaining from flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly declared that
he would suffer no monks in his religion. Yet he instituted, in each
year, a fast of thirty days; and strenuously recommended the observance,
as a discipline which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a
salutary exercise of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During
the month of Ramadhan, from the rising to the setting of the sun, the
Mussulman abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and baths, and
perfumes; from all nourishment that can restore his strength, from all
pleasure that can gratify his senses. In the revolution of the lunar
year, the Ramadhan coincides by turns with the winter cold and the
summer heat; and the patient martyr, without assuaging his thirst with
a drop of water, must expect the close of a tedious and sultry day. The
interdiction of wine, peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits,
is converted by Mohammed alone into a positive and general law; and a
considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command, the use
of that salutary though dangerous liquor. These painful restraints are,
doubtless, infringed by the libertine and eluded by the hypocrite; but
the legislator by whom they are enacted cannot surely be accused of
alluring his proselytes by the indulgence of their sensual appetites.

(3) The charity of the Mohammedans descends to the animal creation; and
the _Koran_ repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit but as a strict and
indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate. Mohammed,
perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of
charity; the standard may vary with the degree and nature of property, as
it consists either in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or merchandise;
but the Mussulman does not accomplish the law unless he bestows a
tenth of his revenue; and if his conscience accuses him of fraud or
extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a
fifth. Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since we are forbidden
to injure those whom we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal the
secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts he can only
repeat the lessons of our own hearts.

The two articles of belief and the four practical duties of Islam are
guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Mussulman is
devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment and the last day. The prophet
has not presumed to determine the moment of that awful catastrophe,
though he darkly announces the signs, both in heaven and earth, which
will precede the universal dissolution, when life shall be destroyed and
the order of creation shall be confounded in the primitive chaos. At the
blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into being; angels, genii,
and men will arise from the dead, and the human soul will again be united
to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection was first entertained by
the Egyptians; and their mummies were embalmed, their pyramids were
constructed, to preserve the ancient mansion of the soul during a period
of three thousand years. But the attempt is partial and unavailing;
and it is with a more philosophic spirit that Mohammed relies on the
omnipotence of the Creator, whose word can reanimate the breathless clay,
and collect the innumerable atoms that no longer retain their form or
substance. The intermediate state of the soul it is hard to decide; and
those who most firmly believe in her immaterial nature, are at a loss to
understand how she can think or act without the agency of the organs of
sense.

The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the final judgment
of mankind; and in his copy of the magian picture the prophet has too
faithfully represented the forms of proceeding, and even the slow
and successive operations of an earthly tribunal. By his intolerant
adversaries he is upbraided for extending, even to themselves, the hope
of salvation; for asserting the blackest heresy--that every man who
believes in God and accomplishes good works may expect in the last day
a favourable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to the
character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger from heaven
should depreciate the value and necessity of his own revelation. In the
idiom of the _Koran_, the belief of God is inseparable from that of
Mohammed; the good works are those which he has enjoined; and the two
qualifications imply the profession of Islam, to which all nations and
all sects are equally invited. Their spiritual blindness, though excused
by ignorance and crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting
torments; and the tears which Mohammed shed over the tomb of his mother,
for whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of
humanity and enthusiasm.

The doom of the infidels is common; the measure of their guilt and
punishment is determined by the degree of evidence which they have
rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which they have entertained; the
eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the Magians,
and the idolaters are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the lowest
hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed the mask
of religion. After the greater part of mankind has been condemned for
their opinions, the true believers only will be judged by their actions.
The good and evil of each Mussulman will be accurately weighed in a
real or allegorical balance, and a singular mode of compensation will
be allowed for the payment of injuries; the aggressor will refund an
equivalent of his own good actions for the benefit of the person whom
he has wronged; and if he should be destitute of any moral property,
the weight of his sins will be loaded with an adequate share of the
demerits of the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt or virtue
shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without
distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of the abyss;
but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mohammed, will gloriously
enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty will fall into the first
and mildest of the seven hells. The term of expiation will vary from nine
hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet has judiciously promised
that all his disciples, whatever may be their sins, shall be saved, by
their own faith and his intercession, from eternal damnation.

It is not surprising that superstition should act most powerfully on
the fears of her votaries, since the human fancy can paint with more
energy the misery than the bliss of a future life. With the two simple
elements of darkness and fire we create a sensation of pain, which may be
aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea of endless duration. But the
same idea operates with an opposite effect on the continuity of pleasure;
and too much of our present enjoyment is obtained from the relief, or
the comparison of evil. It is natural enough that an Arabian prophet
should dwell with rapture on the groves, the fountains, and the rivers of
paradise; but instead of inspiring the blessed inhabitants with a liberal
taste for harmony and science, conversation and friendship, he idly
celebrates the pearls and diamonds, the robes of silk, palaces of marble,
dishes of gold, rich wines, artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and
the whole train of sensual and costly luxury which becomes insipid to the
owner, even in the short period of this mortal life. Seventy-two houris,
or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin
purity, and exquisite sensibility will be created for the use of the
meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand
years, and his faculties will be increased a hundredfold, to render him
worthy of his felicity.

Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of heaven will be open to
both sexes; but Mohammed has not specified the male companions of the
female elect, lest he should either alarm the jealousy of their former
husbands, or disturb their felicity by the suspicion of an everlasting
marriage. This image of a carnal paradise has provoked the indignation,
perhaps the envy, of the monks; they declaim against the impure religion
of Mohammed; and his modest apologists are driven to the poor excuse
of figures and allegories. But the sounder and more consistent party
adheres, without shame, to the literal interpretation of the _Koran_;
useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it were restored to
the possession and exercise of its worthiest faculties; and the union of
sensual and intellectual enjoyment is requisite to complete the happiness
of the double animal, the perfect man. Yet the joys of the Mohammedan
paradise will not be confined to the indulgence of luxury and appetite;
and the prophet has expressly declared that all meaner happiness will be
forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs, who shall be admitted
to the beatitude of the divine vision.

The talents of Mohammed are entitled to our applause; but his success
has perhaps too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised that
a multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the passions
of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church the same seduction
has been tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to that of
the reformers. Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should
grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a
monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the dynasties
of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a baser
origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger scope
of empire and conquest.

Mohammed was alike instructed to preach and to fight, and the union of
these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his
success; the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear,
continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their
irresistible power. His voice invited the Arabs to freedom and victory,
to arms and rapine, to the indulgence of their darling passions in this
world and the other; the restraints which he imposed were requisite to
establish the credit of the prophet and to exercise the obedience of the
people; and the only objection to his success was his rational creed of
the unity and perfections of God.

It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that
deserves our wonder; the same pure and perfect impression which he
engraved at Mecca and Medina is preserved after the revolutions of twelve
centuries by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the
_Koran_. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could return
to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name of the deity who
is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that magnificent temple; at
Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less surprise, but it might still
be incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the church and to study
the orthodox commentators on their own writings and the words of their
master. But the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with an increase of splendour
and size, represents the humble tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands
of Mohammed. The Mohammedans have uniformly withstood the temptation
of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the
senses and imagination of man. “I believe in one God, and Mohammed the
apostle of God,” is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The
intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible
idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of
human virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of
his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. The votaries of
Ali have indeed consecrated the memory of their hero, his wife, and his
children, and some of the Persian doctors pretend that the divine essence
was incarnate in the person of the imams; but their superstition is
universally condemned by the Sunnites, and their impiety has afforded a
seasonable warning against the worship of saints and martyrs.

The metaphysical questions on the attributes of God and the liberty of
man have been agitated in the schools of the Mohammedans, as well as in
those of the Christians; but among the former they have never engaged
the passions of the people or disturbed the tranquillity of the state.
The cause of this important difference may be found in the separation
or union of the regal and sacerdotal characters. It was the interest
of the caliphs, the successors of the prophet and commanders of the
faithful, to repress and discourage all religious innovations; the
order, the discipline, the temporal and spiritual ambition of the clergy
are unknown to the Moslems, and the sages of the law are the guides of
their conscience and the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to
the Ganges the _Koran_ is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not
only of theology but of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws
which regulate the actions and the property of mankind are guarded by
the infallible and immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious
servitude is attended with some practical disadvantage; the illiterate
legislator had been often misled by his own prejudices and those of his
country; and the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to
the wealth and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions,
the kadi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes
a dexterous interpretation more apposite to the principles of equity and
the manners and policy of the times.

His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness is the
last consideration in the character of Mohammed. The most bitter or most
bigoted of his Christian or Jewish foes will surely allow that he assumed
a false commission to inculcate a salutary doctrine, less perfect only
than their own. He piously supposed, as the basis of his religion, the
truth and sanctity of their prior revelations, the virtues and miracles
of their founders. The idols of Arabia were broken before the throne of
God; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer, and fasting, and
alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion; and his rewards and
punishments of a future life were painted by the images most congenial
to an ignorant and carnal generation. Mohammed was, perhaps, incapable
of dictating a moral and political system for the use of his countrymen;
but he breathed among the faithful a spirit of charity and friendship,
recommended the practice of the social virtues, and checked, by his laws
and precepts, the thirst of revenge and the oppression of widow and
orphans. The hostile tribes were united in faith and obedience, and the
valour which had been idly spent in domestic quarrels was vigorously
directed against a foreign enemy. Had the impulse been less powerful,
Arabia, free at home and formidable abroad, might have flourished under a
succession of her native monarchs. Her sovereignty was lost by the extent
and rapidity of conquest. The colonies of the nation were scattered over
the East and West, and their blood was mingled with the blood of their
converts and captives. After the reign of three caliphs, the throne was
transported from Medina to the valley of Damascus and the banks of the
Tigris; the holy cities were violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled
by the rod of a subject, perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedouins of the
desert, awakening from their dream of dominion, resumed their old and
solitary independence.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[31] [Muir[e] and other accounts say that Hamza’s liver was cut out and
brought to Hind; this because he had slain her father at Bedr.]

[32] [The fortress.]

[33] [Dinar--a gold coin. Its original weight was 65.4 grains troy.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V. THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

ABU BEKR, FIRST CALIPH AFTER MOHAMMED

[Sidenote: [632-661 A.D.]]

Mohammed, the founder of the Saracenic empire, died at Medina, on Monday
the 8th of June, 632 A.D., being the twenty-second year of the reign of
Heraclius the Grecian emperor. After he was dead, the next care was to
appoint a successor; and it was indeed very necessary that one should be
provided as soon as possible. Their government and religion being both in
their infancy, and a great many of Mohammed’s followers no great bigots,
not having yet forgotten their ancient rights and customs, but rather
forced to leave them for fear, than upon any conviction, affairs were in
such a posture as could by no means admit of an interregnum. Wherefore
the same day that he expired the Mussulmans met together in order to
elect a caliph or successor. In that assembly there had like to have
been such a fray, as might, in all probability, have greatly endangered,
if not utterly ruined, this new religion and polity, had not Omar and
Abu Bekr timely interposed. For the prophet having left no positive
directions concerning a successor, or at least none that were known to
any but his wives, who in all probability might conceal them out of their
partiality in favour of Omar, a hot dispute arose between the inhabitants
of Mecca and Medina.

At last Omar being wearied out, and seeing no likelihood of deciding the
matter, was willing to give over, and bade Abu Bekr give him his hand,
which he had no sooner done than Omar promised him fealty. The rest
followed his example, and by the consent of both parties Abu Bekr was
at last saluted caliph, and being acknowledged the rightful successor
of their prophet Mohammed, became the absolute judge of all causes both
sacred and civil. Thus, after much ado, that difference was at last
composed, which had like to have proved fatal to Mohammedanism. And
certainly it was a very great oversight in Mohammed, in all the time of
his sickness, never to have named a successor positively and publicly.
If he had done so, without question, his authority would have determined
the business, and prevented that disturbance which had like to have
endangered the religion he had planted with so much difficulty and
hazard.

Now though the government was actually settled upon Abu Bekr, all parties
were not equally satisfied, for a great many were of opinion that the
right of succession belonged to Ali, the son of Abu Talib. Upon which
account the Mohammedans have ever since been divided; some maintaining
that Abu Bekr, and Omar, and Othman, that came after him, were the
rightful and lawful successors of the prophet; and others disclaiming
them altogether as usurpers, and constantly asserting the right of
Ali. Of the former opinion are the Turks at this day; of the latter,
the Persians. And such consequently is the difference between those
two nations, that notwithstanding their agreement in all other points
of their superstition, yet upon this account they treat one another
as most damnable heretics. Ali had this to recommend him, that he was
Mohammed’s cousin-german, and was the first that embraced his religion,
except his wife Khadija, and his slave Zaid, and was besides Mohammed’s
son-in-law, having married his daughter Fatima. Abu Bekr was Mohammed’s
father-in-law, by whom he was so much respected that he received from him
the surname of As-Siddik (which signifies in Arabic, “a great speaker of
truth”), because he resolutely asserted the truth of that story which
Mohammed told of his going one night to heaven.

Ali was not present at this election, and when he heard the news was not
well pleased, having hoped that the choice would have fallen on himself.
Abu Bekr sent Omar to Fatima’s house, where Ali and some of his friends
were, with orders to compel them by force to come in and do fealty to
him, if they would not be persuaded by fair means. Omar was just going to
fire the house, when Fatima asked him what he meant. He told her that he
would certainly burn the house down unless they would be content to do as
the rest of the people had done. Upon which Ali came forth and went to
Abu Bekr, and acknowledged his sovereignty.

Abu Bekr being thus settled in his new government, had work enough to
maintain it; for the Mohammedan religion had not as yet taken such
deep root in the hearts of men but that they would very willingly have
shaken it off had they known how. Accordingly the Arabians, a people of
a restless and turbulent disposition, did not neglect the opportunity
of rebelling, which they thought was fairly offered them by the death
of Mohammed. Immediately taking up arms, they refused to pay the usual
tribute, tithes, and alms, and no longer observed the rites and customs
which had been imposed upon them by Mohammed.

[Sidenote: [632-633 A.D.]]

Abu Bekr sent Khalid ben Walid, with an army of forty-five hundred men,
who, having routed them in a set battle, brought off a great deal of
plunder, and made slaves of their children.

Khalid was the best general of his age, and it was chiefly to his courage
and conduct that the Saracens owed the subduing of the rebels, the
conquest of Syria, and the establishment of their religion and polity.
His love and tenderness towards his own soldiers were only equalled
by his hatred and aversion to the enemies of the Mohammedan religion.
Of both he has given the most signal instances. To those who, having
embraced the Mohammedan religion, afterwards apostatised, he was an
irreconcilable and implacable foe; nor would he spare them, though they
evinced the greatest signs of unfeigned repentance. For his great valour,
the Arabs called him “the Sword of God”; which surname of his was known
also to his enemies, and is mentioned as well by Greek as Arab authors.

About this time several persons, perceiving the success and prosperity
of Mohammed and his followers, set up also for prophets too, in hope
of meeting the like good fortune, and making themselves eminent in the
world. Such were Aswad al-Ansi and Tulaihah ben Khuwailid, with several
others, whose attempts however quickly came to nothing. But the most
considerable of these impostors was Musailima, who had been the rival of
Mohammed even in his life-time, and trumped up a book in imitation of the
_Koran_. He had now gathered together a very considerable body of men
in Yemen, a province of Arabia, and began to be so formidable that the
Mussulmans began to feel alarmed at his growing greatness.

It is strange and surprising to consider from how mean and contemptible
beginnings the greatest things have been raised in a short time. Of this
the Saracenic empire is a remarkable instance. For if we look back but
eleven years, we shall see how Mohammed, unable to support his cause,
routed and oppressed by the powerful party of the Koreishites at Mecca,
fled with a few desponding followers to Medina to preserve his life no
less than his imposture. And now, within so short a period, we find the
undertakings of his successor prospering beyond expectation, and making
him the terror of all his neighbours; and the Saracens in a capacity not
only to keep possession of their own peninsula of Arabia, but to extend
their arms over larger territories than ever were subject to the Romans
themselves. Whilst they were thus employed in Arabia, they were little
regarded by the Grecian emperor, who awoke too late to a sense of their
formidable power, when he saw them pouring in upon them like a torrent,
and driving all before them. The proud Persian, too, who so very lately
had been domineering in Syria, and sacked Jerusalem and Damascus, must be
forced not only to part with his own dominions, but also to submit his
neck to the Saracenic yoke. It may be reasonably supposed that, had the
Grecian empire been in the flourishing condition it formerly was, the
Saracens might have been checked at least, if not entirely extinguished.
But besides that the western part of the empire had been rent from it by
the barbarous Goths, the eastern also had received so many shocks from
the Huns on the one side, and the Persians on the other, that it was not
in a situation to stem the fury of this powerful invasion. Heraclius,
indeed, was a prince of admirable courage and conduct, and did all
that was possible to restore the discipline of the army, and was very
successful against the Persians, not only driving them out of his own
dominions, but even wresting from them a part of their own territories.
But the empire seemed to labour under an incurable disease, and to be
wounded in its very vitals. No time could have been more fatally adverse
to its maintenance, nor more favourable to the enterprises of the
Saracens.

Abu Bekr had now set affairs at home in pretty good order. The apostates
who upon the death of Mohammed had revolted to the idolatry in which
they were born and bred, were again reduced to subjection. The forces of
Musailima, the false prophet, being dispersed and himself killed, there
was now little or nothing left to be done in Arabia. For though there
were a great many Christian Arabs, as particularly the tribe of Ghassan,
yet they were generally employed in the service of the Greek emperor.
The next business, therefore, that the caliph had to do, pursuant to
the tenor of his religion, was to make war upon his neighbours, for
the propagation of the truth (for so they call their superstition),
and compel them either to become Mohammedans or tributaries. For their
prophet Mohammed had given them a commission of a very large, nay,
unlimited extent, to fight, _viz._, till all the people were of his
religion. The wars which are entered upon in obedience to this command,
they call holy wars, with no greater absurdity than we ourselves give the
same title to that which was once undertaken against them by Europeans.
With this religious object, Abu Bekr sent at this time a force under
Khalid into Irak or Babylonia; but his greatest longing was after Syria,
which delicious, pleasant, and fruitful country being near to Arabia,
seemed to lie very conveniently for him.

[Sidenote: [633-634 A.D.]]

The news of his preparation quickly came to the ears of the emperor
Heraclius, who despatched a force with all possible speed to check the
advance of the Saracens, but with ill success; for the general, with
twelve hundred of his men, was killed upon the field of the battle, and
the rest routed, the Arabs losing only 120 men. A number of skirmishes
followed, in most of which the Christians came off the worst.[b]

Damascus was besieged for months, and all sorties of the inhabitants
crushed with heavy slaughter. Heraclius, at Antioch, sent a great army
under Werdan to its relief. Khalid, raising the siege, went to meet it.[a]

[Illustration: DAMASCUS]

The two armies presently came within sight of each other, and the
confidence of the Saracens was somewhat checked, when they perceived
the strength of the emperor’s forces, which amounted to no less than
seventy thousand. Those who had been in Persia, and seen the vast armies
of Chosroes, confessed that they had never beheld an enemy equal to the
present, either in number or military preparation. On the second morning
they moved forward, and engaged in all parts with all imaginable vigour.
The fight, or rather the slaughter, continued till evening. The Christian
army was entirely routed and defeated. The Saracens killed that day fifty
thousand men. Those that escaped fled, some of them to Cæsarea, others to
Damascus, and some to Antioch. The Saracens took plunder of inestimable
value, and a great many banners, and crosses made of gold and silver,
precious stones, silver and gold chains, rich clothes, and arms without
number; which Khalid said he would not divide until Damascus was taken.

The Saracens, returning to Damascus, continued vigorously to press the
siege, and reduced the inhabitants to very great straits, who every day
made a worse defence. For a while, at last, they begged of Khalid to
stay the assault, that they might have a little time to deliberate. But
he turned a deaf ear to them, for he had rather take the town by force,
and put the inhabitants to the sword, and let his Saracens have the
plunder, than that they should surrender, and have security for their
lives and their property. At length, through treachery, Khalid entered at
the east gate with his Saracens, putting all to the sword, and Christian
blood streamed down the streets of Damascus.

Abu Bekr the caliph died the same day that Damascus was taken,[34] which
was on Friday, the 23rd of August, 634 A.D. There are various reports
concerning his death; some say that he was poisoned by the Jews, eating
rice with Harith ben Kaldah, and that they both died of it within a
twelvemonth after. But Aisha says, that he bathed himself upon a cold
day, which threw him into a fever[35] of which he died within fifteen
days.[b]

Abu Bekr particularly lamented the number of the prophet’s companions
that fell in these campaigns, and fearing that the revelations of
Mohammed might be dispersed and lost, he gave orders that they should be
collected into the _Koran_. We shall later have occasion to notice the
slovenly manner in which the persons employed performed their task; the
compilation was subsequently revised in the reign of the caliph Othman,
and it is probable that there are many passages far different from those
which Mohammed wrote.

When all things were ready, the caliph reviewed the troops and issued
that celebrated code of regulations for the conduct of the army; it
was addressed to the general Abu Sufyan, and contained the following
directions: “Take care to treat your men with tenderness and lenity.
Consult with your officers upon all pressing occasions, and encourage
them to face the enemy with bravery and resolution. If you are
victorious, spare all the aged, the women, and the children. Neither
cut down palm trees nor burn any fields of corn. Spare all fruit trees;
slay no cattle but such as are required for your own use. Adhere to your
engagements inviolably; spare the inhabitants of monasteries; desecrate
no houses of religious worship. Cleave the skulls of those members of the
synagogue of Satan, who shave their crowns, give them no quarter, unless
they embrace Islamism, or pay tribute.”

The character of the first caliph had a beneficial effect on the
Mohammedan religion; for though the partisans of Ali accuse him of
ambition, and of uniting with his daughter Aisha to suppress the
prophet’s declarations in favour of Ali, yet they do not deny him the
praise of disinterestedness, justice, and benevolence. Before his
accession, he had bestowed the greater part of his estate to feed the
poor, and had been publicly named by the prophet the most charitable of
men. When placed at the head of affairs, he only took from the treasury
the sum absolutely necessary for his daily support; before entering on
the sovereignty, he ordered an exact account to be taken of his personal
estate, and at his death it was found to be considerably diminished.
In fact the absolute ruler of the richest countries of the world left
behind him but a single camel and an Ethiopian slave, and even these
he bequeathed to his successor. He dictated his will to Othman in the
following terms: “_In the Name of the Most Merciful God._--This is
the last will and testament of Abu Bekr ben Abi Kohafa, when he was
in the last hour of this world, and the first of the next; an hour in
which the infidel must believe, the wicked be convinced of their evil
ways, and liars speak the truth. I nominate Omar ben al-Khattab my
successor; therefore, hearken to him, and obey him. If he acts right, he
will confirm my expectations; if otherwise, he must render an account
of his own actions. My intentions are good, but I cannot foresee the
future results. However, those who do ill shall render a severe account
hereafter. Fare-ye-well. May ye be ever attended by the divine favour and
blessing.” When Abu Bekr had concluded this dictation, he fainted; on his
recovery, he desired Othman to read the document, soon after which he
expired. When information of the event was brought to Omar, he exclaimed,
“The life of Abu Bekr has been such, that it will be impossible for those
who come after, to imitate his sublime example.” Two proverbs attributed
to him, deserve to be quoted: “Good actions are a sure protection against
the blows of adversity.”--“Death is the most difficult of all things
before it comes, and the easiest when it is past.”

THE CALIPH OMAR

[Sidenote: [634-644 A.D.]]

Omar was, like his predecessor, a native of Mecca; he had been originally
a camel-herd, and never became quite free from the coarseness and
rusticity incident to his humble origin. At first a zealous idolater,
he proposed to extirpate all the followers of Mohammed; when he became
afterwards a Mussulman, he was just as eager to massacre all who would
not believe in the prophet. Violent on every occasion, he breathed
nothing but slaughter; and countless anecdotes are related of his
unrelenting temper. One of these must suffice. A Mussulman having a suit
against a Jew, was condemned by Mohammed, and in consequence, carried
his appeal before the tribunal of Omar; scarcely had he stated his case,
when Omar, springing from his seat, struck the appellant dead with one
blow of his sabre, exclaiming, “So perish all who will not submit to the
decision of God’s chosen prophet.” Rigorous justice, as interpreted by
the Mohammedan laws, and extreme severity, rendered his character more
respected than beloved. Mohammed said of him, “Truth speaks by the mouth
of Omar.” He added, that “if God had to send another prophet on the
earth, Omar would be the object of his choice.”

When Abu Bekr informed Omar that he had chosen him as his successor,
Omar, with mingled pride and humility, answered, “I have no need of
the caliphate.” Abu Bekr replied, “But the caliphate has need of you,”
and thus removed all further scruple. On his accession, he called
himself the “Caliph of the Caliph of God’s apostle,” but finding the
title inconveniently long, he changed it into that of “Commander of the
Faithful”; and this became, subsequently, the favourite designation of
his successors. When first he addressed his subjects, he stood a step
lower on the pulpit than Abu Bekr had been accustomed to do; he informed
his hearers that he would not have undertaken the arduous task of
government, only that he reposed perfect confidence in their intention to
observe the law, and adhere to the pure faith; he concluded with these
remarkable words, “O Mussulmans, I take God to witness, that none of you
shall be too strong for me to sacrifice the rights of the weak, nor too
weak for me to neglect the rights of the strong.”

No sooner was Omar placed at the head of affairs than the armies of
the Mohammedans seemed to have acquired tenfold vigour; and this was
not diminished by the severe treatment which the gallant Khalid, for a
trivial offence, received from the jealous caliph. The greater part of
Syria and Mesopotamia had been subdued during the life of Abu Bekr, the
conquest of these countries was now completed; the ancient empire of the
Persians was overthrown at the battle of Kadisiya; Palestine, Phœnicia,
and Egypt submitted to the Saracen yoke almost without a struggle; and
the standard of the prophet floated in triumph from the sands of the
Cyrenian desert to the banks of the Indus. “During the reign of Omar,”
says Khondemir, “the Saracens conquered thirty-six thousand cities,
towns, and castles, destroyed four thousand Christian, Magian, and pagan
temples, and erected fourteen hundred mosques.”

The annals of the world present no parallel to this recital; the Arabs
were animated by an enthusiasm which made them despise the most fearful
odds; they had ever in their mouths the magnificent orientalism,
traditionally ascribed to Mohammed, “in the shades of the scymitars is
paradise prefigured”; they sought battle as a feast, and counted danger
a sport. A fiercer spirit of course displayed itself in the Mohammedan
creed; the sanguinary precepts of propagandism, to which the prophet had
given utterance after his power was established at Medina, quite obscured
the milder doctrine taught at Mecca; and even these were surpassed in
ferocity by traditions which some of the sterner enthusiasts declared
that they had derived from the prophet himself. Abu Horeira declared
that he heard from Mohammed, “He who shall die without having fought for
God, or who never proposed that duty to himself, verily consigns himself
to destruction by his hypocrisy,” and also the singular declaration,
“He who shall bestow a horse upon one who would enlist himself under
the banner of the Most High, and be one who has faith in God and in his
promises, surely, both the food of that horse and the sustenance of his
rider, with the ordure of the former, shall be placed in the scales for
his advantage on the day of judgment.” We shall add one more, preserved
on the authority of Ibn Abbas: “There are two descriptions of eyes which
the fire of hell shall not destroy; the eyes that weep in contemplating
the indignation of God, and the eyes which are closed when in the act of
combat for the cause of God.”[f]

THE CONQUEST OF PERSIA

From the rapid conquests of the Saracens a presumption will naturally
arise, that the first caliphs commanded in person the armies of the
faithful, and sought the crown of martyrdom in the foremost ranks of the
battle. The courage of Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman had indeed been tried
in the persecution and wars of the prophet; and the personal assurance of
paradise must have taught them to despise the pleasures and dangers of
the present world. But they ascended the throne in a venerable or mature
age, and esteemed the domestic cares of religion and justice the most
important duties of a sovereign. Except the presence of Omar at the siege
of Jerusalem, their longest expeditions were the frequent pilgrimage from
Medina to Mecca; and they calmly received the tidings of victory as they
prayed or preached before the sepulchre of the prophet.

In the sloth and vanity of the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes
of the house of Omayyah were alike destitute of the qualifications
of statesmen and of saints. Yet the spoils of unknown nations were
continually laid at the foot of their throne, and the uniform ascent of
the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit of the nation rather
than the abilities of their chiefs. A large deduction must be allowed
for the weakness of their enemies. The birth of Mohammed was fortunately
placed in the most degenerate and disorderly period of the Persians, the
Romans, and the barbarians of Europe; the empires of Trajan, or even of
Constantine or Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of the naked
Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have been obscurely lost in
the sands of Arabia.

In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the aim
of the senate to confine their consuls and legions to a single war,
and completely to suppress a first enemy before they provoked the
hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of policy were disdained
by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the Arabian caliphs. With the same
vigour and success they invaded the successors of Augustus, and those
of Artaxerxes; and the rival monarchies at the same instant became the
prey of an enemy whom they had been so long accustomed to despise. One
hundred years after Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign
of his successors extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the
various and distant provinces which may be comprised under the names of,
(1) Persia; (2) Syria; (3) Egypt; (4) Africa; and (5) Spain. Under this
general division we may proceed to unfold these memorable transactions;
despatching with brevity the remote and less interesting conquests of
the East, and reserving a fuller narrative for those domestic countries,
which had been included within the pale of the Roman Empire.

[Illustration: PERSIAN WARRIOR OF THE MIDDLE AGES]

[Sidenote: [634-637 A.D.]]

In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Khalid, the sword
of God, and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to the banks of the
Euphrates, and reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira. Westward of the
ruins of Babylon a tribe of sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the
verge of the desert; and Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had
embraced the Christian religion, and reigned above six hundred years
under the shadow of the throne of Persia. The last of the Mondars was
defeated and slain by Khalid; his son was sent a captive to Medina; his
nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet; the people were tempted
by the example and success of their countrymen; and the caliph accepted
as the first-fruits of foreign conquest, an annual tribute of seventy
thousand pieces of gold. The conquerors, and even their historians, were
astonished by the dawn of their future greatness.

The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a moment
their intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the priests
and nobles, Queen Azarmidokht was deposed--the sixth of the transient
usurpers who had arisen and vanished in three or four years, since the
death of Chosroes and the retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed
on the head of Yezdegerd, the grandson of Chosroes; and the same era,
which coincides with an astronomical period, has recorded the fall of
the Sassanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. The youth and
inexperience of the prince--he was only fifteen years of age--declined a
perilous encounter; the royal standard was delivered into the hands of
his general Rustem; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular troops was
swelled in truth, or in opinion, to 120,000 subjects, or allies, of the
great king. The Moslems, whose numbers were reinforced from twelve to
thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Kadesiya; and
their line, though it consisted of fewer men, could produce more soldiers
than the unwieldy host of the infidels. The periods of the battle of
Kadesiya were distinguished by their peculiar appellations. The first,
from the well-timed appearance of six thousand of the Syrian brethren,
was denominated the day of succour. The day of concussion might express
the disorder of one, or perhaps of both, of the contending armies. The
third, a nocturnal tumult, received the whimsical name of the night
of barking, from the discordant clamours, which were compared to the
inarticulate sounds of the fiercest animals.

The morning of the succeeding day determined the fate of Persia; and
a seasonable whirlwind drove a cloud of dust against the faces of the
unbelievers. The clangour of arms was re-echoed to the tent of Rustem,
who, far unlike the ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining in a
cool and tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp, and the train
of mules that was laden with gold and silver. On the sound of danger he
started from his couch; but his flight was overtaken by a valiant Arab,
who caught him by the foot, struck off his head, hoisted it on a lance,
and instantly returning to the field of battle, carried slaughter and
dismay among the thickest ranks of the Persians. The Saracens confess a
loss of 7,500 men; and the battle of Kadesiya is justly described by the
epithets of obstinate and atrocious. The standard of the monarchy was
overthrown and captured in the field--a leathern apron of a blacksmith,
who, in ancient times, had arisen the deliverer of Persia; but this
badge of heroic poverty was disguised, and almost concealed, by a
profusion of precious gems. After this victory, the wealthy province of
Irak or Assyria submitted to the caliph, and his conquests were firmly
established by the speedy foundation of Bassora, a place which ever
commands the trade and navigation of the Persians.

[Sidenote: [637-651 A.D.]]

After the defeat of Kadesiya, a country intersected by rivers and canals
might have opposed an insuperable barrier to the victorious cavalry; and
the walls of Ctesiphon or Madain, which had resisted the battering-rams
of the Romans, would not have yielded to the darts of the Saracens. But
the flying Persians were overcome by the belief that the last day of
their religion and empire was at hand; the strongest posts were abandoned
by treachery or cowardice; and the king, with a part of his family and
treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the Median hills. In the
third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of Omar, passed the
Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken by assault; and the
disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge to the sabres of
the Moslems, who shouted with religious transport, “This is the white
palace of Chosroes, this is the promise of the apostle of God!” The
naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of
their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure secreted
with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the various
wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate
of fancy or numbers; and another historian defines the untold and
almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation of three thousands
of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold. The sack of Ctesiphon was
followed by its desertion and gradual decay. The Saracens disliked the
air and situation of the place, and Omar was advised by his general to
remove the seat of government to the western side of the Euphrates.

In every age the foundation and ruin of the Assyrian cities has been easy
and rapid; the country is destitute of stone and timber, and the most
solid structures are composed of bricks baked in the sun, and joined by
a cement of the native bitumen. After the loss of the battle of Jalula,
Yezdegerd fled from Holwan, and concealed his shame and despair in the
mountains of Farsistan, from whence Cyrus had descended with his equal
and valiant companions. The courage of the nation survived that of the
monarch; among the hills to the south of Ecbatana or Hamadan, 150,000
Persians made a third and final stand for their religion and country; and
the decisive battle of Nehavend was styled by the Arabs the “victory of
victories” (641).

The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks and Latins;
but the most illustrious of her cities appear to be more ancient than
the invasion of the Arabs. By the reduction of Hamadan and Ispahan, of
Caswin, Tabriz, and Rei, they gradually approached the shores of the
Caspian Sea; and the orators of Mecca might applaud the success and
spirit of the faithful, who had already lost sight of the Northern Bear,
and had almost transcended the bounds of the habitable world. Again
turning towards the west and the Roman Empire, they repassed the Tigris
over the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces of Armenia and
Mesopotamia, embraced their victorious brethren of the Syrian army.
From the palace of Madain their eastern progress was not less rapid
or extensive. They advanced along the Tigris and the gulf; penetrated
through the passes of the mountains into the valley of Estachar or
Persepolis; and profaned the last sanctuary of the Magian empire. The
grandson of Chosroes was nearly surprised among the falling columns
and mutilated figures; a sad emblem of the past and present fortune
of Persia; he fled with accelerated haste over the desert of Kirman,
implored the aid of the warlike Segestans, and sought an humble refuge
on the verge of the Turkish and Chinese power. But a victorious army is
insensible of fatigue; the Arabs divided their forces in the pursuit of a
timorous enemy; and the caliph Othman promised the government of Khorasan
to the first general who should enter that large and populous country,
the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians. The condition was accepted; the
prize was deserved; the standard of Mohammed was planted on the walls
of Herat, Merou, and Balkh; and the successful leader neither halted
nor reposed till his foaming cavalry had tasted the waters of the Oxus.
In the public anarchy, the independent governors of the cities and
castles obtained their separate capitulations; the terms were granted or
imposed by the esteem, the prudence, or the compassion of the victors;
and a simple profession of faith established the distinction between a
brother and a slave. The administration of Persia was regulated by an
actual survey of the people, the cattle, and the fruits of the earth; and
this monument, which attests the vigilance of the caliphs, might have
instructed the philosophers of every age.

The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus, and as far as
the Jaxartes, two rivers of ancient and modern renown, which descend
from the mountains of India towards the Caspian Sea. He was hospitably
entertained by Tarkhan, prince of Fergana, a fertile province on the
Jaxartes; the king of Samarcand, with the Turkish tribes of Sogdiana
and Scythia, were moved by the lamentations and promises of the fallen
monarch; and he solicited by a suppliant embassy, the more solid and
powerful friendship of the emperor of China. The virtuous Taitsong,
the first of the dynasty of the Tang, may be justly compared with the
Antonines of Rome. His people enjoyed the blessings of prosperity
and peace, and his dominion was acknowledged by forty-four hordes of
the barbarians of Tartary. His last garrisons of Cashgar and Khoten
maintained a frequent intercourse with their neighbours of the Jaxartes
and Oxus; a recent colony of Persians had introduced into China the
astronomy of the magi; and Taitsong might be alarmed by the rapid
progress and dangerous vicinity of the Arabs. The influence and perhaps
the supplies of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd and the zeal of
the worshippers of the fire; and he returned with an army of Turks to
conquer the inheritance of his fathers. The fortunate Moslems, without
unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin and death.
The grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by his servant, insulted by the
seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed, defeated, and pursued by
his barbarian allies. He reached the banks of a river, and offered his
rings and bracelets for an instant passage in a miller’s boat. Ignorant
or insensible of royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drachms of
silver were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend
his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of hesitation and
delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was overtaken and slaughtered by
the Turkish cavalry in the nineteenth year of his unhappy reign. His son
Firuz, an humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station of
captain of his guards; and the magian worship was long preserved by a
colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bokhara. His grandson inherited
the regal name; but after a faint and fruitless enterprise, he returned
to China and ended his days in the palace of Sigan. The male line of the
Sassanids was extinct; but the female captives, the daughters of Persia,
were given to the conquerors in servitude, or marriage; and the race of
the caliphs and imams was ennobled by the blood of their royal mothers.

After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the river Oxus divided the
territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow boundary was
soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs; the governors of Khorasan
extended their successive inroads; and one of their triumphs was
adorned with the buskin of a Turkish queen, which she dropped in her
precipitate flight beyond the hills of Bokhara. But the final conquest
of Transoxiana, as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious
reign of the inactive Walid; and the name of Katiba, the camel driver,
declares the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one
of his colleagues displayed the first Mohammedan banner on the banks
of the Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and
the Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Katiba to the obedience of
the prophet, and of the caliph. A tribute of two millions of pieces of
gold was imposed on the infidels; their idols were burned or broken; the
Mussulman chief pronounced a sermon in the new mosque of Khwarizm; after
several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and
the emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs.

Before the invasion of the Saracens, Khwarizm, Bokhara and Samarcand
were rich and populous under the yoke of the shepherds of the north. The
mutual wants of India and Europe were supplied by the diligence of the
Sogdian merchants; and the inestimable art of transforming linen into
paper, has been transferred from the manufacture of Samarcand over the
western world.

THE SYRIAN CONQUEST COMPLETED

[Sidenote: [636-637 A.D.]]

From the conquest of Damascus the Saracens proceeded to Heliopolis and
Emesa. In the prosecution of the war, their policy was not less effectual
than their sword. By short and separate truces they dissolved the union
of the enemy; accustomed the Syrians to compare their friendship with
their enmity; familiarised the idea of their language, religion, and
manners; and exhausted, by clandestine purchase, the magazines and
arsenals of the cities which they returned to besiege. They aggravated
the ransom of the more wealthy or the more obstinate; and Chalcis
alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold, five thousand ounces
of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as many figs and olives as
would load five thousand asses. But the terms of truce or capitulation
were faithfully observed; and the lieutenant of the caliph, who had
promised not to enter the walls of the captive Baalbec, remained tranquil
and immovable in his tent till the jarring factions solicited the
interposition of a foreign master. The conquest of the plain and valley
of Syria was achieved in less than two years. Yet the commander of the
faithful reproved the slowness of their progress, and the Saracens,
bewailing their fault with tears of rage and repentance, called aloud on
their chiefs to lead them forth to fight the battles of the Lord.

[Illustration: SARACENIC GLAZED JUG AND LAMP]

It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of their valour
and enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who was taught by
repeated losses, that the rovers of the desert had undertaken, and would
speedily achieve, a regular and permanent conquest. From the provinces
of Europe and Asia, fourscore thousand soldiers were transported by sea
and land to Antioch and Cæsarea; the light troops of the army consisted
of sixty thousand Christian Arabs of the tribes of Ghassan. In the
neighbourhood of Bosra, the springs of Mount Hermon descend in a torrent
to the plain of Decapolis, or ten cities; and the Hieromax, a name which
has been corrupted to Yermuk, is lost after a short course in the lake
of Tiberias. The banks of this obscure stream were illustrated by a long
and bloody encounter. On this momentous occasion, the public voice, and
the modesty of Abu Obaidah, restored the command to the most deserving of
the Moslems. Khalid assumed his station in the front, his colleague was
posted in the rear, that the disorder of the fugitives might be checked
by his venerable aspect and the sight of the yellow banner which Mohammed
had displayed before the walls of Khaibar.

The last line was occupied by the sister of Derar, with the Arabian women
who had enlisted in this holy war, who were accustomed to wield the bow
and the lance, and who in a moment of captivity had defended, against the
uncircumcised ravishers, their chastity and religion. The exhortation
of the generals was brief and forcible: “Paradise is before you, the
devil and hell-fire in your rear.” Yet such was the weight of the Roman
cavalry, that the right wing of the Arabs was broken and separated from
the main body. Thrice did they retreat in disorder, and thrice were they
driven back to the charge by the reproaches and blows of the women. Four
thousand and thirty of the Moslems were buried in the field of battle;
and the skill of the Armenian archers enabled seven hundred to boast that
they had lost an eye in that meritorious service. The veterans of the
Syrian war acknowledged that it was the hardest and most doubtful of the
days which they had seen. But it was likewise the most decisive; many
thousands of the Greeks and Syrians fell by the swords of the Arabs; many
were slaughtered, after the defeat, in the woods and mountains; many, by
mistaking the ford, were drowned in the waters of the Yermuk; and however
the loss may be magnified, the Christian writers confess and bewail the
bloody punishment of their sins.

After the battle of Yermuk, the Roman army no longer appeared in the
field; and the Saracens might securely choose, among the fortified towns
of Syria, the first object of their attack. They consulted the caliph
whether they should march to Cæsarea or Jerusalem; and the advice of Ali
determined the immediate siege of the latter. To a profane eye, Jerusalem
was the first or second capital of Palestine; but after Mecca and Medina,
it was revered and visited by the devout Moslems, as the temple of the
Holy Land, which had been sanctified by the revelation of Moses, of
Jesus, and of Mohammed himself.

The siege of Jerusalem lasted four months; not a day was lost without
some action of sally or assault; the military engines incessantly
played from the ramparts; and the inclemency of the winter was still
more painful and destructive to the Arabs. The Christians yielded at
length to the perseverance of the besiegers. The patriarch Sophronius
appeared on the walls, and by the voice of an interpreter demanded a
conference. After a vain attempt to dissuade the lieutenant of the caliph
from his impious enterprise, he proposed, in the name of the people, a
fair capitulation, with this extraordinary clause, that the articles
of security should be ratified by the authority and presence of Omar
himself. The question was debated in the council of Medina; the sanctity
of the place, and the advice of Ali, persuaded the caliph to gratify the
wishes of his soldiers and enemies, and the simplicity of Omar’s journey
is more illustrious than the royal pageants of vanity and oppression. The
conqueror of Persia and Syria was mounted on a red camel, which carried,
besides his person, a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and
a leathern bottle of water. By his command the ground of the temple
of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosque; and, during a
residence of ten days, he regulated the present and future state of his
Syrian conquests. Medina might be jealous, lest the caliph should be
detained by the sanctity of Jerusalem or the beauty of Damascus; her
apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and voluntary return to the
tomb of the apostle.

To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war, the caliph had formed
two separate armies; a chosen detachment, under Amru and Yazid, was left
in the camp of Palestine; while the larger division, under the standard
of Abu Obaidah and Khalid, marched away to the north against Antioch and
Aleppo. The castle of Aleppo, distinct from the city, stood erect on a
lofty artificial mound, and the sides were sharpened to a precipice, and
faced with freestone. After the loss of three thousand men, the garrison
was still equal to the defence. In a siege of four or five months, the
hardest of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens were killed and
wounded. The exhortation of the commander of the faithful, not to give up
the siege, was responded to by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes
of Arabia, who arrived in the camp on horses or camels. Among these was
Dames, of a servile birth, but of gigantic size and intrepid resolution.
At the darkest hour of the night he scaled the most accessible height, a
place where the stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular,
or the guard less vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on
each other’s shoulders and the weight of the column was sustained on the
broad and sinewy back of the gigantic slave.

The foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the lowest part
of the battlements; they silently stabbed and cast down the sentinels;
and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious ejaculation, “O apostle of
God, help and deliver us!” were successively drawn up by the long folds
of their turbans. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down
the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass till the arrival of Khalid,
with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured their conquest.
After the loss of this important post, and the defeat of the last of
the Roman armies, the luxury of Antioch trembled and obeyed. Her safety
was ransomed with three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne
of the successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government in the
East, which had been decorated by Cæsar with the titles of free, and
holy, and inviolate, was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the
secondary rank of a provincial town.

The loss of Damascus and Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and
Yermuk, may be imputed in some degree to the absence or misconduct of
the sovereign. Instead of defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved
the church and state in a metaphysical controversy for the unity of his
will; and while Heraclius crowned the offspring of his second nuptials,
he was tamely stripped of the most valuable part of their inheritance.
In the cathedral of Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at the foot
of the crucifix, he bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his
confession instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious,
to resist the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact,
since they were invincible in opinion. After bidding an eternal farewell
to Syria, Heraclius secretly embarked with a few attendants, and absolved
the faith of his subjects. From the north and south the Saracen troops
of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the seashore, till their banners
were joined under the walls of the Phœnician cities; Tripolis and Tyre
were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered without
distrust the captive harbours, brought a seasonable supply of arms and
provisions to the camp of the Saracens. Their labours were terminated
by the unexpected surrender of Cæsarea. The remainder of the province,
Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, Nablus or Neapolis, Gaza, Askalon, Berytus,
Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to
dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of
the caliphs, seven hundred years after Pompey had despoiled the last of
the Macedonian kings.

The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands
of the Moslems. They died with the reputation and the cheerfulness of
martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be expressed in the words
of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for the last time, his sister
and mother; “It is not,” said he, “the delicacies of Syria, or fading
delights of this world, that have prompted me to devote my life in the
cause of religion. But I seek the favour of God and his apostle; and I
have heard from one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits
of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall
taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers of paradise. Farewell, we shall
meet again among the groves and fountains which God has provided for his
elect.”

The more fortunate Arabs who survived the war, and persevered in the
faith, were restrained by their abstemious leader from the abuse of
prosperity. After a refreshment of three days, Abu Obaidah withdrew
his troops from the pernicious contagion of the luxury of Antioch, and
assured the caliph that their religion and virtue could only be preserved
by the hard discipline of poverty and labour. The year of their triumph
was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five thousand
Saracens were snatched away from the possession of Syria. The death
of Abu Obaidah might be lamented by the Christians; but his brethren
recollected that he was one of the ten elect, whom the prophet had named
heirs of paradise. Khalid survived his brethren about three years; and
the tomb of the Sword of God is shown near Emesa. His valour, which
founded in Arabia and Syria the empire of the caliphs, was fortified by
the opinion of a special providence; and as long as he wore a cap which
had been blessed by Mohammed he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the
darts of the infidels.

[Sidenote: [637-640 A.D.]]

The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of
their children and countrymen; Syria became the seat and support of
the house of Omayyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that
powerful kingdom, were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of
the caliphs. But the Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their
historians scarcely condescend to mention the subordinate conquests which
are lost in the splendour and rapidity of their victorious career. To the
north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to their obedience
the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus, the ancient monument
of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same mountains, they
spread the flame of war, rather than the light of religion, as far as
the shores of the Euxine and the neighbourhood of Constantinople. To the
east they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris;
the long-disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded; the
walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had resisted the
arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were levelled in the dust; and
the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce the epistle or the image
of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror. To the west the Syrian kingdom is
bounded by the sea; and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula
on the coast, was postponed during ten years. But the hills of Libanus
abounded in timber; the trade of Phœnicia was populous in mariners; and a
fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the natives
of the desert. The imperial navy of the Romans fled before them from
the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor,
a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream
and a pun. The Saracens rode masters of the sea; and the islands of
Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to their
rapacious visits. Three hundred years before the Christian era, the
memorable, though fruitless siege of Rhodes, by Demetrius, had furnished
that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a trophy.
A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was
erected at the entrance of the harbour, a monument of the freedom and the
arts of Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the Colossus of Rhodes
was overthrown by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments,
lay scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described
as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the
diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who
is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass
metal: an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred colossal
figures, and the three thousand statues which adorned the prosperity of
the city of the sun.

EGYPT CAPTURED (639 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [639-654 A.D.]]

The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the victorious
Saracen, one of the first of his nation in an age when the meanest of
the brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of enthusiasm.
The birth of Amru was at once base and illustrious; his reason or his
interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped from
Mecca with his friend Khalid, and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at the
same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions of
his cause. His merit was not overlooked by the first two successors of
Mohammed; they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of Palestine;
and in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with the temper of
a chief the valour of an adventurous soldier.

From his camp, in Palestine, Amru had surprised or anticipated the
caliph’s leave for the invasion of Egypt. The magnanimous Omar trusted
in his God and his sword, which had shaken the thrones of Chosroes and
Cæsar; but when he compared the slender force of the Moslems with the
greatness of the enterprise, he condemned his own rashness and listened
to his timid companions. At the head of only four thousand Arabs, the
intrepid Amru had marched away from his station of Gaza when he was
overtaken by the messenger of Omar. “If you are still in Syria,” said
the ambiguous mandate, “retreat without delay; but if, at the receipt of
this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of Egypt, advance
with confidence, and depend on the succour of God and of your brethren.”
The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of Amru had taught him
to suspect the mutability of courts; and he continued his march till his
tents were unquestionably pitched on Egyptian ground. He there assembled
his officers, broke the seal, perused the epistle, gravely inquired the
name and situation of the place, and declared his ready obedience to the
commands of the caliph.

After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah or Pelusium,
and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unlocked the entrance
of the country, as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the neighbourhood
of the modern Cairo.

On the western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east of the
pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the Delta, Memphis, 150
furlongs in circumference, displayed the magnificence of ancient kings.
The siege was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were
encompassed and threatened by the inundation of the Nile. Their last
assault was bold and successful; they passed the ditch, which had been
fortified with iron spikes, applied their scaling-ladders, entered the
fortress with the shout of “God is victorious!” and drove the remnant of
the Greeks to their boats, and the isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards
recommended to the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and
the peninsula of Arabia; the remains of Memphis were deserted; the tents
of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations, and the first
mosque was blessed by the presence of fourscore companions of Mohammed.
A new city arose in their camp on the eastward bank of the Nile. But the
name of Cairo, the town of victory, more strictly belongs to the modern
capital, which was founded in the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs.
It has gradually receded from the river; but the continuity of buildings
may be traced by an attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris [Ramses
II] to those of Saladin.

Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise, must have
retreated to the desert, had they not found a powerful alliance in the
heart of the country.

The persecution of the emperors had converted a sect into a nation,
and alienated Egypt from their religion and government. The Saracens
were received as the deliverers of the Jacobite church; and a secret
and effectual treaty was opened during the siege of Memphis between a
victorious army and a people of slaves. A rich and noble Egyptian of the
name of Mukawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain the administration
of his province; in the disorders of the Persian War he aspired to
independence; the embassy of Mohammed ranked him among princes; but he
declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the proposal of a
new religion.

[Illustration: CAIRO]

In his first conference with Amru, he heard without indignation the
usual option of the _Koran_, the tribute or the sword; and he cheerfully
submitted to pay tribute and obedience to his temporal successors. The
tribute was ascertained at two pieces of gold for the head of every
Christian; but old men, monks, women, and children of both sexes, under
sixteen years of age, were exempted from this personal assessment. At
the pressing summons of Amru, their patriarch Benjamin emerged from his
desert; and, after the first interview, the courteous Arab affected
to declare that he had never conversed with a Christian priest of
more innocent manners and a more venerable aspect. In the march from
Memphis to Alexandria, the lieutenant of Omar entrusted his safety to
the zeal and gratitude of the Egyptians; the roads and bridges were
diligently repaired; and in every step of his progress, he could depend
on a constant supply of provisions and intelligence. The Greeks of
Egypt, whose numbers could scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were
overwhelmed by the universal defection; they had ever been hated, they
were no longer feared; the magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop
from his altar; and the distant garrisons were surprised or starved by
the surrounding multitudes. Had not the Nile afforded a safe and ready
conveyance to the sea, not an individual could have escaped who, by
birth, or language, or office, or religion, was connected with their
odious name.

By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper Egypt, a
considerable force was collected in the island of Delta; the natural
and artificial channels of the Nile afforded a succession of strong and
defensible posts; and the road to Alexandria was laboriously cleared
by the victory of the Saracens in two-and-twenty days of general or
partial combat. In their annals of conquest, the siege of Alexandria is
perhaps the most arduous and important enterprise. The first trading city
in the world was abundantly replenished with the means of subsistence
and defence. Her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of human
rights, religion and property; and the enmity of the natives seemed to
exclude them from the common benefit of peace and toleration. The sea was
continually open; and if Heraclius had been awake to the public distress,
fresh armies of Romans and barbarians might have been poured into the
harbour to save the second capital of the empire.

In every attack, the sword, the banner of Amru, glittered in the van of
the Moslems. On a memorable day, he was betrayed by his imprudent valour:
his followers who had entered the citadel were driven back; and the
general, with a friend and a slave, remained a prisoner in the hands of
the Christians. When Amru was conducted before the prefect, he remembered
his dignity and forgot his situation; a lofty demeanour and resolute
language revealed the lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-axe of
a soldier was already raised to strike off the head of the audacious
captive. His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly
gave his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an angry
tone, to be silent in the presence of his superiors. The credulous Greek
was deceived; he listened to the offer of a treaty, and his prisoners
were dismissed in the hope of a more respectable embassy, till the joyful
acclamations of the camp announced the return of their general, and
insulted the folly of the infidels. At length, after a siege of fourteen
months, and the loss of three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens
prevailed.

The commander of the faithful rejected with firmness the idea of
pillage, and directed his lieutenant to reserve the wealth and revenue
of Alexandria for the public service and the propagation of the faith;
the inhabitants were numbered; a tribute was imposed; the zeal and
resentment of the Jacobites were curbed, and the Melchites, who submitted
to the Arabian yoke, were indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise
of their worship. The intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous
event afflicted the declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius
died of a dropsy about seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria.[36]
Under the minority of his grandson, the clamours of a people deprived
of their daily sustenance compelled the Byzantine court to undertake
the recovery of the capital of Egypt. In the space of four years, the
harbour and fortifications of Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet
and army of Romans. They were twice expelled by the valour of Amru, who
was recalled by the domestic peril from the distant wars of Tripolis and
Nubia. But the facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and
the obstinacy of the resistance provoked him to swear that, if a third
time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as
accessible on all sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his
promise, he dismantled several parts of the walls and towers, but the
people were spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosque of
Mercy was erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped
the fury of his troops.

THE ALLEGED BURNING OF THE LIBRARY

[Sidenote: [641 A.D.]]

We should deceive the expectation of the reader if we passed in silence
the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned
Abul-Faraj. The spirit of Amru was more curious and liberal than that
of his brethren, and in his leisure hours the Arabian chief was pleased
with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who
derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar
and philosophy. Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus
presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in
that of the barbarians--the royal library, which alone among the spoils
of Alexandria had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the
conqueror. Amru was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but
his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the
consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by
the ignorance of a fanatic: “If these writings of the Greeks agree with
the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they
disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.” The sentence
was executed with blind obedience; the volumes of paper or parchment
were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was
their incredible multitude, that six months was barely sufficient for the
consumption of this precious fuel. Since the _Dynasties_ of Abul-Faraj
have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been
repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has
deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the
genius of antiquity.

For our own part, we are strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the
consequences. The fact is indeed marvellous. “Read and wonder!” says the
historian himself; and the solitary report of a stranger, who wrote at
the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced
by the silence of two annalists of a more early date, both Christians,
both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch
Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria. The rigid
sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the
Mohammedan casuists: they expressly declare that the religious books of
the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should
never be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science,
historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied
to the use of the faithful. A more destructive zeal may perhaps be
attributed to the first successors of Mohammed; yet, in this instance,
the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of
materials. We shall not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian
library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Cæsar in his own
defence, or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to
destroy the monuments of idolatry.[37] But if we gradually descend from
the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a
chain of contemporary witnesses that the royal palace and the temple of
Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand
volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of
the Ptolemies. Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be
enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian
and monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths, a
philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to
the benefit of mankind. We sincerely regret the more valuable libraries
which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman Empire; but when
we seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and
the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the
object of our surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried
in oblivion; the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted
to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing
compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet
we should gratefully remember that the mischances of time and accident
have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity had
adjudged the first place of genius and glory; the teachers of ancient
knowledge who are still extant had perused and compared the writings of
their predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that any important
truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from
the curiosity of modern ages.

[Illustration: ARABIC WEAPONS]

In the administration of Egypt, Amru balanced the demands of justice and
policy. In the management of the revenue he disapproved the simple but
oppressive mode of a capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion
of taxes, deducted on every branch from the clear profits of agriculture
and commerce. A third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual
repairs of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare.
Under this administration the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of
Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered
almost without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina. But the
genius of Amru soon renewed the maritime communication which had been
attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, or the Cæsars;
and a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile
to the Red Sea. This inland navigation, which would have joined the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as useless
and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus; and the
Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities of
Arabia.[g]

[Sidenote: [637-644 A.D.]]

Amru, being now possessed of Egypt, began to look a little further
towards the western part of Africa; and in a short time made himself
master of all that country which lies between Barcah and Zeweilah.
Shortly after this he took Tripolis. If we consider the extent of his
success, it alone is great enough to command our admiration even though
nothing else had been accomplished in any other part. But in the East,
also, the victorious arms made no less progress, and the Mohammedan
crescent now began to shed its malignant influence upon as large and
considerable dominions as the Roman eagle ever soared over. About this
time, Aderbaijan, Ainwerdah, Harran, Roha, Rakkah, Nisibin, Ehwaz, Siwas,
and Khorasan were all brought under subjection to the Saracens.

About two years after this, Omar, the caliph, was killed. The account of
his death is as follows: One Firuz, a Persian, of the sect of the magi,
or Parsees, as being of a different religion from the Mussulmans, had a
daily tribute of two pieces of silver imposed upon him by his master,
and made his complaint to Omar, demanding to have a part of it remitted.
Omar told him he did not think it at all unreasonable, considering he
could well afford it out of what he earned. With his answer Firuz was
so provoked that he did as good as threaten the caliph to his face,
who, however, took little notice of his passion. Firuz watched his
opportunity; and not long after, whilst Omar was saying the morning
prayer in the mosque, stabbed him thrice in the belly with a dagger. The
Saracens in the mosque rushing upon him immediately, he made a desperate
defence, and stabbed thirteen of them, of whom seven died. At last, one
that stood by threw his vest over him, and seized him; when, perceiving
himself caught, he stabbed himself. Omar lived three days after the
wound, and then died, in the month of Dhul-haj, in the twenty-third year
of the Hegira, 644 A.D., after he had reigned ten years, six months,
and eight days, and was sixty-three years old; which is the same age
at which, according to some authors, Mohammed, Abu Bekr, and Aisha,
Mohammed’s wife, died.

The conquests gained by the Saracens in his reign were so considerable
that, though they had never been extended, the countries they had subdued
would have made a very formidable empire. He drove all the Jews and
Christians out of Arabia; subdued Syria, Egypt, and other territories in
Africa, besides the greater part of Persia. And yet all this greatness,
which would have been too weighty for an ordinary man to bear, especially
if, as in Omar’s case, it did not descend to him as an hereditary
possession, for which he had been prepared by a suitable education, but
was gotten on a sudden by men who had been acquainted with, and used to,
nothing great before, had no effect upon the caliph.[b]

Neither splendid victories nor extensive dominions changed the stern
character of Omar; he still preserved the rustic simplicity of his
manners and his ancient contempt for luxurious ornament. When he departed
from Medina to receive the submission of Jerusalem, he was mounted on
a red camel, having for his entire equipage two sacks, one containing
corn and the other fruit; before him was a leathern vessel of water, and
behind him a large platter from which he used to take his meals. In this
guise he travelled the entire road from Medina to Jerusalem, punishing
the Mussulmans who led a scandalous life, and providing for a rigorous
administration of justice.

On his arrival, the inhabitants prepared a splendid palace for his
reception; but he refused to enter the city, and had a tent erected
outside the walls. In this tent the deputies found the master of their
destinies sitting on the naked earth. The terms granted to the citizens
of Jerusalem are remarkable for their moderation; the security of the
persons and properties of the inhabitants was guaranteed, the free
exercise of religion permitted, and the churches allowed to remain with
their present possessors. Even when the caliph was anxious to erect
a mosque, he requested the patriarch to point him out an appropriate
situation; that prelate led him to the spot where Solomon’s temple
once stood, which was then covered with filth, and the caliph readily
accepted the ground as it was. He himself set the example of clearing the
rubbish; the army followed with eager emulation, and the mosque of Omar,
erected on this spot, is one of the most beautiful specimens of Arabian
architecture. But though tolerant to the Christians, the caliph showed
himself severe to those of his own followers who had departed from the
rigour of the national manners. Having learned that some of his men wore
flowing robes of silk, he ordered them to be extended on the earth, with
their faces to the ground, and their silken robes to be torn from their
shoulders. He punished with the bastinado those convicted of drinking
wine; he made proclamation that those who had transgressed, should accuse
themselves, and such was the influence he possessed over his troops, that
many voluntarily confessed their guilt, and submitted to the degrading
punishment.

In the history of Mohammedanism, Omar is a person second only in
importance to the founder of Islam. His strict severity was useful at a
time when unprecedented success seemed to excuse military violence; his
impartiality greatly abated the calamities of the conquest. He did not
spare the gallant Khalid, but it is probable that, in his conduct to that
hero, he was actuated more by jealousy than by a love of justice; it
must however be added, that in no instance did he permit high station to
shelter oppressors. A curious circumstance, characteristic of the age, is
recorded. Omar carried a cane with which he personally chastised officers
even of the highest rank, whom he detected in any guilty action, and
hence arose the proverb, “Omar’s cane is more terrible than the sword of
the bravest warrior.”

His strictness in enforcing religious ordinances was carried to the very
extreme of fanaticism; by his orders the splendid library which the
Ptolemies had collected in Alexandria, was said to have been burned to
heat the public baths; and the invaluable records of Persia, assembled
by the zeal of the Sassanides in Madain, were hurled into the waters
of the Tigris. His early education had rendered him insensible to the
charms of literature or art; when his generals sent him, from the palace
of the Persian kings, an unrivalled piece of tapestry, representing a
flower garden, worked with gold and precious stones, he ordered this
elaborate piece of workmanship to be cut in pieces, and the fragments
distributed to his soldiers. For his own use, he had neither palace, nor
court, nor house; during the time of prayer, he publicly officiated in
the mosque; the remainder of the day he spent in the streets and squares,
and it was there he gave audience to the ambassadors of the most powerful
cotemporary princes. His dress was not better than that of his meanest
subjects; when reproached for the deficiencies of his appearance, he
replied, “I would rather please the Lord by my conduct, than men by my
dress.” He was more indiscriminate in his charity than Abu Bekr; the
first caliph relieved none whose distress had been occasioned by vicious
conduct, Omar gave to all who asked. When reproached for making no
distinction, he replied, “Man is placed upon the earth, only to do good
to his brethren; the judgment of man’s worthiness should be left to his
Creator.” The temperance of Omar was as remarkable as his simplicity; his
ordinary food was coarse barley bread seasoned with salt, and on days of
abstinence the salt was laid aside; his only beverage was water. When at
meals, he invited all who chanced to be present, to take a share.

But the splendour of his public works was a strange contrast to the
meanness of his private life. We have already mentioned the mosque
he caused to be erected in Jerusalem; he also greatly enlarged and
beautified that which Mohammed had built in Medina. By his orders, the
foundations were laid of cities that rapidly grew to greatness, Old
Cairo, Cufa, and Bassora. He caused the canal between the Nile and the
Red Sea to be repaired and opened, in order to facilitate the importation
of corn into Arabia, which the recent enlargement of the cities had
rendered a matter of prime necessity. It was Omar, who first introduced
the custom of dating from the Hegira; before his time the Arabians dated
from the last great event which had interested the whole nation,--a war,
a famine, or a plague,--and thus rendered their chronology a mass of
inextricable confusion. To him also is owing the institution of a police
force in Mecca and Medina, the establishment of a fund to provide for the
pay of the army, and the preparation of an equitable scale of rewards for
those who had distinguished themselves in the propagation of Islam. It is
no wonder that, with such claims to admiration, the name of Omar should
be so celebrated among the most rigid sects of the Mohammedans. But while
the Sunnites labour to extend the fame of Omar, his memory is detested by
the partisans of Ali; his name is the proverbial expression for all that
is base in the countries where the Shiite principles prevail; no person
that bears it, dare own it in public; and to such excess do the Persians
carry their hatred, that they celebrate the day of Omar’s assassination
as a public festival.

[Sidenote: [644 A.D.]]

Omar, finding death approaching, was at a loss whom to nominate his
successor; and, to remedy the difficulty, devised the most extraordinary
expedient that can be imagined. He directed that a council of six should
be assembled after his death, that three days should be allowed them for
deliberation, and that if, at the end of that time, they had not agreed
on a new caliph, they should all be slain. The six who met to deliberate
under these circumstances, were Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed,
Othman, likewise his son-in-law, Zobair, the cousin of the prophet, and
Abd ar-Rahman, Talha, and Saad, his favourite companions. After some
deliberation, they elected Othman, and he was installed third caliph.

OTHMAN, THE THIRD CALIPH

[Sidenote: [644-656 A.D.]]

Othman was, like his predecessors, a native of Mecca, sprung from a
different branch of the same tribe that had given birth to the prophet.
He married successively two daughters of Mohammed, long acted as his
secretary, and enjoyed his intimate confidence. It is said, that Mohammed
was so delighted with the generosity displayed by his secretary, that he
exclaimed, “O my God, I am satisfied with Othman, be thou also satisfied
with him.” On another occasion, seeing Othman approach, he covered his
face with his robe, and said, “Should not I be ashamed before a man whose
merits would put angels to the blush?” At the time of his accession, he
was more than eighty years of age, but his health was unshaken, and the
vigour of his faculties unabated.

The third caliph pursued the warlike policy of his predecessors; by
his orders the Mussulman armies completed the conquest of Persia, and
extended the sway of the Saracens to the river Oxus, and the borders
of India. Northern Africa, as far as the shores of the Atlantic, was
subdued by another army; and a fleet, equipped in the harbours of Egypt
and Syria, subdued the island of Cyprus, and menaced the northern coasts
of the Mediterranean. But this success produced its natural effect;
it required all the energies of Omar’s stern character to resist the
progress of luxury and dissipation; the weak Othman was utterly incapable
of any similar exertion. The wild sons of the desert began to rival
in magnificence the most wealthy monarchs; they became ambitious of
palaces and titles, they preferred the splendour of the court, to the
glory of the field. Othman’s gentleness and facility accelerated the
progress of corruption; naturally generous, he was unwilling to refuse
any applicant, and as the foremost candidates for office are generally
those least fitted for its duties, the administration fell into the
hands of the designing and the profligate. With some show of reason, the
old companions of Mohammed complained that they were set aside to make
room for the family of Othman; and, with still more justice, that the
imprudence and wantonness of youth was preferred to their experience.

Religion did not escape from the general corruption; new sects began to
be formed; and the jealousy of the partisans of Ali daily acquired fresh
strength. Abu Dar, an old companion of the prophet, misrepresenting some
passages of the _Koran_, declared that the riches of this world were
the source of every crime, and that the wealthy should be compelled by
force to give their superfluities to the poor. Such doctrine was sure to
obtain a favourable hearing in a half-civilised country, where, from the
unequal distribution of plunder, a few had been suddenly enriched, but
the great bulk of the population reduced to comparative poverty. At the
same time another sectary announced that Mohammed was about to reappear,
and execute justice on the wicked and cruel men who tyrannised over the
Mussulmans. The people, expecting an approaching regeneration, despised
their rulers, and neglected the duties of social life. The second
revision of the _Koran_, ordained by Othman, was regarded by many of the
Mussulmans as a corruption of the true religion; they suspected that the
caliph did not pay sufficient deference to the authority of the prophet;
especially as in certain prayers he made four prostrations where Mohammed
only used two; and he had rebuilt a chapel destroyed by Mohammed’s
special command.

We have been so long accustomed to see the Mohammedan religion united
with despotic government, that we are naturally surprised to find a pure
democracy under the caliphate; from the very beginning, every affair of
importance was submitted to the general assembly; and all, except slaves,
were permitted to state their opinions freely. No practical inconvenience
arose from this custom, whilst disorder was checked by the sacred
character of the prophet, the dignified demeanour of Abu Bekr, or the
stern severity of Omar. But Othman possessed no such influence; when he
attempted to stem the popular tide, he was attacked in his very pulpit,
and driven by volleys of stones from the assembly. Satires and lampoons,
“those straws,” which, as Lord Bacon says, “show the direction of the
wind,” appeared in countless abundance.

Parties and factions were formed on every side; each province demanded a
new governor, every faction desired a new caliph. The leaders in these
disturbances were the ancient companions of the prophet; and many of the
most devoted Mussulmans were ready to join in a revolution. At length
a part of the Egyptian army marched suddenly to Medina and demanded an
immediate reform of abuses. By a liberal use of promises and persuasions,
they were induced to retire; but it was only to return the following
year, irritated by disappointment, and strengthened by large bodies of
partisans from Cufa and Bassora. Othman once more soothed the mutineers,
but as they were returning home, they learned that the caliph’s secretary
had sent official orders that they should be massacred. It is not quite
certain that the caliph had sanctioned this perfidy, but that it was
meditated does not admit of doubt. The soldiers, justly enraged, again
appeared before Medina, demanding the head of the secretary; when that
was refused, they slew Othman himself.

[Sidenote: [656 A.D.]]

The fatal day on which this atrocity occurred was Friday, which the
Mohammedans keep holy. It was Othman’s custom on this day to fast until
he had read through the entire _Koran_, and he was engaged in the perusal
of the sacred volume, when the approach of the assassins was announced.
Some of the caliph’s friends advised him to make some preparations for
resistance, but he replied that he had seen Mohammed in a dream, and had
been informed that they should break their fast together that day in
paradise.

In the meantime, the conspirators advanced sword in hand. Five hundred
guards attempted to check their progress, but were cut to pieces; the
caliph’s wife threw herself in their path and had her hand cut off; the
sons of Ali, and some of the old companions of the prophet, endeavoured
to propitiate the mutineers, but were forced to consult their own
safety by flight. Othman tranquilly read the _Koran_ in the midst of
the confusion; he scarcely deigned to raise his head when the enraged
soldiers burst into his apartment. At their head was a son of Abu Bekr,
named Muhammed, who seized Othman by the beard, and prepared to strike
a fatal blow. The caliph, looking him steadily in the face, asked, “O
Muhammed! what think you that your sainted father would say, if he saw
my beard in your grasp?” Struck with the words, Muhammed drew back in
silence; but his companions, less scrupulous, rushed upon Othman, and he
fell covered with wounds. His blood gushed upon the _Koran_ which he held
in his hand; it is said to be still preserved as a relic in the mosque
of Damascus. So great was the terror diffused by this event, that no one
dared to perform the funeral obsequies; the body remained three days
unburied; at length Ali gave orders for its sepulture, but it was buried
by night, and in a private cemetery.

The orthodox Mussulmans reverence Othman in the present day for the
action which excited most resentment in his own, namely, the revision of
the _Koran_. They cite respecting him, the following traditionary saying
of the prophet, “I have seen the name of Othman written on the gate of
paradise; I have seen it marked behind the throne of God, and on the
wings of the archangel Gabriel.” The Shiites regard him as a usurper, but
they do not execrate his memory so much as that of Omar.

At first the horror inspired by this murder was so great, that all
parties were reduced to silence. The surviving companions of Mohammed
took advantage of this interval of tranquillity, and nominated Ali fourth
caliph.

Ali was the son of Abu Talib, that uncle of Mohammed who had so
faithfully watched over his childhood. He had been the first to
acknowledge the divine mission of his cousin, and he ever manifested the
most devoted attachment to his person. When Mohammed fled from Mecca,
Ali disguised himself in the prophet’s robes, and placed himself on his
bed, that the Meccans might not suspect his escape. When he followed his
patron to Medina, he married the prophet’s favourite daughter Fatima, by
whom he had several children. Mohammed on many occasions showed a strong
love for Ali; he appointed him his lieutenant in his first expedition
against the Greeks, at Tabuc, and during occasional absence, entrusted to
him the government of Medina. It is supposed, on very plausible grounds,
that Ali was actually nominated his successor by the prophet, but that
Aisha prevented the circumstance from being known. This injustice was
deeply felt by the son of Abu Talib and his partisans, but particularly
by Mohammed’s relations, who thought themselves neglected by the three
first caliphs. In vain, however, did his friends endeavour to persuade
Ali to attempt the forcible seizure of the reins of government; he
replied constantly, that he would never reign except by the free
suffrages of the Mussulmans. During the reign of Omar, his loyalty
was so notorious, that he was appointed governor of Arabia during the
caliph’s absence at Jerusalem; he refused to join those who conspired
against Othman, and one of his sons was severely wounded in defence of
that sovereign. Finally, when elected, he very reluctantly consented to
accept the dignity of caliph, which had twice already proved fatal to its
possessors.

ALI (656-661 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [656-657 A.D.]]

Ali commenced his reign by deposing all the governors of the provinces.
Amongst these were several men of great influence; especially Moawiyah
the son of that Abu Sufyan, who had been long the chief of the Meccan
idolaters, and the most bitter enemy of Mohammed. After Mecca had
submitted, Mohammed made Moawiyah one of his private secretaries; the
caliph Omar had raised him to the government of Syria, and he had now
ruled that important province during fifteen years. Crafty, subtle,
intriguing, possessing inflexible obstinacy, and boundless ambition, he
received Ali’s mandate for his deposition with violent indignation. As
he was a near relative of Othman, he resolved to declare himself his
avenger, and though that sovereign had left children, Moawiyah claimed
to be his heir and successor. He found allies in the centre of Arabia;
and while the Syrians were preparing to take arms, Aisha, with a numerous
body of followers, was already in the field. Though she had notoriously
shared in the conspiracy against Othman, she now proclaimed herself his
avenger, and she denounced Ali as the author of his death.

Joined with her were Talha and Zobair, two of Mohammed’s old companions,
who well knew the falsehood of Aisha’s allegations. They had been the
foremost to swear allegiance to Ali, but not having obtained all that
they desired, they ranged themselves in the ranks of the rebels, to whom
their presence gave additional confidence. The obligation of their oaths
they evaded by the expiatory offerings prescribed in the fifth chapter of
the _Koran_, which is one of the greatest blots on the character both of
the book and its author.

Aisha, contrary to the established custom of Arabia, led her forces in
person, mounted on a strong camel, and protected by an escort of picked
men. When she approached a small village named Jowab, all the dogs in the
place rushed out and barked at her with great fury. This she regarded
as an evil omen, and declared that Mohammed had told her, “One of my
wives, engaged in an evil design, shall be attacked by dogs in Jowab;
take care that you be not the wicked person.” Full of alarm, she wished
to return; but Zobair and Talha, knowing how important was her presence,
suborned fifty false witnesses to swear that the village was never known
by the name of Jowab. As she still seemed anxious to depart, they spread
a report, that the army of Ali had gained a position in their rear, and
consequently that she could not return in safety. “This,” say the Moslem
historians, “was the first public lie told since the promulgation of
Islam.”

The two armies met at Khoraiba, a place in the neighbourhood of Bassora;
Ali’s forces amounted to twenty thousand men, all picked soldiers, those
of Aisha were more numerous, but they were, for the most part, raw and
undisciplined levies. After a brief contest, the rebels were routed;
Talha fell wounded mortally from his horse, and with his dying breath
besought pardon from God for his share in the murder of Othman and his
treachery to Ali. When told of this, the generous conqueror exclaimed
that God had granted Talha time for repentance before receiving his soul
into heaven. Zobair escaped from the battle, but was overtaken on the
road to Mecca by his pursuers, who cut off his head, and brought it as an
acceptable present to the caliph. Ali expressed so much indignation at
the sight, that the bearers assailed him with bitter reproaches, saying,
“You are the evil genius of the Mussulmans; you consign to hell those
who deliver you from your enemies, and you name those who attack your
men companions of Satan.” The victory, however, could not be regarded as
complete until Aisha had been forced to submission; the strictest orders
were given to respect her person, but also it was desired that no pains
should be spared to make her prisoner. Seventy men had their hands cut
off attempting to seize her camel by the bridle; the pavilion in which
she sat, was stuck so full of arrows that it resembled a porcupine;
at length a soldier cut the back sinew of the camel, the animal fell
helpless on his knees, and Aisha remained a captive. Muhammed, the son
of Abu Bekr, was sent to take charge of her; she loaded him with the
fiercest invectives, but he did not make any reply. When she was brought
before Ali, he received her in the most courteous manner, recommended her
to forbear from meddling with public affairs for the future, and sent
her under a faithful escort to Medina. Thus ended the first great battle
between the opponents and the partisans of Ali; it is frequently called
by eastern writers “the battle of the camel” from the animal on which
Aisha rode; it was the prelude to many and fearful scenes of slaughter.

The rebellion in Syria next engaged the attention of Ali; Moawiyah had
not only rejected his offers of accommodation, but denied his title to
the caliphate: in order to justify this rebellion, and strike the eyes
of the multitude, Moawiyah procured the bloody robe in which Othman
was murdered, and caused it to be borne in solemn procession through
the streets of Damascus. This sight so powerfully inflamed the popular
passions, that though it was then the middle of summer, more than thirty
thousand persons bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to taste fresh
water, until they had avenged the death of Othman. Among the leading
partisans of the Syrian governor was Amru, the conqueror of Egypt, who
seemed to share the general excitement, though well aware that Ali was
innocent of the imputed crimes.

[Sidenote: [657-658 A.D.]]

The hostile forces met in the plains of Siffin, on the western bank
of the Euphrates, not far from the city of Racca. Neither leader was
prepared for general action, and ninety days were wasted in desultory
skirmishes between divisions. His impetuous valour gave Ali the victory
in most of these encounters; he challenged his rival to decide the
dispute by single combat; but Moawiyah would not venture to enter the
lists. The last action at Siffin continued all night, to the great
disadvantage of the Syrians; they would have been driven from their
very entrenchments, had not the crafty Moawiyah made an appeal to the
superstitious feelings of Ali’s followers. He ordered some of his men to
place copies of the _Koran_ on the points of their lances, and advancing
to the front of the lines, exclaim, “This is the book that ought to
decide all differences between us; this is the word of God, and the
code of our faith; it expressly forbids the shedding of Moslem blood.”
Coarse as was the artifice, it had the most complete success; the troops
of Irak, the flower of the caliph’s forces, threw down their arms, and
clamorously demanded that a negotiation should be commenced. In vain
did Ali command them to continue the fight, assuring them that Moawiyah
disregarded the _Koran_, and was equally the enemy of God and man; the
soldiers clamorously replied that they would not fight against the book
of God, and threatened the caliph with the well-known fate of Othman.

From the moment that he was checked in the midst of victory, Ali seems
to have despaired of the issue of the contest; when required to name an
arbitrator, he coldly answered, “He that is not at liberty, cannot give
his advice; you must now conduct the affair as you think proper.” His
soldiers took him at his word, and nominated on the part of the caliph,
Abu Musa, whose chief merit was, that he had written a faulty copy of the
_Koran_, and whose fidelity had been long more than suspected. Moawiyah
appointed a much more subtle negotiator, Amru, universally regarded as
the most able statesman of the period. The arbitrators were enjoined to
decide the dispute according to the _Koran_ and the traditions of the
prophet, and to pronounce judgment in the next month of Ramadhan.

Amru persuaded Abu Musa, that the best plan that could be adopted, was to
declare the throne vacant, and proceed to a new election. When the day
for giving judgment arrived, Abu Musa, as had been agreed, first ascended
the pulpit, and with a loud voice pronounced the following words; “I
depose both Ali and Moawiyah from the caliphate, in the same manner that
I draw this ring from my finger.” Amru next ascended, and said, “You
have heard Abu Musa pronounce the deposition of Ali: I confirm it; and
I invest Moawiyah with the supreme authority in the same manner that I
now draw this ring upon my finger. I hail him as the legal successor of
Othman, the avenger of his blood, and the most worthy of the Moslems to
command the faithful.”

This unexpected declaration created a violent tumult. Abu Musa accused
Amru of breach of faith, called him a wretch, a dog, an unclean beast,
and imprecated on his grave all nameless desecrations; Amru replied, that
his co-arbitrator was a learned blockhead, a jackass loaded with books,
and the grandfather of stupidity; at the same time, he stoutly maintained
his sentence.

This event was fatal to the cause of Ali; his soldiers, who had forced
him to commence the imprudent negotiation, felt that their fidelity must
for the future be suspected, and began to desert in whole battalions.
The new and formidable sect of the Kharijites, that is, “the deserters,”
appeared in the midst of Arabia, declaring that both the rivals had
forfeited their right to reign, by submitting to human judgment what God
alone should determine. It was necessary to march a large army against
these fanatics, and the time which Ali wasted in their subjugation, was
employed by Moawiyah in new conquests. It would be difficult to form an
idea of the vindictive rage which filled all parties at this period.

We have already mentioned the view taken of affairs, by the fanatical
Kharijites. Three of this sect happened to meet at Mecca, and after
some discourse agreed that if the three chief causes of discontent were
removed, namely, Ali, Moawiyah, and Amru, the affairs of the Mussulmans
would soon be restored to their ancient flourishing condition. Finally,
they resolved to devote themselves for the common advantage, and agreed,
that on a stated day, one should slay Ali at Cufa; another, Moawiyah at
Damascus; and the third, Amru in Egypt. The attempt was made; Amru on
that day did not appear in public; Moawiyah escaped with a few slight
wounds; Ali alone received a mortal stroke.

The respect which the Shiites have for the memory of Ali, borders
on idolatry. All the Mussulmans, however, now join in commiserating
his calamities, and blaming the violence of which he was the victim.
Every time that they pronounce his name, they accompany it with the
benediction, “May God render his face glorious.”

[Sidenote: [659-661 A.D.]]

From the contest between Ali and Moawiyah, the first of the Omayyad
caliphs, arose the distinction of the Mohammedans into Sunnites and
Shiites. The chief points at issue between them, are the following; (1)
The Shiites, or as they call themselves, the Adalians, or “lovers of
justice,” assert that the three first caliphs were usurpers; the Sunnites
declare that they were legitimate monarchs, elected according to the
sunna, or traditional law of the prophet. (2) The Shiites regard Ali as
the equal of Mohammed; some even assert his superiority, but the Sunnites
deny that he possessed any special dignity. (3) The Shiites assert that
the _Koran_ is made void by the authority attributed to tradition; the
Sunnites say that tradition is necessary to complete and explain the
doctrines of the _Koran_.

The Turks, Egyptians, and Arabs belong to the Sunnite sect; the tenets of
the Shiites are professed by the Persians, a great portion of the Tatars,
and several of the Mohammedan princes in India.

Ali was buried at Cufa, but the exact place of his sepulchre cannot be
determined. A magnificent mosque has been erected in the neighbourhood of
the city, which is called Meshed-Ali, the place of Ali’s martyrdom; it
is, to this day, a favourite object of pilgrimage to devout Mussulmans.[f]

So, after a most turbulent and unhappy caliphate, Ali died of his wound,
in the sixty-third year of his age, and the fifth of his reign, 661 A.D.,
and the thirty-eighth year of the Hegira; making the third caliph slain
within twenty years by the hand of an assassin.

Ali was an upright and honourable man, a patron of literature and the
fine arts, and himself a poet. He certainly merited better treatment
at the hands of his own subjects, having been a just judge, and a kind
and paternal governor; oftener forgiving than punishing the misdeeds of
those who were so frequently conspiring against his life and interests.
His lineal descendants are sheriffs and emirs; permitted to wear their
turbans and hair in a peculiar fashion, differing from the usages of all
other Moslems.

Ali left two sons, Hassan and Hosein. Hassan was in his thirty-fifth
year when he succeeded his father, as the fifth caliph of the Moslems.
The people chose Hassan without opposition, owing to his having been a
favourite of his grandfather, the prophet; whom also he is said to have
resembled in features. Moreover, he was a benevolent, upright, and devout
man; but he grievously lacked the energy so indispensable for a ruler in
troubled times. The new caliph would willingly have disbanded the army
ready to march upon Syria; for he was no lover of warfare, and would
rather have forfeited the Syrian provinces than mixed in battle.

His brother Hosein, however, was a warrior; and so were many of the
veteran generals who had sworn allegiance to his father, and whose
plans he was therefore compelled to follow up. He accordingly marched
upon Syria; sending forward twelve thousand light troops, under Kais,
to check the progress of Moawiyah, who was advancing to meet Hassan’s
army. Kais succeeded in repelling the Syrians; and secured a position,
where he might await the arrival of the main body of the army, which,
however, never reached its destination. The troops of Hassan were chiefly
from Irak, and not inclined to enter upon the campaign; moreover, they
knew him to be an inefficient commander. A revolt broke out amongst the
soldiery, in which Hassan was wounded. This occurred at Madain, and the
caliph was compelled to seek refuge with the governor in the citadel.
He ultimately sent proposals to Moawiyah, offering to abdicate in his
favour, under certain stipulations, to which Moawiyah readily agreed. So,
to the great indignation of Hosein, Hassan abdicated; and eventually the
two brothers settled in Medina, where Moawiyah supplied them liberally
with funds.

This act doubtless saved a good deal of bloodshed; and, in the
thirty-ninth year of the Hegira, the sixth caliph, Moawiyah I, began to
reign. His first act was to almost exterminate the sect of Seceders; a
people even more dangerous than the modern Janissaries, and against whom
the caliph Moawiyah had deep hatred, owing to the stab he had received in
Damascus.[t]

FOOTNOTES

[34] Respecting the date of the capture of Damascus, authorities differ,
some placing it in 634 A.D., and others in 635 A.D. The duration of
the siege, too, is equally uncertain, El-Makin[c] stating it to be six
months, while Abulfeda[d] gives seventy days.

[35] Dr. Weil,[e] on authority of the Zaban, says, that this latter
account is the most probable, it being related by Aisha and Abd
ar-Rahman, the son and daughter of Abu Bekr.

[36] [Other authorities state that Alexandria fell nine months after
Heraclius’ death.]

[37] [The loss sustained in Cæsar’s time was repaired by Antony’s gift to
Cleopatra of the library of Pergamus. Alexandria possessed two libraries:
one, that of the Bruchion, which was destroyed during the popular tumults
in the reign of Gallienus, 263 A.D.; the other, that of the Serapeum,
which experienced the same fate from the violence of Theophilus, as
related in ch. 28, to which Gibbon[g] has here referred. These valuable
collections had, therefore, disappeared 250 years before the invasion
of Egypt by Amru; nor in that interval does history record a prince,
patriarch, or prefect, who had either the means or the will to replace
them. The tale of Abul-Faraj[h] would not have been so industriously
circulated, had it not served the purpose of those who wished to
impute to the barbarian conquerors of Rome the guilt of darkening the
world. Gibbon says he felt strongly tempted to deny both the fact and
the consequences of this irreparable shipwreck of learning, as being
founded on the simple authority of Abul-Faraj, whilst Eutychius[i] and
El-Makin[c] are both silent on the subject. Milman,[j] however, adds
that since this period several new Mohammedan authorities have been
adduced to support Abul-Faraj: that of (1) Abd al-Latif,[k] by Professor
White[l]; (2) of Makrisi[m]; (3) of Ibn Khaldun[n]; and after them Haji
Khalfa.[o] Reinhard in a German dissertation, printed at Göttingen, 1792,
and St. Croix (_Magasin Encyclop._, tom. IV, p. 433), have examined the
question. Among oriental scholars, Professor White, M. St. Martin,[q] Von
Hammer,[r] and Silv. de Sacy[s] consider the fact of the burning of the
library, by the command of Omar, beyond question. A Mohammedan writer
brings a similar charge against the crusaders. The library of Tripolis
is said to have contained the incredible number of three millions of
volumes. On the capture of the city, Count Bertram of St. Gilles,
entering the first room, which contained nothing but the _Koran_, ordered
the whole to be burned, as the works of the false prophet of Arabia.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI. THE OMAYYADS

FOUNDATION OF THE OMAYYADS

[Sidenote: [661-750 A.D.]]

With Moawiyah commenced the dynasty of the house of Omayyah, called the
“Omayyads.” This caliph is said to have patronised literature; and during
his reign many of the Greek sciences were first introduced into Arabia.
Moawiyah succeeded in re-establishing peace in his dominions. One of his
earliest appointments was the reinstatement of Amru in the government of
Egypt; allotting him, in grateful recognition of his services, the whole
revenue of that wealthy country for his life-time; but Amru was advanced
in years, and only enjoyed his preferment for a short time, dying in 663.

Moawiyah now turned his thoughts to foreign conquest; hoping to leave an
illustrious name, together with the royal succession, to his son Yazid.
Accordingly he sent him, at the head of a powerful force, to subdue that
famous capital, which was destined in later years to become, as it now
remains, the headquarters of Islamism and the seat of the Moslem rulers.

Great preparations were afoot, and the troops were despatched both
by land and sea to attack Constantinople. The Greek power was on the
decline; their emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, indolent and unfitted
for his high office; and the Moslems entertained sanguine hopes of
success. Their fleet passed the Dardanelles, and the army landed within
seven miles of Constantinople. The besieged had fortified the place, and
repulsed the assault with the Greek fire--a new and terrible agent of
destruction to the Moslems, who, after ravaging the neighbouring coasts,
wintered about eight miles from Constantinople, at the island of Cyzicus.
Through six long years they strove, but in vain; countless lives were
lost, ships wrecked, and vast sums of money expended. Long practice and
the necessary energy, revived in the Greeks a few sparks of that military
ardour which had for years been slumbering. They even sallied forth and
attacked the Moslems; punishing them so severely, that Moawiyah, now an
old man, was glad to obtain a truce for thirty years, paying the emperor
annually three thousand pieces of gold, fifty slaves, and fifty Arabian
horses. Yazid is accused of having instigated the murder of the mild and
virtuous Hassan, who had abdicated in his father’s favour, but who had
stipulated to resume the caliphate after Moawiyah’s death. This act,
which secured his own succession, was perpetrated in the year forty-seven
of the Hegira, 669 A.D.

[Sidenote: [669-680 A.D.]]

Moawiyah sent Achbar ben Nafi al-Fahri, a competent general, to follow
up the conquests so triumphantly commenced in Africa by Abdallah ben
Saad. This man proceeded from Damascus with ten thousand horse, making
good speed towards Africa; and, his force rapidly augmenting by the
accession of barbarian troops, he retook the city of Cyrene; but during
the siege many of its magnificent edifices were destroyed. Continuing
westward, he traversed desolate wilds and jungles, and passed through
places infested with lions, tigers, and serpents, until he beheld the
domains of ancient Carthage, the present Tunisian provinces. Here he
founded a stronghold--a kind of vast caravansary, where stores might be
accumulated, and whose thick and lofty walls might prove a safeguard in
case of defeat. This place eventually gave origin to the city called
Carwahn, or Kairwan--literally signifying a lodgment for travellers and
beasts.

Meanwhile Aisha, who had caused so much discord and bloodshed, had, in
the fifty-sixth year of the Hegira, numbered her years upon earth. One
of her last acts of vengeance was the refusing sepulture to the body of
Hassan, who had expressed a wish in his testament to be buried by the
side of his grandsire, Mohammed, insisting that the mansion was hers, and
carrying her malice even beyond the grave, so that Hassan was interred in
the ordinary burial-ground.

The sand of Moawiyah’s life was now rapidly running out. He was anxious,
ere death, to render the caliphate hereditary, and to perpetuate it in
his line. Accordingly he publicly named his son Yazid as his successor,
and commanded the provinces to send deputies to do fealty to him. This
was more than Mohammed himself or any of his successors had ventured to
require. The delegates arrived from all parts to Damascus, and gave their
hands to Yazid, in pledge of fealty; thus establishing the dynasty of
Omayyah, which extended over nearly a hundred years. Fourteen of them
were designated the Pharaohs of that line. With Moawiyah were introduced
the luxury and splendour, so linked with all our notions of oriental
pomp and proverbially designated the insignia of a caliphate, which had
succeeded to the stern and frugal simplicity of the early Islams. The
waters and the gardens of Damascus were irresistible persuasions to
indolence--that peculiar luxury, known among the Orientals by the term
_kaif_, and in the West by the expressive Italian phrase, _dolce far
niente_. The seat of the caliphate was fixed at Damascus; for neither
Medina nor Cufa was now considered a fit residence for the Moslem
caliphs. Moawiyah, having provided for his son, gave up the ghost in 680
A.D.

YAZID MADE CALIPH

[Sidenote: [680-683 A.D.]]

Yazid, then in his thirty-fourth year, was proclaimed caliph--a man who
is said to have been gifted with talents, but addicted to every debasing
vice, delighting in splendid attire, passionately fond of music and
poetry, and much given to indulge in the indolent _kaif_; all these the
result of long residence in the delightful but enervating climate of
Damascus. But whilst the seventh caliph was idly spending his hours and
days, the brave general Achbar had returned to his command in Africa,
to pursue his career of conquest. He traversed Numidia (Algiers), the
extensive countries of Morocco, and the ancient Mauretania, subduing
and converting the inhabitants, till, arriving at the western shores of
Africa, the waters of the Atlantic opposed his farther progress. Here,
spurring his steed up to the saddle-girths in the surge, he is said to
have elevated his scimitar towards heaven, exclaiming, “Did not these
waters present an insuperable barrier, I would carry the faith and the
law of the faithful to countries reaching from the rising of the sun to
the setting thereof.”

But soon after this tidings reached Achbar that a rebellion had broken
out in his rear. He had overdone his task, and had now to pay dearly
for the temerity which the sagacious Omar had so often and so carefully
repressed amongst his generals. As he marched through Numidia, he was
much harassed by a band of mountaineers, who would never let themselves
be entangled in a pitched battle; but descending from their fastnesses,
cut off the stragglers, and carried havoc into the broken ranks. Achbar
saw that destruction was inevitable; and accordingly liberated his rival
and prisoner, Muhegir, telling him, that this was a day of martyrdom,
and consequently, liberty for them all; and that he would not therefore
deprive him of earning for himself the paradise of the faithful. The
little Islam band was literally cut to pieces; and the body of Achbar
was found upon a heap of slain, his broken scimitar still grasped by his
lifeless hand.

During these events in Africa Yazid was endeavouring to secure undisputed
possession of the caliphate. The only two whom he feared as competitors
were Hosein and Abdallah, the sons of Ali and Zobair, who were both
residing at Medina. Yazid wrote from Damascus to the governor of Medina,
directing him to require from them the oath of fealty; but they, learning
that their lives would be in peril through the intrigues of the governor
and of Merwan ben Hakem, the villainous ex-secretary of Othman, fled with
their families to Mecca, where they openly opposed Yazid.

SIEGE OF MECCA

[Sidenote: [683-684 A.D.]]

Hosein was slain, and his family sent captives to Damascus, where they
were well treated by Yazid; who sent them under careful convoy to
Medina. The anniversary of the martyrdom of Hosein is kept with great
solemnity in Persia and Media; and in after years a splendid mausoleum
was erected on the spot where he fell, called by the Arabs the “Meshed
Hosein” (the sepulchre of Hosein). The death of Hosein furnished his
friend and survivor, Abdallah the son of Zobair, with a fresh claim to
the caliphate, and a subject, capable, in his able hands, of being well
turned to account in working upon the feelings and faith of the Islams.
He was soon proclaimed caliph by the house of Hashem, possessing at the
same time a majority in his favour at Mecca and Medina.

Open rebellion broke out, and Yazid with difficulty found one infirm old
general to espouse his cause. The veteran Muslim quitted Damascus with
twelve thousand horse and five thousand foot. Arriving at Medina, he
found the place securely entrenched and fortified. On the fourth day the
city was stormed, and compelled to surrender. Ali, the son of Hosein, and
the partisans and household of Omayyah, were despatched under careful
escort to Damascus, and then the place was given up to three days’
pillage. In the sixtieth year of the Hegira, 683 A.D., Muslim, whose
memory is execrated by all devout Moslems, died on his march to Mecca;
and the command was assumed by Hosein ben Numair, a Syrian by birth.
This general besieged Mecca for forty days; and just as the inhabitants
feared to share the same fate as the people of Medina, news arrived that
Yazid had expired at Hawwarin, in the thirty-ninth year of his age, 684
A.D. This event changed the fortunes of war. Numair offered allegiance to
Abdallah; but this latter, fearing treachery, simply permitted the Syrian
general and his troops, without arms, to march in procession round the
ruins of the Kaaba, which had been destroyed during the siege by fire.
Part of the family of Omayyah, then at Mecca, accompanied the Syrians on
their return to Damascus.

All the sectarians of Ali hold the memory of Yazid in abhorrence, as the
instigator of the murder of the two brothers, Hassan and Hosein; and
charge him with sacrilege, in ordering the sack of Medina and Mecca.

Moawiyah II, son of Yazid, was proclaimed at Damascus eighth caliph of
the Moslem empire, being the third of the house of Omayyah, a man feeble
in mind and body, and one of the sect of Kadarii, maintaining the free
will of men against the dictates of wiser counsels and better conscience.
This second Moawiyah was in his twenty-first year when he reluctantly
assumed the caliphate; for his health was so bad, that he was compelled
(most probably from weak eyes) to shut himself up in darkened apartments,
whence the Arabs named him _Abu Laili_--the Father of Night. His chief
counsellor was one Omar Aheksus, who is said to have counselled him to
abdicate, after a short sway of six months’ duration; for which advice
the Omayyads buried the unfortunate man alive. This youthful caliph
refused to nominate a successor, declaring that his grandfather had been
a usurper, his father unworthy of so high a trust, and himself unwilling
and unfit to undertake it. Soon after his abdication he died, the wreck
of a diseased frame and morbid temperament.

[Sidenote: [684-689 A.D.]]

Again was Syria rent with civil discord. The people of Damascus favouring
the claims of Merwan, the secretary, as regent during the minority of
Khalid, Yazid’s son; whilst Egypt, Babylonia, Arabia, Khorasan, Medina,
and Mecca acknowledged Abdallah ben Zobair as caliph. Meanwhile, Obaidah
ben Zehad, the same that had caused Hosein to be slain, thought the
present an auspicious moment to secure for himself an independence. After
many fatigues he arrived at Damascus, in time to take an active part in
the election of Merwan as caliph, while Bassora declared its allegiance
to Abdallah. The claims of the former were admitted only in Syria, and
there were even there two factions. A conflict ensued between the two
factions; and the victory sided with Merwan, who was proclaimed caliph
and obliged to marry the mother of Khalid, Yazid’s wife.

Merwan speedily marched against Egypt, but twice returned; and again
twice faced about, tidings having reached him about the prowess of his
lieutenant, another Amru, who ultimately subjugated Egypt. The people
of Khorasan refused to acknowledge either caliph; they appointed Selim,
a younger brother of Obaid Allah, to act as regent, till affairs should
be finally settled. The fickle people of Cufa seemed to awaken from a
prolonged lethargy, and declared in favour of the descendants of Ali;
only, however, the next day to repudiate them. Four thousand men, under
an aged general, did absolutely start on a fanatical expedition to
destroy both claimants to the caliphate and their adherents; and so,
rushing upon their fate, they were all slain.

Meanwhile, the fate of the heroic Achbar on the plains of Numidia was
known at Damascus and Medina. At this time reinforcements arrived from
Egypt, which helped to revive the courage of the Moslems. This only
endured for a while; a large force from Constantinople, under experienced
generals, landed on the coast of Africa. The Egyptians deserted their
standard, Kairwan was vanquished, and the Moslems compelled to fall back
upon Barca. Abdul-Malik, the eldest son of Merwan, marched to the succour
of the discomfited Islam general; and the two forces combined marched
upon Kairwan, defeating the enemy in every action, and finally replanted
the standard of Islam in Kairwan. After this Abdul-Malik returned to
Damascus, where Merwan, having caused him to be proclaimed as his
successor, died after a reign of about eleven months, in the sixty-second
year of the Hegira, 685 A.D.

ABDUL-MALIK, CALIPH (685-705 A.D.)

Abdul-Malik, the eleventh caliph, was proclaimed and acknowledged in
Syria, Egypt, and Africa. He was in the prime of life when he succeeded
to the musnud; full of enterprise, and distinguished as an able general
and an accomplished scholar; but so avaricious that he was surnamed
by the Arabs Kafhol Hagha, signifying in our vernacular, “skinflint.”
Abdallah ben Zobair was still acknowledged caliph of a great part of
the Moslem dominions; holding the seat of government at Mecca, which
gave him great influence over the troops of pilgrims, that even at that
early period annually resorted to the Kaaba. Abdul-Malik, jealous of
this, established a rival city of pilgrimage; fixing for this purpose
on Al-Kudus (Jerusalem), sacred in the eyes of Moslems, as the field
connected with the acts and revelations of Jesus Christ and of Moses
(both of whom they acknowledge and reverence as prophets), as well as
the stage whereon Mohammed pretended to have made his miraculous ascent
to heaven; besides all this, the place was surrounded by the tombs of
the patriarchs. The temple at Jerusalem, where Omar had prayed upon the
steps, was converted into a mosque; and it was enlarged so as to enclose
these steps, and the stone called Jacob’s stone on which the patriarch
is said to have slumbered during his inspired dream. This was kissed by
Moslem pilgrims, as they had heretofore kissed the Black Stone of the
Kaaba. During the caliphate of Abdul-Malik there was a fierce warrior, a
son of Abu Obaidah, who was named Al-Mukhtar (or the Avenger), because
he undertook to avenge the death of Hosein. With almost insuperable
difficulties to contend against, he accomplished his vow; being mortally
wounded, and his small but sturdy band of seven hundred followers cut
down to a man. His death enabled Musa ben Zobair, a brother of the caliph
Abdallah, to govern Babylonia and Cufa. He was at this period a comely
man in the thirty-sixth year of his life, and in all points well adapted
to gain the esteem and love of the people.

[Sidenote: [689-692 A.D.]]

Abdul-Malik hearing of his success invaded Babylonia himself; heading
his army, and leaving his cousin Amru, who had been Merwan’s lieutenant
in Egypt, to govern Syria during his absence. The kinsmen deeply hated
each other; and the caliph had barely turned his back before Amru
aspired to the caliphate. Abdul-Malik hearing this, hastened back; and
a deadly conflict ensued between the two cousins and their adherents
in the streets of Damascus. The women are said to have rushed between
the combatants, holding up their children and imploring both sides to
desist from so unnatural a combat. Amru laid down his arms, and articles
of reconciliation were signed. The caliph broke his faith; and, getting
his cousin into his power, he struck off his head with his own scimitar;
then, banishing his family, he put all who had sided with Amru to death.
On the departure of the exiles the caliph demanded the written contract
of Amru’s widow, who replied that she had folded it in his winding sheet,
to be produced at the day of judgment.

[Illustration: THE PLACE OF WORSHIP, MECCA]

Abdul-Malik now resumed his march to Babylonia, having sent trusty
messengers before him to tamper with the fealty of Abdallah’s subjects. A
battle took place near Tadmor (Palmyra), and the caliph possessed himself
of Babylonia and Persian Irak. Abdul-Malik appointed his brother Besher
ben Merwan governor of Babylonia; naming Musa ben Nosair, who had long
enjoyed his father’s confidence, as vizir to the youthful governor. This
man we shall find hereafter figuring as a noted character in the pages
of Islam conquest. The caliph intrusted Musa with the military rolls of
the province, holding him responsible; and the young governor confided
to him the seal of office, intrusting to him the entire direction of the
government. Having made all these arrangements, Abdul-Malik returned to
Damascus. He was now undisputed sovereign of all the eastern part of
the Moslem dominions, and further secured peace in other quarters by a
shameful augmentation of tribute to the Christian emperor; but he did
all this to enable him the better to carry out his scheme of attacking
Abdallah, and bearding him in his very den at Mecca.

SIEGE OF MECCA

[Sidenote: [692-698 A.D.]]

Hajjaj ben Yusuf, appointed to command the expedition to Mecca, was
joined by five thousand troops under Tarik ben Amru. The former general
is celebrated in Moslem history as the ablest and most eloquent man of
his day. Free pardon and protection were proclaimed to all who would
join the standard of these generals. Abdallah sent troops to check their
progress, but his precaution was unavailing. Hajjaj arrived at the city
gates. Before commencing the assault, arrows, whereto proclamations and
letters for the inhabitants were attached, were discharged over the
walls, warning the inhabitants to desert Abdallah, who was so obstinate
as to resist to the last, though their sacred city should crumble into
ruins. The city was assailed with battering-rams, whilst flaming balls of
pitch and naphtha were thrown over the walls and set fire to the houses.

Abdallah, though old and infirm, held out bravely against the besiegers.
It is said that his mother displayed wonderful energy and courage during
the siege, she being a granddaughter of Abu Bekr; ten thousand are said
to have deserted to the camp of Hajjaj, and many supporters of Abdallah
were slain. In this forlorn plight he was offered his own conditions of
surrender; but, consulting his mother as usual, she reminded him that
his father Zobair had died for the same cause, and advised him not to
bend to the yoke of the line of Omayyah; saying that it were better to
die honourably than live dishonoured for the few years that yet remained
for him. Finally, after prodigies of valour, the poor old man was struck
down by a brick, which hastened his death; and he sank exhausted,
fighting to the last, dying, after a disastrous nine years’ reign, in the
seventy-second year of his age and the seventieth year of the Hegira; so
that in those climates, where girls are frequently mothers at fourteen
and fifteen, the aged mother of Abdallah, who aided in the fight to the
last, must have passed her eighty-sixth year. She died in a few hours
after hearing of her son’s gallant conduct and death. Thus ended the
rival caliphate.

The oath of fealty was administered to all the Arabs of those districts.
Hajjaj remained governor of Mecca and Medina, as notorious for his
cruelty as he was renowned for his valour.

In the year seventy-three of the Hegira peace was again restored
throughout the Moslem dominions, which were now united, under the
caliphdom of Abdul-Malik; and this caliph, being freed from the bonds of
civil discord, now turned his thoughts to foreign conquest, hoping to
revive in his name the early triumphs of Islam. First, he threw off the
tribute to the Greek emperor, which, originating in the reign of Moawiyah
I at 3000 dinars of gold annually, had now augmented to the yearly sum
of 365,000. The Christian emperor Leontius had made himself unpopular;
and the caliph, availing himself of the troubled state of his affairs,
sent Ibn Walid on a depredatory expedition. Ibn Walid returned with much
booty; and Lazuca and Baruncium were taken by the Moslems, through the
treachery of Sergius, one of the Greek emperor’s generals. During the
civil wars in the Moslem empire the Christians had retaken most of their
African possessions, slaying Zohair, the commander of Barca; so that it
was only in the interior that the Moslems yet held any strong positions.
The caliph determined to recover all these. In the seventy-fourth year of
the Hegira, Hassan ben Nohman was sent, with forty thousand picked men,
to subjugate the northern coasts of Africa; and proceeded to Carthage,
of which he after a time made himself master. Most of the inhabitants
fell by the sword, but some escaped by sea to Sicily and Spain. The walls
were demolished, the city given up to plunder, and several beautiful
females were taken captives. But while rejoicing over their late
victories, a fleet suddenly appeared in the offing, bringing troops from
Constantinople and Sicily, reinforced by Goths from Spain; the expedition
being under the command of the prefect John, an experienced and valiant
soldier.

The Arab commander, finding himself unable to contend against
overwhelming numbers, retired to Kairwan, where the Islams fortified
themselves, patiently awaiting the reinforcements, which in due time
arrived. With their combined forces the Moslems routed John and his
adherents, besieged Carthage, and razed that noble city to the ground,
giving the place up to flames. The imperial troops were rapidly expelled
from the coast of Africa. But the Moslems had a formidable enemy to
contend with in Kahina the sorceress, the mother of that Ibn Kahina who
had so harassed the troops of the noble and gallant Achbar. Under this
pseudo-prophetess and queen the Moors and Berbers made a valiant stand,
and after several engagements Hassan was compelled to fall back upon
the frontiers of Egypt. On this, Kahina is said to have addressed her
troops, suggesting that they should lay waste the cities and countries
intervening between her own possessions and the land of Egypt, saying
that the wealth and the fruitfulness of these parts were the inducements
which led these Islams continually to disturb their quiet and predicting
that they would be sure, so long as these existed, to return again in
greater numbers.

[Sidenote: [698-699 A.D.]]

Her suggestion was immediately acted upon. Cities and towns were razed
to the ground; fruit trees cut down; fields desolated with fire; and
the whole aspect of the country, from Tangiers to Tripoli, converted,
from being one extensive garden, into a hideous waste, with not a tree
standing to shelter a wayfarer from the sun. But the inhabitants of the
plains, who were great sufferers by this extreme measure, hailed the
return of the Moslems. Kahina was again in the field. This time her ranks
were thinned by desertion, and she was taken prisoner and beheaded.
Hassan returned, laden with booty, to Damascus, where he was received
with honour, and made governor of Barca, still retaining the military
command of the provinces in Africa. Hassan, however, fell a victim to
his honours; for the caliph’s brother, then viceroy of Egypt, offended
that his own lieutenant should be superseded in Barca, waylaid Hassan
and deprived him of his appointment, keeping him so closely guarded that
he died of a broken heart. Abdul-Aziz ben Merwan, the caliph’s brother,
named Musa ben Nosair to the command in northern Africa. Musa was sixty
years old, but still hale and vigorous. He was accompanied by his three
sons.

Musa joined the army in Africa, and told the soldiers that he was one
of themselves; if they found him act well, to thank God and endeavour
to imitate him; if wrong, to reprove, and show him his error; and if
any among them had to complain, let them speak out like men. “Finally,”
said he, “I have instructions from the caliph to pay you three times the
amount of arrears due”: and if anything made the cheers of the soldiers
more hearty, it was this winding up to his speech. A sparrow is said
to have fluttered into his bosom whilst he was speaking, which Musa
interpreted into a favourable omen, crying “Victory, by the master of the
Kaaba; the victory is ours;” at the same time scattering the feathers of
the poor bird into the air.

Musa was liberal, and quite divested of pride--points that endeared him
to the Moslem soldiers. On first arriving he had to contend with a Berber
chief, Warkastaf, who headed a mountain horde that committed depredations
between Zaghwar and Kairwan; him he eventually killed, and his sons,
Abdul-Aziz and Merwan, scattered the mountaineers and made them retreat
beyond the borders of the southern desert. Musa sent his patron a large
share of the spoils which had been taken in Africa; and these chanced to
arrive in Egypt at the very moment that Abdul-Aziz, the viceroy, was at
his wits’ end how to appease the wrath of his brother the caliph. The
caliph, who was an avaricious man, immediately decided in Musa’s favour;
and confirmed his brother’s appointment; making Musa emir of Africa.
It was in the seventy-fifth year of the Hegira that Musa was confirmed
in his post; and in the eightieth he fought the severest contest of his
African campaign, defeating strong hordes of the barbarians in their own
fastnesses amongst the defiles of Mount Atlas.

[Sidenote: [699-705 A.D.]]

At last the two armies came to a pitched battle, when a Berber chief
challenged any Moslem champion to single combat. There being some delay
in answering this challenge, Merwan, the son of Musa, was deputed to
undertake the conflict; when, though very inferior in size and strength,
he slew both horse and rider, thrusting his javelin through them both.
Kasleyah the king of the Berbers was slain, and the victory completed;
and Merwan espoused the daughter of the deceased king, having by her two
sons.

But Musa, not satisfied with triumphs by land, longed to launch out upon
the seas. The caliph had ordered his predecessors to erect an arsenal at
Tunis; and Musa undertook to carry out this project, building dockyards
and a fleet to carry out his proposed enterprise. Many people opposed
this scheme, even as their descendants the modern Arabs set their face
against any improvements, as innovations which were not practised by
their ancestors before them. One old Berber advised him to persevere;
and he followed the advice to such purpose that, by the end of the
year eighty-one of the Hegira, 701 A.D., the arsenal and dockyard were
completed, and a strong fleet rode at anchor in the port of Tunis. About
this time, a fleet sent by Abdul-Aziz took the island of Lampedusa,
capturing immense booty; with which his ships were returning heavily
laden, when a mighty tempest arose; the fleet was driven upon the rocky
coast of Africa, and nearly all hands perished.

[Sidenote: [705-715 A.D.]]

Early in the eighty-second year of the Hegira, Musa embarked with a
thousand volunteers, chosen from the bravest amongst his followers,
upon his first naval expedition; but when the fleet was ready to set
sail, much to the disappointment of those whom he had enlisted, he
disembarked and handed over the command to his third and yet untried
son, Abdallah. He returned laden with spoil; so much so that each of
his followers laid claim to one thousand dinars of gold as his share in
the booty. This expedition was the terrible Algerine scourge in embryo,
which in after years carried death and devastation wherever the black
flag waved triumphant. These vessels returned to port about the same
time when tidings reached Musa of the death of the caliph Abdul-Malik,
which occurred in the eighty-sixth year of the Hegira, 705 A.D., in the
sixtieth year of his age and twentieth of his reign. His son Walid was
immediately proclaimed twelfth caliph or successor of the prophet at
Damascus; and Musa, immediately transmitting the caliph’s due of the
immense booty brought home by the late marine expedition from Tunis, at
once obtained his own confirmation in his post as governor or emir of
northern Africa, while the interests of his sons were proportionately
advanced.

Walid was an idle and voluptuous man; he intrusted the government of his
vast dominions entirely to the emirs appointed by his father, while he
himself, hating to be troubled with the affairs of state, lived almost
secluded from the world within the precincts of his extensive harem,
where he had no less than sixty-three wives and yet died without leaving
any issue. His reign is only distinguishable for the vast improvements
he introduced in the architectural style of the East. His enervated life
secluded him from the well-won and well-worn laurels which had secured
for his ancestors a home and a name. One of his fourteen brothers,
Maslama, invaded Asia Minor, marching on Cappadocia, and besieging the
city of Tyana strongly garrisoned by Christians. Finally, Tyana was won;
and while Maslama extended his conquests, his son was spreading the faith
of Islam in the East.

In the early part of Walid’s caliphate the fleets of Musa continued
to be the scourge of the western parts of the Mediterranean. Some
vessels proceeded to Sicily, some to Sardinia; Syracuse was plundered;
and hundreds of beautiful women were borne away by these corsairs and
sold to adorn the harems of the wealthier Moslems. Abdallah also made
a successful descent upon Majorca, whilst Musa and his eldest sons
triumphed over Fez, Daguella, Morocco, and Sus; the valiant tribes of
the Zeuetes capitulated, till finally the caliph Walid was acknowledged
throughout Almagreb to Cape Nov on the Atlantic; and there remained only
Tingitania, the northern extremity of Almagreb, to be subdued.

While the two vast continents of Europe and Africa were divided by the
Straits of Hercules, Ceuta and Tangiers were the rocky defences of this
narrow passage on the African side; there remained but the opposite
stronghold of Gibraltar to secure the key to the Mediterranean; and
beyond this, in the haze of distance, Musa shaded his eyes to gaze upon
the purple mountains of the fair Andalusia; perhaps the night breeze
wafted across that narrow channel the strange fragrance of a thousand
orange groves, intermixed with the wild herbs and flowers of the
mountains of Spain, and woke the weary Arab from his dream of the dreary
reality of his hot African clime to the desired conquest of that unknown
country. Brightly were such dreams realised in the siege and subsequent
capture of Ceuta, and in the ultimate conquest of Spain.[b]

Leaving the story of the Arabian invasion of Europe to a later chapter,
we may continue with the destinies of the Omayyad dynasty.[a]

THE EASTERN CALIPHATE

Immediately on his succession Walid had confirmed Hajjaj in the
government of Irak, and appointed as governor of Medina his cousin,
Omar b. Abdul-Aziz, who was received there with joy, his piety and
gentle character being well known. Under his government important works
were undertaken at Medina and Mecca by order of Walid, who, having no
rivals to struggle against, was able to give his attention to pacific
occupations. The mosque of Medina was enlarged, wells were sunk, the
streets widened, and hospitals established. At Mecca many improvements
were introduced. The reputation of Omar attracted to the two holy cities
a great number of the inhabitants of Irak, who were groaning under the
iron hand of Hajjaj. The latter, who was not a man to let his prey escape
from his grasp, was so urgent with Walid that he obtained the dismissal
of Omar b. Abdul-Aziz in the year 93, and the appointment of Othman b.
Hayyan at Medina, and of Khalid b. Abdallah at Mecca. These two prefects
compelled the refugees at Mecca and Medina to return to Irak, where many
of them were cruelly treated and even put to death by Hajjaj. It was
probably his cruelty which drove so many men of Irak to enlist in the
armies of the East and the South; and this may in some degree account
for the unheard-of successes of Kotaiba b. Muslim in Transoxiana, and of
Muhammed b. Kasim in India. They may also be explained by the ambition of
Hajjaj, who, it is said, cherished the project of creating a vast empire
for himself to the east and south of the Moslem realm, and had secretly
promised the government of China to the first of his generals who should
reach that country. Be this as it may, in the course of a very few years
Kotaiba conquered the whole of Bokhara, Khwarizm, and Transoxiana or
Mawara-annahr, as far as the frontiers of China. Meanwhile Muhammed b.
Kasim invaded Mokram, Sind, and Multan, carried off an immense booty, and
reduced the women and children to slavery. In Armenia and Asia Minor,
Maslama, brother of the caliph Walid, and his lieutenants, also obtained
numerous successes against the Greeks. In Armenia, Maslama even advanced
as far as the Caucasus.

SULEIMAN’S AMBITIONS

[Sidenote: [715 A.D.]]

[Illustration: COSTUME OF AN ARABIAN WOMAN]

Walid, in the very year of his death, which took place in 715, wished to
have his son Abdul-Aziz b. Walid chosen as his successor, and had offered
his brother Suleiman a great sum of money to induce him to surrender
his rights to the caliphate; but Suleiman obstinately refused to do so.
Walid went still farther, and sent letters to the governors of all the
provinces, calling on them to make the people take the oath of allegiance
to his son. None except Hajjaj and Kotaiba b. Muslim consented thus to
set at nought the order of succession established by Abdul-Malik; and
Suleiman succeeded without difficulty at the death of his brother. We
can easily conceive the hatred felt by Suleiman for Hajjaj, and for all
that belonged to him, far or near. Hajjaj himself escaped by death; but
Suleiman poured out his wrath on his family, and strove to undo all that
he had done. First of all, Muhammed b. Kasim, the conqueror of India, who
was cousin to Hajjaj, was dismissed from his post and outlawed. Hajjaj
had deprived Yazid b. Muhallab of the government of Khorasan; Suleiman
conferred on him that of Irak. Kotaiba b. Muslim, on learning the
accession of Suleiman, knew that his own ruin was certain, and therefore
anticipated the caliph by a revolt. But Suleiman induced Kotaiba’s troops
to desert by authorising them to return to their homes; and when the
illustrious general sought to carry his army with him, a conspiracy was
formed against him which ended in his murder. Yazid b. Muhallab, who
preferred Khorasan to Irak, obtained permission to exchange. Immediately
on his return to Khorasan he set on foot a series of new expeditions
against Jorjan and Tabaristan. But the inhabitants of Khorasan, which
he governed oppressively, made complaints against him to the caliph,
accusing him of practising extortions in order to obtain such a sum of
money as would enable him to rebel against his sovereign. From that
day Suleiman determined to get rid of Yazid. As, however, he was then
dreaming of the conquest of Constantinople, he thought it prudent to
dissemble his dissatisfaction for some time in order to concentrate his
attention on the object of his desires.

[Sidenote: [715-724 A.D.]]

The Byzantine Empire was disturbed by internal troubles during the years
715-717 A.D. Suleiman resolved to take advantage of these in order to
rid himself forever of the hereditary enemy of Islam, and prepared a
formidable expedition. A fleet of eighteen hundred vessels, equipped at
Alexandria, sailed to the coasts of Asia Minor, took on board the Moslem
army, commanded by Maslama, and transported it to Europe. This army
appeared under the walls of Constantinople the 15th of August, 717, five
months after Leo III, the Isaurian, had ascended the throne. Once more
the Greek fire prevailed against the Moslems. Their fleet was destroyed
by this terrible engine of war; the army could obtain no fresh supply of
provisions, and suffered all the horrors of famine. Meanwhile the caliph,
who desired to be present in person at the taking of Constantinople, had
set out to join the army. He fell ill at Dabik, not far from Aleppo,
and died there on the 22nd of September in the same year, after having
nominated as his own successor his cousin, Omar b. Abdul-Aziz, and as
successor to the latter, Yazid b. Abdul-Malik, his own brother. In vain
did the new caliph despatch from Egypt a fleet of four hundred ships to
carry arms and provisions to the army before Constantinople; this fleet
also was destroyed by the Greeks, and the Moslem army was decimated by
famine, and soon by the plague as well. A hundred thousand men perished
miserably under the walls of Constantinople, and Maslama brought back to
Asia Minor a mere handful of soldiers, and that with great difficulty.[c]

THE LAST OMAYYADS (717-750 A.D.)

The caliph appointed by Suleiman to be his successor was his cousin,
Omar II, the son of Abdul-Aziz, a sovereign in whom according to some
authors were united all the virtues of the great Omar without any of
the latter’s severity against unbelievers, while others accuse him of
levying intolerable imposts on the Christians. Yazid, Suleiman’s one
time favourite, the governor of Khorasan, was thrown into prison for
defalcation, and all other governors received strict orders not to resort
to force and oppression in spreading the doctrines of Islamism, but to
proceed with all mildness and humanity. Unfortunately for the realm
the rule of the just and pious prince whose soul turned from earthly
greatness and pride of conquest to the joys of paradise, was of but short
duration. In the third year of his reign he succumbed to a painful malady
which caused grave suspicions of poisoning to arise against certain of
his ambitious kinsmen. Omar had not yet attained his fortieth year when,
deeply mourned by all his people, he was laid in his grave at Deir Saman,
in the neighbourhood of Hims (Emesa).

The four years’ reign of Yazid II, who had beforehand been appointed
Omar’s successor by his brother, Suleiman, ran its course in the midst
of civil and foreign strife. Scarcely had Yazid, Muhallab’s son, learned
of the death of the caliph when he escaped from prison and fleeing to
Irak, where his brothers and other kindred possessed a large following,
raised the standard of revolt. He was overcome, however, by the Syrian
army under Maslama at Akr, on the left bank of the Euphrates, and sought
and found death on the battle-field. His brothers were also overpowered
by the hostile forces at Kerman, their wives and children were sold
as slaves and the rebellious cities of Bassora and Wasit were heavily
punished. At the same time wars, desertions, and conspiracies were rife
in the remaining provinces, especially in northern Africa; while even
in Spain and southern France the Moslem arms no longer met with their
former success. Meanwhile the caliph in Damascus was giving himself
up completely to the pleasures of love and song, and in the arms of a
favourite slave was seeking restoration from the fatigues and hardships
of a ruler’s life.

[Sidenote: [724-744 A.D.]]

Yazid’s brother and successor, Hisham, adopted an entirely different
course. Simple in taste, just and pious like both the Omars, he
banished from his court the luxury and extravagance in which most of
his predecessors had freely indulged. But the house of Omayyad had too
many enemies even among the believers themselves, and passions had been
too deeply stirred by the recent civil war to make it possible that
the twenty years’ reign of a prince who in spite of many praiseworthy
qualities had by his avarice and suspicion incurred the enmity of all
the city authorities, could run its course without suffering violence
from storms and accidents. The abhorrence felt in Cufa toward the cruel
and rapacious governor Khalid, had moreover revived in the minds of the
mercurial inhabitants of Irak, all their former aversion to the Omayyads,
and incited the Shiites to fresh revolt. Khalid was indeed deposed from
office and forced by torture to disgorge his ill-got wealth, but the
conspiracy was already too widespread to be completely uprooted. Zaid,
a grandson of Husein, headed a revolt in the streets of Cufa, which
resulted in a sharp struggle during which the leader and most of his
followers lost their lives. Zaid’s body was mutilated and his head sent
to the caliph at Damascus. But the new glory of martyrdom served only
to enhance the importance and sanctity of the Alids, and to strengthen
the hopes entertained by the Abbasids, their kinsmen, of entering the
succession and getting the sovereignty away from the Koreishites to
secure it to the house of Hisham to which alone, in the opinion of strict
believers, it rightfully belonged. They had a large following in Khorasan
and Transoxiana; and the Kharijites who, in consequence of the recent
campaigns, had spread over the entire realm, served them in India and in
Africa in the execution of their ambitious plans against the Omayyads.

The insurrections, conspiracies, and civil wars which under Hisham broke
out with ever increasing violence in the provinces, multiplying acts of
rapacity and revenge, and dealing death-blows to the welfare of country,
state, and people by the destruction of agriculture, industry, and trade,
were so many indubitable signs that the unity of the kingdom was about
to be dissolved, that the might of the Omayyad dynasty in Damascus was
nearing its end. The subjugated populations were beginning to recover
from their surprise and to bethink themselves of former times; and
though the majority still remained faithful to the new religion, the
consciousness of their national identity and remembrance of the past were
not to be blotted from their minds, and the bold leader who could best
evoke these secret feelings could count upon warm sympathy and a crowd
of followers. The dissimilar elements that religious zeal had served to
bind together in the first enthusiasm of the “Sacred War,” strove in the
course of time, as other interests came uppermost and smothered passions
again broke loose, to separate naturally and once more become distinct.
These strivings on the part of the people towards independence were
effectually aided by the divisions and hostilities that existed between
the various commanders, by the machinations of the Abbasids, and their
co-religionists and by the avarice of the caliph who, though observing
the closest parsimony in his own mode of living, loved to feast his eyes
on full state coffers.

[Sidenote: [744-750 A.D.]]

Walid II, Hisham’s successor, scattered the hoarded treasures of his
predecessor, and delighted flatterers, courtiers, generals, and troops
by his boundless liberality. He disgraced himself, on the other hand, by
his licentiousness and excesses, and gave offence by running counter to
all the accepted Mohammedan customs and religious laws. However loudly
smooth-tongued poets, in whose company he squandered the wealth that was
his by oppression as well as by inheritance, might sing his praises, the
people were wroth with the unworthy ruler who spent his time in hunting
and debauchery, found all his pleasure in wine, song, and dance, indulged
in unnatural vices and flouted public decency by carrying with him dogs
and wine on a pilgrimage to Mecca. When, therefore, this godless caliph
sent to the governors a circular letter filled with pious maxims of the
strictest orthodoxy, calling upon all the people to acknowledge and swear
allegiance to his two minor sons, Hakam and Othman, as their future
rulers, the unheard-of innovation excited the liveliest dissatisfaction.
Especially loud in their complaints were the sovereign’s own kinsmen,
who had each in secret cherished the hope of succession; so that now
another and more threatening danger was added to those by which the royal
house was already beset; disunion within itself. The sons of Hisham and
Walid I allied themselves with the enemies of the Omayyads, and accused
the caliph, whom they had also personally affronted, of “unbelief,
free-thought, and incest.” Even Khalid, hitherto steadily devoted to
the House of Omayyah, hesitated at swearing allegiance to two children
who “did not yet know how to pray, and could not be accepted as lawful
witnesses.” The caliph thereupon gave him into the hands of his mortal
enemy Yusuf, governor of Cufa, who caused his members to be broken
one after another until he died under the torture. By this act Walid
increased the number of his enemies. A widespread conspiracy was formed
in Damascus and its vicinity, under the leadership of Yazid, son of the
former caliph Walid I, as a result of which the commander of the faithful
was attacked by a troop of insurgents in his castle of Nadira, and after
a brave resistance was overpowered and killed. The following day his head
was carried on the end of a lance about the streets of Damascus, and his
own brother Suleiman refused to his remains the honour of burial. The
reign of Yazid III lasted but half a year. As a former rebel against the
rightful sovereign, as an adherent of the doctrines of free-will, and as
a parsimonious leader who curtailed the pay of his troops, he had made
many enemies; and would certainly have succumbed to the arms of mighty
Merwan, the Omayyad governor of Armenia and Aderbaijan, who advanced upon
him with a large army, had he not died just previous to the encounter.

Merwan now entered Syria with his seasoned, experienced troops, captured
Himso, and in a desperate engagement that took place in a narrow valley
near Ain Diar defeated the Yemenite army that Hisham’s son, Suleiman, had
led into the field against him. In this battle Suleiman left seventeen
thousand men on the field of battle, and as many more fell into the
hands of Merwan, while the rest of his army scattered in disorder. When
the news of this battle reached Damascus, Ibrahim, whom Yazid III had
designated as his successor, fled with Suleiman from the capital, after
having put to death Walid’s sons and Yusuf, the earlier governor of Irak,
who were in prison, and seized the state treasures. Merwan, who had
hitherto acted only as Walid’s avenger and the protector of his sons, now
found himself in a position where he could stretch out his hand towards
the crown of caliph, and cause the oath of allegiance to be taken to
himself. In order to give his pretensions the appearance of legitimacy he
made known the statement of a fellow-prisoner of the murdered princes,
who asserted that at his death the eldest of them had made over his right
of succession to the throne to him, Merwan. In spite of this sanction,
whether true or false, and in spite of the reconciliation which took
place later with Ibrahim and Suleiman, Merwan’s rule never met with
full recognition. The battle of Ain Diar had inflicted wounds too deep,
had brought uppermost in too many minds the sacred duty of revenge, to
allow Merwan, the usurper, to ever come to peaceful enjoyment of his
power. The years of his reign were marked by uninterrupted struggles
with hostile factions, who had again united and all over the realm were
stirring up the people to revolt. Even the Syrians, who had hitherto
been the Omayyad’s strongest prop, went over in part to the enemy, and
Merwan, with all his military talent and the tireless activity that had
won for him the rather doubtful title of Himar (Donkey), could not in
the long run withstand such determined opposition. With insurrection,
tribal feuds, and civil strife in every province the whole realm was in
a condition of anarchy and lawlessness that destroyed all private peace,
and awoke in every breast an intense desire for a firm hand at the helm
of state that should guide it into less troubled waters. That such a
ruler was no longer to be looked for among the members of the house
of Omayyah, divided as it was, and having foot on no solid, religious
ground, had lately become the settled conviction in the minds of all.

In the East the active partisan, Abu Muslim, had raised the black flag of
the Abbasids and had appeared clad in black in company with his followers
at the most splendid feasts. “Under the embers,” said Nasr, governor of
Khorasan, to the caliph when he begged help against the house of Abbas
and its champion, Abu Muslim, “I see red coals that will soon burst
into flame and suffocate or consume the wisest, body and trunk. As wood
nurses fire to flame, so incendiary speeches precipitate war, and in
astonishment I ask, is the family of Omayyah awake or asleep?”

After Nasr had suffered numerous attacks from Abu Muslim he received
from the caliph reinforcements under the general Nabata. But when the
latter with ten thousand Syrians was defeated by Abu Muslim’s forces,
under Kahtaba Nasr fled with the rest of his troops to Hamadan. He did
not live to reach the ancient city, and his successor to the governorship
surrendered to Kahtaba who was just returning from a second victory
near Ispahan, on condition that himself and his Syrian followers should
receive full pardon. The black flag of Abbasids now waved in all the
lands east of the Tigris, and for the family of Omayyah the decisive
hour had arrived. Kahtaba perished on the blood-soaked battle-field of
Kerbela; but his son Hasan, who succeeded his father to the command,
completely defeated the Syrian army, which was led by the brave governor
Hobaira. It was now the turn of Cufa to display the black banner and in
that city Abul-Abbas, the head of the Abbasids, was proclaimed caliph.

When the news of these events reached the warlike Merwan, he gathered
together his entire military force and after causing Ibrahim, the eldest
of the Abbasid brothers, to be put to death in his prison at Haram,
advanced to meet the enemy. On the river Zab, not far from the ruins of
Nineveh, where once in the neighbourhood of Arbela and Gaugamela the fate
of the Persian kingdom and its reigning house had been decided, took
place the great battle which wrested from the Omayyads the sceptre of
supremacy in the East, and gave the first impulse toward the dissolution
of the entire kingdom (January 25th, 750). Fortune which had so long
been favourable to Merwan now deserted him; beset by treachery and
ill-chance, he fled from the battle-field to Hims and Damascus, whither
but few of the soldiers that made up his mighty forces could follow him,
those who escaped the sword of the enemy finding death in the waters
of the stream. Abdallah then began a triumphal march through all the
towns and countries that lay between Mosul and Syria. Merwan, after
having appointed his son-in-law Walid governor, fled at his approach
to Palestine. Here he learned that the black flag was also flying in
Damascus, where the terrible Abdallah, nicknamed “As-Saffan, the Shedder
of Blood,” had celebrated his entrance by putting to death the newly
appointed governor Walid, and he again sought flight--into Egypt this
time. But insurrection had reached even the peaceful Nile valley, and in
an unsuccessful engagement with the opposing factionists Merwan II came
to a violent end while seeking refuge in a church at Busir, in Upper
Egypt.

[Sidenote: [661-750 A.D.]]

With Merwan’s death the last support to the unity of the kingdom was
removed. Weak and unpopular as were many of the rulers of the Omayyad
dynasty, their sway nevertheless extended from the Indus and the
Iaxartes to the western coast of the Pyrenean peninsula, and from the
Caucasus to the Bay of Aden. Sole founders and perpetuators of the
Islamite kingdom in the three divisions of the ancient world, the early
fame of the Omayyads served to gloss over many a fault in their later
representatives, lending a lustre to their names which according to their
contemporaries did not rightfully belong to them. Now that Abul-Abbas
had become established in Damascus, the central point round which the
whole political life of the Moslems had revolved was lost; and Islamism
was henceforth to break up into ever widening smaller circles in which
each unit was free to develop individually, until the Mohammedan world
should be again reduced to that condition of dismemberment which had at
first prevailed among the tribes of the Arabian peninsula. There were
indeed among the caliphs of Damascus some to whom virtues and the ability
to rule were not denied by later writers. Omar II’s piety and love of
justice, and the court life of Yazid II, bright with all the lustre that
benevolence, poetry, and brilliant feasts could shed upon it, received
full meed of praise from poets and true believers. By borrowing from the
Byzantines their methods of administration and their Greek-Roman culture,
by attracting to their court physicians, architects, and mathematicians,
and enriching the simple life of the inhabitants of the desert with the
arts and conveniences of civilisation, they showed future rulers how
to weld together native and foreign constituents so that great results
might be obtained, to unite many and diverse elements into one specific
whole. But a stain rested upon the name of the Omayyads that, in the
opinion of true believers, could never be wiped away. The blood of Ali
and his family still dyed their hands, they had driven the sacred line of
Mohammed from the seat of honour, and they had covered the head of Hosein
with ridicule and contempt. These sins could not be expiated by any
single act; they constituted a perpetual curse that must descend from one
generation to another of the race, dividing families by dissensions and
internal feuds until the whole dynasty should finally be overthrown.[d]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII. THE ARABS IN EUROPE

[Sidenote: [711-961 A.D.]]

In the progress of conquest from the north and south, the Goths and the
Saracens encountered each other on the confines of Europe and Africa. In
the opinion of the latter, the difference of religion is a reasonable
ground of enmity and warfare. As early as the time of Othman, their
piratical squadrons had ravaged the coasts of Andalusia; nor had they
forgotten the relief of Carthage by the Gothic succours. In that age,
as well as in the present, the kings of Spain were possessed of the
fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of Hercules, which is divided by
a narrow strait from the opposite pillar or point of Europe. A small
portion of Mauretania was still wanting to the African conquest; but
Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed from the walls of Ceuta by
the vigilance and courage of Count Julian, the general of the Goths. From
his disappointment and perplexity Musa was relieved by an unexpected
message from the Christian chief, who offered his place, his person, and
his sword, to the successors of Mohammed, and solicited the disgraceful
honour of introducing their arms into the heart of Spain.

[Sidenote: [711 A.D.]]

If we inquire into the cause of his treachery, the Spaniards will repeat
the popular story of his daughter La Cava, of a virgin who was seduced,
or ravished, by her sovereign; of a father who sacrificed his religion
and country to the thirst of revenge. The passions of princes have often
been licentious and destructive; but this well-known tale, romantic in
itself, is indifferently supported by external evidence; and the history
of Spain will suggest some motives of interest and policy more congenial
to the breast of a veteran statesman. After the decease or deposition
of Witiza, his two sons were supplanted by the ambition of Roderic, a
noble Goth, whose father, the duke or governor of a province, had fallen
a victim to the preceding tyranny. The monarchy was still elective; but
the sons of Witiza, educated on the steps of the throne, were impatient
of a private station. Their resentment was more dangerous, as it was
varnished with the dissimulation of courts; their followers were excited
by the remembrance of favours and the promise of a revolution; and their
uncle Oppas, archbishop of Toledo and Seville, was the first person in
the church, and the second in the state. It is probable that Julian was
involved in the disgrace of the unsuccessful faction; that he had little
to hope and much to fear from the new reign; and that the imprudent king
could not forget or forgive the injuries which Roderic and his family had
sustained. Too feeble to meet his sovereign in arms, he sought the aid of
a foreign power; and his rash invitation to the Moors and Arabs produced
the calamities of eight hundred years. In his epistles, or in a personal
interview, he revealed the wealth and nakedness of his country; the
weakness of an unpopular prince; the degeneracy of an effeminate people.

The Goths were no longer the victorious barbarians who had humbled the
pride of Rome, despoiled the queen of nations, and penetrated from the
Danube to the Atlantic Ocean. Secluded from the world by the Pyrenean
Mountains, the successors of Alaric had slumbered in a long peace; the
walls of the cities were mouldered into dust; the youth had abandoned
the exercise of arms; and the presumption of their ancient renown
would expose them in a field of battle to the first assault of the
invaders. The ambitious Saracen was fired by the ease and importance of
the attempt; but the execution was delayed till he had consulted the
commander of the faithful; and his messenger returned with the permission
of Walid to annex the unknown kingdoms of the West to the religion and
throne of the caliphs. In his residence of Tangier, Musa, with secrecy
and caution, continued his correspondence and hastened his preparations.
But the remorse of the conspirators was soothed by the fallacious
assurance that he should content himself with the glory and spoil,
without aspiring to establish the Moslems beyond the sea that separates
Africa from Europe.

Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to the traitors and
infidels of a foreign land, he made a less dangerous trial of their
strength and veracity. One hundred Arabs, and four hundred Africans
passed over in four vessels from Tangier, or Ceuta; the place of their
descent on the opposite shore of the strait is marked by the name of
Tarik their chief; and the date of this memorable event is fixed to
the month of Ramadhan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira. Their
hospitable entertainment, the Christians who joined their standard, their
inroad into a fertile and unguarded province, the richness of their
spoil and the safety of their return, announced to their brethren the
most favourable omens of victory. In the ensuing spring, five thousand
veterans and volunteers were embarked under the command of Tarik, a
dauntless and skilful soldier, who surpassed the expectation of his
chief; and the necessary transports were provided by the industry of
their too faithful ally.

The Saracens landed at the pillar or point of Europe; the corrupt and
familiar appellation of Gibraltar (_Jebel at-Tarik_) describes the
mountain of Tarik; and the entrenchments of his camp were the first
outline of those fortifications, which, in the hands of the British,
have resisted the art and power of the house of Bourbon. The adjacent
governors informed the court of Toledo of the descent and progress of the
Arabs; and the defeat of his lieutenant Edeco, who had been commanded
to seize and bind the presumptuous strangers, admonished Roderic of the
magnitude of the danger. At the royal summons, the dukes, and counts,
the bishops and nobles of the Gothic monarchy, assembled at the head of
their followers; and the title of king of the Romans, which is employed
by an Arabic historian, may be excused by the close affinity of language,
religion, and manners, between the nations of Spain.

His army consisted of ninety or a hundred thousand men; a formidable
power, if their fidelity and discipline had been adequate to their
numbers. The troops of Tarik had been augmented to twelve thousand
Saracens; but the Christian malcontents were attracted by the influence
of Julian, and a crowd of Africans most greedily tasted the temporal
blessings of the _Koran_. In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, the town of
Xeres has been illustrated by the encounter which determined the fate
of the kingdom; the stream of the Guadalete, which falls into the bay,
divided the two camps, and marked the advancing and retreating skirmishes
of three successive and bloody days. On the fourth day, the two armies
joined a more serious and decisive issue; but Alaric would have blushed
at the sight of his unworthy successor, sustaining on his head a diadem
of pearls, encumbered with a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery,
and reclining on a litter, or car of ivory, drawn by two white mules.
Notwithstanding the valour of the Saracens, they fainted under the
weight of multitudes, and the plain of Xeres was overspread with sixteen
thousand of their dead bodies. “My brethren,” said Tarik to his surviving
companions, “the enemy is before you, the sea is behind; whither would
ye fly? Follow your general; I am resolved either to lose my life, or
to trample on the prostrate king of the Romans.” Besides the resource
of despair, he confided in the secret correspondence and nocturnal
interviews of Count Julian with the sons and the brother of Witiza. The
two princes and the archbishop of Toledo occupied the most important
post; their well-timed defection broke the ranks of the Christians;
each warrior was prompted by fear or suspicion to consult his personal
safety; and the remains of the Gothic army were scattered or destroyed
in the flight and pursuit of the three following days. Amidst the
general disorder, Roderick started from his car, and mounted Orelia, the
fleetest of his horses; but he escaped from a soldier’s death to perish
more ignobly in the waters of the Bætis or Guadalquivir. His diadem,
his robes, and his courser, were found on the bank; but as the body of
the Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the pride and ignorance of the
caliph must have been gratified with some meaner head, which was exposed
in triumph before the palace of Damascus.[38] “And such,” continues
a valiant historian[b] of the Arabs, “is the fate of those kings who
withdraw themselves from a field of battle.”

Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and infamy, that his only
hope was in the ruin of his country. After the battle of Xeres he
recommended the most effectual measures to the victorious Saracen. Tarik
listened to his advice. A Roman captive and proselyte, who had been
enfranchised by the caliph himself, assaulted Cordova with seven hundred
horse; he swam the river, surprised the town, and drove the Christians
into the great church, where they defended themselves above three months.
Another detachment reduced the seacoast of Bætica. The march of Tarik
was directed through the Sierra Morena, that separates Andalusia and
Castile, till he appeared in arms under the walls of Toledo. The most
zealous of the Catholics had escaped with the relics of their saints;
and if the gates were shut it was only till the victor had subscribed a
fair and reasonable capitulation. But if the justice of Tarik protected
the Christians, his gratitude and policy rewarded the Jews, to whose
secret or open aid he was indebted for his most important acquisitions.
Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often pressed the
alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast nation embraced the
moment of revenge; the comparison of their past and present state was
the pledge of their fidelity; and the alliance between the disciples of
Moses and of Mohammed was maintained till the final era of their common
expulsion.

[Sidenote: [711-713 A.D.]]

From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader spread his conquests
to the north, over the modern realms of Castile and Leon; but it is
needless to enumerate the cities that yielded on his approach, or again
to describe the table of emerald, transported from the East by the
Romans, acquired by the Goths among the spoils of Rome, and presented
by the Arabs to the throne of Damascus. Beyond the Asturian mountains,
the maritime town of Gijon was the term of the lieutenant of Musa, who
had performed, with the speed of a traveller, his victorious march of
seven hundred miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Bay of Biscay. The
failure of land compelled him to retreat; and he was recalled to Toledo
to excuse his presumption of subduing a kingdom in the absence of his
general.

Spain, which, in a more savage and disorderly state, had resisted two
hundred years the arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few months by
those of the Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission and
treaty, that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who
fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause of the
Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres; and, in the
national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined a contest with the
antagonist who had vanquished the united strength of the whole. Yet a
spark of the vital flame was still alive; some invincible fugitives
preferred a life of poverty and freedom in the Asturian valleys; the
hardy mountaineer repulsed the slaves of the caliph; and the sword of
Pelagius (Pelayo) has been transformed into the sceptre of the Catholic
kings.

[Illustration: A SARACEN CHIEF]

On the intelligence of his rapid success, the applause of Musa
degenerated into envy; and he began, not to complain but to fear, that
Tarik would leave him nothing to subdue. At the head of ten thousand
Arabs and eight thousand Africans, he passed over in person from
Mauretania to Spain; the first of his companions were the noblest of
the Koreish; his eldest son was left in the command of Africa; the
three younger brethren were of an age and spirit to second the boldest
enterprises of their father. Some enemies yet remained for the sword of
Musa. The tardy repentance of the Goths had compared their own numbers
and those of the invaders; the cities from which the march of Tarik had
declined considered themselves as impregnable; and the bravest patriots
defended the fortifications of Seville and Merida. They were successively
besieged and reduced by the labour of Musa, who transported his camp
from the Bætis to the Anas, from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana. When
he beheld the works of Roman magnificence, the bridge, the aqueducts,
the triumphal arches, and the theatre, of the ancient metropolis of
Lusitania, “I should imagine,” said he to his four companions, “that the
human race must have united their art and power in the foundation of
this city; happy is the man who shall become its master!” The defence
of Merida was obstinate and long; and the castle of the martyrs was a
perpetual testimony of the losses of the Moslems. The constancy of the
besieged was at length subdued by famine and despair; and the prudent
victor disguised his impatience under the names of clemency and esteem.
The alternative of exile or tribute was allowed; the churches were
divided between the two religions; and the wealth of those who had fallen
in the siege, or retired to Galicia, was confiscated as the reward of the
faithful.

In the midway between Merida and Toledo, the lieutenant of Musa saluted
the vicegerent of the caliph, and conducted him to the palace of the
Gothic kings. Their first interview was cold and formal; a rigid account
was exacted of the treasures of Spain; the character of Tarik was exposed
to suspicion and obloquy; and the hero was imprisoned, reviled, and
ignominiously scourged by the hand, or the command, of Musa. Yet so
strict was the discipline, so pure the zeal, or so tame the spirit, of
the primitive Moslems, that after this public indignity, Tarik could
serve and be trusted in the reduction of the Tarragonese province. A
mosque was erected at Saragossa, by the liberality of the Koreish; the
port of Barcelona was opened to the vessels of Syria; and the Goths were
pursued beyond the Pyrenean Mountains into their Gallic province of
Septimania or Languedoc. In the church of St. Mary at Carcassonne, Musa
found, but it is improbable that he left, seven equestrian statues of
massy silver; and from his _term_ or column of Narbonne, he returned on
his footsteps to the Galician and Lusitanian shores of the ocean. During
the absence of the father, the son Abdul-Aziz chastised the insurgents
of Seville, and reduced, from Malaga to Valencia, the seacoast of the
Mediterranean.

Theodemir and his subjects were treated with uncommon lenity; but the
rate of tribute appears to have fluctuated from a tenth to a fifth,
according to the submission or obstinacy of the Christians. In this
revolution, many partial calamities were inflicted by the carnal or
religious passions of the enthusiasts; some churches were profaned by the
new worship; some relics or images were confounded with idols; the rebels
were put to the sword; and one town (an obscure place between Cordova and
Seville) was razed to its foundations. Yet if we compare the invasion of
Spain by the Goths, or its recovery by the kings of Castile and Aragon,
we must applaud the moderation and discipline of the Arabian conquerors.

The exploits of Musa were performed in the evening of life, though
he affected to disguise his age by colouring with a red powder the
whiteness of his beard. But in the love of action and glory, his breast
was still fired with the ardour of youth; and the possession of Spain
was considered only as the first step to the monarchy of Europe. With
a powerful armament by sea and land, he was preparing to repass the
Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul and Italy the declining kingdoms of the
Franks and Lombards, and to preach the unity of God on the altar of the
Vatican. From thence subduing the Barbarians of Germany, he proposed to
follow the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea, to
overthrow the Greek or Roman Empire of Constantinople, and, returning
from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with Antioch and the
provinces of Syria. But his vast enterprise, perhaps of easy execution,
must have seemed extravagant to vulgar minds; and the visionary conqueror
was soon reminded of his dependence and servitude.

The friends of Tarik had effectually stated his services and wrongs;
at the court of Damascus, the proceedings of Musa were blamed, his
intentions were suspected, and his delay in complying with the first
invitation was chastised by a harsher and more peremptory summons. An
intrepid messenger of the caliph entered his camp at Lugo in Galicia,
and in the presence of the Saracens and Christians arrested the bridle
of his horse. His own loyalty, or that of his troops, inculcated the
duty of obedience; and his disgrace was alleviated by the recall of his
rival, and the permission of investing with his two governments his two
sons, Abdallah and Abdul-Aziz. His long triumph, from Ceuta to Damascus,
displayed the spoils of Africa and the treasures of Spain; four hundred
Gothic nobles, with gold coronets and girdles, were distinguished in his
train; and the number of male and female captives, selected for their
birth or beauty, was computed at eighteen, or even at thirty, thousand
persons.

[Sidenote: [713-722 A.D.]]

Ten years after the conquest, a map of the province was presented to
the caliph--the seas, the rivers, and the harbours, the inhabitants and
cities, the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of the earth.
In the space of two centuries the gifts of nature were improved by the
agriculture, the manufactures, and the commerce of an industrious people;
and the effects of their diligence have been magnified by the idleness
of their fancy. The first of the Omayyads who reigned in Spain solicited
the support of the Christians; and, in his edict of peace and protection,
he contents himself with a modest imposition of ten thousand ounces of
gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten thousand horses, as many mules,
one thousand cuirasses, with an equal number of helmets and lances. The
most powerful of his successors derived from the same kingdom the annual
tribute of twelve millions and forty-five thousand dinars or pieces of
gold, about six millions of sterling money; a sum which, in the tenth
century, most probably surpassed the united revenues of the Christian
monarchs. His royal seat of Cordova contained six hundred mosques, nine
hundred baths, and two hundred thousand houses; he gave laws to eighty
cities of the first, to three hundred of the second and third order: and
the fertile banks of the Guadalquivir were adorned with twelve thousand
villages and hamlets. The Arabs might exaggerate the truth, but they
created and they describe the most prosperous era of the riches, the
cultivation, and the populousness of Spain.[c]

Musa did not reach Syria until the close of the year 714. Walid
Abul-Abbas was on the bed of death; and Suleiman, the brother and heir
of the caliph, wrote to the emir, commanding him not to approach the
expiring sovereign, but to delay his entrance into Damascus until the
opening of a new reign. Suleiman doubtless wished that the pomp of the
spectacle should grace his own accession, and that the treasures now
brought should not run the risk of dispersion by his brother. But Musa
imprudently disregarded the command; perhaps he dreaded the fate which
would await him for his delay should Walid recover; and he proceeded to
the palace. That prince, however, in a few days bade adieu to empire and
to life, and Musa remained exposed to the vengeance of Suleiman. He was
cast into prison; was beaten with rods, while made to stand a whole day
before the gate of the palace; and lastly was fined in so heavy a sum,
that, unless his wealth were exhaustless, he must have been impoverished.

While Musa was thus deservedly punished for his rapacity and injustice,
his son Abdul-Aziz was actively employed in finishing the subjugation of
the peninsula. But one step, which he doubtless expected would strengthen
his influence with both Arabs and natives, was the occasion of his
downfall. Smitten with the charms of Egilona, the widow of Roderic, he
made her first his concubine, next his wife; and it is probable that
through the counsels of that ambitious and unprincipled woman, he aimed
at an independent sovereignty. Besides, Suleiman might well apprehend the
open rebellion of the son, on learning the story of the father’s harsh
fate. To prevent the consequences which he dreaded might arise from the
indignation of this powerful family, he despatched secret orders for
the deposition and death of the three brothers. And Abdul-Aziz, while
assisting at morning prayers in the mosque of Seville, fell beneath the
poniards of the assassins. After this bloody execution, so characteristic
of Mussulman government, Habib ben Obaid departed with the head of the
emir to the court of Damascus. It was shown to Musa by the caliph, who at
the same time asked him with a bitter smile, if he recognised it. The old
man, who recognised it too well, turned away his shuddering looks, and
fearlessly exclaimed, “Cursed be he who has destroyed a better man than
himself!” He then left the palace and betook himself to the deserts of
Arabia, where the grief of having thus lost his children soon brought him
broken-hearted to the grave.

Severe as were the afflictions of Musa, and execrable as was the manner
in which those afflictions were brought upon him, it is impossible
to feel much pity for his fate. Of envy, rapacity, and injustice, he
has been proved abundantly guilty; and though little is said of his
cruelty by Arabic writers who lived long after his time, it is no less
indisputable from the testimony of contemporary Christian historians.
The horrors which he perpetrated in his career of conquest, or rather of
extermination, have been compared to those of Troy and of Jerusalem, and
to the worst atrocities of the persecuting heathen emperors. There may
be exaggeration in the declamatory statements of those historians, but
the very exaggeration must be admitted to prove the melancholy fact. The
execution of Abdul-Aziz produced a great consternation in the minds of
the natives.

The Arab sheikhs assembled to invest one of their body with the high
dignity. The virtues and wisdom of Ayub ben Habib, the nephew of Musa,
commanded their unanimous suffrages. But Omar II, the successor of
Suleiman, disdaining to recognise a governor not appointed by the
sovereign authority of the caliph, deposed Ayub and nominated Al-Haur
ben Abd ar-Rahman to the viceregal dignity. Not even the rich booty
which he collected during an irruption into Gothic Gaul, could, it is
said, satisfy his rapacity; and he extorted heavy sums from the people.
But what added most to the discontent of the Arabs was the defeat of
his general Al-Kama, who had ventured to penetrate into the mountain
fastnesses of the Asturias, to crush the infant power of Pelayo. [See the
later volume on Spain.]

Yazid, the successor of Omar, replaced Al-Haur by As-Sama ben Malik [or
Assan], 721 A.D. At the head of a considerable force, he passed the
Pyrenees, took Carcassonne, reduced Narbonne, and laid siege to Toulouse,
which made a noble resistance until Eudes, duke of Aquitaine, hastened
to its relief. A bloody battle was fought under the walls of that city,
fatal to the hopes of the Moslems. Their emir, their sheikhs, and many
thousands of their number, were left on the field; perhaps few would have
escaped, but for the courageous address of Abd ar-Rahman, the lieutenant
of the deceased chief, who rallied the remains of the troops, and safely
effected a retreat to Narbonne.

The grateful remnant immediately invested Abd ar-Rahman ben Abdallah with
the government of Spain; and the election was confirmed by the emir of
Africa. But Ambasa succeeded, by criminal intrigues, in procuring the
deposition of this favourite chief and his own nomination. Carcassonne
and Nîmes vainly attempted to resist him. In the midst of his success,
however, death surprised him; and, at his own request, Odsra ben
Abdallah was permitted to succeed him, but was speedily replaced by
Yahya ben Salma. So loud, however, were the complaints that the African
emir was obliged to depose him, and to nominate in his room Othman ben
Abi Neza, better known to the readers both of history and romance as
Manuza. But in a very few months this emir was replaced by another; and
the latter was as summarily removed to make way for the Syrian Al-Haitam
ben Obaid. At the end of two months, Abd ar-Rahman, the predecessor of
Ambasa, was again invested with the viceregal dignity--an appointment
which gave the highest satisfaction to the country.

THE INVASION OF FRANCE

[Sidenote: [722-732 A.D.]]

This celebrated emir commenced his second administration by distributing
justice so impartially, that the professors of neither faith could find
reason to complain. But these cares could not long divert him from the
great design he had formed--that of invading the whole of Gaul. Though
the Arabic historians conceal the extent of the preparations, for the
natural purpose of palliating the disgrace of failure, there can be no
doubt that those preparations were on an immense scale; that the true
believers flocked to the white standard[39] from the farthest parts of
the caliph’s dominions; and that the whole Mohammedan world contemplated
the expedition with intense anxiety.

Just before the Mussulman army commenced its march, Othman, who still
continued at his station in Gothic Gaul, very near to the Pyrenees,
received orders to lay waste the province of Aquitaine. But Othman, or
Manuza, was in no disposition to execute the order; he had seen with
envy Abd ar-Rahman preferred to himself; and his marriage with one of
the daughters of Eudes, duke of Aquitaine, whom he passionately loved,
rendered him more eager to cultivate the friendship than to incur the
hostility of the Franks. In this perplexity, Othman acquainted Eudes
with the meditated assault, and thereby enabled that chief to meet it.
Abd ar-Rahman instantly despatched a select body of troops under one of
his confidential generals, to watch the movements, and, if necessary, to
punish the treason, of Othman, who, with his beautiful princess, sought
for safety in flight. He was overtaken in the Pyrenees, while resting
during the heat of the day beside a fountain. His head was sent to the
emir, and his bride to end her days in the harem of Damascus.

Abd ar-Rahman now commenced his momentous march, in the hope of carrying
the banner of the prophet to the very shores of the Baltic. His progress
spread dismay throughout Europe; and well it might, for so formidable and
destructive an armament Europe had not seen since the days of Attila.
Conflagrations, ruins, the shrieks of violated chastity, and the groans
of the dying, rendered this memorable invasion more like the work of
a demon than of a man. The flourishing towns of southern and central
France, from Gascony to Burgundy, and from the Garonne to the Loire, were
soon transformed into smoking heaps. In vain did Eudes strive to arrest
the overpowering torrent, by disputing the passage of the Dordogne;
his army was swept before it, and he himself was compelled to become a
suppliant to his enemy the mayor of the Franks. That celebrated hero,
Charles Martel, whose actions, administration, and numerous victories
commanded the just admiration of the times, was no less anxious to
become the saviour of Christendom; but he knew too well the magnitude of
the danger to meet it by premature efforts; and he silently collected
in Belgium and in Germany the elements of resistance to the dreaded
inundation. When his measures were taken, he boldly advanced at the head
of his combined Franks, Belgians, Germans, etc., towards the enemy,
who had just reduced Tours, and who was soon drawn up to receive him
in the extended plain between that city and Poitiers. After six days’
skirmishing, both advanced to the shock. The contest was long and bloody;
the utmost valour was displayed by the two armies, and the utmost ability
by the two captains; but in the end, the impenetrable ranks, robust
frames, and iron hands of the Germans turned the fortune of the day. When
darkness arrived, an immense number of Saracen bodies, among which was
that of Abd ar-Rahman himself, covered the plain. Still the misbelievers
were formidable alike from their numbers and from their possible despair;
and the victors remained in their tents, under arms, during the night.
At break of day they prepared to renew the struggle; the white tents
of the Arabs, extending as far as the eye could reach, appeared before
them, but not a living creature came out to meet them. It was at length
discovered that the enemy had abandoned their camp, their own wealth,
and the immense plunder they had amassed; and had silently, though
precipitately, withdrawn from the field. Christendom was saved; pope and
monk, prince and peasant, in an ecstasy of grateful devotion, hastened
to the churches, to thank heaven for a victory which, however dearly it
had been purchased by the true servants of God, had inflicted so signal a
blow on the misbelievers, that their return was no longer dreaded.

[Illustration: A FRENCH SOLDIER OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY]

This far-famed victory, which was obtained in the year 732, spread
consternation throughout the whole Mohammedan world. Fortunately for
Christendom, the domestic quarrels of the Mussulmans themselves, the
fierce struggles of their chiefs for the seat of the prophet, prevented
them from universally arming to vindicate their faith and their martial
reputation. Abdul-Malik ben Khotan was nominated by the African emir
to succeed Abd ar-Rahman and to revenge the late disasters. The emir
passed the Pyrenees; but a complete panic seemed to have seized on
his followers, who soon retreated, but were pursued and destroyed. He
was superseded by Okba ben al-Hajjaj. Feeling his mind and body alike
exhausted by his harassing duties, he applied to the caliph for the
restoration of Abdul-Malik.

[Sidenote: [733-755 A.D.]]

The restored emir had little reason to congratulate himself on his
good fortune. The restless barbarians of Mauretania again revolted,
and defeated and slew their governor who hastened to subdue them. The
Syrians, under Thalaba ben Salama, and the Egyptians under Balej ben
Besher, were expelled from the country, and induced to seek refuge in
Spain. Their arrival boded no good to the tranquillity of the peninsula.
Abdul-Malik tried negotiation in vain; the Africans invested him in
his last hold, and the inhabitants hoping to obtain favour by his
destruction, tied him to a post on the bridge of Cordova, and opened
their gates to Balej. The unfortunate emir was speedily beheaded, and the
inhuman victor tumultuously proclaimed the governor of the faithful.

Balej did not long enjoy his usurped honours. Offended at the preference
thus shown to another, Thalaba unexpectedly became the advocate of
subordination. At the same time the son of Okba rallied the dispersed
troops of the murdered Abdul-Malik, and marched against the usurper.
Balej fell, pierced by the scimitar of Abd ar-Rahman; the tyrant’s forces
fled, and the victor was hailed by the honourable surname of Al-Mansur.
Thalaba from his viceregal throne was removed to a dungeon in the
fortress of Tangier. Husam was not destined to be more fortunate than his
predecessors. He was deposed by Thueba.

During scenes of anarchy and of blood, there was a third party, which
took no part in them, and which groaned over the disasters of this
fertile land. It was agreed that the only means of ending the existing
anarchy was to appoint an emir with sovereign power over the whole
peninsula. After some deliberation the choice unanimously fell on Yusuf
al-Fehri, of the tribe of Koreish, which was also that of the prophet.
Yusuf was now compelled to enter on a ruinous civil war; and ruinous it
was beyond example in this ill-fated country. To describe the horrors
which ensued is impossible; it seemed as if one half of Spain had risen
for no other purpose than that of exterminating the other half, and of
transforming the whole country into a desert. Many cities, to say nothing
of inferior towns and villages, disappeared forever from the face of the
peninsula; leaving, however, melancholy mementos of their past existence
in the ruins which remained.

Above forty years had now elapsed since the first descent of the
Mohammedans; and in the whole of that period there had been but few
intervals of tranquillity, or even of individual security. So mutable had
been the government, that twenty different emirs had been called, or had
raised themselves, to direct it. About eighty chiefs secretly assembled
at Cordova; when, laying aside all private ambition, they consulted as
to the means of ending the civil war. They were addressed by Hayut of
Emessa, who reminded them of the recent usurpation of the Abbasids;
of the consequent massacre of the Omayyads; and, what was still more
melancholy, of the fatal divisions among the partisans of those families
throughout the Mohammedan world, and of the anarchy which was the
inevitable result of those divisions. These chiefs agreed to establish a
separate, independent monarchy, but the main difficulty still remained.
What individual could be found in whose claims a whole nation could
be likely to acquiesce, and who possessed the requisites towards that
nation’s prosperity? It was removed by Wahib ben Zair, whose interesting
relation is thus abridged:

[Sidenote: [750-778 A.D.]]

After the tragic massacre of the Omayyads, two sons of Merwan, the
last caliph of that house, who had been so fortunate as to escape the
destruction of their brethren, were foolish enough to reside at the court
of Abul-Abbas, on his solemnly promising to spare their lives. Yielding
at length to the repeated insinuations of a base spy, Abul-Abbas ordered
their execution. Soliman, the eldest, was immediately taken and slain;
but the other, Abd ar-Rahman, who was fortunately absent from Damascus,
was seasonably informed of this second tragedy. Hastily furnishing
himself with horses and money, he commenced his flight from Syria. He
chose the most unfrequented paths, and safely arrived among the Bedouin
Arabs. From Arabia he passed through Egypt into Africa, where new dangers
awaited him. After some days of a fatiguing journey through boundless
plains of sand, he reached Tahart in Mauretania, by the inhabitants of
which he was received with joy. “Abd ar-Rahman,” concluded Wahib, “still
remains there; let him be our sovereign!”

The proposal of the sheikh was received with unanimous applause.
Accompanied by Teman ben Al-Kama, he was instantly deputed by the
assembly to pass over into Mauretania, and offer the crown to the
princely descendant of Moawiyah. The prince immediately accepted the
proposal. The youth of the whole tribe were eager to accompany him, but
he selected 750 well-armed horsemen for this arduous expedition. Abd
ar-Rahman landed on the coast of Andalusia in the early part of the year
755. The inhabitants of that province, sheikhs and people, received
him with open arms, and made the air ring with their acclamations.
His appearance, his station, his majestic mien, his open countenance,
won upon the multitude even more perhaps than the prospect of the
blessings which he was believed to have in store for them. His march
to Seville was one continued triumph; twenty thousand voices cheered
his progress; twenty thousand scimitars, wielded by vigorous hands,
were at his disposal. The surrounding towns immediately sent deputies
with their submission and the offer of their services. After a series
of unsuccessful manœuvres, Yusuf fell in a battle near Lorca, and his
head was sent by the victorious general to the king. According to the
barbarous custom of the times, it was suspended from an iron hook over
one of the public gates of Cordova. The very same year Narbonne fell into
the power of the Christians, after a siege of six years. Gothic Gaul was
now lost to the Moslems.

[Sidenote: [756-796 A.D.]]

The peace which the monarch enjoyed was destined to prove of short
duration. While he continued at Seville, indulging alike in poetry and
friendship, he received intelligence of an insurrection at Toledo, by
Hisham ben Adri al-Fehri, a relative of Yusuf. Hisham with some other
generals fell into the hands of Bedra, who, in the fear of their being
saved by the clemency of Abd ar-Rahman, immediately struck off their
heads. But he was now menaced by an enemy more powerful than any which
had yet assailed him; and one of the last perhaps he would ever have
dreamed of opposing. This was no other than Charlemagne, who poured his
legions over the Pyrenees into the valleys of Catalonia. He himself
headed the division which passed into Navarre through Gascony, and his
first conquest was the Christian city of Pamplona. The walls he levelled
with the ground; and thence proceeded to Saragossa. That city quickly
owned his supremacy; and so also, we are told, did Gerona, Huesca, and
Barcelona, the government of which he confided to the sheikhs who had
invited him into the peninsula, and had aided him with their influence.
The whole country, from the Ebro to the Pyrenees, in like manner owned
his authority. How far he might have carried his arms, had not the revolt
of the Saxons summoned him to a more urgent scene, it would be useless to
conjecture.

While in the defiles of the Pyrenees, between Roncesvalles and Valcarlos,
his rear was furiously assailed by some thousands of Navarrese in ambush,
who were justly indignant at the wanton destruction of their capital.
That the injury inflicted on the emperor was serious, is apparent from
the words of his own secretary, who tells us that the whole rearguard was
cut to pieces, including many of his generals and chief nobles; and that
not only the riches amassed in the expedition, but the whole baggage of
the army, fell into the hands of the victors. Scarcely had Charlemagne
passed the Pyrenees, when Abd ar-Rahman recovered Saragossa and the other
places, of which that monarch had received the submission, and which he
had, probably, been sanguine enough to hope would continue to acknowledge
his supremacy. But if Abd ar-Rahman was thus freed from so formidable an
invader, he was still subject to the curse of domestic sedition.

During his long reign, Abd ar-Rahman had several transactions with the
Christians of the Asturias. Under the viceroys his predecessors, the
Mussulman arms had failed against both Pelayo and Alfonso I; but he was
more successful. By Froila or Fruela I, indeed, one if not two of his
generals were successively and signally defeated (760 and 761); but from
the tenor of a treaty between the two kings, a treaty on which the early
Christian writers preserve a deep silence, we may infer either that the
Asturian ruler had sustained some reverse, or that he turned aside the
storm of threatening vengeance by concessions.

Abd ar-Rahman died in 787. The chief features of his character were
honour, generosity, and intrepidity, with a deeply rooted regard for
the interests of justice and religion. His views, for a Mussulman,
were enlightened, and his sentiments liberal. Misfortune had been his
schoolmaster, and he profited by its lessons. He was an encourager of
literature, as appears from the number of schools he founded and endowed;
of poetry in particular he must have been fond, or he would not have
cultivated it himself. In short, his highest praise is to be found in the
fact that Mohammedan Spain wanted a hero and legislator to lay the first
stone of her prosperity, and that she found both in him.

Hisham ben Abd ar-Rahman, surnamed Alhadi Radhi, the Just and the Good,
was immediately proclaimed at Merida, whither he had accompanied his
dying father; and his elevation was hailed by the acclamations of all
Spain. The success with which Hisham crushed formidable insurrections of
his two brothers roused within him the latent sparks of ambition. He now
aspired to conquests not only in the Asturias, but in Gothic Gaul. He
proclaimed the _al-jihed_, or holy war, which every Mussulman was bound
to aid, if young, by personal service, if rich and advanced in years, by
the contribution of horses, arms, or money. Two formidable armies were
immediately put in motion; one thirty-nine thousand strong, which was
headed by the hajib or prime minister, marched into the Asturias; the
other, which was still more numerous, advanced towards the Pyrenees.
The hajib laid waste all Galicia as far as Lugo, and obtained immense
plunder; but Alfonso, surnamed the Chaste, had the glory of freeing the
infant kingdom from the invaders. A second expedition, under the hajib’s
son, was still more unfortunate. From this time may be dated the real
independence of the Christians.

[Sidenote: [796-815 A.D.]]

The success of the other army was not very signal; it made no conquests,
but shortly returned across the Pyrenees laden with immense plunder.
In the seventh year of his reign Hisham caused his son Al-Hakem to be
recognised as his successor, and died a few months afterwards, in 796,
universally lamented by his subjects. The reign of Al-Hakem was one of
extreme agitation. Barcelona, and many other fortresses of Catalonia,
acknowledged the supremacy of Charlemagne.

Whilst these transactions were passing in Catalonia, Alfonso the Chaste
was naturally eager to profit by the division in his favour. To punish
his revolt in 801, Al-Hakem ravaged his eastern territories. But on the
return of the Mohammedan king, who left Yusuf ben Amru to prosecute the
war, the Asturian entirely routed the forces of that general, whom he
took prisoner, and for whose ransom he exacted a heavy sum. This very
fact proves that the two kings were now placed on an equal footing--that
the ties of vassalage had been burst asunder by the Christian hero. In
808, Alfonso crossed the Duero, invaded Lusitania, and took Lisbon.
Al-Hakem hastened to the theatre of war, and obtained some successes.
Abd ar-Rahman, Al-Hakem’s son, defeated Alfonso on the banks of the
Duero, took Zamora, and compelled that king to sue for peace. However,
hostilities soon recommenced, but with little advantage to either party.

Internally the reign of Al-Hakem was no less troubled. Scarcely was the
rebellion of his uncles repressed, when the tyranny of Yusuf ben Amru
occasioned great disorders in Toledo. In 805, the inhabitants openly rose
against the governor, whom they confined in prison. Al-Hakem invited
the principal inhabitants--chiefly Mohammedans--to wait on the heir of
the monarchy; but as they entered the palace, they were seized by his
soldiers, were carried into a subterraneous apartment, and massacred.
[More than seven hundred are said to have perished on this “day of the
fosse” (807).] About the same time a conspiracy was formed in Cordova
itself, the object of which was to assassinate Al-Hakem, and to raise
a grandson of the first Abd ar-Rahman to the vacant throne. The fatal
secret was revealed to the monarch’s ear. The very day on which this
tragedy was to be perpetrated, three hundred gory heads were exhibited in
the most public part of Cordova. Had his own been there, instead of them,
no public sorrow would have been manifested.

[Sidenote: [815-835 A.D.]]

This incident was not likely to assuage his appetite for blood--an
appetite which is believed to have been innate in his temperament,
though education and circumstances had hitherto suspended its cravings.
Commensurate with its increasing intensity was his passion for luxury. He
no longer delighted in reaping “the iron harvests of the field.” Shut up
in his palace with his female slaves, amidst the sweetest sounds of vocal
and instrumental music, or witnessing the lascivious dance, he passed
the whole of his time. If, however, his person was thus hidden from the
eyes of his people, his existence was but too evident from the execution
of his sanguinary mandates. That he might enjoy the pleasures without
the cares of royalty, in the year 815 he caused his son Abd ar-Rahman
to receive the homage of his chiefs as the wali alhadi, or successor to
the throne, and on the shoulders of that prince he thenceforth laid the
whole weight of government. But tyrants often tremble, as well as their
oppressed subjects. To escape assassination, or the consequences of an
open insurrection, he filled or surrounded his palace with a chosen guard
of five thousand men, whose fidelity he secured by permanent liberal pay.
To meet this extraordinary increase of expenditure, he laid an entrance
duty on the merchandise which arrived in the capital. This measure
excited indignation, not so much because it was oppressive as because it
was novel; murmurs arose on every side, and even an open insurrection
appeared certain. To crush it by terror, he ordered ten men who had
refused to pay the duty to be publicly executed.

A trivial accident, however, acting like a spark on the present
inflammable spirit of the people, produced a general explosion; the
guards of the ten prisoners were massacred; a few who wisely fled were
pursued to the very gates of the palace, the multitude uttering terrific
menaces against the author and advisers of so odious a novelty. The
desire of vengeance roused the king from his unworthy lethargy. Seizing
his arms, and followed by the cavalry of his guard, he charged the mob,
which, as mobs always will do, endeavoured to escape when real danger
approached. In a few minutes the streets of Cordova were strewn with dead
bodies; such as could reach their habitations were safe; about three
hundred were overtaken on the banks of the river, and were instantly
impaled. But the effects did not end here; the numerous streets outside
the walls of the city were levelled with the ground, and the surviving
inhabitants were pardoned only on the condition of leaving Cordova
forever. With loud lamentations, the unhappy exiles departed from the
scene of their former happiness; a considerable number settled in Toledo;
eight thousand accepted the asylum offered them by Edris ben Edris in his
new city of Fez, and the quarter where they settled is at this day called
the Andalusian quarter. The fate of the far greater portion was more
singular; fifteen thousand proceeded to Egypt, seized on Alexandria, and
there maintained themselves in spite of all opposition, until the wali,
by the caliph’s permission, purchased their departure by a large sum of
money, and by allowing them to reside on one of the isles of Greece.
They chose Crete, and founded an independent government [which lasted
till 961 when the Greeks recaptured it]. From this moment Al-Hakem, who
acquired the surname of the Cruel, was torn by incessant remorse. In 821
he breathed his last.

[Illustration: A SARACEN CHIEF]

Abd ar-Rahman II had long made himself beloved, both in a private
capacity and as the deputy of his father; happiness was as much hoped
from his reign, and as much was it alloyed by many misfortunes. The
first was the hostile arrival of his great uncle, Abdallah, son of Abd
ar-Rahman I, who, though on the verge of the tomb, resolved to strike
another blow for empire. He was speedily defeated. A salutary law was now
passed, defining the right of succession to be inherent in the children
of the natural monarch, according to their primogeniture; and, where the
direct heirs subsisted, excluding the other branches of the family.

In his transactions with the Christians of the Asturias and Catalonia,
Abd ar-Rahman was more fortunate than his two predecessors. He did not
allow either Alfonso or Ramiro to gain much advantage over him. Three
armies of Franks successively appeared in Spain, but effected nothing;
while a Mohammedan fleet burned the suburbs of Marseilles. Nor was the
kingdom of Abd ar-Rahman free from internal troubles. Merida twice
revolted; Toledo followed the example, and sustained a blockade of nine
years against the royal forces.

[Sidenote: [835-886 A.D.]]

Scarcely were these domestic wounds closed, when a new and unexpected
enemy appeared on the coast of Lusitania. The Scandinavian vikings, in
fifty-four vessels, had spread terror along the maritime districts of
France and the peninsula. These savage northmen landed wherever there
was a prospect of booty; plundered towns and churches; consumed with
fire everything which they could not remove; and put to the sword all,
of every age and of either sex, who had the misfortune to fall in their
way. In short, from the terrific descriptions given of them both in the
Icelandic sagas and the Christian writers of the south, we should suppose
them to have been demons rather than men. Thirteen days they assailed
Lisbon, and that place would have fallen but for the seasonable march
of the neighbouring walis to relieve it. The pirates re-embarked with
their booty; landed on the coasts of Lusitania and Algarve, which they
ravaged; and ultimately destroyed a great part of Seville. Such was their
reputation for valour, that their retreat was seldom molested. To rebuild
the ruined walls was the immediate work of the king, and to be prepared
for resistance, in the event of future piratical descents, he established
a line of forts from the principal seaports to his capital, with
facilities for communicating rapidly with one another. To add to these
internal calamities, a drought of two years withered the productions of
the earth; or if anything was spared by the heat, it was devoured by
clouds of locusts.

These sufferings of his people must sensibly have afflicted the heart
of Abd ar-Rahman; and he endeavoured to relieve them by importing corn
from Africa, and by furnishing the unemployed with occupation. The works
which he constructed in that city were of equal magnificence and utility.
Mosques were erected; the streets paved; marble baths made for the
convenience of the men; and, the most important of all his enterprises,
water in abundance was brought from the mountains to the city by means
of leaden pipes. Abd ar-Rahman was a man of letters as well as a man
of science. In 850 he caused his son Muhammed to be acknowledged wali
alhadi. In 852 he died, universally lamented by his people.

The reign of Muhammed I contains little to strike the attention. He was
always at war, either with the Asturians or his own subjects. Ramiro,
Ordoño, and Alfonso III successively defeated his best troops, and
gradually enlarged their dominions. He was ultimately more successful
in his contests with his subjects than with his natural enemies. Of
the difficulty, however, with which this success was obtained, Musa
ben Zeyad, the wali of Saragossa, and Omar, a bandit chief, afford us
abundant proof. Omar escaped into the Pyrenees, and offered his services
to the Navarrese; gained them many fortresses, and received from them the
title of king. He conquered the whole country as far as the Ebro. The
king in person, with his son Al-Mundhir, and his best officers, hastened
to the field. Omar was defeated and slain. But the rebels were not yet
annihilated. Kalib ben Omar, who with the title inherited the warlike
spirit of his father, was destined to greater things, and laid waste
or rendered tributary the country on the banks of the Ebro. Al-Mundhir
advanced to measure arms with the son of his old enemy; but a whole
year elapsed before he could gain any advantage over Kalib. If to these
agitating scenes we add a drought of a year’s duration, the third which
had visited Spain within the short period of twenty years; an earthquake
which swallowed several towns, and another invasion of the Normans, some
idea may be formed of the disasters of this reign.

[Sidenote: [886-939 A.D.]]

The death of Muhammed was sudden. No sooner did Kalib ben Omar hear of
Muhammed’s death than he descended from his mountains, was joined by
thousands of partisans, and was successful beyond his most sanguine
hopes. Huesca, Saragossa, and Toledo opened their gates to him. The
whole kingdom was in consternation or in joy, according to the loyalty or
disaffection of the people. It is certain that the new king, Al-Mundhir,
had not many friends, and those few he soon lost. In the second year of
his reign he fell in battle with the formidable Kalib.

The reign of Abdallah, the brother and successor of Al-Mundhir, was
destined to be as troubled as any of his predecessors. One of the
first revolts was headed by his eldest son Muhammed. He was joined by
his brother Al-Kasim; but he was defeated by his younger brother Abd
ar-Rahman, was severely wounded in battle, and was consigned to a dungeon
by the victor, until the king’s pleasure could be known. There he died,
whether in consequence of his wounds, or by violence, is uncertain. But
the greatest affliction of the king was the continued triumph of the
rebel Kalib.

On the death of Abdallah, the throne of Mohammedan Spain was filled
by Abd ar-Rahman III, son of the rebel prince Muhammed, who had so
mysteriously died in prison, and, therefore, grandson of Abdallah. Why
the deceased king did not procure the elevation of his own son Abd
ar-Rahman, surnamed Al-Mudafar, or the Victorious, surprised many, but
grieved none. By universal acclamation the new king was hailed as Emir
al-muminin, or prince of the believers, and An-Nasir lidini-l-lahi,
defender of the faith of God. It is difficult to account for the yielding
of this spiritual homage to the young prince; but the fact is certain
that he was the first of his family to assume the title and honours of
caliph.

After labouring with success to pacify the partisans of the Abbasids,
who at first regarded his assumption of the spiritual character as
little less than blasphemous, Abd ar-Rahman resolved to exterminate the
audacious rebels who had so long distracted the kingdom. The son of Omar
ben Hafs still reigned at Toledo over nearly one-half of Mohammedan
Spain. To contend with this formidable adventurer, Abd ar-Rahman
assembled a select military force of forty thousand men, and took the
field. In the end victory declared for the king; seven thousand of the
rebel and three thousand of the royal forces were left on the field. The
consequences of this success were important; the whole of eastern Spain
submitted to Abd ar-Rahman. Kalib himself long held out against the power
of Abd ar-Rahman.

The pacification of his kingdom allowed Abd ar-Rahman leisure to dream of
ambition, which opportunity seasonably aided. He came into conflict with
the ruler of Egypt, over Fez, which he finally cleared of the Egyptians.
But the most memorable of the warlike exploits of this king were against
the Christians of Leon and the Asturias. Soon after the accession of Abd
ar-Rahman, Ordoño II invaded the Mohammedan possessions, and, if any
faith is to be had in the chroniclers of his nation, he obtained many
advantages--advantages, however, of which not the slightest mention is
made by the Mohammedan writers. In short, from the accession of Ordoño to
some time after that of Ramiro II, not one of the successes derived by
the Christians is acknowledged by the Moors.

[Sidenote: [939-961 A.D.]]

From the conflicting statements of the two hostile writers, it appears
certain that in 934 Ramiro II made an irruption into the states of Abd
ar-Rahman, and ruined Madrid, and that the king of Cordova, in revenge,
sent Almudafar to invade Galicia. That hero, say the historians of his
nation, made terrible reprisals on the subjects of Ramiro, thousands of
whom he brought away captive, with an immense booty, and defeated Ramiro
himself on the banks of the Duero. The Christians, on the other hand,
tell us that their hero triumphed over the misbelievers on the plains
of Osma (which is on the banks of that river), of whom he slew a great
number, and made many thousands of captives. Abd ar-Rahman advanced to
meet him with eighty thousand men. The combat [of Alhandega] which ensued
was the most obstinate, and beyond comparison the most bloody, that had
been fought between Christians and Moors since the days of Roderic. There
can be no doubt that victory shone on the banners of the Christians,
notwithstanding the assertion of the Mohammedan writers, who say that
Ramiro was driven from the field. But that the success was so splendid as
the Christians pretend, that eighty thousand of the Moors fell on this
memorable day, is too monstrous to be believed. According to the Arabian
writers, that number only--yet it is surely large enough--left Zamora,
twenty thousand out of the original one hundred thousand remaining to
invest that fortress. And if their account is to be credited--and the
minute circumstances attending it give it all the air of truth--Abd
ar-Rahman took the fortress on his return to Cordova.

During the rest of don Ramiro’s reign one battle only is said by the
Christians to have been fought between the Moors and him, in which he was
of course victorious. But if the Mohammedans are to be believed, that
hero was defeated in 941 by Abdallah, wali of the frontier; and again in
949 by Abd ar-Rahman in person.

In his internal administration Abd ar-Rahman was distinguished for great
capacity of mind, for unbounded liberality, for unrivalled magnificence,
and for inflexible justice. The foundation of the palace and town of
Medina-Azhara, about two leagues from Cordova--the former distinguished
for all the splendour of art and wealth, the latter for a mosque which
rivalled that of Cordova--attested his taste and luxury. The roof of the
palace is said to have been supported by above four thousand pillars of
variegated marble, the floors and walls to have been of the same costly
material, the chief apartments to have been adorned with exquisite
fountains and baths; and the whole to have been surrounded by the most
magnificent gardens, in the midst of which arose a pavilion resting on
pillars of white marble ornamented with gold, and commanding an extensive
prospect. In the centre of the pavilion, a fountain of quicksilver, we
are told, constantly played, reflecting in a new and wondrous manner the
rays of the sun. The whole description reminds us rather of the creations
of genii than of the labours of man. Of the justice of this great king
the Mohammedan world had a fearful example in the fate of his son
Abdallah. Many years before his death he caused his second son, Al-Hakem,
to be recognised as wali alhadi. The choice gave umbrage to Abdallah,
who at length entered into a conspiracy, the object of which seems to
have been the assassination or perpetual imprisonment of Al-Hakem. The
secret was betrayed by one of the number; Abdallah was suddenly arrested,
confessed his meditated crime, and was suffocated, notwithstanding
the entreaties of his intended victim Al-Hakem. “Thy humane request,”
replied the king, “becomes thee well, and if I were a private individual
it should be granted; but as a king, I owe both to my people and my
successors an example of justice; I deeply lament the fate of my son; I
shall lament it through life; but neither thy tears nor my grief shall
save him!” The king seems ever afterwards to have blamed his excessive
rigour. Though at the very summit of human prosperity, he was thenceforth
unhappy. Accordingly, we need not be surprised to hear his own confession
that during near fifty years of empire, his days of happiness amounted to
no more than fourteen.

The reign of Abd ar-Rahman III has been termed the most brilliant period
in the history of the Spanish Arabs.[d]

[Sidenote: [912-961 A.D.]]

Among the Omayyad princes of Spain Abd ar-Rahman III incontestably
holds the first place. His achievements bordered on the fabulous. He
had found the empire in a state of anarchy and civil war, divided
amongst a crowd of chiefs of different race, exposed to constant raids
from the Christians of the north, and on the verge of being absorbed
either by Leon or by the Fatimites. In spite of innumerable obstacles
he had saved Andalusia both from itself and from foreign rule. He had
given to it internal order and prosperity and the consideration and
respect of foreigners. He found the treasury in disorder; he left it
in the most flourishing condition. A third of the annual revenues,
which amounted to 6,245,000 pieces of gold, sufficed for the ordinary
expenditure; another third was kept as a reserve; the rest was devoted
to buildings. The condition of the country was equally prosperous.
Agriculture, industry, commerce, the arts and sciences, flourished
together. The foreigner was lost in wonder at the scientific system of
irrigation, which gave fertility to lands that appeared most unpromising.
He was struck by the perfect order which, thanks to a vigilant police,
reigned in the most inaccessible districts. Commerce had developed to
such an extent that, according to the report of the superintendent of
the customs, the duties on imports and exports constituted the most
considerable part of the revenue. A superb navy enabled Abd ar-Rahman
to dispute with the Fatimites the empire of the Mediterranean, and
secured him in the possession of Ceuta, the key of Mauretania. A
numerous and well-disciplined army, perhaps the best in the world, gave
him a preponderance over the Christian of the north. The most haughty
sovereigns were eager for his alliance. Ambassadors were sent to him by
the emperor of Constantinople and by the sovereigns of Germany, Italy,
and France.[e]

Leaving for a while the Spanish Arabs, now at the height of their power,
we return to the Mohammedans in the East.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[38] The Arabian historians call this the battle of Guadalete [Wadi
Lekah]. Citing Tarik’s letter to Musa and a public speech of his
messenger, as vouchers for their accuracy, they state that Tarik himself
transpierced Roderic with his lance, and having cut off his head, sent it
to Musa, by whom it was conveyed to the caliph Walid.

[39] The white was the colour of the house of Omayyah. Green was
afterwards assumed by the Fatimites, and black by the Abbasids.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII. THE ABBASIDS

[Sidenote: [750-1258 A.D.]]

The revolution which had raised the Abbasids to the caliphate may be
regarded as an uprising of eastern against western Asia; it was the
populations of Khorasan and Irak who had brought it about, and it was
they whom it chiefly benefited. Abul Abbas, who reigned but four years
(750-754) transferred the royal residence from Syria to Babylonia and
took up his abode at Anbar. His brother and successor Al-Mansur, desiring
a more imposing dwelling-place, at first chose Cufa, but finding that
popular feeling ran high there against his own family, and in favour of
the Fatimites, he decided to build for himself a new city which should
owe entire allegiance to him.

FOUNDING OF BAGHDAD (762 A.D.)

Thus he founded Baghdad (762), which was destined to eclipse all
other cities of the Orient. A brick wall strengthened by about 160
towers defended it from attack, and immense sums were spent in its
embellishment. The people of the East regarded with satisfaction
this change of capital which brought the seat of government nearer
to themselves; but the inhabitants of Spain and Maghreb, already
discontented with their isolated situation which made them in a way mere
tributary provinces, were only awaiting a favourable opportunity to
declare their independence.

Upon learning of the downfall of the Omayyads and the ascension of the
Abbasids, Spain immediately cut herself loose from the mother-country and
proclaimed as caliph a member of the Omayyad family, who chanced to be in
Maghreb. Africa, without going so far, appeared to approve the course of
its governor, Abd ar-Rahman, who hesitated to recognise the sovereignty
of Al-Mansur; and the people, equally unwilling to acknowledge the
caliphate of Cordova, gradually broke up into distinct groups each having
its own chief, until the fragile ties which still bound them to the
Abbasid dynasty were completely severed (755-756 A.D.).

The period of the first Abbasid caliphs was also that of the greatest
splendour in the history of the oriental Arabs; it marked the passing of
the age of conquest and the dawning of the new glories of civilisation.
Al-Mansur, brother of Abul Abbas, whose reign was short, in reality opens
the series of those remarkable caliphs whose names, still popular in
Arabia, have been made equally so in other lands by _The Thousand and
One Nights_. He had fought when young under the chiefs of his family and
merited the name “Victorious” which had been bestowed upon him; but his
principal claim to glory lies in having created a system of government
which attests the depth and soundness of his views. Throughout his vast
empire the finance and military forces of the provinces were under the
control of the different governors, who devoted the products of taxation
to supplying the needs of their localities and sent to the caliphs only
what was left over. Not daring to disturb a condition of things so
favourable to the people, Al-Mansur instituted the method of frequently
changing the representatives of the royal power in the provinces, and of
debarring all members of distinguished families from taking part in the
transaction of public affairs. His greatest error was an insufficient
regard for the sanctity of his word, and a relentless abasement of any
servant whose rising greatness seemed to involve a menace. Thus Abdallah,
the overthrower of the Omayyads, Abu Muslim, and later the Barmecides,
all fell victims to a policy as pitiless as it was suspicious.

Al-Mansur devoted a portion of his life to amassing wealth which some
historians estimate to have reached a sum equivalent to £30,000,000,
or $150,000,000, but this avidity did not prevent his displaying great
liberality towards men of learning, and he himself gave the example of an
enlightened interest in the arts and sciences.

During his reign the people, accustomed to rendering him the profound
respect he demanded, grew to look upon the caliph as the representative
of God on earth, and his successors had no difficulty in enforcing
obedience. Nay, they were rather concerned to avoid the despotism
made easy by their unlimited authority. The first caliphs after Abul
Abbas were just princes, who exerted their power for the general and
intellectual welfare of the Arabs. Other cities arose beside Baghdad;
roads were laid, caravansaries, market-places, canals, and fountains
were constructed, learned and charitable institutions were erected, and
the study of letters, commerce, and all the arts of peace were directly
fostered by the government.

HARUN AR-RASHID (786-809 A.D.)

The magnificence of all previous reigns paled before that of Harun
ar-Rashid,[40] Harun the Just (786-809). This famous potentate, in
whom the peculiar genius of the Arab race seems to have reached its
highest development, merits particular mention among the vicegerents of
Mohammed. Brave, generous, and magnanimous, he resisted all temptations
to use despotically his supreme power over a people who never murmured
at his will, and governed with a sole view to assuring the happiness of
his subjects. He loved virtue, was always ready to recognise his own
faults, and neglected no occasion of doing good. That he so far belied
his character as to decree the murder of the Barmecides shows him to
have been deceived by false statements concerning that family, which
had furnished him with his ablest statesmen, Fadl and the grand vizier
Jafar. Of Persian origin, the Barmecides had figured prominently at court
for nearly a century, and it was chiefly at the instigation of their
later representatives that Harun ar-Rashid was so active in protecting
commerce, industry, and the arts. Singularly enough Emin, Harun’s eldest
son, possessed none of the virtues of his father; but his brother,
Al-Mamun, showed profound wisdom in governing the affairs of Khorasan and
by popular choice he was placed upon the throne in 813, Emin being made
to resign his authority.

AL-MAMUN AND HIS SUCCESSORS

[Sidenote: [809-847 A.D.]]

Al-Mamun surpassed all hopes that had been formed of him. Less brilliant
than Harun, he was superior to him in the range of his knowledge and the
practical force of his genius. The single political mistake with which
he can be reproached was an act of gratitude and kindness. In recompense
for services received, he gave to Tahir the hereditary governorship of
Khorasan, and this was the first step towards the dismemberment of the
eastern caliphate; not because the Tahirites were disposed to abuse their
power, but because an unfortunate example had been set, which led the
governors of provinces to seek gradually to cut themselves free from the
control of their rightful sovereign.

Holding education to be the highest blessing of the people, Al-Mamun
opened schools in all parts of his realm, and insured the pursuit of
letters by permanent endowments. He gathered about him learned men of
all nationalities, and would admit no distinctions in religion. He even
decreed that any ten heads of families, whether Christians, Jews, or
magi, who assembled for the purpose, could constitute a church, and that
all were eligible to appointment for public offices. But, liberal as he
was, Al-Mamun was not always safe from hostile attack. The theologians
of Baghdad had already been active in putting down zendism, a religion
compounded of the beliefs of Islam and the magi; and on Al-Mamun’s making
use of some of the writings of this faith to render odious the memory of
Abu Muslim, they brought violent accusations against him. To silence his
adversaries Al-Mamun increased the penalties against separatism, but true
to his principles of tolerance forbore to inflict them.

Al-Mamun’s immediate successors, Mutasim and Wathik, were worthy of the
throne. The first-named made the single mistake of forming his body-guard
of young Turks, whose later successors were to renew the excesses
committed by the prætorians in the time of the Roman emperors; while the
reign of Wathik was disturbed solely by doctrinal disputes. Great indeed
must have been the diversity of opinion in religious matters, since
there are to be counted no less than sixty-three principal sects among
the Arabs. Wathik having brought the light of his reason to bear on the
dogma of the eternity of the _Koran_, sustained with great heat by Akhmed
ben Nasr, was at one time on the point of being dethroned and supplanted
by his rude antagonist. Although treated with severity by prejudiced
historians, Wathik was an excellent prince, who governed his realm with
such wisdom and benevolence that it soon came to contain no beggars, and
he died with the resignation of a firm, enlightened character.

The reigns of the earlier Abbasids are marked by a complete absence
of expeditions undertaken with a view to aggrandisement, the wars
with neighbouring populations being carried on without any thought of
invasion. The Greeks offered the Arabs of the Orient more frequent
pretexts for dispute than other nations, and the frontier line which
separated them became the scene of many sanguinary conflicts. The
vanity of the degenerate Greeks who constituted the population there,
was inordinately flattered by success even in border-warfare, and they
continued their aggressions through the reigns of most of Abul Abbas’
successors.

[Sidenote: [754-833 A.D.]]

During the reign of Al-Mansur the Byzantine emperors had been afflicted
by the loss of Melitene, an important city of Cappadocia, the devastation
of Cilicia, and the defeat of an army on the shores of the Melas, in
Pamphylia, and were destined to suffer further reverses at the hands
of the caliph himself. Irritated by successive defeats, the Arabs got
together all their forces and entered Asia Minor, where they vanquished
all the troops that Irene, guardian of Constantine Copronymus, sent
against them, and finally appeared before the walls of Constantinople.
Preferring capitulation to the horrors of a siege, the empress
surrendered the cities of Cilicia and agreed to pay an annual tribute
of sixty thousand dinars. Harun ar-Rashid, whom Al-Mahdi had placed in
command of this expedition, returned to Syria with considerable booty and
with six thousand prisoners in his train.

In 792 Irene believed herself strong enough to break the treaty, and
preparations for hostilities were begun on both sides. Harun, now
become caliph, had vessels equipped which ravaged the islands of the
Mediterranean and destroyed the Greek fleet in the Gulf of Adalia, making
Irene pay dearly for her attempt at rebellion. She again agreed to pay
tribute, stipulating merely an exchange of captives; which exchange took
place on the bank of a little river in Cilicia, and was ever afterward a
custom when a truce occurred between belligerents. Nicephorus, Irene’s
successor, confident in his courage, hesitated not to tempt fortune again.

[Illustration: SARACEN SWORDS

(From a panel in the Alhambra)]

He addressed a haughty letter to the caliph, which elicited this brief
reply: “In the name of the all-merciful God, Harun ar-Rashid, commander
of the faithful, to Nicephorus, dog of a Roman. I have received your
letter, son of an infidel, and you shall not hear my reply, you shall
see it.” Harun indeed wrote his reply in letters of fire all over the
plains of Asia Minor. He was constantly victorious; but, though the wars
in which he was engaged proved that the Arabs had not yet lost their
military skill, they showed that they had greatly deteriorated from the
standard of the generals of Omar, who would not have paused till they
reached Constantinople itself.

In 829 the war was resumed under a singular pretext. Al-Mamun, who
was a passionate lover of mathematics, learned that Leon, an adept in
that science, resided at Constantinople, and made known his desire to
consult him at Baghdad. The emperor refused to allow Leon to leave
Constantinople, and Al-Mamun again took up arms, but did not push the
war with great vigour. In 833, after Mutasim had come to the throne, the
emperor, encouraged by some slight Greek successes, in his turn took
the offensive, and for a long time the issues were about even between
the two rulers. At last after the taking of Zapetra, the caliph’s native
town (836), by the emperor, Mutasim swore to be revenged; and marching on
Amorium took the city (840) and subjected it to the same treatment as had
been inflicted on Zapetra. Wathik, Mutasim’s successor, was less bent on
war; but the Greeks continued hostilities until, under the emperor Basil,
they regained all the domains in Cilicia that Harun had taken from them.

In their western provinces the Abbasids displayed no great eagerness or
concern; they scarcely sought to hold Spain under their sway, and left
Africa almost entirely to itself, even serving by their own direct acts
to elevate the family of the Aghlabites, and free it from all allegiance
to themselves except the formal recognition of sovereignty. Ibrahim ben
Aghlab thus assumed governorship over all Maghreb; but his successors
were not able to prevent a member of the Alid family from severing from
the Baghdad caliphate the whole of western Mauretania.

BAGHDAD UNDER THE CALIPHS

[Sidenote: [801-908 A.D.]]

The Abbasids hoped, perhaps, that the divisions which could not fail to
arise in Spain would bring the peninsula again under their dominion;
and this anticipation will serve to explain their negotiations with
the Frankish kings, the embassies and presents that passed back and
forth between Harun ar-Rashid and Charlemagne. The Baghdad caliphate,
meanwhile, did not once take up arms against that of Cordova, though
Arabs from the peninsula had made incursions into their domains, and a
fleet, manned by Andalusian pirates, had taken and burned Alexandria,
putting the inhabitants to the sword. In thus abstaining from reprisals
and warlike enterprises the Abbasids yielded to the spirit of the
times. The Arabs of the East were beginning to appreciate the benefits
of civilisation; and the Baghdad rulers responded to the wishes of
their subjects by giving them an orderly system of administration, by
establishing strict justice, by distributing far and wide the advantages
of education, and by cementing the union between the different provinces
of the empire by means of closer commercial and industrial relations.

A chamber of finance and a state chancery had originally been instituted,
and for a time these had been deemed sufficient; but later the chamber
of finance had been replaced by four diwans, one of which was charged
specially with the payment of troops, another with the imposition of
taxes, a third with the appointment of subordinate officials, and the
fourth with the keeping of accounts. The Abbasids had added to this
organisation the office of _hajid_, a sort of chamberlain whose mission
was to introduce ambassadors, and that of a superior judge, who was to
relieve them of the care of deciding important cases that were appealed
from the judgment of the kadi.

[Sidenote: [750-1258 A.D.]]

Upon their accession to power the Abbasids had resolved to give more
unity and force to the administration; and as the burden of affairs was
really too heavy for one man to carry, they had attached to their persons
a vizir (bearer of burdens) whose duty it was to perform all preliminary
labours, and to fix the sum each province was to pay in taxes, so that
the amount of the state revenues could be approximately estimated
in advance. In imposing taxes the caliphs were guided by a verse in
the _Koran_ which ordained that every unbeliever residing in Moslem
territory should be subject to dues; the rate _per capita_ for the entire
population was graded according to the fortune of the individual, the
rich paying more than the poor. There were also certain ground-taxes and
tithes, in the assessment of which great opportunities for extortion were
open to provincial governors, and the need that the whole should be under
the oversight of some vigilant head became plainly apparent.

The flourishing state of finances under their rule enabled the Abbasids
to undertake many and important works. Al-Mahdi built caravansaries
and had cisterns dug along the weary road from Baghdad to Mecca, cut
a new route from Mecca to Medina, and established posting stations
between Hedjaz and Yemen that communication might be easy between the
two important provinces. From a period as early as that of Moawiyah, a
courier service had existed between the various Arab capitals.

The Abbasids also permanently endowed a number of mosques and schools,
which were thus enabled to subsist through all political revolutions.
They collected the archives of the caliphate in Baghdad, and organised in
that city an excellent police, which not only protected individuals but
watched over property night and day. The merchants themselves were formed
into syndicate bodies with the charge of guarding against commercial
frauds, and a supervisor of market-places was appointed to verify the
weights and measures used, and his soldiers dealt summary justice to
all found guilty of trickery. In the desert districts, too, pillage
and depredation had been again begun by the Bedouins, now that warlike
expeditions had ceased, and _miraje_ were appointed whose special office
it was to protect pilgrims and caravans on their way to Mecca.

In this manner the Abbasid caliphs strove to insure the prosperity
of their realm, and under them the Arabs rose to a high degree of
civilisation. With the same ardour that had characterised them in their
military undertakings, they now endeavoured to outstrip the Greeks in
commerce, industry, and the arts, excelling in those very branches of
letters and sciences in which the inhabitants of Constantinople, even in
that city’s decadence, believed themselves to be supreme.

Agriculture was widely practised; by a skilful system of cultivation the
merit and reputation of the fruits and flowers of Persia were greatly
enhanced, and the wines of Shiraz, Yed, and Ispahan became staples of
commerce throughout Asia. Mines of iron, lead, and other minerals were
carefully exploited, beautiful fabrics were manufactured in the cities
of Irak and Syria, and remarkable progress was made in every branch of
mechanical art. The sciences, letters, and decorative art were actively
cultivated, as were architecture and music; while, though a check was
placed upon sculpture and painting in their highest form by the _Koran_,
which forbade the reproduction of the human figure or that of the
Godhead, a number of magnificent monuments were erected in the cities
of Mesopotamia and Mawarannahar. The passion for letters displayed by
Europeans during the Renaissance scarcely equalled that of the Arabs
at this period. The best Greek writings brought from Constantinople
were immediately translated, a school of interpreters was opened at
Baghdad, and fifteen thousand dinars were devoted yearly to educational
institutions. Libraries were founded, and enlarged from century to
century by the ruling princes, and the Arab tongue became the universal
language of Asia, gradually supplanting the more ancient idioms. There
were hospitals, wherein physicians were obliged to submit to several
examinations before being allowed to practise their profession, and
laboratories for experiment with medicinal plants, of which several
had been recently discovered. The Arabs were, in fact, the creators
of modern chemistry, and though they erred in leaning too much toward
alchemy and astrology, their very errors indirectly contributed to the
progress of the science.

Great as was the contrast between the literary culture of the Arabs and
the profound ignorance of Europe during the Middle Ages, the luxury and
magnificence displayed by the Abbasid dynasty forms a no less curious
spectacle. Sole depositaries of the natural wealth of many and vast
provinces, and without a permanent army to support, they disposed freely
of enormous revenues, which were expended in a truly fabulous manner.
Gold and precious stones were fairly strewn through palaces, mosques,
and gardens, and the gifts lavished on friends and favourites reached
a stupendous amount. It is said that Al-Mahdi expended six millions
of dinars during a single pilgrimage to Mecca, and that Zobaida, the
wife of Harun, made use of no utensils save golden ones set with gems,
and wore no stuffs save those woven with silver threads. In Al-Mamun’s
palace were sixty thousand rugs and pieces of tapestry, many of which
were embroidered in gold; and on the occasion of the reception of a
Greek ambassador, he caused to be erected in the audience chamber a tree
of solid gold bearing pearls to represent fruit. Mutasim’s stables in
Samara were said to contain accommodation for a hundred thousand horses;
and when he founded that city, he had the entire site artificially
constructed without regard to the cost of so gigantic an undertaking.

GRADUAL DECLINE OF ARABIAN DOMINION IN THE EAST

[Sidenote: [786-892 A.D.]]

Charlemagne, having heard much of the power of the Baghdad sovereigns,
determined to enter into relations with them, and despatched one Jewish
deputy and two Franks to Irak with presents for the commander of the
faithful. Harun, who feared an alliance between the Frankish king and
the Omayyads of Spain, responded with alacrity to this advance, and sent
ambassadors with splendid presents to Charlemagne in return. Not only
in Europe, but in China and among the Hindus and the Tatars, the Arab
potentates were looked upon as the richest princes in the world, and
exaggerated ideas prevailed as to their power.

Indeed at a casual glance it might seem that centralisation had drawn
into unity all their various provinces, and that a long and prosperous
future lay before the nation; but to an observant eye the signs of
approaching decadence were already apparent. In the material order of
things, that a sovereign should have supreme rights over the property
of his subjects necessarily destroys all impulse towards emulation and
progress among the latter. A people so governed is bound to die out in
discouragement and decay. Under the earlier caliphs no injustice or
spoliation was to be feared; but when the brutal and astute Turks took
the reins of power, the law of the _Koran_, by which supreme authority
centred in one individual, the representative of God on earth, was
certain to work irreparable harm. In the moral and religious order the
same unfortunate conditions prevailed. Gifted minds, irresistibly drawn
towards science while still bound by the letter of Mohammed’s books, had
need of a deliverer who should free them from the yoke of principles
too rigid for the times. Al-Mamun, and after him Mutasim and Wathik,
attempted some modification of doctrines formed for primitive times, but
their efforts were set at naught by the blind obstinacy of the doctors of
the Moslem faith. The _Koran_ now being established as the direct word
of God, its laws were held to be beyond appeal, and all the prerogatives
of absolute despotism were still accorded to monarchy even against the
judgment of those in whom it was vested. If the later Abbasid princes had
been men of high attainments and solid virtue, they would doubtless have
wielded their unrestricted power entirely for the good of the people,
and the golden age might again have been ushered in; but unfortunately
during the second half of the ninth century we see on the throne only
crowned and sceptred slaves. The contempt they inspired broke the springs
of government; anarchy reached its height, and numerous factions, long
suppressed, took up arms once more and spread abroad disorder and dread.

The Alids had several times renewed their pretensions to the throne. Once
Al-Mamun was on the point of abdicating in their favour, thus recognising
the justice of their claims; but a revolt was immediately raised in
Baghdad by the house of Abbas and its partisans, which forced Al-Mamun
to relinquish the idea of dispossessing his whole family. Though their
ambition was not yet fulfilled, the Alids were emboldened by the caliph’s
attitude toward them, and henceforth lost no chance of profiting by the
divisions that necessarily arose in a state possessing no definite law of
succession.

Under Harun and Al-Mamun the Arabian empire in the East attained
its greatest degree of splendour; we shall now observe its gradual
dissolution.

From the reign of Wathik (846) onwards, we see the caliphate becoming the
sport and prey of anarchy, and Baghdad fell under the yoke of a series
of cruel or implacable despots. Mutawakkil, whose reign ushered in the
new order of things, was guilty of atrocities that surpass those of Nero.
He took vengeance on a vizir who had offended him by causing him to be
thrown into a furnace lined with points of steel; and fearing that a plot
was being formed against him, he invited to a festival all the important
officers of his court and had them massacred by his soldiery. The horror
which his cruelties inspired armed against him the hand of his own son,
Muntasir, who himself died of sorrow and remorse within a year of his
accession to the throne (862).

Mustain, grandson of Mutasim, was chosen to succeed him, to the exclusion
of four brothers, two of whom, Mutazz and Mutamid, subsequently came
to the throne. Mustain reigned little longer than three years, and was
replaced by Mutazz, whom a faction raised to the caliphate in 866. A
second faction deposed him in 869 and a son of Wathik, Muhtadi Billah by
name, was proclaimed caliph. This prince’s projects of reform aroused
hatred in many quarters, and he was murdered in his own palace. After
him Mutamid enjoyed the exceptionally long reign of twenty-two years
(870-892), thanks to the ability and devotion of his brother, Muwaffak,
who frustrated all attempts at revolt. Most of the perpetual disorders
from which the country suffered were caused by the Turks whom Mutasim had
raised to the position of body-guard. In permanent garrison at Baghdad,
and in close proximity to the person of the sovereign, these slaves had
from the first been guilty of such excesses that Mutasim was obliged
to leave the capital and retire to the little village of Samara. Their
number and influence had constantly increased during the reign of Wathik,
and at the time of his death they had become such a power in the state
that they had no difficulty in placing Mutawakkil on the throne.

The danger that can arise from the establishment of alien bodies,
organised to be the instrument of the will of a sovereign who is himself
the first victim, is plainly apparent. With interests distinct from
those of the native Arabs, and subject to no control save that of the
caliph himself, these unruly Turks made brute force the agent by which
they obtained their desires. They became accomplices of the parricide
Muntasir out of revenge for some slight suffered at his father’s hands,
and forced him to exclude his brothers and appoint Mustain to the throne.
A delay in the distribution of their pay was sufficient to excite a
revolt, and oblige the caliph to sign his abdication. Muhtadi met with
a still sorrier fate for having desired to subject his redoubtable
body-guard to some sort of discipline; and Muwaffak’s only means of
diverting them from dangerous enterprises at home was to employ them on
distant missions.

[Illustration: AN ARAB CHIEF

(Based on decorations in the Alhambra)]

[Sidenote: [819-879 A.D.]]

The troubles which surrounded the caliphate in Baghdad wrought the most
serious consequences throughout the empire. The governors of provinces,
sole depositaries of power during the intervals of government, aspired
to complete independence and sold their submission to each successive
sovereign. The provinces themselves, regretting the riches that went from
them to swell the disorders of the capital, encouraged the pretensions
of their governors, until these latter finally succeeded in reducing the
caliph to a purely nominal supremacy.

The dismemberment of Spain and Africa had been the first blow struck at
the unity of the Moslem states; when the Abbasid caliphs had invested the
Aghlabites with the government, they had not regarded it as an act of
final abdication on their own part. In Asia the work of disintegration
had gone on more slowly. The Tahirites, whom Al-Mamun had established in
Khorasan by giving full control of that province to his general Tahir,
maintained amicable relations with the caliphs until their realm in turn
became torn by dissensions, and they were finally overthrown by the power
of the Saffarids. Yakub, the leader of this family of Saffarids, wished
to push his victories further, and advanced to the attack of Baghdad
(874). Muwaffak, who was in command of the city, met and defeated him at
Wasit, but did not feel sufficiently strong to follow up his advantage by
pursuit. Yakub retired to his own dominions, and having by the following
year regained all his losses, would shortly have visited the caliph with
complete destruction, had not his life been suddenly cut short (879).

[Sidenote: [819-913 A.D.]]

The establishment of the dynasty of the Saffarids in Khorasan, Sistan,
and Tabaristan cut off all communication between the centre of the
empire, Khwarizm, and the Mawarannahar, and Ismail, the governor of those
provinces, declared his independence in full assurance of impunity. In
819 the sons of Asad ben Saman had obtained from Al-Mamun the command
of Samarcand, Ferghana, and Balkh respectively; one of them, Akhmed,
transmitted his power to his eldest son Nasr, who, by taking possession
of Bokhara, became later sovereign over all Transoxiana. Suspecting his
brother Ismail of complicity with the Turks and Saffarids, against whom
he was obliged vigorously to defend his province, Nasr pursued him with
an armed force (888), but was himself taken prisoner. On this occasion,
Ismail revealed the magnanimity of his character; he caused all the
deference due his rank to be paid to his brother, and up to the time of
the latter’s death in 892 saw that his authority was respected. When he
was at last free to act as sovereign, Ismail forced the Turks to retreat
beyond the Jaxartes, and laid a solid foundation for the Samanid dynasty.

Other principalities were springing into power in the remaining parts
of western Asia. The city of Bassora was seized by an adventurer who
successfully resisted all attacks during the reigns of Mutazz and
Mutamid, and nearly the whole of Arabian Irak was under the dominion
of the Zengians. To Muwaffak is due the glory of retaking these
provinces--and Bassora likewise in 882. He was not so successful in his
enterprise against the Tulunids, who detached Egypt and Syria from the
Arabian empire. Akhmed ben Tulun, one of the Turks educated at the court
of the caliph, had distinguished himself by ability and courage, and
was considered worthy of the post of governor of Egypt and Syria. Once
established in these provinces he had no difficulty in maintaining his
authority, supported as he was by the whole force of the Turkish militia;
and he resolved to declare himself independent. In 877 he claimed the
right of collecting taxes, thus openly cutting himself off from the
caliphs, who, knowing their own weakness, incited the emirs of Syria to
revolt against the Tulunids. Akhmed overcame all these difficulties,
and when he died, in 884, left behind him a consolidated power. His son
Khumaraweih succeeded him, and quelled the opposition of the few hostile
parties that remained.

The rule of the Tulunids was on the whole advantageous to Egypt and
Syria. Akhmed loved science and was withal liberal-minded, generous, and
charitable. At Fostat, the capital of Egypt, he caused a superb mosque to
be erected, which is known to-day as the mosque of Tulun, and also built
palaces and laid out market-places for the accommodation of the traders
of different nations who flocked to Egypt at that time. Khumaraweih was
distinguished for his luxury and magnificence; he was said to have built
an immense menagerie, in which the animals were lodged in splendid cages,
having water brought to them in bronze canals. The bed in which he slept
was said to be gently rocked and supported by a tiny lake of quicksilver,
on which it rested. His death was by assassination, and with him perished
the splendour of the Tulunids.

[Sidenote: [908-946 A.D.]]

No new dismemberments occurring during the reigns of Mutadid (892-902),
Muktafi (902-908), and the first part of the reign of Muktadir (908-913),
it might have been thought that the caliphs would retain the extensive
empire that remained to them. Indeed, many circumstances arose which
materially increased their power. Shortly after his accession to the
throne Mutadid received tribute from Khumaraweih, and subsequently
repulsed the tribes of Arabs and Kurds who had swarmed out of the Syrian
deserts with the intention of overpowering Mosul. Muktafi was even more
successful; he attacked Harun by sea and land and immediately received
the submission of all the emirs. In Egypt the descendants of Tulun
were deserted by the very supporters whom they had formerly laden with
benefits. About this time the Saffarids likewise disappeared, overthrown
by the Samanids, against whom they had been pitted by the artful policy
of the caliphs. In addition to their newly-gained province of Khorasan
the Samanids were given the investiture of Tabaristan and Sidjistan,
Muktafi thus replacing two rival princes in his immediate neighbourhood
by a single ruler whom the Turks did not allow to become dangerous.
Muktafi’s successor, Muktadir Billah (908-932), did not succeed, as
Muktafi had done, in keeping his dominions intact. Powerless in his
own capital, he was little respected outside, and on all sides arose
disturbances that his predecessors had temporarily kept down. After
Muktadir, Kahir (932-934), Radhi (934-940), Muttaki (940-944), and
Mustakfi (944-946) lost their few remaining provinces, and the temporal
power of the caliphs in Baghdad was forever at an end.

In 930 a descendant of the emir, Hamdan, who had asserted his
independence, took several strongholds in the province of Jezira, and
pushing on as far as the northwest of Syria, founded there an important
principality of which the capital was Mosul. The establishment of the
Hamdanites in Jezira facilitated the rebellion of Egypt. Since the fall
of the Tulunids the caliphs had committed the blunder of allowing Egypt
and Syria to remain united, thinking that a frequent change of governors
was all that was necessary to maintain peace. But one of these governors,
Ikhshid the Turk, won over a large party of supporters, and when the
order came for him to relinquish his rule to another, he refused to obey.
Thus Egypt and Syria were finally lost to the Abbasids in 936.

In the neighbourhood of Baghdad the Raikites and the Baridians disputed
the possession of Bassora, Wasit, and the province of Ahwaz, and sought
to play an important part in the politics of the capital. The lords of
Armenia and Georgia ceased to pay a tribute that was no longer demanded,
and the two provinces commenced at that epoch to separate into distinct
realms. In the provinces bordering on the Caspian Sea the same tendency
was to be observed. During the reign of Muktadir a chief named Merdawij
had conquered the province of Gilhan, wrested Tabaristan away from the
Samanids, and subdued the greater part of Aderbaijan. The glory of
founding a new dynasty, however, fell not to him but to three brothers
who fought in his army and who claimed descent from the old Sassanid
kings, although their father, Buya, was only a simple fisherman. Struck
by their courage and ability, the people flocked to their standard, and
to the provinces already gained by Merdawij they added Kerman, Mekran,
Laristan, and many others (933-940).

Baghdad being now surrounded by independent principalities, the dominion
of the caliphs was limited to that city itself, and even in that small
realm their authority was purely nominal. Owing to court intrigues
and the rebellions that were constantly breaking out in the city, the
history of the later Abbasids is nothing but a panorama of executions
of generals, vizirs, sovereigns, and pretenders. Out of fifty-nine
commanders of the faithful thirty-eight came to violent ends, and
suffered calamities worse than death. That the blood of the family of
Mohammed might not be shed, many were made to die of starvation; others
were walled up or cast into glaciers. Kahir emerged from his imprisonment
with blinded eyes, and for the rest of his life begged alms at the doors
of mosques. His successor, Radhi, to escape the tyranny of the Turks
who were now in charge of every branch of the government, created the
post of emir of the emirs. This dignitary, to whom was given command
over the army and control over the public finances, soon came to be the
real sovereign, Radhi, who withdrew to strict seclusion, reserving not a
vestige of authority to himself. But instead of setting, as he thought,
a master over the turbulent Turkish guard, Radhi’s act had simply
augmented the power of its chiefs. One of these, Bajkam, irritated at the
rise of Ibn Raik, got possession of the person of Radhi and forced him
to appoint him, Bajkam, emir of the emirs. The death of this ambitious
politician in the second year of Muttaki’s reign was the signal for fresh
disturbances. Claimants, whose pretensions the Turks were obliged to
combat, sprang up on every side, and the post of emir of the emirs came
to be as hotly contested as that of caliph had formerly been. Muttaki,
having no alternative but to sanction the acts of the stronger side,
thought for a moment of placing himself in the hands of the Ikhshidites;
but Turun ordered him to be put to death and proclaimed Mustakfi caliph.
Exasperated by this terrible abuse of power, the inhabitants of Baghdad
called to their aid the Buyid princes, who had recently established
themselves in the provinces of the former Persian Empire, and in 945
the Turks were finally driven from the city. Muiz ad-Daula set upon the
throne a caliph who was a mere tool to his desires, and reserving the
post of emir of the emirs for himself, became the first of that series of
Buyid emirs which continued for more than a century.

Meanwhile, in singular contrast with the sanguinary turbulence of those
who had usurped their power, the Arabs, weary of wars and civil strife,
gave themselves up to the study of science and letters; the last of
the Abbasids, in the closest seclusion their palaces would afford,
sought consolation for the hardships of their lot in the society of
scholars and literary men. The Buyid princes also followed the example
set by Al-Mamun, and gave a great impetus to the study of astronomy and
mathematics. They levied in their tributary provinces forces sufficient
to enable them to maintain their supremacy against all rival factions,
while the caliphs Muti, Tai, Kadir, and Kaim, deprived of their revenues
and shorn of all authority and kingly state, played exactly the same part
as was enacted by the Merovingian _rois fainéants_ under the tutelage of
their mayors of the palace. Nevertheless, it was only from the hands of
the caliphs that the greater part of the ruling families of Asia would
receive their investitures, the Abbasids being still the legitimate
sovereigns in the eyes of devout Moslems.

THE VARIOUS RELIGIOUS SECTS

[Sidenote: [750-945 A.D.]]

In all times the Moslem empire had been disturbed by a variety of
religious sects. Under the Abbasids the Mutazilites had promulgated a
lofty faith which had exerted great influence over noble minds. There
were others which had confined themselves to protesting against the
license of the times and demanding social reformation, while many
had been made merely the instrument of personal ambition. Among the
most prominent were the Rawandis, a fanatical sect who believed that
to caliphs should be accorded the worship due to divinities, and who
so importuned Al-Mansur with their adoration that he caused them to
be cut to pieces by his guards. More formidable were the Zendians,
who boldly maintained that the holding of property was a crime, and
that man should not eat the flesh of animals. They were mercilessly
pursued and exterminated. In 781 Mokanna incited the population of
Khorasan to revolt, and in 834 Babik founded in Aderbaijan the sect of
the Ismailians, who professed, according to Arab historians, the most
pronounced materialism, and for four years resisted all Mutasim’s efforts
to put them down. Of all the sects, however, none promulgated its beliefs
with such rapidity and success as that of the Karmathians, who, in
the tenth century, infested Arabia and wrested from the caliphs their
spiritual and temporal power over the whole eastern part of the peninsula.

[Illustration: AN ARAB CAVALIER

(Based on decorations in the Alhambra)]

Karmat retained most of the doctrines of the _Koran_, recognising Ali
and the seven imams as direct descendants of Mohammed, and rejecting
only the theory of revelation. He had devised a system of successive
degrees into which his followers were to be initiated, and the last of
these, according to Nowairi and Makrizi, was atheism. It is not likely
that a belief of this nature would have found many adherents had not
Karmat preached at the same time abolition of slavery. Fighting in
the name of liberty, his partisans overcame all opponents; but having
enriched themselves by pillage they fell into the most grievous excesses
and incurred general contumely. The series of their victories commenced
under the reign of Mutadid, when after defeating one of his generals
they advanced on Cufa, and reduced and pillaged it. During the reign of
Muktafi they carried their arms as far as Palestine, and even threatened
Damascus. Their ablest chief, Abu Tahir, conducted them on another
expedition against Cufa, as a result of which the city was totally
destroyed; then drawing near to Baghdad he repulsed the attack of an army
of thirty thousand men. “Are your master’s soldiers as devoted as mine?”
asked Abu Tahir of one of the Moslem generals. He then commanded one of
his men to plunge a sword into his own breast, another to leap into the
Tigris, and a third to precipitate himself from the top of a high cliff;
all of which commands were immediately obeyed. Some years previously
(930) the Karmathians had besieged Mecca and massacred two thousand
persons; they also destroyed the temple of the Kaaba, carried off the
famous Black Stone, and choked up the well of Zemzem. In the Hamdanites
and Ikhshidites they finally met adversaries who were their match; and
after suffering defeat in several encounters they retired permanently to
the deserts of Syria and Bahrain.

In addition to the powerful reformers who aimed at nothing less than the
destruction of both the temporal and spiritual authority of the caliphs,
there were numerous philosophers and ascetics who created schisms in the
very heart of Islam. The most important of these minor sects was that of
the Sufis, whose aim was to hold the soul in constant communication with
God by destroying all natural sentiment and affection. Though frequently
persecuted by the caliphs, the apostles of Sufism succeeded in spreading
their doctrines through all Persia, thus hastening the extinction of
Islam, which was every day losing more ground. The existence of the
Shiites and the Sunnites was a further check on the growth of the Moslem
faith; and the first Abbasids having failed to establish religious unity,
the troubles resulting from such a confusion of creeds were constantly
on the increase. Born enemies of the Omayyads though they were, the
Abbasids, fearing to let the Alids or Shiites gain too much power, were
avowedly on the side of the Sunnites and persecuted all who opposed their
views.

[Sidenote: [900-1020 A.D.]]

After many vain attempts to gain the throne the Alids sought to found
a dominion for themselves in some of the dismembered provinces. One of
their number was for a short time ruler of Tabaristan, but was unable
to maintain his supremacy. In Africa they were more fortunate, the
Edrisites succeeding in establishing themselves in Mauretania, while
in 908 Obaid Allah, who assumed the title of imam, rallied the whole
Maghreb to his cause and overthrew the dynasty of the Aghlabites.
Gradually extending his dominion further along the coast, he laid the
foundations of the Fatimite rule in Kairwan and Mahdiya, and was already
stretching out his hand toward Egypt when death cut short his plans.
His immediate successors, Abul-Kasim (936-945) and Al-Mansur (945-953),
were unable to shake the position of the adroit and valiant Ikhshid;
but they placed themselves in communication with the Arabian Shiites in
Hedjaz and Yemen, and gained many friends by means of largess wisely
distributed. At Ikhshid’s death disputes arose as to the succession,
and Muiz-lidinillah, who replaced Al-Mansur (953), penetrated into the
interior of the country, received the submission of the emirs, and became
the first Fatimite caliph in Egypt. From this period the Fatimites had
the advantage in the spiritual struggle with the Abbasids. After founding
Great Cairo (972) they conquered Syria and a part of Jezira, and their
supremacy was acknowledged by nearly all the populations of Arabia, who
hoped to find in them a defence against the Karmathians in future.

Thus three realms, which were governed respectively by the Fatimites,
the Buyids, and the Samanids, formed the whole of the Arabian empire at
the close of the tenth century; and the history of that period is most
interesting, since it shows how centres of civilisation may shift; not at
Baghdad but at Cairo were Arabian luxury and culture henceforth to shine
with their brightest lustre.

Under the Fatimites commerce, industry, agriculture, the arts and
sciences flourished in Egypt as they had flourished in Asia under the
early Abbasids. Magnificent works were constructed to connect the little
town of Fostat with Mesra, and splendid mosques were added to those
erected by Tulun. It seemed to be the wish of the caliphs to efface from
every mind the remembrance of the glories of Baghdad; and they were also
most zealous in administering the government of their realm, giving their
personal attention to the assessment and collection of taxes. Thanks
to the remarkable fertility of the land, they were soon in receipt of
a revenue nearly as large as those of Harun ar-Rashid. Muiz and Aziz
were wise and moderate in their expenditures and just in their rule;
but Hakim who succeeded them (996-1020) was like an evil genius on the
throne. He reduced his subjects to a state of the most abject submission,
and maintained a wonderfully organised system of police which kept him
informed of the slightest occurrences, thus giving rise to the belief
that he was omniscient. He was in fact worshipped as a divinity, and
his sudden disappearance but confirmed the universal faith, inasmuch as
it was publicly stated that he had ascended to heaven whence he would
again descend to earth at a later day. One or two facts will serve to
give an idea of the blind despotism of Hakim. He set fire to Cairo that
he might enjoy the sight of the city in flames, and he tortured Jews
and Christians to make them renounce their religion, then gave them
permission to return to it again. Terror reigned wherever he appeared;
yet he respected and encouraged learned men and caused the astronomical
tables of Ibn Junis to be dedicated to him. He is supposed to have been
assassinated by one of his sisters, who then assumed the regency in
the name of his son Dhahir, who was still a child (1020-1036). On the
death of Dhahir, Abu Temim Mustansir ascended the throne and held it for
fifty-eight years. Being acknowledged ruler of Africa and Arabia and
proclaimed their spiritual sovereign by the inhabitants of Baghdad, who
were weary of the rule of Kaim-biamrillah, Mustansir was at one time on
the point of re-establishing the universal caliphate; but he was shortly
afterward punished for his ambitious schemes by the loss of the best part
of Syria, and it was with difficulty that he could maintain his supremacy
even in Palestine.

[Sidenote: [933-1094 A.D.]]

The Buyids, who had taken possession of Persia in 933, and were
all-powerful in Irak-Arabia and Baghdad, did not continue to shine for
so long a period as the Fatimites, but their era was ushered in a little
earlier. During the last half of the tenth century, after the Turkish
militia had been destroyed and the Hamdamites driven from Jezira and
Mosul, the Buyids were without rivals in Asia, and the continuance of
peace permitted them to carry on the work begun by Al-Mamun. Two of
their princes, Adhud ad-Daula and Sharaf ad-Daula, revived the taste for
literature by themselves becoming authors, and to them is due the credit
of restoring upon a sound basis the school of Baghdad, which during
their reign was to produce so many learned men. Adhud ad-Daula did not
rest content with showering benefits on poets and scholars; he caused
engineers of the highest merit to sink the bed of the river Bendemir
in Persia, thus preventing the inundations which were so frequent
and disastrous near Shiraz, and furnishing an improved water-way for
commerce. A magnificent hospital was erected at Baghdad, and at its
inauguration a festival was given which is still famous in the annals of
the East. Unfortunately the Buyids succeeded no better than the caliphs
in transmitting their power to their descendants by means of fixed laws;
they actually paved the way for the dismemberment of the empire they had
founded, and laid it open to revolution and disaster by the impolitic
manner in which they distributed its provinces and dependencies among
their children.

The dominion of the Samanids, after lasting for more than a century,
came to an end at about the same time. Alp Tegin, a Turkish slave who
had risen to a position of dignity under Abdul-Malik, failed in his
attempt to get the reins of power into his own hands at the death of that
monarch, and fled to Ghazni, where he gradually assumed control of public
affairs, and for sixteen years successfully resisted all efforts of the
Samanids to overthrow him.

Subuktigin, the wise general and councillor who succeeded him in 995,
carried the Moslem faith and arms into India, ravaging the Punjab,
founding the cities of Bast and Kasdar and defending the Samanids against
the Turks who were invading the Mawarannahar. He designated his youngest
son, Ismail, to succeed him; but the eldest, Mahmud, at the head of an
armed force, proclaimed himself an independent sovereign and became rich
with the plunder of India. He defeated the Samanids without difficulty
and became master of Khorasan in 1000, thus extending as far as the
Caspian Sea an empire that began at the Indus and Ganges and embraced
the territories known to-day as Afghanistan, Herat, and Baluchistan.
Mahmud was the first of the oriental princes to assume the title of
sultan. Ghazni was his capital, hence the name “Ghaznevid” given him
by historians, and the cities of Kanaiy, Lahore, and Delhi in India,
where the greatest renown was gained, paid him tribute. He further
devastated the kingdom of Guzerat and destroyed the pagoda of Somnath,
the magnificence of which defies description. Two thousand Brahmans were
employed in the service of this temple, and its idol was formed of a
single stone fifty cubits high. Immense sums were offered to Mahmud as
a ransom for this idol, which was the most revered in Hindustan, but he
inexorably refused them all.

[Sidenote: [852-1055 A.D.]]

While Mahmud’s troops were swarming over India, Mawarannahar fell into
the power of the tribes of Turkestan. The sultan committed the error
of allowing these enemies to remain, and himself introduced into his
dominions the Seljuk Turks, who had recently been converted to Islam,
and demanded grants of land in Khorasan. Masud, who succeeded his father
in 1028, tried to rid himself of these formidable neighbours, but was
defeated and could do no more thereafter than remain on the defensive.
Toghril Beg, grandson of Seljuk, soon gained a second victory more
decisive than the first over the Ghaznevids and drove them back towards
India. Turning westward he invaded Khawarizm, Jorjan, Irak-Djeni, and
then invaded the dominions of the Buyid princes.

The greatest disorder reigned at Baghdad. To escape the troubles by which
he was beset, the caliph Kaim had placed himself under the protection of
Toghril Beg, and relinquished the temporal power over all the states of
Islam to that prince, who had made great display of piety by erecting
temples to Mohammed in all the conquered cities. The ceremony of the
investiture took place in Baghdad. After kissing the dust before the
caliph, who was clothed in the black garments of the Abbasids, Toghril
Beg ascended the throne that had been especially prepared for him and
received upon his head the two crowns which signified his sovereignty
over the double realm of Persia and Arabia. To further cement this
union of the East with the West, the sister of Toghril Beg was given to
the caliph in marriage, and the title of sultan was introduced in the
_khotba_, or official prayer.

No sooner had the Turks withdrawn, however, than a general uprising
took place at Baghdad, and Abu Temim Mustansir, the Fatimite ruler of
Egypt, was proclaimed caliph in place of Kaim. True to his conciliatory
policy the sultan came to the rescue of the imprisoned Abbasid prince and
replaced him on the throne.

While the Arab predominance was being destroyed little by little, the
Greeks were making renewed efforts to regain some of the colonies they
had lost. As early as 852 their fleets had carried destruction to the
town of Damietta, and a century later they had penetrated as far as
Aleppo and had pillaged the treasures of Saif ad-Daula, the Hamdanite
prince. Two of their emperors, Nicephorus and Zimisces (963-976), had
crossed the Euphrates and made Jezireh swarm with their troops, while
a great many strongholds had been reconquered as well as the country
Cilicia and the island of Cyprus.

Incapable as they were of resisting the incursions of the Greeks, how
were the Baghdad caliphs to check the advance of the warrior hordes
of Turkestan, whom the Seljuks had gathered under their banner by the
promise of spoils to be gained in the lands they were to conquer? The
scattered tribes which the Samanids had easily repulsed in 893 were now
united under one chief and formed a mighty force that, sweeping down all
obstacles, was to subjugate the whole of western Asia and maintain its
supremacy there for centuries to come.

THE SELJUK TURKS

[Illustration: A TURKISH PRIEST]

[Sidenote: [1055-1092 A.D.]]

The name of Seljuks, applied to the Turks who shared in the conquests of
Toghril Beg, must not deceive as to their number; no particular horde was
meant by those thus designated, since in the Turkestan as in the Arabian
deserts any tribe which succeeded in imposing its sovereignty upon others
gave to these the name of its chief. The Turks were of the Scythian
race, to which also belonged those ferocious Huns, presented to us under
so terrifying an aspect by Greek historians; but a distinction must be
made, inasmuch as at the extremity of Asia the Tatars and Mongols lived
still in a state of primitive savagery, acknowledging no god but a sword
stuck upright in the ground; while the tribes called Turks had learned
agriculture and commerce from the Arabs, and were possessed moreover of
an overweening vanity and love of power, which made them willing even
to be slaves that they might gradually work upon the spirit of their
master for his final overthrow and destruction. Moslems themselves and
Sunnites, the Seljuks found everywhere brothers in the enemies’ ranks,
and took their investiture from the hands of the Abbasids. After they had
vanquished the Greeks, from whom they wrested Asia Minor, they extended
their dominion from the Indus to the Bosporus. But they had no idea of
a strong organisation; their independent chieftains, at rivalry among
themselves, disputed with each other the fragments of sovereign power,
and these divisions made them fall an easy prey to the Mongols, when,
in the beginning of the thirteenth century, Jenghiz Khan swept into the
western world.

The most brilliant epoch in the history of the Seljuks was the period
between 1055 and 1092, when they were united under one single head, and
that head was the dispenser of booty. Numerous were the gifts which it
was in the power of Toghril Beg to bestow on relatives and followers.
Recognised as sultan or supreme ruler by the caliphs, he extended his
sovereignty over Jezireh and Armenia, and it was in the midst of further
exploits that death surprised him in 1063. His nephew, Alp Arslan,
succeeded him and enjoyed a brilliant reign. He vanquished the Roman
emperor, Diogenes, destroyed the independence of the Georgians, and had
just carried his arms into Turkestan, when he died by the hand of a
citizen of Khwarizm. The greater part of Asia had come under his sway,
twelve hundred chiefs paid homage to him, and two hundred thousand
soldiers marched under his banner; and yet he was not the most brilliant
among the princes of his family; that glory was reserved for his son,
Malik Shah (1072-1092).

Malik Shah was a ruler endowed with the highest qualities, and his
noble projects were ably seconded by his grand vizier, Nizam al-Mulk.
Mosques and colleges were erected at Baghdad, and new roads and canals
facilitated communication between the most distant points of the
empire. While Nizam al-Mulk occupied himself with the details of the
administration, the sultan travelled from one of his states to another
seeking to make their boundaries recede ever further and further. His
name was uttered in prayers from Mecca to Baghdad, from Ispahan to
Kashgar; and he ultimately became master of all Asia Minor. By his
orders Suleiman, one of his kinsmen, entered the territory of the
Greeks and advanced to the Bosporus, after having conquered all the
countries situated between Great Armenia, Georgia, the Black Sea, the
Mediterranean, Albania, and Lesser Armenia (1081). This was the origin of
the sultanate of Iconium and Rum, afterwards Asiatic Turkey, which played
so important a rôle in the time of the Crusades. The Greeks were driven
out of Asia by the victories of Suleiman; and in spite of their Christian
population, Antioch and the cities of Mesopotamia were obliged to submit
to the Turkish yoke. In one of these expeditions Malik Shah was taken
prisoner, and Nizam al-Mulk freed him in a manner as prudent as it was
adroit; but the sultan afterwards turned upon and disgraced this eminent
minister, who was to fall at length by the sword of the Ismailians at the
age of ninety-three.

[Sidenote: [1092-1218 A.D.]]

At the death of Malik Shah (1092) the Seljuk empire, losing its unity,
broke up into several independent principalities. In vain the sultan in
Persia strove to exercise a sort of supremacy over the other princes of
his family; the four sons of Malik Shah, Mahmud, Barkiyarok, Sinjar, and
Muhammed, divided the land among themselves at the close of protracted
wars that exhausted the resources of the Seljuks without procuring
any beneficial results either to Islam or the Turkish race. From this
point the various countries and provinces that had once formed one
realm drifted further and further asunder. In 1096 the emir Ortok
established himself in Jerusalem with the intention of founding there
a hereditary sovereignty and a governor of Khwarizm; profiting by the
intestine troubles of the Seljuks, he declared his independence, and
his successors, commencing a series of conquests which were to include
Mawarannahar, Khorasan, Irak, and Kerman, renewed the empire of the
Ghaznevids. Certain princes of that race had retained the provinces
contiguous to the two banks of the Indus up to the time when the Ghurids,
first at Lahore (1183-1205) and then at Delhi, undertook the siege of
India, ravaging Benares, subjugating Bengal, and giving birth to the
Afghan dynasty in the ancient Paropamisus.

The Ghurids had already been established twenty-five years in the
dominion left by the last of the Ghaznevids when Muhammed, sultan of
Khwarizm, took from them their western provinces, and became nearly as
powerful as Malik Shah had been. At the moment of his greatest splendour
this prince fell a victim to the Mongol invasion (1208-1218).

We have witnessed the development of the antagonism between the Turkish
and Arab races, whereby barbarism threatened to submerge the Moslem
states, as it had menaced Europe in the time of the Germanic invasion.
But by the law of compensation the Turks, while making felt about them
the authority of the sword, imbibed the influence of Arab civilisation,
and adopted with their religion and language their respect for science
and the arts. A comparison of the decadence of the Arabian and Roman
empires offers points of the most striking similarity; in the East
the sultans renewed the glories of the reigns of Theodoric and of
Charlemagne, and the school of Baghdad continued to shed effulgence over
all Asia up to the end of the fifteenth century.

Still without influence, though restored to independence by the weakening
of the Seljuks, the Abbasid caliphs remained in the capital, to which
their authority was mostly confined. No successors of Kaim had revolted
against the tyranny of the Seljuks except Mustarshid (1118-1135) and
Rashid (1135-1136), who both committed acts of resistance, the latter
even losing his life in defending Baghdad against the sultan Massud,
whose supremacy he obstinately refused to recognise.

Massud, grandson of Malik Shah, was still strong enough to command
respect, and during his life-time Muktafi, Rashid’s successor, ventured
on no open rebellion. But at his death, there being disputes as to the
rights of succession, the caliph publicly presented himself as the lawful
sovereign, and after repelling all attacks directed against Baghdad,
got himself acknowledged throughout Irak-Arabia. Affairs remained in
this condition for a century, during which Mustanjid, Mustadi, Nasir,
Dhahir, Mustansir, and Mutasim had not to endure the shame of seeing
the government in the hands of others. They were at liberty to protect
commerce and industry, letters and sciences, without incurring anyone’s
censure; and Baghdad, in the midst of the disturbances which broke forth
on all sides, was as an inaccessible fortress, into which even the rumour
of certain bloody engagements between hot-headed Sunnites and intractable
Shiites could penetrate but feebly.

ARABS AND TURKS UNITE AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS

While the power of the Seljuks was gradually declining in the eastern
provinces, what was taking place in the western provinces of the Arabian
empire? At the death of Malik Shah (1092) three sultanates were formed,
those respectively of Aleppo, Iconium, and Damascus, having no connection
with each other, nor with the sultanates of Persia or of Kerman. The
first of these distinct realms extended over Asia Minor, the other two
included the large cities of Jezireh and Syria. A favourable opportunity
now presented itself to the Fatimite caliphs to reconquer some of their
former possessions in those countries; but so fallen were they from their
early greatness that they permitted the names of the Seljuk sultans to be
mentioned in the public prayers at Hedjaz. Far from seeking to arm the
Arabs against the Turks, Mustali, successor to Mustansir, had had but one
aim, that of obtaining certain barren concessions from the Seljuk princes
by intervening in their private quarrels; and moreover an unforeseen
incident had arisen which diverted all minds from internecine troubles.

[Sidenote: [1097-1171 A.D.]]

The arrival of several armies of Christians, sent to Palestine with the
mission of delivering the Holy City, aroused in the Moslems all their
religious fanaticism. Arabs and Turks suspended their mutual animosity to
make one cause against the common enemy; the danger once past, however,
divisions again broke forth that greatly facilitated the progress of
the Christians. Before the arrival of Godfrey de Bouillon (1097) the
army of Peter the Hermit had perished in the domains of the sultan of
Iconium, and the Moslems, thinking they had nothing more to fear from
without, recommenced their civil wars; thus the disciplined troops of the
first true crusaders found no power to combat stronger than that of the
Seljuks divided among themselves, and after having crossed the mountains
of Cilicia they took the city of Antioch and made an easy entrance into
Palestine.

The Moslems everywhere remained divided and without a common head. To
the Fatimite caliphs, Mustali, Emir, Hafidh, Dhafir, Faïz, and Adid,
or rather to their grand viziers, it never occurred to unite with the
independent princes of Syria for the purpose of repulsing the enemy
of their common faith; the main objects of their policy seemed to be
to carry on negotiations with the Turkish emirs, the war against the
Franks occupying a subordinate place in their concern. At the death of
Barkiyarok, however, there suddenly arose a new and powerful defender of
Islam.

Imad ad-Din (called “the bloody” by our chroniclers) had distinguished
himself at the court of the Seljuks in Aleppo and Mosul. Organising for
himself under the name of Atabekm a small independent state, he spread
terror among the emirs all about him, and finally attacked the Seljuk
sultan at Aleppo and became master of that town (1127). He next proceeded
to awake in the Moslems their ancient hatred for the name of “Christian”
and commenced against the Franks a sort of guerilla warfare which
terminated in the taking of Edessa, after which he forced the kings of
Jerusalem to make appeal to Europe.

Zenki was succeeded by his sons Saif ad-Din and Nur ad-Din, the latter
of whom proved himself a worthy successor of his father. He harassed the
Franks by repeated attacks, and allowed the two monarchs to exhaust their
forces by vain efforts to take Damascus, which was still under the power
of the Seljuks. When they finally retired, defeated, Nur ad-Din himself
assailed the sultan, who was enfeebled by this long, heroic resistance,
took from him Damascus, and entered Palestine, which he ravaged in every
direction. By a fortunate circumstance he was soon permitted to mingle in
the affairs of Egypt, by offering troops to a vizier for the purpose of
suppressing the caliph Adid. Not receiving the reward promised for this
service, he opened hostilities at once, and several times defeated the
kings of Jerusalem, while his lieutenant, Shirkuh, became master of Egypt
and forced the caliph to bestow upon him the charge of grand vizier. This
was the sentence of death for the Fatimites. Shirkuh’s nephew, Saladin,
sharer in his uncle’s secret designs, carried the revolution to a head,
and in less than a month prayers were said in the mosque in the name of
the Baghdad caliph, Nostadi, and Adid was deposed without a voice being
raised in his favour (1171).

SALADIN AND HIS SUCCESSORS AGAINST THE CRUSADERS

[Sidenote: [1171-1229 A.D.]]

Scarcely did Saladin get into his hands the resources of the wealthy land
of Egypt than he commenced against the Franks that series of assaults
which has made his name famous. He was later elevated to the supreme
rank by the universal choice of the Moslems at the death of Nur ad-Din,
the latter’s son having been put aside.

The reign of Saladin, who was the most interesting figure in the
history of the Crusades, represents for us the highest point of Arab
civilisation. Being by birth a Kurd, he cannot be said to belong to
the Turkish race, though he possessed the warlike instincts of a Turk,
joined to a superior intelligence. In Godfrey de Bouillon and Richard
the Lion-hearted are personified the piety, generosity, and valour of
Christian chivalry; Saladin is no less the hero of the Moslem world.
Unfaltering courage, magnanimity, a spirit of strict justice, and
unshakable fidelity to his plighted word were among his principal
virtues. Passing his life as he did in the midst of wars, he had little
opportunity to foster the arts of peace; yet he was no stranger to
letters and the sciences, and he neglected no opportunity to elevate
himself in the esteem of his people. Saladin was the first to unite under
one control the forces of Syria and Egypt, and therein lies the secret of
his success against the crusaders.

[Illustration: A CRUSADER OF THE THIRD CRUSADE]

At his entrance into Palestine, Jerusalem was a prey to the worst
disorders, owing to the chiefs of the Crusade not being content to guard
the sacred places that had been entrusted to them, but aspiring to govern
all the cities and strongholds. The Holy City fell immediately into
his power. The Moslems took possession of the temples as mosques, and
besieged all the maritime towns; but a check inflicted upon them at Tyre
revived the courage of the Franks and enabled them to await the arrival
of Richard and Philip Augustus. The Third Crusade followed in 1187-1192,
but Jerusalem could not be conquered by the Christians in spite of the
bravery of the English king. The magnanimity shown by the sultan of Egypt
in the treatment of his prisoners is well known; he set all the foreign
knights at liberty, merely stipulating that each should bestow his name
upon some newborn child.

Several months after the departure of Richard, Saladin died at Damascus,
admired by his enemies and regretted by Moslems, who foresaw that new
divisions would arise. Indeed three Eyyubid states at once came into
being; one in Egypt, another in Damascus, Jerusalem, and Lower Syria, and
the third in Aleppo and Upper Syria. Three sons of Saladin had divided
the states left by their father, two of them being despoiled by their
uncle Adil Saif ad-Din, who remained master of Egypt and Damascus. Malik
Adil, called Saphedin in our chronicles, was the sworn enemy of the
Franks; he took from them the city of Tripolis, and was the determining
cause of the Fifth Crusade.

Malik al-Kamil, his son, became sultan of Egypt in 1218, and graciously
received presents from Frederick II, when that prince entered Palestine
at the head of the Sixth Crusade, and received from him the city of
Jerusalem that had cost the Moslems so many lives. The Eyyubid sultans
that succeeded Malik looked upon the Franks as enemies who must be
driven from Asia at any cost; and so Jerusalem fell again into infidel
hands and became in turn the possession of the sultans of Egypt and of
Damascus.

Thus we find, at the commencement of the thirteenth century, the
posterity of Saladin wielding power over almost the whole of the
western part of the Arabian empire. A descendant of Nur ad-Din, it is
true, possessed a part of Jezireh, and certain Eyyub princes reigned
over provinces of the peninsula; while the name of the Abbasids, last
representatives of the former Arab supremacy, was still proclaimed
in public prayers. The Alids and Fatimites formed a single sect,
without unity or political influence. Armenia and Georgia had reverted
to Christianity, and a considerable faction known in history as the
Ismailians, Bathenians, or Assassins had still retained a certain
prominence.

[Sidenote: [1090-1250 A.D.]]

This sect was founded toward the close of the eleventh century by Hassan
Sabba, who succeeded in gaining an absolute ascendency over the minds of
his followers. An enemy alike to Christianity and Islam, he promulgated
a doctrine which was similar to that of the Karmathians, and among
his possessions were several fortresses, in one of which he resided.
The name “assassins” is a corruption of the word _hashish_, a sort of
intoxicating drink by means of which Hassan Sabba persuaded his followers
that he could initiate them in all the joys of paradise. Hassan assumed
the character of a lesser providence charged with redressing wrongs and
punishing untruth; and as he at the same time permitted all sorts of
brigandage on the part of his sectarians, the dynasty he established
terrorised all western Asia for more than two centuries. They carried
their arms into Syria, where they erected fortifications and pillaged all
the caravans that passed through. As late as the thirteenth century they
possessed stations in Irak and Syria, not far from Damascus and Aleppo.

THE MONGOLS UNDER JENGHIZ KHAN INVADE WESTERN ASIA

[Sidenote: [1220-1258 A.D.]]

Such was the situation of the oriental world when a new race of
conquerors, the Mongols, descended upon western Asia. Like the Turks
the Mongols formed one particular branch of the Scythian race, but had
preserved, in the depths of Tatary, their primitive customs and religion.
Their life was nomadic, their organisation tribal, and obedience to their
chiefs, together with love of war and pillage, were their distinguishing
characteristics.

Jenghiz Khan was already ruler of Tatary and Northern China when he
directed his movements westward and menaced Mawarannahar (1219). This
province belonged at the time to Muhammed, sultan of Khwarizm, who
was at war with Nasir, caliph of Baghdad, for a very serious cause.
Nasir, alarmed at the growing power of Muhammed, had armed the Ghurid
princes against him; whereat Muhammed had summoned to a grand council
in his palace a number of doctors and jurists whose decision could not
be doubtful, and had declared the reign of the Abbasids, usurpers of
the caliphate, to be at an end. A descendant of Ali, Ala ad-Din, was
proclaimed caliph in place of Nasir, and a mighty expedition was prepared
against Baghdad. Nasir was saved by the arrival of the Mongols at that
juncture, the sultan being obliged to direct his entire force toward
Mawarannahar, where it was cut to pieces. Muhammed himself fled to an
island in the Caspian Sea, leaving his son Jelal ad-Din to meet and
resist the invaders as best he might (1220). Courageous to foolhardiness,
this prince would actually have opposed a successful resistance to the
terrible enemy had he been supported by a people determined to defend
their homes at any cost; but betrayed and abandoned by those upon whom
he should have been able to rely, he experienced the sorrow of seeing
the hordes of Jenghiz Khan sweep devastatingly through Mawarannahar,
Khwarizm, Gilan, and Aderbaijan. When the conqueror, master of 1,700
square leagues, retired to his own capital, Karakorum (1220-1227), Jelal
ad-Din, who had taken refuge in India, returned, and all the populations
who had escaped subjugation flocked to his banners. Out of the remains
of his father’s possessions he formed a new empire which extended from
the source of the Ganges to Mosul, and for yet a little while Baghdad
was secure against attack by the Mongols. But Ogdai became khan by the
consent of his father, Jenghiz, and all the greatest chiefs immediately
set out to invade the domains of Jelal ad-Din, so that the latter was
again reduced to flight, and later found death at the hands of an
assassin.

Ogdai was less fortunate in his attempts against the sultan of
Iconium and against Baghdad, which was ably defended by the caliph
Mustansir (1235-1241). Kuyuk his successor (1241-1251) also made but
little progress and had to be content with driving from his court the
ambassadors of the caliph and of the sultan. Mangu Khan, who reigned
next, was seized with a desire for conquest, and sent his brothers Kublai
and Hulagu on missions of aggrandisement. While Kublai was occupied in
completing the submission of China, Hulagu left Karakorum at the head
of a numerous army and besieged Baghdad, with which he had already held
secret communication. The caliph Mustasim, informed of his approach,
made no attempt at resistance, and for seven days his capital was at
the mercy of the Mongols, who pillaged and destroyed on all sides,
burning many priceless manuscripts that they found in the libraries and
colleges. Mustasim was strangled and his corpse dragged around the walls
of Baghdad, which had been witnesses of all the different phases of the
Abbasids’ rise and fall--their grandeur, their decadence, and their
closing ignominy.

The Mongols had now only a step to take to seek the conquest of Egypt
and Syria; but they encountered the mamelukes, whom they were unable to
vanquish. As their name indicates, the mamelukes were Circassian slaves
whom Saladin’s successors had imported to their palaces, and who renewed
at Cairo the insubordination and excesses of which the Turkish soldiery
had been guilty at Baghdad.

When the Khwarizmians fled to Syria before Jenghiz Khan, the sultan of
Damascus gave to the Franks Tiberius, Jerusalem, and Ascalon in return
for their aid. Now the sultan of Egypt and his mamelukes joined forces
with the Khwarizmians, and during a series of combats in which Jerusalem
was taken and retaken several times, they concluded by turning upon their
own allies and almost destroying them (1240-1245). Three years later they
repulsed at Massur the attack of St. Louis, who had begun an invasion of
Egypt. In 1250 a revolution occurred which changed the whole face of the
country.

[Sidenote: [1258-1517 A.D.]]

The mamelukes, dissatisfied with the treaty they had concluded with
the king of France, their prisoner, rose in revolt and proclaimed one
of their chiefs, Muiz ad-Din, sultan. St. Louis, who had retired to
Palestine, sought in vain to raise up enemies against the mamelukes by
entering into relations with the khan of the Mongols, and the leader of
the Ismailians. Syria, after having been briefly occupied by Hulagu, who
put an end to the sultanates of Aleppo and Damascus (1258), remained
permanently, together with Jezireh, in the hands of the mamelukes. The
Franks lost successively their remaining possessions and a new dynasty of
Abbasid caliphs arose, who for over two centuries exercised no higher
function than that of bestowing a sort of religious consecration upon
the sovereigns of Egypt. In 1517 the Ottoman Turks, already masters of
Constantinople and Asia Minor, exterminated the mamelukes, and extended
their authority over all the countries known to-day under the name of
Asiatic Turkey.

Situated as they were in the midst of incessant revolutions, and
suffering from the onslaught of barbarian races from the north, the Arabs
began gradually to disappear; but the great movement they imparted to
civilisation has never been lost in Asia, and traces of their beneficent
influence are still everywhere apparent. We have seen the Seljuk, Malik
Shah, borrow from the school of Baghdad the reforms he introduced into
the Persian calendar; before him Mahmud, the Ghaznevid, had called to
his councils a universal genius--Albiruni, who exercised a remarkable
influence upon the century in which he lived; the Mongul, Hulagu, who
could not save from the flames the precious instruments and records that
had been the result of years of enlightened research, permitted the
celebrated mathematician, Nasir ad-Din Thusi, to build a magnificent
observatory at Meraga; and lastly his brother Kublai, when he became
emperor of China, carried with him into the celestial empire all the lore
and wisdom of the Occident.

Under the first Ottoman emperors we shall note the use by eminent writers
of the old dialect of the Abbasids; but this is the last faint effulgence
of a protracted period of glory. The tyranny of the sword is to usurp
power over all the Asiatic continent--among the Manchurian Tatars in the
east, the Usbegs in the north, the Sophia in Persia, and the Ottoman
Turks in the west. From an intellectual point of view the Orient is to
fall again into immobility and torpor, until the nations of the west,
carrying out on a grander scale the work begun by the Arabs, shall so
develop all the forces of science and of human industry as to react on
Asia, and infuse into the swarming populations of those vast spaces the
spirit of a new life.[b]

We have now seen the sceptre of Mohammed pass from his own race. It
remains to resume the story of the Arabs in Spain.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[40] [Also spelled Harun-er-Rashid and Harun al-Rashid.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX. THE DECLINE OF THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN

[Sidenote: [961-1492 A.D.]]

Al-Hakam II, the son and successor of Abd ar-Rahman, inherited all the
great qualities of his father. He was, however, averse to war, fond
of tranquillity, and immoderately attached to literature. His agents
were constantly employed in the East in purchasing scarce and curious
books; he himself wrote to every author of reputation for a copy of
that author’s works, for which he paid royally; and wherever he could
not purchase a book, he caused it to be transcribed. By this means he
collected an extensive library, the unfinished catalogue of which, in the
time of Ibn Hayan, reached forty-four volumes. On his accession, that he
might devote his chief time to the public administration yet not neglect
interests so dear to him, he confided to one of his brothers the care of
his library, and to another the duty of protecting literary institutions
and of rewarding the learned. His reign is the golden age of Arabian
literature in Spain.

He appears never to have been engaged in war with the Christians; for
though the Arabian writers mention the siege and reduction of an Estefano
de Gormas by the king in person, no mention is made of such a fact by
the contemporary bishop of Astorga. In Africa, his general, Khalib,
successfully repressed an insurrection of two local governors, and
rendered the walis of Fez again dependent on the throne of Cordova.

As Hisham II, the son and successor of Al-Hakam, was but eleven years
old when he ascended the throne, the regency was conferred by the
queen-mother on her secretary, Muhammed ben Abdallah, a man of great
genius, valour, and activity. Muhammed, better known as Almansor, may,
in fact, be regarded as the king; for he alone throughout life governed
the realm. Hisham was too feeble, too despicable, too much addicted to
slothful pleasures, to command even the passing notice of the people.

ALMANSOR

[Sidenote: [977-998 A.D.]]

The wars of Almansor with the Christians, which proved so fatal to them,
occupy the most prominent part of his administration. Without acquainting
them with his intention to disturb a peace which had continued during
the reign of Al-Hakam, in 977 A.D. he penetrated into Galicia, where
booty and captives in abundance rewarded the avarice of his followers.
In the two years succeeding, he frequently renewed his incursions, both
into Galicia and Tarragona, without encountering much opposition. Under
an infant king, the Christians were too much occupied with their internal
dissensions to unite even in defence of their country. In short, his
destructive inroads are said to have occurred twice every year during a
great part of his life.

In 981 Almansor not only reduced Zamora, but took possession of many
other fortresses in the neighbourhood. The ensuing campaigns were no
less successful; they are, however, too numerous to be particularised.
It will be sufficient to state that in 983 A.D. he took Gormaz; in
984, Simancas; in 986, Sepulveda; in 987, he destroyed Coimbra, which,
however, the Moors themselves soon rebuilt; in 989, he reduced Artienza,
Osma, and Alcova; in 992, Montemayor; in 994, San Estevan and Corunna; in
995, Aguilar; in 996, the important cities of Leon and Astorga, with a
great number of inferior places; and in the same year he laid waste the
whole of Galicia, not sparing even the holy precincts of Compostella. His
restless barbarity, and still more his innumerable acts of sacrilege,
are dwelt upon with indignant wonder by the old chroniclers. But many
precious things escaped his fury; and many more, such as the bodies of
saints and kings, were removed by the terrified Christians from Leon to
Oviedo--for the mountains of the Asturias again became the inaccessible
asylum of the native monarchy. The bells of Compostella were sent to
Cordova, to be melted into lamps for the famous mosque of that city.
But the indignant saint sought for revenge; for, on their return to
Cordova, the misbelievers were seized with a violent dysentery, which
carried off the greater portion of them; comparatively few (if the bishop
of Astorga[b] is to be believed, not one) returned to the Mohammedan
capital. Later writers than Sampiro assign--perhaps with truth--much of
the honour to the Christians, who, on learning the extent of the disease,
pursued the misbelievers, and cut off such as Santiago would have spared.
However this be, on the departure of the invaders, the Christians issued
from their mountains, rebuilt their towns, and restored the church of
Compostella.

During these successful operations against the kings of Leon, Almansor
had time to signalise his administration in other parts. In 985 he seized
on Barcelona; and would have carried his victorious banners to the
Pyrenees, had not his march been arrested by intelligence from Africa.
Al-Hasam, an emir of Almaghreb, who during the late reign had usurped the
government of the whole province, and been expelled by Khalib, had fled
to Egypt. By Nazar, the sultan of that country, he had been favourably
received; and on his return he bore an order to the governor of Tunis
to provide him with three thousand horse, and some Berber infantry. His
little army was speedily reinforced; for in that country, more perhaps
than any other on the face of the earth, he who endeavoured to disturb
existing institutions was sure to receive some degree of co-operation.
The general of Almansor--for Hisham was nobody--was defeated and
compelled to seek refuge in Ceuta. But Abdul-Malik, the son of Almansor,
hastened to the scene of strife, and in two battles annihilated the
forces of his enemy, whom he made prisoner; and who, though relying on
the faith of treaties, was sent to Spain and executed. With Al-Hasam
ended the dynasty of the Edris, which had ruled in Fez about two hundred
years. In 987, however, the flames of war were rekindled by Balkin ben
Zeiri, and nourished by his son and successor. After various alternations
of fortune the country was pacified by the victories of Abdul-Malik, who
was rewarded by the dignity of emir of Almaghreb.

DECAY OF POWER

[Sidenote: [998-1009 A.D.]]

But the chief attention of the hajib was always turned to the natural
enemy of his nation. From his elevation he had meditated the destruction
of the Christian power. Now that Africa was pacified, and his son able to
send him a supply of Berber troops, he resolved to execute his project,
and as usual to commence with Leon. His preparations which he had been
long making were immense; but this circumstance saved Spain. Terrified at
the approaching danger, Sancho king of Navarre, and another of the same
name, the count of Castile, entered into a confederacy with the regency
of Leon (Alfonso V, who then reigned, was only in his eighth year), to
repel the common foe. This was the first time during the administration
of Almansor that the three powers thus united; they were, in fact,
generally at war with one another; a circumstance which, coupled with
the frequent minority of the kings of Leon, will fully account for the
unparalleled triumphs of that hero.

In 1001 the Mohammedan army, in two formidable bodies, ascended the
Duero, and encountered the Christians in the vicinity of Calatanazar,
a place between Soria and Medina Cœli. When Almansor perceived the
widespread tents of the Christians, he was struck with surprise. The
battle commenced with break of day, and was maintained with unexampled
obstinacy until darkness separated the combatants.

That the loss on both sides was immense, may well be conceived from
the desperate valour of the two armies. If Almansor by his frequent
and impetuous assaults broke the adverse line, it was soon reformed,
and the next moment saw the Christian knights in the very heart of the
infidels. Overcome with fatigue, with anxiety, and still more with the
mortification of having been so unexpectedly repelled, he slowly retired
to his tent, to await the customary visits of his generals. The extent
of his disaster was unknown to him, until he learned, from the few who
arrived, the fate of their brother chiefs. To hazard a second field,
he well saw, would be destruction; and burning with shame he ordered
a retreat. Whether the Mohammedans were disturbed or not in their
retreat is uncertain, but Almansor himself proceeded no further than the
frontiers of Castile, before he sank under the weight of his despair.
Obstinately refusing all consolation--some accounts say all support--he
died in the arms of his son Abdul-Malik, who had hastened from Africa to
see him, the third day of the moon Shaffal (1002).

Almansor was formed for a great sovereign. He was not only the most able
of generals, and the most valiant of soldiers, but he was an enlightened
statesman, an active governor, an encourager of science and the arts,
and a magnificent rewarder of merit. His loss was fatal to Cordova.
The national sorrow was mitigated for a moment by the appointment of
Abdul-Malik to the vacant post of hajib. This minister promised to
tread in the steps of his illustrious father; his administration both
in Africa and Spain was signalised by great spirit and valour; but,
unlike Almansor, he found the Christians too well prepared to be taken
by surprise. He was suddenly seized with excruciating pains--the effect,
probably, of poison; and he died in 1008, in the seventh year of his
administration. With him ended the prosperity of Mohammedan Spain.

[Sidenote: [1009-1012 A.D.]]

Abd ar-Rahman, the brother of Abdul-Malik, was next advanced to the
post of hajib. He prevailed on the childless monarch to designate him
as successor to the throne. This rash act occasioned his ruin, and was
one of those which accelerated with fearful rapidity the decline of the
state. The race of the Omayyads was not extinct; and Muhammed, a prince
of that house, resolved to chastise the presumption of the hajib. He
rapidly marched on the city, forcibly seized on the palace and king, and
proclaimed the deposition of the hajib, who later was wounded, taken, and
crucified by the barbarous victor.

Muhammed first caused himself to be appointed hajib; but the modest title
soon displeased, and he aspired to that of king. He who had successfully
rebelled against his sovereign, and who held that sovereign a prisoner in
the palace, was not likely to hesitate at greater crimes. By his orders
Hisham was secretly conveyed to an obscure fortress, and there confined.
At the same time the death of the king was publicly announced; a person
resembling him in stature and countenance was, we are told, substituted
for him, and laid in the royal sepulchre; and Muhammed, in conformity
with the pretended will of his predecessor, was hailed as prince of the
believers.

But the usurper was far from secure in his seat of power. The dangerous
example which he himself had set of successful rebellion, was too
attractive not to be followed; and his own acts hastened the invitation.
Incensed against the African guard which had supported the factions of
Abd ar-Rahman, he dissolved that formidable body, and ordered them to
be expelled the city. They naturally resisted; but with the aid of the
populace he at length forced them beyond the walls, and threw after them
the head of their chief. The exasperated Africans swore to be revenged,
and proclaimed Suleiman, of the royal blood of the Omayyads, the
successor of Hisham. As the forces of Suleiman were too few to make an
open attack on Cordova, he traversed the country in search of partisans,
and added greatly to the number of his followers. He even procured many
Christian auxiliaries from Sancho, count of Castile. In an obstinately
contended battle he overthrew the usurper; twenty thousand troops of
the latter being left on the field. The victor hastened to Cordova, and
assumed the reins of sovereignty. There, however, he did not long remain;
he felt he was unpopular; and to avoid assassination, he shut himself up
in the palace of Azhara.

The African domination--for such his was--became odious to the native
Moslems; nor was the feeling lessened by the presence of the Christian
auxiliaries. The latter were honourably dismissed; but still there was
no solid security for Suleiman, against whom plots were frequent. To
add to his vexations, Muhammed, aided by Count Raymond of Barcelona and
several walis, advanced against Cordova. The African party was defeated,
its chief forced to flee, and Muhammed again recognised as king. But
throughout these contentions, the vicissitudes of success and failure
followed each other with amazing celerity. Though pursued by a superior
force headed in person by his bitter rival, Suleiman turned round and
inflicted a terrible defeat on Muhammed, who precipitately fled, almost
alone, to the capital. The victor followed him, seized on the heights
in the vicinity of Cordova, and laid siege to the place. Muhammed was
weakened by the desertion of his Christian allies, and still more by
the disaffection of the mob, which bears about the same feeling to
unfortunate princes as the kindred cur towards the meanly clad visitant.
The hajib Uhada, a man who had contrived to keep his post in every recent
change of government, took advantage of this alienation of popular
feeling; he did not declare for Suleiman, as little of a favourite as the
present ruler; but he suddenly drew Hisham from confinement, and showed
him to the astonished populace. Astonishment gave way to transport; and
transport, as usual, to excesses. Muhammed was beheaded, his corpse torn
in pieces by the new converts to legitimacy (1012 A.D.), and the head
thrown into the camp of Suleiman.

[Sidenote: [1012-1023 A.D.]]

But Suleiman refused to recognise the grandson of the great Abd
ar-Rahman. Having formed an alliance with Obaid Allah, the son of
Muhammed and wali of Toledo, he aimed at nothing less than the deposition
of the king. At first his efforts were unpromising; his ally was
defeated, made prisoner, and beheaded. Fortune favoured him in other
respects. Suleiman marched on Cordova. In vain did the hajib Khairan, the
successor of Uhada, whom Hisham in a fit of suspicion had put to death,
attempt to defend the city. The inhabitants opened one of the gates;
the Africans entered, fought, and conquered; their chief was a second
time saluted as king, and Hisham forever disappeared from the stage of
royalty--probably at the same moment from that of life.

Suleiman began his reign--for so long as Hisham lived he cannot be
properly ranked among the kings of Cordova--by rewarding his adherents
in the most lavish manner. He confirmed them, as he had promised, in the
hereditary possession of their fiefs; thus engrafting on a strangely
foreign stock the feudal institution of more northern nations. This
was the signal for the creation of numerous independent sovereignties,
and consequently for the ruin of Mohammedan Spain. The strength of the
misbelievers had consisted in their unity under the religious sway of
their caliphs; when this strong bulwark was dissolved the scattered
fragments of their empire might for a moment resist the eager assaults of
the Christians; but these must inevitably be swept away in the end by the
overwhelming flood.

The hajib Khairan, who had escaped to his government of Almeria, swore to
be revenged on this new usurper. As, however, no forces which he could
bring into the field could contend for a moment with those of Suleiman,
he passed over to Ceuta to interest the governor, Ali ben Hammud, in his
project. Suleiman was forsaken by most of the walis, his allies--they can
no longer be called subjects; his troops deserted to swell the ranks of
his enemy; and in a battle near Seville, his Andalusian adherents turned
against him, and thereby decided his fate.

Ali was proclaimed king of Mohammedan Spain, but not until search had
been vainly made for Hisham. The crown was not destined to sit more
lightly on his head than on that of his immediate predecessor. He found
an enemy where he least expected one; he was stifled in the bath by his
Slavonic attendants, and the report circulated that his death was natural.

Al-Kasim ben Hammud, brother of the deceased king, seized on the throne.
A powerful conspiracy was formed to dethrone him. His palace was
assailed; and though, by the valour of his guards, it held out fifty
days, at the end of that time most of them fell in an attempt to effect
their escape. Some of the more humane of the assailants secretly conveyed
Kasim beyond the walls and provided him with a small escort of cavalry,
which conveyed him to Xeres. When this intelligence was known at Cordova,
the Alameris, or party of the family of the great Almansor, which acted
a conspicuous part in all these commotions and which adhered to the
fortunes of the Omayyads, proclaimed as king Abd ar-Rahman ben Hisham,
brother of the usurper Muhammed.

Muhammed ben Abd ar-Rahman, cousin of the king, a man of boundless
wealth, succeeded in corrupting the chief nobles of the city. In the
silence of night he armed a resolute band of his creatures, who hastened
to the palace, and massacred the soldiers on duty. After a reign of only
forty-seven days, the king’s bedchamber was entered and he was pierced
with a thousand wounds.

END OF THE OMAYYADS

[Sidenote: [1023-1238 A.D.]]

Muhammed II reaped the reward of his crime. His successor was Yahya,
who perished in an ambuscade (1025). The next prince on whom the choice
of the Cordovans fell, Hisham III, brother of Abd ar-Rahman al-Mortada,
was naturally loth to accept a crown which had destroyed so many of its
wearers. In the end, however, being rather forced than persuaded to
relinquish his scruples, he left his retirement. Unhappily, he had but
too much reason to find that neither private virtues nor public services
have much influence over the bulk of mankind; and that the absolute king
who has not the power to make himself feared will not long be suffered
to reign. In 1031 a licentious mob paraded the streets of Cordova, and
loudly demanded his deposition. He did not wait the effects of their
violence; with unfeigned satisfaction he retired to private life, in
which he passed unmolested the remainder of his days. The remembrance
of his virtues long survived him; and by all the Arabic writers of his
country he is represented as too good for his age.

[Illustration: THE ALHAMBRA]

With Hisham III ended the caliphate of the West, and the noble race of
the Omayyads. If the succession was interrupted by Ali, and Al-Kasim, and
Yahya, who though descended from a kindred stock were not of the same
family, that interruption was but momentary; especially as Abd ar-Rahman
IV reigned at Jaen, while the last two princes were acknowledged at
Cordova. From this period 1031 A.D. to the establishment of the kingdom
of Grenada in 1238 A.D., there was no supreme chief of Mohammedan Spain,
if we except the fleeting conquerors who arrived from Africa, the fabric
of whose dominion was as suddenly destroyed as it was erected.

Vicious as is the constitution of all Mohammedan governments, and
destructible as are the bases on which they are founded, the reader
cannot fail to have been struck with the fate of this great kingdom. It
can scarcely be said to have declined; it fell at once. Not thirty years
have elapsed since the great Almansor wielded the resources of Africa
and Spain, and threatened the entire destruction of the Christians,
whom he had driven into an obscure corner of this vast peninsula. Now
Africa is lost; the Christians hold two-thirds of the country; the petty
but independent governors, the boldest of whom trembled at the name of
Almansor, openly insult the ruler of Cordova, whose authority extends
little further than the walls of his capital. Assuredly, so astounding
a catastrophe has no parallel in all history. Other kingdoms, indeed,
as powerful as Cordova, have been perhaps as speedily deprived of their
independence; but if they have been subdued by invading enemies, their
resources, their vigour, to a certain extent their greatness have long
survived their loss of that blessing. Cordova, in the very fullness of
her strength, was torn to pieces by her turbulent children.

INDEPENDENT KINGDOMS

[Sidenote: [1031-1094 A.D.]]

The decline and dissolution of the Mohammedan monarchy, or western
caliphate afforded the ambitious local governors throughout the peninsula
the opportunity for which they had long sighed--that of openly asserting
their independence of Cordova and of assuming the title of kings.

But Cordova, however weakened, was not willing thus suddenly to lose
her hold on her ancient subjects; she resolved to elect a sovereign
who should endeavour to subdue these audacious rebels, and restore her
ancient splendour. The disasters which had accompanied the last reigns
of the Omayyad princes had strongly indisposed the people to the claims
of that illustrious house. Jehwar ben Muhammed surrounded himself by a
council which comprised some of the most distinguished citizens, and
without the advice of which he undertook no one thing, not even the
nomination to public offices. Of that council he was but the president,
possessing but one vote like the remaining members; so that Cordova
presented the appearance rather of a republic than of a monarchy. He
introduced a degree of tranquillity and commercial activity unknown since
the death of the great Almansor. But the same success did not attend him
in his efforts to restore the supremacy of Cordova. Whatever might be the
internal dissensions of the petty kings, the success of some, the failure
of others, none thought of recognising his superiority. To recount the
perpetually recurring struggles of these reguli for the increase of their
states, their alliances, their transient successes or hopeless failures,
or even their existence, would afford neither interest nor instruction
to the reader. Such events only can be noticed as are either signal in
themselves, or exercised more than a passing influence on the condition
of the Mohammedan portion of the peninsula.

After triumphing over some neighbouring kings, who dreaded his increasing
power, the sovereign of Seville prepared to invade the possessions of
Jehwar; but death surprised him before those preparations were completed.
His son, Muhammed Al-Mucteded, who succeeded him, was as ambitious as
himself, but more luxurious. All southern Andalusia came into the power
of Al-Mucteded, yet his ambition was far from satisfied. For some time he
remained in alliance with Muhammed, the son and successor of Jehwar, in
the throne of Cordova; but he gained possession of that ancient capital
by stratagem. After many years of continued warfare, the king of Seville
and Cordova became, not merely the most powerful, but almost the only
independent sovereign of Mohammedan Spain.

Yahya al-Kadi, the son and successor of Ibn Dylnun on the throne of
Toledo, inherited neither the courage nor the abilities of that prince.
Sunk in the lowest sensuality, he regarded with indifference the growing
success of Muhammed. He became at length so contemptible that his very
subjects rose and expelled him. He applied for aid to the ally of his
father, Alfonso VI king of Leon; but that prince, though under the
greatest obligations to the memory of the father, was persuaded by the
king of Seville to adopt a hostile policy towards the son. It seems,
indeed, as if Muhammed and Alfonso, in the treaty which they concluded
at the instance of the former, had tacitly agreed not to interrupt
each other in the execution of the designs each had long formed. The
victorious Alfonso triumphed over all opposition, and prosecuted
the siege with a vigour which might have shown the misbelievers how
formidable an enemy awaited them all, and how necessary were their
combined efforts to resist him. But Muhammed, the only enemy whom the
Christian hero had to dread, was no less occupied in deriving his share
of the advantages secured by the treaty--in reducing the strong towns
of Murcia and Granada. After a siege of three years, Toledo was reduced
to the last extremity, and was compelled to capitulate. On the 25th of
May, 1085 A.D., Alfonso triumphantly entered this ancient capital of the
Goths, which had remained in the power of the misbelievers about 374
years.

The conquest of Toledo was far from satisfying the ambition of Alfonso;
he rapidly seized on the fortresses of Madrid, Maqueda, Guadalajara, and
established his dominion on both banks of the Tagus. Muhammed now began
seriously to repent his treaty with the Christian, and to tremble even
for his own possessions. He vainly endeavoured to divert his ally from
the projects of aggrandisement which that ally had evidently formed.
Muhammed saw that unless he leagued himself with those whose subjugation
had hitherto been his constant object,--the princes of his faith,--his
and their destruction was inevitable. The magnitude of the danger
compelled him to solicit their alliance. Such resistance as Mohammedan
Spain alone could offer seemed hopeless. With this conviction in their
hearts two of the most influential cadis proposed an appeal to the
celebrated African conqueror, Yusuf ben Tashufin, whose arm alone seemed
able to preserve the faith of Islam in the peninsula. The proposal was
received with general applause by all present; they did not make the
very obvious reflection that when a nation admits into its bosom an
ally more powerful than itself, it admits at the same time a conqueror.
The wali of Malaga alone, Abdallah ben Zagut, had courage to oppose the
dangerous embassy under consideration. “You mean to call in the aid of
the Almoravids! Are you ignorant that these fierce inhabitants of the
deserts resemble their own native tigers? Suffer them not, I beseech you,
to enter the fertile plains of Andalusia and Granada! Doubtless they
would break the iron sceptre which Alfonso intends for us; but you would
still be doomed to wear the chains of slavery. Do you not know that Yusuf
has taken all the cities of Almaghreb, that he has subdued the powerful
tribes of the East and West, that he has everywhere substituted despotism
for liberty and independence?” The aged Zagut spoke in vain.

THE ALMORAVIDS

Beyond the chain of Mount Atlas, in the deserts of ancient Gætulia, dwelt
two tribes of Arabian descent. At what time they had been expelled,
or had voluntarily exiled themselves from their native Yemen, they
knew not; but tradition taught them that they had been located in the
African deserts from ages immemorial. Yahya ben Ibrahim, belonging to
one of these tribes (that of Gudala), made the pilgrimage of Mecca.
Being questioned by his new friend as to the religion and manners of
his countrymen, he replied that they were sunk in ignorance, both from
their isolated situation in the desert and from their want of teachers.
He entreated the alfaqui to allow some one of his disciples to accompany
him into his native country. With considerable difficulty Abdallah ben
Yassim, the disciple of another alfaqui, was persuaded to accompany
the patriotic Yahya. Abdallah was one of those ruling minds which,
fortunately for the peace of society, nature so seldom produces. Seeing
his enthusiastic reception by the tribe of Gudala, and the influence
he was sure of maintaining over it, he formed the design of founding
a sovereignty in the heart of these vast regions. He prevailed on his
obedient disciples to make war on the kindred tribe of Lamtuna. His
ambition naturally increased with his success; in a short time he had
reduced, in a similar manner, the isolated tribes around him.

To his valiant followers of Lamtuna, he now gave the name of
Al-Morabethun, or Almoravids, which signifies men consecrated to the
service of God. The whole country of Darah was gradually subdued by this
new apostle, and his authority was acknowledged over a region extensive
enough to form a respectable kingdom. But though he exercised all the
rights of sovereignty, he prudently abstained from assuming the title. He
left to the emir of Lamtuna the ostensible exercise of temporal power;
and when, in 1058 A.D., that emir fell in battle, he nominated Abu Bekr
ben Omar to the vacant dignity. His own death, which was that of a
warrior, left Abu Bekr in possession of an undivided sovereignty. The
power, and consequently the reputation of the emir, spread far and wide.
Abu Bekr looked around for a site on which he might lay the foundations
of a great city, the destined metropolis of a great empire; and the city
of Morocco began to rear its head from the valley of Eylana. Before,
however, his great work was half completed, he received intelligence that
the tribe of Gudala had declared a deadly war against that of Lamtuna.
As he belonged to the latter, he naturally trembled for the fate of
his kindred; and at the head of his cavalry he departed for his native
deserts, leaving the command of the army, during his absence, to his
cousin, Yusuf ben Tashufin.

[Sidenote: [1070-1103 A.D.]]

Whatever were Yusuf’s other virtues, it will be seen that gratitude,
honour, and good faith were not among the number. Scarcely had his
kinsman left the city than, in pursuance of the design he had formed
of usurping the supreme authority, he began to win the affections of
the troops, partly by his gifts and partly by affability. Nor was his
success in war less agreeable to so fierce and martial a people as the
Almoravids. The Berbers were quickly subdued by him. He had long aspired
to the hope of marrying the beautiful Zainab, sister of Abu Bekr; but
the fear of a repulse from the proud chief of his family had caused him
to smother his inclination. He now disdained to supplicate for that
chief’s consent; he married the lady. Having put the finishing touch to
his magnificent city of Morocco, he transferred thither the seat of his
empire. The augmentation of his army was his next great object; and so
well did he succeed in it that he found his troops exceeded one hundred
thousand.

Yusuf had just completed the subjugation of Fez when Abu Bekr returned
from the desert, and encamped in the vicinity of Agmat. With a force
so far inferior to his rival’s, so far from demanding the restitution
of his rights, he durst not even utter one word of complaint; on the
contrary, he pretended that he had long renounced empire, and that his
only wish was to pass the remainder of his days in the retirement of the
desert. With equal hypocrisy Yusuf humbly thanked him for his abdication;
the sheikhs and walis were summoned to witness the renewed declaration
of the emir, after which the two princes separated. The following day,
however, Abu Bekr received a magnificent present from Yusuf, who, indeed,
continued to send him one every year to the period of his death.

Yusuf had just exchanged his humble title of emir for that of
_al-muslimin_, or prince of the believers, and of _nazir ed-din_, or
defender of the faith, when letters from Muhammed reached him. Before
he returned a final answer to the king of Seville, he insisted that the
fortress of Algeciras should be placed in his hands, on the pretence that
if fortune were unpropitious he should have some place to which he might
retreat. That Muhammed should have been so blind as not to perceive the
designs involved in the insidious proposal is almost enough to make one
agree with the Arabic historians, that destiny had decreed he should fall
by his own measures.

Alfonso was besieging Saragossa, which he had every expectation of
reducing, when intelligence reached him of Yusuf’s disembarkation. He
resolved to meet the approaching storm. At the head of all the forces he
could muster he advanced towards Andalusia, and encountered Yusuf on the
plains of Zallaka (1086). Alfonso was severely wounded and compelled to
retreat, but not until nightfall, nor until he had displayed a valour
worthy of the greatest heroes. Yusuf now proclaimed the Al-hijed, or
holy war, and invited all the Andalusian princes to join him. But this
demonstration of force proved as useless as the preceding; it ended in
nothing; owing partly to the dissensions of the Mohammedans and partly
to the activity of the Christians, who not only rendered abortive the
measures of the enemy but gained some signal advantages over them.
Yusuf was forced to retreat on Almeida. Whether through the distrust of
the Mohammedan princes, who appear to have penetrated his intention of
subjecting them to his empire, or through his apprehension of Alfonso, he
again returned to Africa, to procure new and more considerable levies. He
landed a third time at Algeciras, not so much with the view of humbling
the Christian king as of executing the perfidious design he had so long
formed. For form’s sake, indeed, he invested Toledo, but he could have
entertained no expectation of reducing it; and when he perceived that
the Andalusian princes refused to join him, he eagerly left that city,
and proceeded to secure far dearer and easier interests. He openly threw
off the mask, and commenced his career of spoliation. After the fall of
Muhammed, Yusuf had little difficulty in subduing the remaining princes
of Andalusia.

Thus ended the petty kingdoms of Andalusia, after a stormy existence of
about sixty years, and thus commenced the dynasty of the Almoravids. For
some years after the usurpation of Yusuf, peace appears to have subsisted
in Spain between the Mohammedans and the Christians. Fearing a new
irruption of Africans, Alfonso contented himself with fortifying Toledo;
and Yusuf felt little inclination to renew the war with one whose prowess
he had so fatally experienced. But Christian Spain was, at one moment,
near the brink of ruin. The passion for the Crusades was no less ardently
felt by the Spaniards than by other nations of Europe. Fortunately, Pope
Paschal II, in answer to the representations of Alfonso, declared that
the proper post of every Spaniard was at home, and there were his true
enemies. Yusuf returned to Morocco in 1103, where he died in 1106, after
living one hundred Arabian or about ninety-seven Christian years.

[Sidenote: [1103-1130 A.D.]]

Ali was only in his twenty-third year when he succeeded his father, whose
military talents he inherited, and whom he surpassed in generosity.
On the death of Alfonso, in 1109 A.D., Ali entered Spain at the head
of one hundred thousand men, to prosecute in person the war against
the Christians. But though he laid waste the territory of Toledo, and
invested that city, he soon abandoned the siege. A second army sent by
Ali had no better success. In 1118 Saragossa, after a siege of some
months, fell into the power of the Christians, and the north of Spain was
forever freed from the domination of the Mohammedans. The following year
the Aragonian hero destroyed twenty thousand of the Africans, who had
advanced as far as the environs of Daroca; while another division of the
Almoravids, under Ali in person, was compelled to retreat before the army
of Leon and Castile.

At this very time the empire of the Almoravids was tottering to its fall.
It had never been agreeable to the Mohammedans of Spain, whose manners,
from their intercourse with a civilised people, were comparatively
refined. The sheikhs of Lamtuna were so many insupportable tyrants; the
Jews, the universal agents for the collection of the revenues, were here,
as in Poland, the most pitiless extortioners; every savage from the
desert looked with contempt on the milder inhabitant of the peninsula.
The domination of those strangers was indeed so odious that, except for
the divisions between Alfonso and his ambitious queen, Donna Urraca, who
was sovereign in her own right, all Andalusia might speedily have been
subjected to the Christian yoke. Even while Ali remained in Spain, there
was an open revolt of the inhabitants, who could not longer support the
excesses of the barbarian guard.

But the cause which most menaced the existence of Ali’s throne, and
which was destined to change the whole face of western Africa and
southern Spain, originated, like the power of Yusuf ben Tashufin, in
the deserts bordering on Mount Atlas. Muhammed ben Abdallah, the son of
a lamp-lighter in the mosque of Cordova, was distinguished for great
curiosity and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Whether Muhammed was a
fanatic or a knave, or composed of a large mixture of both, is not easy
to be determined. He wandered from place to place, zealously preaching
doctrines dangerous to the faith of Islam. His reception, however, was
long cool; and from one town, where he had held forth in the mosque, he
was compelled to flee to Tlemcen. On his way he fell in with a youth,
Abdul-Mumin by name, whom he persuaded to share his fortunes. The two
friends subsequently travelled to Fez, and thence to Morocco.

The artful rebel was permitted to follow his vocation till the excitement
produced by his fanatic appeals to the ignorant populace was too great
to be overlooked, and he was ordered to leave Morocco. At a short
distance from the city, however, probably in its public cemetery, he
built a hut among the graves, as a residence for himself and his faithful
Abdul-Mumin. As he had anticipated, he was soon followed by crowds
who venerated his prophetic character, and who listened with pleasure
to vehement denunciations which fell with terrific effect on their
superiors. He inveighed against the impiety of the Almoravids, who appear
not to have been more popular in Mauretania than in Spain. Ali ordered
the rebel to be secured. Muhammed, who had timely notice of the fate
intended him, fled to Agmat, accompanied by a host of proselytes; but
finding that his liberty was still in danger, he hastily retreated to
Tinmal in the province of Sus. His success in this region was so great
that he had soon an army of disciples, all devoted to his will, because
all believed in his divine mission. For some time he preached to them
the coming of the great mahdi, who should teach all men the right way
and cause virtue and happiness to reign over the whole earth; but he
carefully refrained from acknowledging himself to be the mighty prophet,
doubtless because he was fearful of shocking the credulity even of his
own followers. One day, in conformity with a preconcerted plan, as he was
expatiating on the change to be effected by the long-promised teacher and
ruler, Abdul-Mumin and nine other men arose, saying: “Thou announcest a
mahdi; the description applies only to thyself. Be our mahdi and imam; we
swear to obey thee!” The Berbers, influenced by the example, in the same
manner arose and vowed fidelity even unto death.

[Sidenote: [1130-1143 A.D.]]

From this moment he assumed the high title of mahdi, and proclaimed
himself as the founder of a new people. He instituted a regular
government, confiding the administration to Abdul-Mumin, his minister,
with nine associates, but reserving the control to himself. Seventy
Berbers or Alarabs formed the council of the new government. An army
of ten thousand horse and a far greater number of foot was speedily
organised, with which he took the road to Agmat just as Ali returned to
Morocco from Spain. The Almohads [_Unitarians_], for such was the name
assumed by the followers of Muhammed, defeated the troops of Ali four
times.

At length Muhammed resolved to reduce the capital of Morocco. At his
voice forty thousand men took the field. The preparations of Ali were
immense; one hundred thousand men were ranged round his standard. They
were again defeated, were pursued to the very walls of Morocco, and that
capital was invested with a vigour which showed that the Almohads were
intent on its reduction. But Ali led his troops against the rebels, whom
he completely routed. Abdul-Mumin rallied the fugitives, and effected
an orderly retreat. But time was necessary to repair the misfortune,
especially as some of the savage tribes of the desert withdrew from
Muhammed’s banner, on finding that his power was that of a mere mortal.

In 1130 the mahdi commanded all to assemble the following day near the
great mosque, to bid adieu to their chief. All wondered at the command,
except such as were acquainted with his long hidden disease. He exhorted
them to persevere in the doctrine he had taught them; announced his
approaching death; and when he saw them dissolved in tears, inculcated
the duty of resignation to the divine will. He then retired with his
beloved disciple, to whom he presented the book containing the tenets
of his faith--a book which he had received from the hands of Al-Gazali.
The fourth day he expired. The chiefs of the state were soon afterwards
assembled to deliberate on the form of government; a monarchy was chosen;
and by their unanimous suffrages Abdul-Mumin was proclaimed imam and
almumenin.

For the next three years the new caliph was diligently employed in
extending his conquests. The whole country, from the mountains of Darah
to Salee, all Fez and Tasa, received his spiritual and temporal yoke.
The empire of the Almoravids was now bounded within a narrow sphere.
Ali became dejected and unhappy; his troops were everywhere defeated;
his towns were rapidly delivered into the power of a savage enemy, who
had vowed his destruction; and though, in compliance with the advice of
his counsellors, he associated with him in the empire his son Tashufin,
whose exploits in Spain had obtained him much celebrity, that prince was
too busily occupied with the Christians and his discontented subjects of
Andalusia to prop the declining empire in Africa.

[Sidenote: [1143-1145 A.D.]]

Tashufin ben Ali succeeded in 1143 to his father, who died at
Morocco--more from grief at the declining state of affairs than from
any other cause. His first object was to assemble an army to strike
another blow for the defence of his empire. At first he was successful.
Abdul-Mumin was compelled to fall back on his mountain; but in a second
action Tashufin was defeated; in a third he was also compelled to
retreat. Ali saw that his only hope of safety lay in an escape to Spain.
One night he resolved to make a desperate effort to gain the port where
his vessels were still riding at anchor. Unfortunately either he mistook
his way or his mule was terrified by the roaring of the waves, for the
next morning his mangled corpse was found at the foot of a precipice on
the beach.

[Illustration: ARAB SOLDIER]

But Morocco, Fez, and some other cities were yet in the power of the
Almoravids, who raised Ibrahim Abu Ishak, son of Tashufin, to the throne.
The vindictive Abdul-Mumin, however, left them little time to breathe.
Tlemcen he took by assault, and massacred the inhabitants; Fez he also
reduced. The siege of Morocco was prosecuted with vigour. The inhabitants
were so fatally repulsed in a sortie that they durst no longer venture
outside the walls. Famine soon aided the sword; the number who died
of starvation is said to have amounted to three-fourths of the whole
population. Such a place could not long hold out; and accordingly it was
carried in the first general assault. Ibrahim and the surviving sheikhs
were instantly brought before the conqueror. Not only were he and his
chiefs led out to instant execution, but a general massacre of the
surviving inhabitants was ordered. The few who were spared were sold as
slaves; the mosques were destroyed and new ones erected; and the tribes
of the desert were called to re-people the now solitary streets.

During these memorable exploits in Africa, the Christians were rapidly
increasing their dominions. Coria, Mora, etc., were in the power of
Alfonso, styled the emperor; and almost every contest between the two
natural enemies had turned to the advantage of the Christians. So long,
indeed, as the walis were eager only to preserve or to extend their
authority, independent of each other and of every superior, this success
need not surprise us; we may rather be surprised that the Mohammedans
were allowed to retain any footing in the peninsula. Probably they would
at this time have been driven from it but for the seasonable arrival of
the victorious Almohads. Both Christians and Africans now contended for
the superiority. While the troops of Alfonso reduced Baeza, and with
a Mohammedan ally even Cordova, Malaga and Seville acknowledged Abu
Amram. Calatrava and Almeria next fell to the Christian emperor, about
the same time that Lisbon and the neighbouring towns received Dom Henry
(Henrique), the new sovereign of Portugal. Most of these conquests,
however, were subsequently recovered by the Almohads. Being reinforced by
a new army from Africa, the latter pursued their successes with greater
vigour. They reduced Cordova, which was held by an ally of Alfonso;
defeated, and forever paralysed, the expiring efforts of the Almoravids;
and proclaimed their emperor Abdul-Mumin as sovereign of all Mohammedan
Spain (1146).

DYNASTY OF THE ALMOHADS

[Sidenote: [1145-1198 A.D.]]

Abdul-Mumin, as if desirous of subduing not merely what had formed the
empire of the Almoravids but all the regions which owned the faith
of Islam, levied army after army; so that from Portugal to Tunis and
Kairwan his wild hordes spread devastation and dismay. To detail the
events of the wars sustained by his general, or his son the cid Yusuf,
in Andalusia, would afford little interest to the reader. It will be
sufficient to observe that, by slow but sure degrees, the whole of
Andalusia was incorporated with his empire. Once only did he visit Spain,
if remaining a few hours at Gibraltar can deserve the name. In 1162
he breathed his last. On his accession, Yusuf Abu Yakub dismissed the
enormous army which had been collected. During the following few years he
appears to have cultivated the blessings of peace; it was not until 1170
that he entered Spain, and all Mohammedan Spain owned the emperor.

Notwithstanding the destructive wars which had prevailed near a century,
neither Moors nor Christians had acquired much advantage by them. From
the reduction of Saragossa to the present time, the victory, indeed,
had generally declared for the Christians; but their conquests, with
the exception of Lisbon and a few fortresses in central Spain, were
lost almost as soon as gained; and the same fate attended the equally
transient successes of the Mohammedans. The reason why the former did not
permanently extend their territories, was their internal dissensions.
The Christians, when at peace among themselves, were always too many for
their Mohammedan neighbours, even when the latter were aided by the whole
power of western Africa.

Yakub ben Yusuf, from his victories afterwards named Al-Mansur, was
declared successor to his father. For some years he was not personally
opposed to the Christians, though his walis carried on a desultory
indecisive war. In 1194 he landed in Andalusia, and proceeded towards
Valencia, where the Christian army then lay. There Alfonso VIII, king of
Castile, was awaiting the expected reinforcements from his allies, the
kings of Leon and Navarre. Both armies pitched their tents on the plains
of Alarcon. The chiefs of both naturally felt anxious for the result; but
the charge of rashness cannot be erased from the memory of Alfonso, for
venturing to withstand alone a conflict with the overwhelming force of
the enemy, instead of falling back to effect a junction with his allies.
His loss must have been immense, amounting probably to twenty thousand
men. With a generosity very rare in a Mohammedan, and still more in an
African, Yakub restored his prisoners to liberty--an action for which,
we are informed, he received few thanks from his followers. After this
signal victory Yakub rapidly reduced Calatrava, Guadalaxara, Madrid and
Esalona, Salamanca, etc. Toledo, too, he invested, but in vain. He
returned to Africa, caused his son Muhammed to be declared wali alhadi,
and died (1199). He was, beyond doubt, the greatest and best of the
Almohads.

[Sidenote: [1198-1212 A.D.]]

The character of Muhammed Abu Abdallah, surnamed An-Nasir, was very
different from that of his great father. Much as the world had been
astounded at the preparations of his grandfather Yusuf, they were not
surpassed by his own, if, as we are credibly informed, one alone of the
five divisions of his army amounted to 160,000 men. It is certain that
a year was required for the assembling of this vast armament, that two
months were necessary to convey it across the straits, and that all
Christian Europe was filled with alarm at its disembarkation. Innocent
III proclaimed a crusade to Spain; and Rodrigo of Toledo, the celebrated
historian, accompanied by several prelates, went from one court to
another to rouse the Christian princes. While the kings of Aragon and
Navarre promised to unite their forces with their brother of Castile to
repel the common danger, great numbers of volunteers from Portugal and
southern France hastened to the general rendezvous at Toledo, the pope
ordered fasting, prayers, and processions to be made, to propitiate the
favour of heaven, and to avert from Christendom the greatest danger that
had threatened it since the days of the emir Abd ar-Rahman.

THE BATTLE OF LAS NAVAS DE TOLOSA (1212 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1212-1270 A.D.]]

Muhammed opened the campaign by the siege of Salvatierra, a strong
but not important fortress of Estremadura, defended by the knights of
Calatrava. That he should waste his forces on objects so incommensurate
with their extent, proves how little he was qualified to wield them.
The place stood out for several months, and did not surrender until the
emperor had sustained a heavy loss, nor until the season was too far
advanced to permit any advantage to be derived from this partial success.
By suspending the execution of his great design until the following
season, he allowed Alfonso time to prepare for the contest. The following
June, the kings of Leon and Castile having assembled at Toledo, and been
joined by a considerable number of foreign volunteers, the Christian army
advanced towards the south.

On July 12th, the crusaders reached the mountainous chain which divides
New Castile from Andalusia. They found not only the passes, but the
summits of the mountains occupied by the Almohads. To force a passage
was impossible; and they even deliberated on retreating, so as to
draw out, if possible, the enemy from positions so formidable, when
a shepherd entered the camp of Alfonso, and proposed to conduct the
Christian army, by a path unknown to both armies, to the summit of this
elevated chain--by a path, too, which would be invisible to the enemy’s
outposts. A few companies having accompanied the man, and found him
equally faithful and well informed, the whole army silently ascended, and
entrenched themselves on the summit, the level of which was extensive
enough to contain them all. Below appeared the widespread tents of
the Moslems, whose surprise was great on perceiving the heights thus
occupied by the crusaders. For two days the latter, whose fatigues had
been harassing, kept their position; but on the third day they descended
into the plains of Tolosa, which were about to be immortalised by their
valour. Their right wing was led by the king of Navarre, their left by
the king of Aragon, while Alfonso took his station in the centre. The
attack was made by the Christian centre against that of the Mohammedans;
and immediately the two wings moved against those of the enemy.

The struggle was terrific, but short; myriads of the barbarians fell, the
boundary was first broken down by the king of Navarre, the Castilians and
Aragonese followed, all opponents were massacred or fled, and the victors
began to ascend the eminence on which Muhammed still remained. Muhammed
mounted a mule and soon outstripped not only the pursuers but the
fugitives. The carnage of the latter was dreadful, until darkness put an
end to it. The victors now occupied the tents of the Mohammedans, while
the two martial prelates sounded the _Te Deum_ for the most splendid
success which had shone on the banners of the Christians since the time
of Charles Martel. The loss of the Africans, even according to the
Arabian writers, who admit that the centre was wholly destroyed, could
not fall short of 160,000 men.

The reduction of several towns, from Tolosa to Baeza, immediately
followed this glorious victory--a victory in which Don Alfonso nobly
redeemed his failure in the field of Zallaka, and which, in its immediate
consequences, involved the ruin of the Mohammedan empire in Spain.
After an unsuccessful attempt on Ubeda, as the hot season was raging,
the allies returned to Toledo, satisfied that the power of Muhammed was
forever broken. That emperor, indeed, did not long survive his disaster.
Having precipitately fled to Morocco, he abandoned himself to licentious
pleasures, left the cares of government to his son, or rather his
ministers, and died in 1213, not without suspicion of poison.[c]

THE DECLINE OF ARAB POWER

After the dissolution of the Almohad empire Africa and Spain, without
severing any of the ties that bound their populations together, ceased
forever to obey the same government. This separation would have had no
disastrous consequences for Islam if the tribes of Maghreb had not set
so high a price upon their assistance that the Spanish Arabs were unable
to accept it. The Maghrebites did indeed cross the strait several times
after 1232, but these expeditions served merely to assure the triumphs of
the Christians, who drew together in closer and closer union.

The defeat of Tolosa had, by demonstrating the incapacity of Muhammed
an-Nasir, precipitated the insurrection of Andalusia; and in Africa the
power founded by Abdul-Mumin was as rapidly declining, owing to the
failure of the Almohad princes to display the necessary decision and
address. As early as 1242 the wali of Tunis refused to renew the tribute
which as vassal he was bound to pay, caused himself to be proclaimed an
independent sovereign, and founded on the most solid basis the dynasty
of the house of Abu Hass, which was destined to endure through several
centuries. Farther to the west, in 1248, the Beni Zian family established
their supremacy at Tlemcen, Algiers, and in the neighbourhood of Fez;
while in the Maghreb the tribe of Beni Merin raised the standard of
revolt and menaced Fez, Tasa, and Morocco. For twenty years the Almohads
held their ground against their enemies; but all the courage they
displayed was rendered useless by their own intestine strife, and in 1270
the Merinid, Abu Yusuf, received the allegiance of the Arabian Moors, or
Berbers, of western Africa.

[Sidenote: [1270-1359 A.D.]]

It would be impossible to-day to determine exactly the extent of the
territories controlled by the revolting tribes, but in the beginning
their domains, without doubt, included Bougie and Algiers and extended
from Tlemcen to the Atlantic. Their frontier lines must, in any case,
have been constantly changing, as the rulers of the three states waged
incessant war against each other, and emigration and displacements
were continually taking place. A chronological list of the princes who
succeeded each other at Tunis, Tlemcen, and Morocco, during the period
that extended from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, would teach
us little of an epoch concerning which very few documents exist. The most
we know is that the cities of Tunis, Bougie, Algiers, Tlemcen, Fez, and
Morocco retained under the Abu Hass, the Beni Zian, and the Beni Merin
the importance and splendour that had been theirs under the Zairites and
the Omayyads, and could still cite with pride the names of many great
artists and scholars. The ancient maritime power of the Aghlabites had
fallen never to rise again; but bands of pirates were organised which
inflicted great damage on Christians, and vessels leaving the Atlantic
ports began to descend the coasts of Africa to the tropics, where they
carried on a great trade in gold, amber, and negro slaves.

[Illustration: SPANISH HERALD, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

Naturally the Arabs were drawn into all the disputes that arose between
the different sovereigns of Africa, but they experienced no serious
results from any of them. Once in 1347, and again in 1359, the Merinid
chiefs had succeeded in overcoming Tlemcen and Tunis; but the deposed
rulers soon recovered their thrones and continued to reign over the
populations they had trained to obedience. Of the three African dynasties
that of Abu Hass experienced the fewest turmoils and disorders. While
in Maghreb two rivals of equal force disputed for supremacy over the
capitals of Fez and Morocco, and in Tlemcen the Beni Zian were obliged
to resist the encroachments of formidable neighbours, the kings in Tunis
were powerful enough to command the respect of all other cities near, and
to wrest Tripoli from the warlike mamelukes of Egypt, the rulers who had
succeeded to the Eyyubid sultans.

Having apparently accomplished their mission, the Arabs no longer sought
to make the cause of Islam triumph, but little by little withdrew to the
obscurity and monotony of a desert life. Even in 1270, at the time of
the last crusade of St. Louis, they displayed nothing like the courage
that had characterised them on former occasions, being content to sign
a disadvantageous treaty with Charles of Anjou, by which they bound
themselves to receive French and Italian merchandise free of duty, and to
permit the free practice of Catholicism throughout their states.

[Sidenote: [1343-1534 A.D.]]

Later the Spaniards and the Portuguese conquered the African cities
which command the Straits of Gibraltar, and sent into the interior as
many troops as the Africans had formerly sent into Spain. When they
had become masters of Algeciras and Tarifa, the Portuguese, who first
undertook these enterprises, seized Alemtejo and Algarve and then decided
to carry into other countries that spirit of adventure which had led them
to demand on sea the wealth and power that were denied them on land. In
1415 they took possession of Ceuta, which they had to defend against
Edward, second of the house of Braganza, but were finally able to retain
by allowing to remain in irons a child that they had delivered over as
hostage. Between 1439-1481 Alfonso V conquered the important cities of
Tangiers and Arzillo. Nevertheless the Portuguese had little thought
of extending their conquests further, but were devoting themselves to
commerce and navigation, in the interests of which they made those
maritime discoveries that were to raise them so high among nations and
send their ships into so many unknown waters of the globe.

It has not been sufficiently pointed out how fatal to the Arabs of Spain
was the occupancy by the Portuguese of Tangiers, Ceuta, and Arzillo.
Hitherto the Moslems in Maghreb could come to the assistance of their
brothers in Spain without looking upon themselves as interested parties
to the dispute. But after the Portuguese came to command the strait, with
power to intercept all communications between the two continents, the
last blow to Mohammedan unity was struck by the Christian princes.

Once the Catholic sovereigns had become masters of the Mediterranean
ports of the peninsula, they enlarged their navy that the Moslem fleets
might be constantly held in check, and after the fall of the monarchy of
Granada they penetrated deep into Africa. In 1504 Diego of Cordova took
several places between Ceuta and Oran, and in 1509 Cardinal Ximenes,
minister to Ferdinand of Aragon, organised and directed a much more
important expedition. Instead of attacking the younger branch of the
Merinids at Morocco, he advanced on Tlemcen and Algiers, the double realm
of the Beni Zian, and taking the city of Oran established there a strong
garrison.

These encroachments on the part of Christians must be stopped at any
cost. Meeting with nothing but supineness and indifference among the
Moors and Arabs whom he approached, Eutemi, king of Algiers, finally
implored the assistance of Horuj, the celebrated pirate of Mytilene, who
was at the head of a considerable fleet. Accepting these overtures with
alacrity, Horuj repaired to Algiers with a force of five thousand men
(1516); but after entering the city he caused Eutemi to be assassinated,
and himself usurped the government. He further profited by the terror he
had caused to attack Tlemcen and drive forth the Beni Zian; but in 1518
the Spaniards engaged him in a battle in which he lost his life, leaving
Tlemcen in the hands of his enemies.

In no wise discouraged by this reverse, the brother of Horuj, Khair
ad-Din, better known under the name of Barbarossa, succeeded in
getting himself acknowledged ruler by the inhabitants of Algiers and
establishing his dominion on solid foundations throughout the country;
he drove the Spaniards back into Oran, where he kept them confined.
Fear, nevertheless, of the superior numbers of the Christians and the
mutability of the Arab spirit caused him to seek for his states the
protection of the supreme ruler who, at his request, sent him troops
of Turkish militia from Constantinople. Barbarossa then took the title
of regent, and in the name of the Ottoman sultan exercised the highest
authority over all the states of Algiers.

We have witnessed in Asia the gradual substitution of the Turks for the
Arabs as defenders of the Moslem faith; and we shall now assist at a
repetition of the same process in Africa. This was, too, the epoch of
greatest power of the sultans in Constantinople. Suleiman, master of
Egypt, of Asia Minor, of Greece, and Bulgaria, threatened simultaneously
Persia and Hungary, and he alone was capable of protecting Africa against
the redoubtable might of Charles V. Far from injuring the cause of Islam,
the arrival of these new auxiliaries in the Maghreb should have given
it a fresh impetus; but exactly the reverse took place. From the day
the Arabs came under subjection to the Turks, all the noble sentiments
and generous impulses that had before characterised them gave place to
a hopeless condition of servility and degradation; bowed under the yoke
of an insolent military body that enforced obedience at the point of the
sword, they lost that natural pride that had set them apart from other
races, and little by little fell into the brutish torpor that has been
their prevailing state in modern times, and which has caused us to judge
them wrongfully as showing antagonism to all ideas of civilisation.

[Sidenote: [1534-1541 A.D.]]

The Turks had sway not only over Algiers but over Tunis and Tripoli, and
it was to Barbarossa that they owed these further triumphs. Placed by
Suleiman in command of the Ottoman fleet, the brother of Horuj thought
it necessary to repay this distinction by brilliant services. Having
given refuge in Algiers to a deposed prince of the house of Abu Hass,
Barbarossa presented himself at Tunis, ostensibly for the purpose of
re-establishing its legitimate ruler, but in reality to pave the way
for Ottoman dominion. Suleiman, acquainted with his designs, publicly
conferred the investiture on the restored prince, who was immediately
afterward spirited away: and Barbarossa seized the fort and town of
Goletta, and put down the revolt of the inhabitants in the name of the
Ottoman ruler, to whom they remained long under subjection.

Meanwhile Christian sovereigns looked on with anxiety while the capitals
of the Barbary states were passing into the possession of a power already
so formidable; and Charles V, king of Spain and emperor of Germany,
determined to check at once the increase of Ottoman dominion. Taking
sides with the Abu Hass he embarked in 1535 with troops gathered from
the Netherlands, Italy, and Sicily, and landed not far from the ruins of
Carthage. Barbarossa had been able to provision the fort of Goletta, but
could not rally to his standard the Arab tribes; and Goletta, bravely
defended by Sinan, the renegade Jew, was taken by the Christian forces.
Tunis itself, Barbarossa being defeated, was forced to open its doors to
the victors, and all its riches became the prey of the European soldiers.
The prince of the house of Abu Hass, whose interests Charles V had
espoused, was reinstated on the throne under the following conditions:
(1) that he was to hold the kingdom of Tunis as a fief to the crown
of Spain; (2) that all Christian slaves should be restored to liberty
without ransom; (3) that the subjects of the emperor in his domain should
be free to engage in commerce and practise the Christian religion;
(4) that twelve thousand crowns should be contributed towards the
maintenance of a Spanish garrison in Goletta; and (5) that all the ports
of the kingdom of Tunis should be delivered over into the hands of the
emperor. Brilliant as was this expedition, it did not completely destroy
African piracy, Algiers having been left still undisturbed. Barbarossa’s
successor, Hassan Aga, committed new depredations, and soon intercepted
all the commerce of the Mediterranean Sea. It became necessary to
establish guards along the coasts of Italy, Sicily, and Spain to keep off
the incursions of Barbary pirates who, it was asserted, were secretly
encouraged by the Arabs still residing on the continent. Charles V
got together a new fleet and undertook to reduce Algiers (1541). But
the elements were against him from the start, and being assailed at a
propitious moment by the Algerian Turks and certain tribes of Arabs
whose religious fanaticism had been excited, the imperial army suffered
complete and disastrous defeat.

[Sidenote: [1541-1800 A.D.]]

This unfortunate enterprise also restored the preponderance to the Turks.
As soon as circumstances permitted they sent a fleet against the knights
of St. John whom Charles V had made masters of Tripoli and reconquered
the state in 1551. The government was given into the hands of the
celebrated Dragut, who ten years later in concert with Piali Pasha was to
achieve another great naval victory.

After the battle of Lepanto, John of Austria marched on Tunis, which
offered but a feeble resistance; hardly had he turned his back, however,
on the conquered domain, when Sinan Pasha hurried from Tripoli and
everywhere re-established the authority of the sultan. Henceforth the
Turks were masters over all Tunis and Algiers, and expeditions directed
against them had no longer any object save to demand reparation or to
punish them for acts of piracy.

Morocco, on the other hand, always remained independent of the Ottoman
rule. The Merinids were succeeded in the fifteenth century by the
Oatazes, who were in turn replaced by the Sherifs, whose dynasty
continues to this day. The adroit personages who had created the grandeur
of Morocco were looked upon as the legitimate descendants of Mohammed,
and to the brothers of the reigning king, not his children, fell the
succession to the throne. This law was the cause of much disturbance in
the state, and in 1578 it formed the pretext for a famous expedition
directed against Morocco by Dom Sebastian, king of Portugal. The sherif
Abdallah having died, his son, Mulei Muhammed, had at first had the
advantage over his uncle in the dispute for the succession; but being
at last defeated Muhammed betook himself to Portugal, where he hoped
to persuade the king, by the promise of large rewards, to assist him
in gaining the crown. Carried away by enthusiasm, Sebastian embarked;
and having in his possession the coat of arms worn by Charles V at his
entry into Tunis, he imagined that he should exceed all that emperor’s
exploits, and perhaps place the cross over the mosques of Morocco and
Fez. He was taken at a disadvantage, however, by the Arabs at Kasr
al-Kebir, and he and his little troop found themselves confronted by
the dire alternative of achieving victory or meeting death. In this
supreme moment Sebastian’s courage did not desert him; it served to
make illustrious his defeat and dying moments. The two competitors also
perished the same day; one by drowning in the river Mucazin, and the
other as the result of a fever which he had disregarded in the haste and
ardour of his preparations. Made wise by this terrible experience, the
Portuguese did not renew their attempts against Africa, and the sherifs
had further only to repress the internal dissensions that so frequently
arose in their domains.

Such was the situation of the Arabs in Africa during the seventeenth
century. They had still a sort of preponderance in Morocco; but in
Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli the Turks had become masters of the cities of
the coast, and imposed upon them the severest rule. The different tribes,
armed against each other by the astute policy of their oppressors, and
terrorised by frequent and sanguinary executions, paid the tribute
demanded of them without daring to murmur, and never even dreamed of
throwing off the yoke under which they laboured.

We will return now to the Arabs in Spain, who had struck the first and
most damaging blow at the empire of the Almohads. In addition to the
garrisons the Africans placed among them, the populations had still to
resist the domination of the Christians; and in order to effect this the
most perfect unity would have been necessary, with the complete sacrifice
of all private interests to the national welfare. But, as we have seen,
instead of possessing a strongly constituted central government, the
Spanish Arabs were divided up into a number of independent states, and
the Catholic princes took advantage of this dismemberment to separately
overcome them. James I, not content with the conquest of the Balearic
Isles, undertook to gain possession of Valencia, and in his enthusiasm
for this project abstained from urging against Thibaut de Champagne
the rights his birth gave him to the crown of Navarre, thus gaining
for himself an ally in the person of a prince who could furnish him
with substantial aid. The king of Valencia struggled hard to defend his
possessions, but the disunion among the Moslems and the bad faith of
the walis, who for bribes delivered over to the enemy all the cities
adjacent to the capital, caused Valencia finally to be invested both by
land and by sea. Too feeble to resist longer, the Moslem king invoked the
aid of the other sovereigns of Africa, but all were too busy with their
own affairs, and Valencia fell into the hands of James (Jayme), under
conditions that enabled the inhabitants to leave in freedom, or to remain
with full protection for their property and religious liberty (1238).

[Sidenote: [1238-1245 A.D.]]

Valencia conquered, James next sought to extend his dominion over the
kingdom of Murcia, but the king of Castile, by a powerful intervention
(1241), succeeded in turning him from all schemes of aggrandisement. The
kingdom of Murcia, less powerful than that of Valencia, was divided among
a great many different tribes whose chiefs, all jealous of each other’s
authority, hastened to submit to Ferdinand III under the best conditions
they could obtain. The wali of Lorca alone held out for independence; but
two years later his cities were also taken by assault, and the entire
kingdom of Murcia passed over to the crown of Castile.

Another acquisition of far greater importance had, moreover, been made by
this crown since 1232. In the coveted regions of Guadalquivir, Ibn Hud
had at first been able to take an energetic stand against Ferdinand III;
but lacking utterly the resources necessary for carrying on a protracted
struggle, he was at last obliged to surrender Ubeda and Andujar, and
could not prevent siege being laid to Cordova. The peril which threatened
the capital should have aroused the courage and ardour of the Moslems in
its defence, but nothing of the sort occurred; Ibn Hud was assassinated
in the midst of his preparations for resistance, and the city was obliged
to capitulate. Thus was extinguished the glory of the Islam metropolis in
the West, the city of arts and Moslem luxury and magnificence. Ferdinand
III placed the cross on the minarets of the great mosques, and returned
to Compostella the bells of St. James that Almansor had carried away as
trophies.

[Sidenote: [1245-1249 A.D.]]

The time had come for the Arabs to bid farewell to the memories of their
past triumphs and glories; they witnessed the profanation of all their
sanctuaries without venturing to make the supreme effort that might still
have saved them. Ferdinand’s victories now followed in quick succession.
After taking several cities he encountered and defeated, before Alcala,
Muhammed ben al-Akhmar, who had gotten himself acknowledged in the states
of Ibn Hud. The Moslems displayed great courage in this engagement; and
Ferdinand, after taking possession of the vast domain ceded to him by
Muhammed ben al-Akhmar, agreed to leave him in peace provided he would
pay him an annual tribute, furnish a certain number of troops in case of
war, and appear in person at the assemblies or _cortes_ of Castile. He
reserved to himself the right of aggression against the Arabs of the
Algarve and Guadalquivir, who were still divided into many small states.
Seville, the ancient capital of the Almoravids and the Almohads, the
capture of which would forever prevent the union of the Algarve with the
Sierra Nevada Moslems, was suddenly invested, and in the camp of the
enemy were plainly to be seen Muhammed ben al-Akhmar and his five hundred
horsemen. The city resisted long, being in constant receipt of supplies
from Moslem sources by way of the Guadalquivir, and it was not until
Ferdinand III equipped a small fleet and surrounded the mouth of the
Guadalquivir that the inhabitants, threatened by famine, capitulated. The
same favourable terms were accorded to them as to the Arabs of Valencia
(1248).

[Illustration: SPANISH WAR VESSEL, THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES]

Upon the taking of Seville ensued the submission of all the states lying
upon the right bank of the Guadalquivir; hence the complete downfall of
the Arab race could not be far distant. Yet the inevitable result was
somewhat retarded by Muhammed ben al-Akhmar, whose courage and ability
reminded the Arabs of the qualities of the famed Almansor, and who
brought into being a powerful Moslem state which for a while opposed a
formidable barrier to the spread of Christian influence. Granada, its
capital, became soon the rallying-point of the Moslems dispersed all
over the country, and the beneficence of this remarkable prince’s rule
attracted to his states all who were not disposed to accept the Spanish
domination. Emigrants from Cordova and Seville found a cordial welcome
at Muhammed’s court, and their number was also increased by the Moslem
population which James expelled, in 1249, from the plains about Valencia.
It can readily be seen what an advantage to Granada was the presence of
all these active, intelligent inhabitants; the elements of wealth and
success that the Arabs had strewn all over the peninsula now returned
upon them in a single flood; and Islam, rising once more under the
astonished gaze of Spain, enjoyed a second period of glory (1238-1492).

The luxury and gallantry of the court of Granada have remained famous
to this day. Tourneys and jousts were given, and frequent bull-fights
and races. The people were often invited by the sovereign to solemn
festivals and splendid banquets, and all this opulence was by no means
the result of oppression, but sprang naturally from the condition of
ease which prevailed among all classes. La Veja, the fertile plain which
surrounds Granada, produced in that day three times what it does in this,
and could easily support a considerable population. The manufacture of
silks and other stuffs attained the highest point of excellence, the fine
arts were cultivated as successfully as at Cordova, and to stimulate
invention prizes were offered in every department of endeavour. The names
Alhambra and Generalif awaken in the mind images of the greatest richness
and splendour. The Alhambra was at once the palace and fortress of the
Moorish kings; Generalif was a magnificent pleasure palace built near the
Alhambra on the summit of a hill, and serving as a summer residence for
the nobles of the court.

Astronomy, medicine, chemistry, and mathematics were widely encouraged,
and from that period dates the discovery of gunpowder. In the
universities, which were restricted in their method of instruction, were
taught grammar, geography, dialectics, and an obscurely formulated system
of theology; also a great impulsion was given to the writing of those
stories and romances which, in spite of their numerous affectations,
have so many warm admirers to-day. In regard to political institutions
the sovereigns of Granada accomplished much that was too important
to be passed by in silence. In every city they established a sort of
national guard by placing all the citizens under arms; and in order that
the frontiers might be more effectively protected, soldiers were given
grants of land on the borders, sufficient to maintain themselves and
their families. The price of the necessaries of life was never allowed to
rise beyond a certain point, and the kings themselves saw to it that the
markets were always well supplied.

All the details of life in the capital were strictly regulated, and a
capital police force patrolled the streets at night. Certain of the
princes, following the rigorous proscriptions of the _Koran_, prohibited
the use of spirituous liquors; but for the most part it was the abuse
alone that was severely punished. A successful effort was made to prevent
Jews from practising usury with as great freedom as elsewhere; and to
avoid litigation and dispute, public acts and private treaties were
drawn up in terms of great clearness and precision. Wise measures were
adopted in all that pertained to the practice of religion. The feasts of
Ramadhan, instead of being set apart for folly and debauchery, were made
the occasion of good deeds and charity toward the poor; and processions
for the purpose of imploring rain were prohibited, as also all nocturnal
public gatherings. Imprisonment was substituted for whipping in penal
offences, and lapidation was completely abolished; criminals condemned to
death were still buried alive, as was the law in all Moslem states.

[Sidenote: [1275-1432 A.D.]]

Strong as was Granada’s claim to an honourable place in history, it had
no fixed laws of succession, and beside princes worthy of all admiration
we see cruel and incapable despots who precipitated the ruin of the
Moslem races. Muhammed ben al-Akhmar and Muhammed II (1273-1302) were
able to repress all attempts at disorder in their states, but Muhammed
III was not so fortunate. One of his brothers, Nasar Abul-Jinz, incited
an insurrection in Granada and got himself proclaimed king, only to be
deposed in his turn four years later by his nephew, Ismail ben Faraj.
This prince reigned twelve years and was succeeded by his two sons,
Muhammed IV (1325-1333) and Yusuf I (1333-1354). The latter was the
author of many of the reforms we have noted above, and was, without
doubt, the most remarkable of the rulers of Granada, notwithstanding
the defeat he suffered at Rio Salado at the hands of the Christians. At
the death of Yusuf, Muhammed (V) Guadix, his son, was excluded from
the throne by family intrigues and jealousies, but finally mounted it
in 1362 and reigned until 1391. The succession next fell to Yusuf II,
and Muhammed VI, who condemned his elder brother Yusuf to death. Yusuf
was playing chess when the executioner appeared before him; he asked and
obtained leave to finish the game; but before it was ended messengers
from the court arrived with the news that Muhammed VI was dead, and
that he, Yusuf, was to ascend the throne. Yusuf III (1408) retained the
crown until 1423, when there broke out all over the realm those civil
dissensions that were to bring about the fall of Granada, and in which
the powerful families of the Zegris, the Abencerrages, and the Vanegas
played so prominent a part.

From the time of their accession to power the Castilians were the only
enemies the kings of Granada had to fear; hence they strove to conciliate
them by receiving them honourably at their court, or by arbitrating
personally in any disputes that might arise. But the differences in
race and religion were too great to allow of any real friendship being
established, and the Castilians were only withheld by their own internal
troubles from carrying out further the projects of Ferdinand III. If
the princes of Granada had seized the opportunity offered them by these
disorders among the Castilians, the standard of the prophet might yet
have been raised in Spain; but the spirit of conquest had completely
abandoned them, and the warfare in which they were engaged during a long
period of time was confined to attacking a few places, among which were
Gibraltar, Tarifa, and Almeria. One last effort was made, however, in
1275, by Muhammed II, who delivered over Tarifa and Algeciras to Abu
Yusuf, and together the two princes invaded Algarve. Sancho the Brave was
not intimidated, and successfully defended the interior of the country.
Later, when the states had awarded him the crown as a return for his
valour, his father, Alfonso X, begged aid of the king of Granada against
his rebellious son, and if the Arab ruler had yielded his subjects would
have had an excellent opportunity of penetrating to the heart of Castile.
But Muhammed II preferred, by entering an alliance with Sancho, to gain
for himself the friendship of a powerful warrior.

In 1308 the Castilians took Gibraltar and laid siege to Algeciras; to
induce them to raise the siege it was necessary to cede to them several
cities. During the minority of Alfonso XI two of the _infante_ or
regents of Castile united their forces and made a hostile advance on
Granada; but their ardour made them neglect all prudence and they were
completely defeated on the spot that is called to this day the Sierra de
los Infantes (1319). This victory encouraged the king of Granada, who
immediately sent out expeditions to reconquer the places he had lost,
even Gibraltar. The advantage might have been pushed still further had
the Africans supported Muhammed V, but on the contrary they took from
him Algeciras, Marbella, and Ronda. It was not until the accession of
Yusuf II that a genuine alliance united all the Moslems under one banner.
In concert with the Merinid prince, Abul-Hassan, Yusuf attacked Tarifa;
but the allied forces met with severe defeat and Abul-Hassan, after
surrendering all his possessions to Spain, went to hide his shame in Fez
(1340). His fleet was shortly afterward destroyed by the European galleys
which had united to assure the empire of the sea to the Christians.

[Sidenote: [1432-1491 A.D.]]

Henceforth the Arabs in Spain were thrown entirely on their own
resources, and situated as they were at the extremity of the peninsula,
they asked for nothing but to remain in complete obscurity. Not until
1432 was war again resumed; at that time Yusuf IV and Muhammed VII
disputed for the crown, and one of the two competitors implored aid of
the Castilians, who assisted him to victory. Now followed a series of
isolated frontier-combats caused by incursions of Castilian nobles and
Arab sheikhs into one another’s territory; but they brought about no
general war, being, as it were, preliminary jousts that served to prepare
the public spirit for the supreme struggle that was to come.

Granada was in no condition to resist the Castilians when Mulei Hassan
ascended the throne in 1466. Despite his courage and patriotism, that
new king was not received with favour by the people, who accused him of
cruelty and arrogance and resented the power he had allowed a Christian
slave-woman to gain over him; many even went so far as to assert that
he would name the son of this slave his successor, to the exclusion
of Abu Abdallah (Boabdil), the son of the sultana Zoraya. In Castile,
on the contrary, the nobles had united to form a faction around the
infanta Isabella, who was married to Ferdinand, king of Sicily, who was,
moreover, the heir presumptive to the crown of Aragon. Disposing of the
revenues of three kingdoms, the husband and wife were about to establish
forever the unity and power of Spain by destroying the Arab domination in
the peninsula. Mulei Hassan aroused their resentment by refusing to pay
the tribute agreed to by his father; he even carried hostilities to the
point of attacking Zahara, which he took in 1480. But the ruins of the
conquered city were destined to fall upon the heads of the victors; their
own Alhama, the main support of Granada, was taken by the Castilians, who
shortly afterward advanced upon the capital.

Here all was trouble, the partisans of Abu Abdallah having just deposed
Mulei Hassan, who abandoned by the most of his supporters was obliged to
retire to the provinces. The Castilians carried on the war for a while
longer, but without great energy; and when Abu Abdallah finally fell into
their hands they immediately restored him to liberty, thinking that his
culpable ambitions would serve them better than the most signal victory.
Mulei Hassan recovered the throne for a short time, but was forced to
abdicate in favour of his uncle, Az-Zagal. Abu Abdallah, who had incurred
the contempt of his compatriots, sought aid of Ferdinand; and that king
immediately invaded the kingdom of Granada, taking the cities of La Vega,
after which Az-Zagal delivered over to him Granada (1486). Ferdinand
had attained the object of his expedition; but instead of retiring he
concluded a new compact with Abdallah, which authorised him to pursue
Az-Zagal and take from him all the strongholds in which he might seek
refuge. Armed with this pretext he besieged and captured Malaga, then
directed his troops against Almeria, Baza, and Vera. Convinced that
further struggle was useless, Az-Zagal proposed a general capitulation to
Spain. Ferdinand accepted and displayed great generosity and moderation.
In return for all the states he delivered over, the Moslem king was to
receive full proprietary right over vast domains, and his subjects were
to become subjects of Castile, retaining all their property and liberties
on payment of a tribute.

[Sidenote: [1491-1525 A.D.]]

The greater number of the Arabs of Granada saw in this treaty the
assurance of future peace, and were willing to submit to the Christian
domination; but the orthodox Moslems flew to arms, and forcing Az-Zagal
to take flight in Africa they fortified Granada and determined to
successfully defend it or be buried under its ruins. The 9th of May,
1491, Ferdinand appeared before the walls of the city at the head of
eighty thousand men. The ablest of the Arab generals had organised
the defence; but despite that fact and the bravery with which all the
inhabitants, men, women, and children, endured the hardships and horrors
of a siege, Ferdinand and Isabella had superior might on their side, as
well as indomitable perseverance, and were bound to succeed.

As a proof of her determination not to recede until her purpose had been
accomplished, Isabella built a town about Granada, which exists to this
day under the name of Santa Fé. Moats and entrenchments guarded the
Spanish camp from surprises in any direction, and Ferdinand occupied
himself in intercepting all communication from outside. The Moslems
risked their last chance of safety in a general battle which resulted in
victory for the Christians. Contrary to the advice of many sheikhs, who
preferred death to surrender, Abu Abdallah entered into negotiations with
Ferdinand. The treaty ran that Granada was to be given up at the end of
two months, provided reinforcements did not arrive by sea or land within
that time. The Arabs had made appeal to the sovereigns of Africa, and
even to the sultan of Constantinople, but none would undertake the risk
of such an enterprise, and Granada was forced to succumb.

Not wishing to remain in the country that had witnessed his ignominy
and disgrace, Abu Abdallah went to Africa to finish his days in the
silence of the deserts. The inhabitants of Granada withdrew to the inmost
chambers of their dwellings, and let the Christians take possession of
their city, which had the air of being completely deserted. The banner
of Castile was flown from the summit of the Alhambra, and the great
mosque was straightway decorated with the ornaments of the Catholic
religion. There was not one among the vanquished who raised a protesting
voice at anything that took place; they even seemed indifferent to the
terms of surrender by which they retained their personal liberty, their
property, their religion, their usages, and even their former legislative
institutions. The fall of Granada seemed to be the sentence of death of
the whole Arab race, as indeed it did mark the end of their domination in
Spain, which had lasted 781 years (711-1492).

Ferdinand had no intention of faithfully carrying out the terms of the
contract; he possessed Granada--that was the end and aim of his ambition.
Accustomed as he was in politics to sacrificing everything to his own
interests, he determined to force the Arabs gradually to abjure their
religion and mode of life until they became merged into the rest of the
population. He went prudently to work by charging his inquisitioners to
convert the Moslems to Catholicism only by degrees. The Jews were first
to be attacked, and forced by tortures and horrible executions to deny
the faith of their fathers, that the Arabs might see what fate was in
store for them should they refuse allegiance to Christianity. A little
later all Moslem religious exercises were prohibited in public, and in
1499 Ferdinand boldly threw aside the mask, and pronounced sentence of
expulsion against any Moslems who should refuse to be baptised. In vain
were the cries of indignation that arose in the kingdom of Granada; the
inhabitants of the cities went to church to worship the Christian God,
and then in the privacy of their own homes asked pardon of the prophet
for the sacrilege they had committed. The mountaineers of Alpujarras, the
most energetic among the Moslem populations, openly refused to obey, and
took up arms; but Ferdinand marched upon them with a superior force, and
after having devastated their lands added confiscation to the sentence of
exile pronounced against them.

[Sidenote: [1525-1609 A.D.]]

The Moslems of Valencia, whose industries formed one of Spain’s principal
sources of prosperity, were tolerated as late as the reign of Charles
V. During that period the nobles of the country forced them to submit
to baptism. In 1525 an edict, instigated by the archbishop of Seville
who was grand inquisitor, called upon the Arabs of Seville to renounce
immediately their customs, language, and style of dress. In 1565 the
Moslems attempted to gain some amelioration of these hard conditions by
paying Philip II the sum of eight hundred thousand ducats; but though the
government and the inquisition relaxed their severity in some degree,
the Spanish people, carrying intolerance to its highest limits, pursued
even into their mountain fastnesses the unfortunate Arabs who refused to
become converted.

In 1568 the few faithful Moslems who were left armed themselves for
revolt and entered into relations with their co-religionists in Africa,
hoping to surprise and take Granada. Under the leadership of Muhammed ben
Omayyah, who claimed to descend from the Cordovan caliphs, the struggle
was carried on for several years; but finally divisions arose in the
rebel camp, and Muhammed was assassinated. Mulei Abdallah who succeeded
him was outwitted by John of Austria, and most of his soldiers deserted
him--some to submit to the Christian rule, others to be transported to
Africa. Mulei himself was reduced to negotiating terms with his victor.
The mountaineers of Alpujarras were dispersed through the provinces of
Asturias, Galicia, and Castile, and there kept under close surveillance.

A last blow was dealt the Arabs in 1609. Despite the protestations of a
few generous nobles, the Moslem populations of Murcia and Valencia were
crowded, by order of Philip III, on transports which carried them to
the shores of Africa. A great many passed over into the Pyrenees, where
they were received with kindness by Henry IV; this generous king offered
many of them a refuge in his own domains, and to others he gave means of
embarking for the ports of Guienne and Languedoc. It has been calculated
that, from the time of the conquest of Granada until 1609, three millions
of Arabs were exiled from Spanish soil; and never have the plains of
Valencia, Murcia, and Granada recovered the flourishing aspect that they
wore when cultivated by their former masters. The decree of 1609 was as
fatal to Spain as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to France
nearly a hundred years later.[d]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X. ARAB CIVILISATION

THE _KORAN_

The _Koran_ is held by the Mohammedans in the greatest veneration. The
book must not be touched by anybody but a Moslem; nor even by a believer,
except he be free from pollution. Whether the _Koran_ be created or
uncreated, has been the subject of a controversy fruitful of the most
violent persecutions. The orthodox opinion is that the original has been
written from all eternity on the preserved table. Of this, they believe,
a complete transcript was brought down to the lower heaven (that of the
moon) by the angel Gabriel: and thence taken and shown to Mohammed once
every year of his mission; and twice in the last year of his life. They
assert however that it was only piecemeal, that the several parts were
revealed by the angel to the prophet, and that he immediately dictated
what had been revealed to his secretary, who wrote it down. Each part,
as soon as it was thus copied out, was communicated to his disciples, to
get by heart; and was afterwards deposited in what he called the chest
of his apostleship. This chest the prophet left in the custody of his
wife Hafsa. The present book was compiled, partly out of these detached
scraps, and partly out of the memories of his companions.

When we consider the way in which the _Koran_ was compiled, we cannot
wonder that it is so incoherent a piece as we find it; the book is
divided into chapters; of these some are very long; others again,
especially a few towards the end, very short. Each chapter has a title
prefixed, taken from the first word, or from some one particular
thing mentioned in it, rarely from the subject-matter of it; for if a
chapter be of any length, it usually runs into various subjects that
have no connection with each other. A celebrated commentator divides
the contents of the _Koran_ into three general heads: (1) Precepts
or directions, relating either to religion, as prayers, fasting,
pilgrimages; or to civil polity, as marriages, inheritances, judicatures.
(2) Histories--whereof some are taken from the Scriptures, but falsified
with fabulous additions; others are wholly false, having no foundation
in fact. (3) Admonitions: under which head are comprised exhortations
to receive Islamism; to fight for it, to practise its precepts, prayer,
alms, etc.; the moral duties, such as justice, temperance, etc.,
promises of everlasting felicity to the obedient, dissuasives from
sin, threatenings of the punishments of hell to the unbelieving and
disobedient. Many of the threatenings are levelled against particular
persons, and those sometimes of Mohammed’s own family, who had opposed
him in propagating his religion.

In the _Koran_, God is brought in, saying, “We have given you a book.”
By this it appears that the impostor published early, in writing, some
of his principal doctrines, as also some of his historical relations.
Thus, in his _Life_, p. 16, we find his disciples reading the twentieth
chapter of the _Koran_ before his flight from Mecca; after which he
pretended many of the revelations in other chapters were brought to him.
Undoubtedly, all those said to be revealed at Medina must be posterior
to what he had then published at Mecca; because he had not yet been at
Medina. Many parts of the _Koran_ he declared were brought to him by
the angel Gabriel, on special occasions. Accordingly, the commentators
on the _Koran_ often explain passages in it by relating the occasion on
which they were first revealed. Without such a key, many of them would be
perfectly unintelligible.

There are several contradictions in the _Koran_. To reconcile these,
the Moslem doctors have invented the doctrine of abrogation--_i.e._,
that what was revealed at one time was revoked by a new revelation.
A great deal of it is so absurd, trifling, and full of tautology,
that it requires no little patience to read much of it at a time.
Notwithstanding, the _Koran_ is cried up by the Mussulmans as inimitable.
Accordingly, when Mohammed was called upon, as he often was, to work
miracles in proof of his divine mission, he excused himself by various
pretences, and appealed to the _Koran_ as a standing miracle. Each
chapter of the _Koran_ is divided into verses, that is, lines of
different length, terminated with the same letter, so as to make a
different rhyme, but without any regard to the measure of the syllables.

The Mohammedan religion consists of two parts, faith and practice. Faith
they divide into six articles: (1) A belief in the unity of God, in
opposition to those whom they call associators; by which name they mean
not only those who, besides the true God, worship idols or inferior gods
or goddesses, but the Christians also, who hold Christ’s divinity and the
doctrine of the Trinity. (2) A belief in angels, to whom they attribute
various shapes, names, and offices, borrowed from the Jews and Persians.
(3) The Scriptures. (4) The prophets; on this head the _Koran_ teaches
that God revealed his will to various prophets, in divers ages of the
world, and gave it in writing to Adam, Seth, Enoch, Abraham, etc.; but
these books are lost; that afterwards he gave the Pentateuch to Moses,
the Psalms to David, the Gospel to Jesus, and the _Koran_ to Mohammed.
The _Koran_ speaks with great reverence of Moses and Jesus, but says the
Scriptures left by them have been greatly mutilated and corrupted. Under
this pretence, it adds a great many fabulous relations to the history
contained in those sacred books, and charges the Jews and Christians
with suppressing many prophecies concerning Mohammed (a calumny easily
refuted, the Scriptures having been translated into various languages,
long before Mohammed was born). (5) The fifth article of belief is the
resurrection and day of judgment, while about the intermediate state
Mohammedan divines have various opinions. The happiness promised to the
Moslems in paradise is wholly sensual, consisting of fine gardens, rich
furniture, sparkling with gems and gold, delicious fruits, and wines that
neither cloy nor intoxicate; but above all, affording the fruition of all
the delights of love in the society of women having large black eyes,
and every trait of exquisite beauty, who shall ever continue young and
perfect. Some of their writers speak of these females of paradise in very
lofty strains; telling us, for instance, that if one of them were to look
down from heaven in the night, she would illuminate the earth as the sun
does; and if she did but spit into the ocean, it would be immediately
turned as sweet as honey. These delights of paradise were certainly, at
first, understood literally; however, Mohammedan divines may have since
allegorised them into a spiritual sense. As to the punishments threatened
to the wicked, they are hell-fire, breathing hot winds, the drinking of
boiling and stinking water, eating briers and thorns, and the bitter
fruit of the tree Zakum, which in their bellies will feel like boiling
pitch. These punishments are to be everlasting to all except those who
embrace Islamism; for the latter, after suffering a number of years, in
proportion to their demerits, will then, if they have had but so much
faith as is equal to the weight of an ant, be released by the mercy of
God, and, upon the intercession of Mohammed, admitted into paradise.

The sixth article of belief is that God decrees everything that is to
happen, not only all events, but the actions and thoughts of men, their
belief or infidelity; that everything that has or will come to pass has
been, from eternity, written in the preserved or secret table, which is a
white stone of an immense size, preserved in heaven, near the throne of
God. Agreeable to this notion, one of their poets thus expresses himself:
“Whatever is written against thee will come to pass, what is written
for thee shall not fail; resign thyself to God, and know thy Lord to be
powerful, his decrees will certainly take place; his servants ought to be
silent.”

Of their four fundamental points of practice, the first is prayer. This
duty is to be performed five times in the twenty-four hours: (1) In
the morning before sunrise; (2) when noon is past; (3) a little before
sunset; (4) a little after sunset; (5) before the first watch of the
night. Previous to prayer they are to purify themselves by washing.
Some kinds of pollution require the whole body to be immersed in water,
but commonly it is enough to wash some parts only, the head, the face
and neck, hands and feet. In the latter ablution, called _wodhu_, fine
sand or dust may be used when water cannot be had; in such case, the
palm of the hand being first laid upon the sand, is then to be drawn
over the part required to be washed. The Mohammedans, out of respect to
the divine Majesty before whom they are to appear, are required to be
clean and decent when they go to public prayers in their mosques; but
are yet forbidden to appear there in sumptuous apparel, particularly
clothes trimmed with gold or silver, lest they should make them vain and
arrogant. The women are not allowed to be in their mosques at the same
time with the men; this they think would make their thoughts wander from
their proper business there. On this account they reproach the Christians
with the impropriety of the contrary usage.

The next point of practice is alms-giving, which is frequently enjoined
in the _Koran_, and looked upon as highly meritorious. Many of them have
been very exemplary in the performance of this duty. The third point of
practical religion is fasting the whole month Ramadhan, during which
they are every day to abstain from eating, or drinking, or touching a
woman, from daybreak to sunset; after that they are at liberty to enjoy
themselves as at other times. From this fast an exception is made in
favour of old persons and children; those also that are sick, or on a
journey; and women pregnant or nursing are also excused in this month.
But then, the person making use of this dispensation must expiate the
omission by fasting an equal number of days in some other month, and by
giving alms to the poor. There are also some other days of fasting, which
are, by the more religious, observed in the manner above described. The
last practical duty is going the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every man who
is able is obliged to perform once in his life. In the ceremonies of it
they strictly copy those observed by Mohammed. A pilgrimage can be made
only in the month of Dhul-Hija; but a visitation to Mecca may be made at
any other time of the year.[b]

DOZY’S ESTIMATE OF THE _KORAN_

The book which contains the revelations made to Mohammed, and which is,
at the same time, if not the most complete, at least the most trustworthy
source of his biography, presents more peculiarities and irregularities
than any other. It is a collection of stories, exhortations, laws, etc.,
placed side by side without attempt at chronological order or any other
order. The revelations were seldom long, most frequently they consist
of simple verses which were put into writing in Mohammed’s life-time,
or simply entrusted to memory; for, as is proved by the genealogies
and poems of paganism, which for long were only preserved by oral
tradition, Mohammed’s contemporaries had a memory of marvellous power,
as is generally the case with people who write little. Mohammed called
every complete revelation _sura_, or “_koran_.” The former of these two
words is Hebrew, and it literally means a series of stones in a wall,
and thence the line of a letter or of a book; in the _Koran_, as we
possess it, it has the wider meaning of a chapter. The word _koran_,
properly speaking, is an infinitive, and means “to read, to recite, to
expose”; this word is also borrowed from the Jews, who use the verb
_kara_ (to read) especially in the sense of to study the Scriptures; but
Mohammed himself included under the name _Koran_ not only each separate
revelation, but also the union of several or even of all of them.

[Illustration: SPECIMEN OF ARABIC WRITING

(From an old manuscript of the _Koran_)]

However, in the time of Mohammed no complete collection of the texts of
the _Koran_ existed; and had it not been for the care of the first three
caliphs it would have run a great risk of being forgotten. What reserves
are needed in admitting the entire authenticity of the text of the
sacred writings of the East! The example of the Jews shows this clearly.
Already in the time of Mohammed it was known that the Jews had altered
the text of the Old Testament in several places; they have been blamed
for doing so, and the fact has been positively proved; at the same time
in the history of Judaism itself reasons have been discovered for these
alterations, which from a certain point of view appear necessary. The
Mohammedans had not the same reason as the Jews for adding and altering;
but that does not prove that they had no other reasons.

However that may be, and whatever may be the judgment which posterity
will declare as to the greater or lesser authenticity of the _Koran_, it
is quite certain that the arrangement of this book and its division into
_suras_ or chapters is entirely arbitrary. And it could not be otherwise;
an arrangement according to subject was quite impossible, for Mohammed
often spoke in the same revelation of totally different things. Still
less could a chronological order be followed: first, because Mohammed
himself, in many places, added new revelations to more ancient ones;
next, because in those times there was no one still living who knew the
exact moment when each verse had been revealed. It was with perfect
justice that, at this period, a man who was asked if the fragments of the
_Koran_ were arranged in chronological order, replied: “Even if all men
and all _jinns_ (demons) attempted it, they could not succeed.” So the
length of the _suras_ was taken as a rule of the order to be followed,
without keeping too strictly to it; the longest came first, then the one
which was nearest in length, and so on; so that the last _sura_ is at
the same time the shortest. The consequence is that revelations dating
from very different epochs are now mixed without order, so that a similar
confusion is found in no other book; and this, above all else, makes the
reading of the _Koran_ so difficult and so tedious.

For believing Moslems the _Koran_, that is to say God’s Word which has
not been created, is the most perfect book which exists, both in matter
and form, and this opinion is what it should be in the natural order of
things; but it is somewhat strange that the prejudice of the Moslems
should have had more influence on us than would have been expected. The
pompous rhetoric and the so frequently foolish accumulation of metaphors
which are to be found in the Meccan _suras_ have been taken seriously for
poetry and admired in consequence; the style of the whole book has been
considered a model of purity of language. It is difficult to argue on the
question of taste; every man has his private opinion on this matter, and
he can seldom be persuaded to change it. But if we must give our own,
we must confess that, among the more famous of ancient Arab books, we
know none so wanting in taste and originality, so exceedingly prolix and
wearisome as the _Koran_.

Mohammed was not able to compose in verse, an art of which nearly all
were masters at that time; so he did not speak in verse, and he even
had a marked aversion for poetry. His taste was extremely peculiar;
he preferred very mediocre poets who could express pious thoughts in
bombastic verse, to the greatest Arab poets who were still living or
who had only lately died. Generally speaking he was opposed to poetry,
and very naturally; for it was the true expression of the former joyous
life of paganism. He was therefore forced to employ rhymed prose for his
revelations, which consists in using short sentences, two or more of
which rhyme together. In the oldest _suras_ Mohammed closely followed the
rules of this style of writing so that they resemble the oracles of the
old Arab soothsayers; later on however he neglected them more and more,
made sentences longer than they should have been, and took many licences
with the rhyme which, far from being attractive, are real blemishes. If
they were found in any other book than the Word of God, they would have
been severely criticised.

Moreover, he was not master of the language, which partly explains the
frequent repetitions to be found in the _Koran_. Mohammed had much
trouble in composing; he seldom found at once the right word to express
his thought; so he tried all methods, and hence it is that in the _Koran_
the same ideas recur continually and only the expression changes. The
_Koran_ is crowded with degenerate words, borrowed from the Jewish, the
Syrian, and the Ethiopian languages; the Arab commentators, who knew no
other language than their own, wearied their brains in trying to explain
them, without succeeding, however, in finding the true meaning. Moreover
the _Koran_ contains more than one infraction of the rules of grammar;
and if these are less noticeable, it is because Arab grammarians, wishing
to justify them, made these errors into rules or exceptions to the rules.

The _Koran_ had, moreover, very little influence on Mohammed’s
contemporaries. The Arabs had reached a very high degree of
civilisation and of development--I refer to intellectual and not to
material civilisation; while Mohammed was a mere enthusiast, like
many others elsewhere--a fanatic, who was surpassed in understanding,
science, intelligence, and even in morality by more than one of
his fellow-citizens. The greater number of his contemporaries were
indifferent to his pious effusions. And, in short, to find the _Koran_
fine and sublime, faith must first have stifled common sense. The
majority of the nation had not yet reached that stage. So the conversions
one reads of which are attributed to certain passages of the _Koran_
belong chiefly to the domain of pious legend and not to history; history,
in fact, teaches that the multitude knew little or nothing of the
_Koran_, and that they were moreover not at all anxious to know it.

DOCTRINE OF ISLAMISM

There is no religion less original than Islamism. It has as base
Hanifitism and Mosaism as it was developed under the influence of
Parseeism, together with facts borrowed from the ancient Arabic religion
and Christianity, with the additional dogma that Mohammed is the greatest
and the last prophet of God. That was the sum of the system preached by
the Meccan prophet.

The _Koran_ contains no deep thoughts, no poetic theories depicted in
sublime and moving language. It does not try to resolve great problems
by clothing them in a borrowed symbolic form. Islamism is certainly
the most prosaic and monotonous of religions, and at the same time the
least susceptible of modification and development. How explain this
phenomenon? By the very character of the Arab people, who, in effect,
hold specially to the positive. They seek even poetry in the form rather
than the substance; and, everything taken into consideration, they rather
resemble a developed and reasoning people of the nineteenth century than
an ancient nation, still animated by the poetry of youth which other
religions have produced.

Again, Mohammed counts for much. He was not a profound thinker, but
an enthusiast of mediocre talent. Far from aspiring to originality,
his great glory was to avoid it, since he never ceased repeating that
the doctrine he preached had been announced from all time by prophets
of old. There is a third reason still which must not be lost sight
of: In other countries religion developed gradually--it was not the
founder who wrote, but his disciples; thus each author imprinted more
or less his individuality on his book, and this circumstance, which
naturally excludes uniformity, imposed on future ages the duty of not
keeping to the letter but entering into the very spirit of the text.
There was nothing of this kind in Arabia. There, a single man regulated
everything--faith, customs, even the law. The _Koran_ is a book made by
one man who exposes the immutable will of God. Islamism has thus a great
fixity. One knows not how to contest it; but, far from being a cause of
satisfaction, this must be deplored; for continual progress is a task
imposed on humanity.

The laws of the _Koran_ still flourish and will do so as long as Islamism
exists. That they were good for those times, and then constituted real
progress, may be admitted without difficulty. But the laws of Charlemagne
were just as excellent for their epoch; yet where would now be all the
people over whom he reigned, had they been condemned always to preserve
and follow these laws? Would not progress have been impossible for
western Europe? The legislation of the _Koran_ hardly enters into the
scope of our subject, and we will keep to its doctrines. It has been so
often analysed, and moreover presents so little originality, that we
shall make a very rapid survey of it.

The unity of God is the first article of faith; the second, the divine
mission of Mohammed. The God of Mohammed resembles the Allah Taala of the
primitive Arabic religion, the Jehovah of Mosaism, and the Ahuramazda
of the Parsee monotheist not yet corrupted. The story of creation is
borrowed from the Jews. The jinns of primitive religion have been
preserved, transformed into angels and demons. That is what Zoroaster
did with regard to the Indian divinities, the devas. It is forbidden
to honour the angels, they are perishable and will die in the day of
judgment. The arch-fiend also has the Hebrew name of Satan and the Greek
one of Iblis (Diabolos); but as Ahriman of the duallist Neopardism has
never taken his true signification in Judaism, the idea the _Koran_
gives of the arch-fiend and his subjects is more Christian than Jewish.
However, Mohammed diverges in one point from church doctrine--the
impossibility of converting devils. According to him devils may be
converted, and he himself has converted many.

The revelations of God are worked by means of prophets and holy books.
Each period has its revelation which God modifies according to the needs
of the time, and this idea, beautiful in itself, would be fecund if
Mohammed had not given his revelation as the last and most perfect. Adam
had already received the gift of prophecy, and the number of prophets was
not inconsiderable, seeing they were ordinarily reckoned at 124,000, but
the six greatest are Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed. The
_Koran_ admits the miraculous birth of Jesus--for brevity’s sake we will
not speak of all the others--but he was not the Son of God but a man in
the proper sense of the word, and witnessed in speaking of himself that
he was only a servant of the Divinity; he declares that not he but God
alone is omniscient. On the judgment day, Allah will say: “Oh, Jesus, Son
of Mary, hast thou said to men, place my mother and myself as gods by the
side of God?” And Jesus will answer, “Far be the thought from me; how can
I pretend to a name which does not belong to me?” It is not so clearly
seen whether the _Koran_ admits the Ascension. As to miracles, Jesus did
a great number, even when his mother was still feeding him, and later he
raised the dead, etc. To crown all, it was not he who was crucified, but
a man whom they took for him. The principal object of his doctrine was,
like that of all prophets, to announce the unity of God.

Man has five great duties to fulfil. He must admit the two principal
dogmas of Islamism, pray, fast, give alms, and go on pilgrimage to
Mecca. These duties are called the Pillars of Islamism. According to the
revelation made to Mohammed when he journeyed to heaven, and which is
not noted in the _Koran_ (for this book only orders prayers three times
a day), all believers ought, after having gone through the prescribed
purifications, to pray at a given time for five minutes each day, by
preference at the mosque. Mohammed is a great deal more occupied with
the ceremonies of prayer than with the prayer itself, for there are
designated passages of the _Koran_ and consecrated formulas to be
recited; so there can be no question of spontaneous prayer, and if in the
Moslem countries the degenerate cult consists in a mechanical movement of
the lips, the fault to a large extent must be attributed to the prophet
himself. The attitudes, gestures, inflexions of the head and body are
exactly regulated by Mohammed himself, and even more by theologians who
came after. On Fridays there is gathering for common prayer, but the day
is not a time of repose like the Jewish Sabbath or the Christian Sunday.
With the exception of prayer-time, each follows his daily occupation.

Fasting is prescribed for the whole month of Ramadhan. It is only
after sunset that eating and drinking are permitted. Mohammed decreed
this law at Medina, in a time when the fixed lunar year was still
followed--that is, when the solar year was made up by the intercalation
of a supplementary month; consequently the month of Ramadhan regularly
fell in winter. But when afterwards Mohammed had established the vague
lunar year and the month of Ramadhan fell by chance in summer, it was a
severe trial not to dare to take a drop of water all through the long
and stifling summer day. It is not astonishing, then, that the Moslem
is generally morose and bad tempered during the fast and awaits its end
with impatience. But, once over, there is celebrated on the first day of
the month of Khauwal, the most joyous fête known to Islamism, that of
the fast-breaking (_aid-al-fitr_) or “little fête” (the little _bairam_
of the Turks), which, in certain countries, lasts three days. The fifth
great duty, which all Moslems of age and free, and of no matter which
sex, have to accomplish once in a life-time is the pilgrimage to Mecca.

THE PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA

This pilgrimage was borrowed from the ancient religion with all the
ceremonies which accompany it, although they have been modified in some
respects and received a touch of Islamism. In spite of their great
antiquity, they were not much observed by Arabs in the time of Mohammed
except mechanically. But, as Islamism retained them, it was necessary to
justify them.

When Adam had been driven from the terrestrial paradise and sent into
the world, he lamented to God: “Alas! I shall hear no more the angels’
voices.” “That,” said God, “is the result of your sin. But build me a
temple and walk around it thinking of me as you have seen the angels do
around my throne.” Adam arrived in the neighbourhood of Mecca, and laid
there the foundations of the holy temple whilst the angels, aiding him,
brought large blocks of rock from five mountains. It was on to these
foundations that the temple itself descended from heaven. Adam also
received from paradise a tent formed of red hyacinth, in which the place
of repose was the angular stone. Also a white hyacinth, only blackened
because sinners had touched it. This is the famous Black Stone.

At the time of the deluge both temple and tent were taken up to heaven,
but the Black Stone was hidden in the mountain of Abu Kobais, which is
near Mecca. Afterwards the spot where the temple had stood remained
known to men and was visited as a sacred place. It was there, in fact,
that Abraham came with Hagar and Ishmael and left them to their fate.
The water which Hagar had brought being soon exhausted, she and her son
suffered greatly from thirst. As far as her eyes could see there was no
living being near. So to get a wider view she climbed Mount Safa, then
the Merwa heights which are opposite, but still saw no one. On returning
she found her son dying of thirst. Not knowing what to do, she returned
in haste to the two hills, and in her misery ran several times from one
to the other. When in desperation she returned, there was water bubbling
near her son. She hastened to pile sand round that it should not escape
before she had filled her pitcher; then she and her son drank. This
spring ran in that place where the wells of Zemzem were afterwards dug.

When on a visit to Ishmael, Abraham told him that God had ordered him to
build a temple in a certain spot; father and son set immediately to work,
and in digging came across the old foundations laid by Adam. Abraham
wanted to set in one of the angles a recognisable stone to mark the spot
where the procession should begin round the temple; but while Ishmael
was seeking a suitable stone the angel Gabriel brought Abraham the Black
Stone, which he had been to fetch from Mount Abu Kobais. Abraham took and
placed it in the angle. When the wall was too high for him to reach up he
mounted on a big stone which Ishmael placed before him and removed when
necessary.

The temple finished, both father and son on Gabriel’s order walked round
it seven times, carefully touching the four corners each time. Then,
bowing twice, they prayed behind the large stone on which Abraham had
stood. Gabriel also taught them the rites which they had to accomplish in
other sacred spots. First they had to hurry rapidly seven times on the
path between the two hills of Safa and Merwa, in memory of the journeys
Hagar had made in her agony. Then he led them to the valley of Mina; but
on their arrival the devil (Iblis) showed himself. “Throw something at
him,” said Gabriel. Abraham obeyed by throwing seven little stones, upon
which Iblis went away. In the middle and at the foot of the valley he
was seen again, but each time Abraham drove him away with little stones.
Thence arose the custom of throwing stones in the Mina valley during the
pilgrimage. But when, led by Gabriel, he had also visited Mozdalifa and
Arafa and learned what ceremonies there were to be performed he received
orders to tell all men they were to go on a pilgrimage to the Kaaba and
other sacred spots. “My voice cannot reach to them,” he answered. “Do
what I command you,” then said God; “I know what to do so that they may
hear.”

Abraham stood up on the big stone, and it rose so high that it was above
all the mountains. Turning himself successively to the four cardinal
points, he cried, “O men, a pilgrimage to the ancient house is ordered.
Obey your Lord.” Then from all countries came the answer: “_Labbaika,
Allahomma, labbaika_;” which means, according to the explanation which
the Arabs love to give to this old formula: “We are ready to serve
thee, O God, we are ready.” It is in perpetual memory of this fact that
the print of Abraham’s feet have remained on this stone. Even to this
day it is called Makam Ibrahim or “Abraham’s station.” This is how the
theologians, aided by a well-known story in Genesis and a Jewish legend
which speaks of Abraham making a journey into Arabia, came to resolve
the difficult problem of making very old customs agree with the new
religion and explain it. The explanation has not satisfied everyone,
but it has sufficed for the majority, and must certainly be praised
for its ingenuity. Being acquainted with what the majority think about
pilgrimages and the meaning they set on ceremonies, we will here give a
brief description of these customs:

First when the boundaries of the sacred territory are crossed and the
pilgrim is purified, the ordinary clothes are doffed and the pilgrim’s
garment or _ihram_ is put on. This is composed of two pieces of linen,
wool, or cotton; one tied round the loins, the other thrown over the neck
and shoulders so as to leave bare a part of the right arm. All head-dress
is forbidden, save for old men and invalids, who have to purchase this
dispensation with alms. Instead of shoes sandals are worn, or the upper
part of the boot is cut away so as to form a kind of sandal. The _ihram_
for women is composed of a mantle and veil.

[Illustration: ARABIC BRONZE TAP]

On the seventh day of the month of Dhul-Hija, the fête is opened by a
sermon which the kadi of Mecca delivers after the midday prayer, and
in which he reminds the worshippers of the ceremonies they have to
accomplish. On the eighth all repair to Mina, arriving there after a
slow walk of two hours. The journey continues to Mount Arafa, which is
six hours’ march from Mecca. It is on this sacred mountain and in the
long valley, that the night is passed, but very few think of sleep.
The devout pray aloud, the others sing joyful songs, or pass the time
in the cafés. The grand ceremony at Arafa consists in a long preaching
which begins on the ninth at three in the afternoon and continues till
sunset. This is regarded as so important that those who have not heard
it, even if they have visited all the sacred spots in Mecca, cannot
pretend to the title of _haji_ (pilgrim). The preacher, who is generally
the kadi of Mecca, is seated on a camel and reads his sermon in Arabic.
Every four or five minutes he stops and raises his arms to implore the
benediction of heaven. During this interval the audience flap the folds
of their pilgrim’s garment and make the air resound with their cries of
“_Labbaika, Allahomma, labbaika_.” According to the law the preacher must
show visible signs of emotion, so he seldom ceases wiping his eyes with
his handkerchief. The audience must also be deeply moved, recognise their
deep sinfulness, and shed abundant tears.

When at last the sun has set behind the mountains, the preacher closes
his book and the pilgrims run with all their might towards Mozdalifa. A
scene of indescribable confusion arises, for everyone runs as hard as he
can, and the caravans from different countries make it a point of honour
to arrive first at the destination. Foot-travellers, litters, camels
are always being knocked over, there is fighting with sticks and other
weapons. At night there is a magnificent illumination, “so grand that one
might imagine that all the stars from heaven had come down to earth.”

On the tenth is the greatest fête of the year, the “day of sacrifice,” or
the great _bairam_ of the Turks. At daybreak the kadi delivers another
sermon of the same kind as that of the previous day, except that it is
shorter; then the prayers for the fête are read, and when finished all go
slowly to the narrow Mina valley, where there is a village. There they
begin to throw stones about the size of a kidney bean, which, strictly,
ought to have been picked up at Mozdalifa. But many get them in Mina or
use them a second time, although this is forbidden by law. The first
seven little stones are aimed against a species of pillar or altar of
rough stone which is at the entrance of the valley, in the middle of the
route, and which measures six or seven feet in height. Then seven stones
are thrown in the middle of the valley against a pillar of the same kind,
and seven more at the western end against a stone wall. At the same time
they cry: “In the name of God! God is great! We throw stones to be safe
against the devil and his hosts.”

After this the sacrifices begin. The pilgrims immolate the victims
they have brought; and all Mohammedans, in whatsoever part of the
world, sacrifice at the same time. That, generally speaking, ends the
pilgrimage. The pilgrims’ robes may now be doffed, everyday clothes
resumed, and many return to Mecca to make a tour of the Kaaba. But
ordinarily a stay of another two days is made at Mina, and stone-throwing
is recommenced. The eleventh is the day of rest, and a return to Mecca
is made on the twelfth. The pilgrim goes to the Kaaba, which in the
interval has received its new veil, says some prayers, stands in front
of the Black Stone, touches it with the right hand or kisses it, if
not hindered by the crowd, and begins the seven tours, the first three
being made rapidly. To each tour belong certain prescribed prayers to
be said; at the end of each one he again touches or kisses the stone.
Then, asking pardon for his sins, he goes to the station of Abraham,
which is quite near, and prays again. Thence he goes to the sacred well
of Zemzem, from which he drinks as much as he wishes, or as much as the
crowd permits; finally he runs seven times rapidly from the Safa to the
Merwa hill. This done, he has accomplished all the ceremonies, which are
so regulated as to their least details that few pilgrims know them by
heart. The strangeness of these ceremonies has even struck some pious
Moslem theologians who do not put very great faith in the legends. They
admit that the act of walking round a temple, running swiftly between two
hills, throwing little stones, etc., does not increase piety; but they
get out of the difficulty by saying the ceremonies are a sign of divine
wisdom, impenetrable to our weak understanding, or a trial of man’s
submission to the mysterious and incomprehensible will of God.

We can pass over the other moral duties imposed by the Moslem religion,
for morals do not vary much in any religion. There is just one peculiar
duty, the holy war, of which we will say a few words.

THE HOLY WAR

European opinion for a long time has not been exact. The _Koran_, if
its sequence of ideas is well studied, gives no order relative to this
war against all infidels; and Mohammed, to begin with, shows himself
extremely tolerant, admitting the possibility of salvation for all those
who believe in God and the last judgment and practice virtue, whatever
may be their form of worship. But the opposition he met with modified
his way of looking at things, and it was then that Islamism became the
only religion that could save. Nevertheless the holy war is not imposed
as a duty except and only in the case of enemies to Islamism being the
aggressors. Only an arbitrary interpretation by theologians can take the
orders otherwise.

Another equal error is to think that Islamism has been propagated by
force. Political power, certainly, has been extended in that way, not
religion. The caliphs, far from seeking to make proselytes, for reasons
of pecuniary interest saw with much displeasure the conversion of
conquered peoples.

Mohammed also forbade games of chance and wine. As events then stood,
he had to ask for all in order to obtain anything. The Arabs were great
drinkers and took a certain pride in being so. Even among Mohammed’s
disciples at Medina there were those who came drunk to the mosque. It was
then necessary to agitate against drunkenness, and as warnings on the
subject of this abuse of wine did not produce any effect, he forbade it
altogether. Omar sanctioned the prohibition by adding the penalty of the
whip. The success has not been great. All the time Islamism has existed
wine has been drunk, a great deal of it, indeed; only, out of respect
for the law, it has not been done openly. The alimentary laws are much
less rigorous than with the Jews. Pork, for which moreover the Arabs had
a repugnance, has been forbidden, and as the use of fat generally causes
fearful and hideous diseases in hot countries, it must be recognised that
the prohibition in question is a very wise law in Eastern religions.[c]

ARAB CULTURE

In the Middle Ages the Arabs were the sole representatives of
civilisation. They opposed that barbarism which spread over Europe,
shaken as it was by invasions of northern peoples, and went back to “the
perennial source of Greek philosophy”; far from resting content with
acquired treasures, they enlarged and opened up new ways to the study of
nature.

Wars of invasion, scarcely interrupted by civil discord, far-away
expeditions, and striking triumphs, filled the first century of the
Hegira. Even in 760, after the fall of the Omayyads, there was no
evidence that to the tumult of arms would succeed in the caliph empire
a period noted only for intellectual progress. But under the Abbasids
a noble emulation, and above all the example and protection of the
sovereigns, dissipated the ignorance and coarseness with which the
disciples of Mohammed were justly charged. Men’s minds were permeated
with new ideas, a number of writings of all kinds sprang into existence
and in their turn gave birth to an infinity of others, which made Arabic
the medium of learning for the East and all the Moslem states. Nearly all
these writings are still extant, and form one of the vastest literatures
ever known.

To the caliph Abu Jafar al-Mansur belongs the credit of the first impulse
given to the study of exact science. Among the confused and incomplete
traditions that exist concerning the ancient Arabs, one catches a glimpse
of notions of practical astronomy. The spectacle of the heavens had
attracted their attention, as it does that of all peoples enjoying a
mild climate and clear air, although without invariably inspiring to
consideration of the celestial laws. All that they had gathered in their
intercourse with surrounding nations was a knowledge of the names of
planets and certain stars, which they deified, an exact indication of
the dwellings in the moon, and purely astrological learning. They went
by the lunar year, but it does not appear they had ever tried to mark
time by eras and epochs in general usage. Thus it is almost impossible to
establish a regular order in the long series of facts which make up the
Arabian annals, until that epoch when a timely revolution broke up the
various beliefs of its nomad populations, writing them under the law of
the _Koran_ and developing new desires.

“The Arabs,” says Humboldt,[d] “were admirably adapted to the rôle of
mediator and to influence the peoples included in the area between the
Euphrates and the Guadalquivir and the southern part of central Africa.
They possessed an unexampled activity which marked a distinct epoch in
the world’s history, a tendency opposed to the intolerant spirit of the
Jews, which led them to mingle with conquered peoples without always
abjuring their national character or traditional remembrances of their
native country, and this in spite of a perpetual change of land. Whilst
the German races did not acquire polish until a long time after their
migrations, the Arabs brought with them not only their religion but also
a perfected language and a wealth of poetry, which was not to be forever
lost but was to be found again among the troubadours and minnesingers of
Provence.”

M. Girault de Prangey[e] has studied carefully Arab art, and compared
the architectural monuments of Spain and the East. In the peninsula he
distinguishes three successive epochs. The first, from the eighth to the
tenth century, shows a badly disguised imitation of Christian and Roman
buildings. The mosque of Cordova is doubtless in the same style as that
of Damascus, which it surpassed in magnificence. There is no doubt that
the churches described by Eusebius of Cæsarea,[f] with courts, porticoes,
fountains, and priests’ lodgings, served as models for the mosques of
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Byzantine mosaics are found in them. But
already in 965 a sumptuous Greek ornamentation seemed insufficient.
Details were multiplied, arches were complicated with festoons and
varied curves, such as one sees at Cordova in the Villaviciosa chapel
constructed in the caliphate of Hakim.

The second epoch, from the tenth to the twelfth century, marks the first
development of that Moorish architecture encouraged by the Almoravid
and Almohad princes. The Arabs then strayed from the beaten path. The
ogee arch, porcelain mosaics, fantastic embroideries, ornaments run in
stucco, became fashionable. Inscriptions abounded and became part of the
decorations.

Finally the third epoch, when Arab art attained its apogee, was
contemporary with the splendour of the kingdom of Granada. The Alhambra
is the highest expression of it. The exterior of the palace, so simple
yet imposing, is in conformity with the Moorish habit of hiding from the
eyes of strangers. The entrance is only an immense arch decorated with
some emblems and an inscription recording the founder’s name. The walls
are of a species of mortar mixed with little pebbles which glint in the
sunlight. In the interior, on the contrary, man’s genius has expended
its utmost resources. Vast painted and gilded galleries, adorned with
arcades of every shape cut up with festoons, in stalactites, and loaded
with stucco open-work, the rooms lighted by uncasemented windows, the
Ambassadors’ hall, that of the Two Sisters, the Infantes room, the
Comares tower, the court and fountain of Lions, the Alberca court, below
which are baths modelled in the ancient style--all offer admirable
effects. Here water gushes among millions of beautiful little columns
isolated or grouped picturesquely, there it flows in marble trenches,
now forming cascades, now jets thrown in spray to feed the basins in
the patios surrounded by shrubs and flowers. Everywhere inscriptions
skilfully combined with sculptures express noble and elevated sentiments,
adding fresh charm to the marvel of a palace which Christian kings partly
destroyed.

The interior ornaments of the principal halls of this ancient residence
of Moorish kings are in plaster. The fashion of the relief is
geometrical, and although constantly repeated has none the less beauty
and delicacy. The paintings, artfully distributed and protected by
the Andalusian climate, are to-day as they were in the times of the
Abencerrages. In some of the halls which surround the court of Lions the
colours put on by the Arabs still retain their lustre. They are very
pure, composed only of reds, blues, yellows, and greens. In a recent
analysis the blue and red matter was found to be of ultramarine and
vermilion or sulphate of mercury.

It is, moreover, to be regretted that a general study has not been made
of the Arabic buildings in Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and even India, of
the different epochs of Arabic rule. It would offer peculiar characters
useful in an exact determination of style. We have reason to hope that
skilful artists will soon supply this want.

COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY

The empire of the caliphs, in its extent, its rich soil, varied climate,
people, and regulated condition of its provinces, naturally excited
commercial speculation. The productions of Spain, Barbary, Egypt,
Abyssinia, Arabia, Persia, and Russia, those of countries bordering on
the Caspian Sea, as well as all Indian and China merchandise, came to
Mecca, Medina, Cufa, Bassorah, Damascus, Baghdad, Mosul, and Madain
(Modein). The founding of colonies had created new business centres and
opened up important routes.

The Arabs were, moreover, devoted to industry by that same law which made
of work a duty, and commended commerce and agriculture as meritorious and
pleasing to God. Merchants and their callings elicited equal respect.
Governors of provinces, generals, and servants did not blush to be known
as Khayat the tailor, Atari the druggist, Jauhari the jeweller, etc. Free
passage for merchandise through armies and the safety of the high-roads
were maintained at all points. Wells and cisterns were dug in the desert,
caravanseries were built at certain distances where travellers could find
necessary help at a moderate cost.

Relations existed between Spain and the limits of eastern Asia; an Arab
fleet had gone through the Straits of Gibraltar, and a tempest which
drove them ashore hindered the possible honour of discovering the Azores,
and perhaps America. But though restricted to the old world, the Moslems
gave a strong impulse to every kind of human industry. Spain enriched
herself with the products of Arabian agriculture and manufactures. Cane
sugar, rice, cotton, saffron, ginger, myrrh, ambergris, pistachio,
bananas, henna for dyeing, mohaleb to promote plumpness, were objects of
exchange in the peninsula; tapestry of Cordova leather, Toledo blades,
Murcia cloth made from beautiful wool, Granadan, Almerian, and Sevillian
silks, and gun-cotton were sought in all parts of the world. Sulphur,
mercury, copper, iron were exploited successfully; the finely tempered
Spanish steel caused the helmets and cuirasses coming from its foundries
to be quickly bought up. The environs of Seville were covered with olive
trees, and contained one hundred thousand oil farms or oil-mills. The
province of Valencia gave to Europe southern fruits. From the ports of
Malaga, Cartagena, Barcelona, and Cadiz there were large exportations;
and Christian nations patterned their maritime regulations upon those of
the Arabs.

Under the Moors, as M. Darny has said, Toledo had 200,000 inhabitants and
Seville 300,000; to-day the population is rated at 21,000 for the one,
and 143,000 for the other. Cordova was eight leagues in circumference,
had 60,000 palaces, and 283,000 houses. To-day she has scarcely 56,000
inhabitants. The diocese of Salamanca then included 125 towns or
boroughs; this number is now reduced to 13. Seville had 6000 workers on
silk alone, yet in 1742 only 10,000 could be counted in the peninsula
among both silk and wool factories.

The geographer Edrisi, who visited Spain in the middle of the eleventh
century, assures us there were in the royal kingdom of Jaen more than
600 towns and hamlets working in silk. The expulsion of the Moors had
for Spain as disastrous results as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes
had for French commerce; and Cardinal Ximenes, desiring that even the
remembrance of the service they had rendered should be destroyed, ordered
in a decree worthy of barbarous times 84,000 Arabian manuscripts to be
burned in the public squares of Granada.

The northerly coasts of Africa had also shown great commercial
development. Numerous factories arose, and the Mauretanian Tingitana
rivalled the peninsula in its manufacturing and rural activity.
The country of Sous recalled Andalusia in its fertility and in the
intelligence of its inhabitants. The East caught the infection of this
general industry; at Siraf and Aden there was an exchange of goods
between China, India, Persia, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Nubian slaves and
Habasch, tiger skins, silk, cotton, ivory, and gold-dust from Zanzibar
came from Ethiopia. India and China sent stuffs, saddles, sandalwood,
spices, ebony, lead, tin, pearls, and precious stones. From Aden these
goods were transported to Jiddah, then to Suez, and shared among Egyptian
ports and Syrian coast towns. Countries bordering on the Caspian Sea
bought stores at the Cabul fair; caravans from Samarcand to Aleppo
distributed Chinese silks, cashmere cloth, musk, and medicinal drugs of
Turkestan.

We have set forth the causes and principal effects of the great wave of
civilisation poured forth in the Middle Ages by the Arabs, which rolled
from the columns of Hercules to the confines of Asia. It remains, to
complete this vast picture, only to say a few words on certain Arabian
discoveries, which altered the literary, political, and military
conditions of the entire world. These were paper, the compass, and
gunpowder.

PAPER, COMPASS, AND GUNPOWDER

One has already seen how many useful and important inventions have been
transmitted to us by the Arabs, and even although they were not perhaps
the originators they must not be refused the glory of having brought them
to the light and of having propagated them from one end of the world to
the other. This is really what they did with paper, the compass, and
gunpowder.

A belief, founded on certain apocryphal writing, that the Chinese knew
the use thereof at a far distant epoch, has been considered sufficient
to rob the Arabs of the honour of having bequeathed these inventions to
Europe, but this is an injustice. It might be said that printing existed
in China from the eighth century; yet the names of Gutenberg, Faust, and
Schoeffer are not less illustrious. Would not the Arabs, if they had
taken tissue paper from them, have also borrowed the art of printing had
it then been known? Would those of the Celestial Empire ever practically
have used chance discoveries? What use have they made of the compass,
they who still believed in 1850 that there was a burning furnace at the
South Pole; and have they ever applied gunpowder and utilized its power
in as many ways as the Arabs?

It must be remembered that at the siege of Mecca in 690 a kind of bomb
was already in use, and that in Egypt in the thirteenth century powdered
nitre was used to throw projectiles to a great distance with a noise like
thunder. It is also mentioned on the occasion of a naval battle between
the king of Tunis and the emir of Seville in the eleventh century, in
1308 at the siege of Gibraltar, in 1324 at that of Baeza; also as used by
Ismail, king of Granada in 1340 and by Algeciras in 1342, and Ferreras
says positively that the balls were shot by means of powder. The Spanish
thenceforth made use of it, and one sees the European armies little by
little provided with cannon, while no mention is made of their trials
and attempts which would necessarily have preceded the organisation
of artillery if the actual invention of gunpowder had originated with
Christian nations as some writers and historians have long claimed.

[Illustration: EARLY BRONZE CANNON]

With regard to the compass, nothing proves that the Chinese used it for
navigation, while we find the Arabs using it in the eleventh century, not
only for sea voyages, but in caravan journeys through the desert, and to
determine the azimuth of the Kiblah, that is the direction of the Moslem
oratories towards Mecca. It was the same with paper. Towards the year 650
silk paper was already being made at Samarcand and Bokhara. In 706 Jusuf
Amron at Mecca thought of substituting cotton for silk; hence the “damask
paper,” of which Greek historians speak. In Spain, where linen and hemp
were more common, arose factories for linen paper. “The Xativa paper,”
says the geographer Edrisi, “is excellent and incomparable.” Valencia and
Catalonia soon afterwards proved formidable rivals to Xativa (Jativa).
In the thirteenth century Arabian paper was used at Castile, whence
it penetrated into France, Italy, England, and Germany. But Arabian
manuscripts always led in the fineness and glossiness of their paper, as
well as in the choice of ornamentation in lively and brilliant colours.

It was thus that the influence exercised by the Arabs manifested itself
in every branch of modern civilisation. From the ninth to the fifteenth
century the most voluminous literature extant was formed, productions
were multiplied; valuable inventions attested the wonderful activity of
men’s minds at this epoch; and their influence, felt throughout Christian
Europe, justified the opinion that the Arabs have led us in all things.
On the one hand we find inestimable material for a history of the
Middle Ages--narratives of voyages, the happy idea of the biographical
dictionary; on the other, unequalled industry, buildings grandiose in
thought and execution, important discoveries in the arts. Does not all
this reveal the work of a people too long disdained?[g]

INFLUENCE OF THE ARABS ON EUROPEAN CIVILISATION

“The nations of Europe,” says Bailly in one of his letters to Voltaire,
“after having grown old in barbarism, were only enlightened by the
invasion of the Moors and the arrival of the Greeks.” We venture to
add--and far more by the invasion of the Moors, or of those to whom
Bailly gives the name, than by the arrival of the Greeks of the Lower
Empire. And, indeed, one of the distinctive and prominent characteristics
of the influence which the Arabs exercised on all branches of modern
civilisation, is precisely that of having restored to Europe a knowledge
of the ancient Greek authors, whose language, works, and even names, were
completely forgotten.

It may be boldly asserted that the numerous translations and still more
numerous commentaries which the Arabs wrote on all the works of Ancient
Greece, and which makes their literature the second daughter of Greek
literature, served to give the modern peoples their first notions of
the sciences and letters of antiquity. It was only after having known
them through the versions of the Arabs that the desire to possess and
understand the original writers took shape, and that the language of
Homer and Plato found several diligent interpreters. Indeed, “The greater
part of Greek erudition,” according to Hyde,[h] “which we have to-day
from those sources, we received first from the hands of the Arabs.”

In order to justify this assertion, which may seem a little paradoxical,
it will be sufficient to call attention to the fact that the Arabs had
transmitted to Europe, without disguising its origin, the knowledge
they borrowed from the Greeks, long before Boccaccio’s guest, Leontius
Pilatus, had started a course on the Greek language at Florence (about
1360), and the dispersal of the inhabitants of Constantinople, after the
taking of that town by Muhammed II (1453), had rendered their idiom a
common study in Europe. Indeed many Greek books, and notably those which
treated of the sciences, were originally translated from Arab into Latin.
Among others may be cited the earliest versions of Euclid and Ptolemy.

A not less certain proof that Greek letters first received an asylum
from the Arabs, is that several works of Ancient Greece have been
preserved by them, and discovered in their own works. Mathematicians, for
instance, would never have possessed the _Sphericals_ of the geometrician
Menelaus of Alexandria, who was antecedent to Ptolemy, but for the Arab
translation (_Kitab al-Okar_), which was afterwards translated into
Latin, nor the eight books of Apollonius of Perga’s _Conic Sections_, if
the Maronite, Abraham Ecchellensis, had not copied and translated (1661)
the missing fifth and sixth and seventh books from an Arab manuscript in
the Medici library in Florence; neither would the doctors have been able
to complete Galen’s Commentaries on Hippocrates’ _Epidemics_ without the
Arab translation discovered in the Escurial, and the naturalists would
not even possess an abridgement of Aristotle’s _Treatise on Stones_ but
for the Arab manuscript in our (the French) National library.

If we trace the whole history of human knowledge, and recall the fact
that Greece survived Rome in Alexandria, we may well assign the Arabs
the position of guardians to that sacred depôt between Greece and the
Renaissance. “They merit,” says M. Libri,[i] “eternal gratitude for
having been the preservers of the learning of the Greeks and Hindus,
when those people were no longer producing anything and Europe was still
too ignorant to undertake the charge of the precious deposit. Efface the
Arabs from history and the Renaissance of letters will be retarded in
Europe by several centuries.”

[Illustration: BRONZE CANNON AND MOUNTING]

In the matter of science especially, and far more than their forerunners
the Romans, the Arabs were the heirs of the Greeks. If they far preferred
Aristotle’s philosophy to that of Plato, it may have been because they
saw in Plato what he actually was, namely one of the fathers of the
Christian church, but it was certainly because Aristotle mingled the
positive sciences with metaphysical speculation. Nevertheless Plato
(Aflathoun), as well as Aristotle (Aristhathlis or Aristou), received
from them the surname of _Al-Elahi_, or the Divine. It was not only
on the masters, _principes Scriptores_, on Aristotle, Hippocrates,
Dioscorides, Euclid, Ptolemy, Strabo, that their studies were directed
and concentrated; there is no grammarian so mediocre, no rhetorician
so poor, no sophist so subtle, that the Arabs have not translated and
commented on him.

SCHOLASTICISM

It was in passing through their hands that the peripatetic doctrine
engendered scholasticism. It is certain that, in the interminable wrangle
between Realists and Nominalists the former leaned on the authority of
Avicenna, the others on that of Averrhoës; it is certain, according
to the observation of M. Hauréau,[j] that the philosopher Al-Kendi is
often quoted by Alexander of Hales, Henry of Ghent and St. Bonaventura,
whilst Al-Farabi furnished his aphorisms to William d’Auvergne, Vincent
de Beauvais, and Albertus Magnus; and that this same William d’Auvergne
prefers the Arabs far above the Greeks, finding the Greeks too much of
philosophers and the Arabs more of theologians. Doubtless scholasticism
was a vain and regrettable learning, for the schools of the Middle Ages,
as Condillac says, resembled the knights’ tournaments, but, all the
same, it produced some free thinkers, such as Johannes Scotus Erigena,
Berengarius, Abélard, and William of Occam; and it was from it that,
in after time, proceeded John Huss, Savonarola, Luther, Bruno, and
Campanella.

After having laid hands on the various branches of the knowledge
possessed by the ancient Greeks, who had remained superior to the Latins,
in the sciences even more than in letters and not less than in the arts,
and after having enlarged its domain in all directions, the Arabs laid
it open to the nations of Europe, all of whom they had outdistanced.
Spain was naturally the first to receive and spread their gifts. In the
tenth century, in the most profound darkness of the Middle Ages, that
country “to which,” says Haller,[o] “the humanities fled together,” was
the only one which accepted and welcomed those solid studies, which were
everywhere else repelled and destroyed, even in Constantinople, since the
time of Leo the Isaurian (717). Indeed, as early as the tenth century,
when the Muzarab, John of Seville, translated the Holy Scriptures into
Arabic, and when another Muzarab, Alvaro of Cordova, reproached his
compatriots with forgetting their language and their law (_legem suam
nesciunt christiani et linguam propriam non advertunt Latini_), in order
to train themselves in the Arab doctrine (_Arabico eloquio sublimati_),
Spain counted several illustrious scholars, Ayton, bishop of Vich, a
Lupit of Barcelona, and a Joseph, who instructed Adalbero, archbishop of
Rheims, all versed in mathematics and astronomy.

MATHEMATICAL SCIENCE

To Spain then came the small number of foreigners who were tormented by
the desire to know. Gerbert (born in Auvergne about 930, elected pope in
999, under the name of Silvester II, died in 1003), so celebrated for
his adventures, his learning, and his labours, after going through all
the schools of France, Italy, and Germany without being able to satisfy
the passion for instruction which possessed him, came finally to Spain
to seek that physical and mathematical knowledge which raised such
admiration in France, Germany, and Italy, whither he returned to spread
them, that the prodigies of his learning could only be explained by the
accusation of having delivered himself over to the devil.

Gerbert is unanimously credited with having been the first to introduce
the use of Arabic figures into these countries, and with having added
some elementary notions of algebra to the calculations of arithmetic. He
also passes as the first constructor of clocks. Whether, as most of his
biographers affirm, Gerbert pursued his studies as far as the homes of
the Arabs in Cordova and Seville, or whether he only made a long sojourn
in Catalonia and associated with the scholars of that country, as is
witnessed to by his collection of _Epistles_, addressed in great part to
Catalans like Borrell, count of Barcelona, Ayton, Joseph, and Lupit, it
is none the less certain that Gerbert learned all he knew from the Arabs,
and that that knowledge, so prodigious as to appear supernatural, was, as
William of Malmesbury says, “stolen from the Saracens.”

His example and his success roused other foreigners to come and glean,
where he had made so ample a harvest. The German Hermannus-Contractus
(who died in 1054), author of the book, _De Compositione Astrolabii_;
the English Adelard, who translated the first Arabic _Euclid_ into Latin
(about 1130); the Italian Campano of Novara, who published a _Theory of
the Planets_; Daniel Morley; Otto of Freising; with Hermann the German;
Plato of Tivoli; Gerard of Cremona, who translated at Toledo itself,
Alhazen; Avicenna, Rhazes, Albucasis, and even Ptolemy’s _Almagest_, not
from the Greek, but from the Arabic--that Gerard of Cremona of whom it
was said: “At Toledo he lived, Toledo he raised to the stars”--all went
in succession to gather in Spain the elements of mathematics, physics,
and astronomy, which they carried thence to their compatriots.

Montucla[k] not only says that “the Arabs were long the sole depositaries
of learning, and that it is to their commerce that we owe the first rays
of light which came to chase away the darkness of the eleventh, twelfth,
and thirteenth centuries”; he adds that “during this period, all who
obtained the greatest reputation in mathematics had been to acquire their
knowledge amongst the Arabs.” It is asserted that all the authors who
wrote on the exact sciences before the fifteenth century did nothing
but copy the Arabs, or, at the most, enlarge upon their lessons. Such
were the Italian Leonardo da Pisa, the Polish Vitellio, the Spaniard
Raymond Lully, the English Roger Bacon, and finally the French Arnauld de
Villeneuve, who is credited with having discovered spirits of wine, oil
of turpentine, and other chemical preparations.

During the same period, the whole of European geography was limited
to the _Seven Climates_ of Edrisi, and, in the seventeenth century,
when correcting by Abu Ishak Ibrahim ben Yahya certain geographical
errors, Abraham Hinckelmann was able to say: “The greatest assistance
and illumination for posterity we owe to Arabism.” As to the famous
_Astronomical Tables_ of Alfonso X, they, like his book on _Armillaries_
or celebrated spheres, only sum up the discoveries of the Arabs previous
to the thirteenth century. It was from their works that all his learning
was drawn by that celebrated monarch, who received the surname of the
Wise (or learned), and who did indeed effect some advancement in science,
between the system of Ptolemy and that of Copernicus. The _Alphonsine
Tables_ are borrowed from the various _Ziji_ or tables of the Arab
astronomers, and reproduce their form and substance.

When Louis XIV had a degree of the meridian measured geometrically, in
order to determine the size of the earth, he doubtless did not know that
five centuries before, the caliph Al-Mamun had ordered the same operation
to be performed by his astronomers at Baghdad. In the Middle Ages,
according to Bailly,[l] “the first step taken towards the revival of
learning was the translation of Alfergan’s _Elements of Astronomy_.” That
famous Spanish rabbi, Aben-hezra (or Esdra), who was surnamed the Great,
the Wise, the Admirable, on account of his book on _The Sphere_, was born
at Toledo, in 1119, and had been a disciple of the Arabs in astronomy. He
spread his masters’ lessons throughout Europe. It was from Albategnius,
more than from Ptolemy, that Sacrobosco (John of Holywood) had drawn the
materials for his book _De Sphera Mundi_; it was in Albategnius, too,
that the commentator on that great astronomer, Regiomontanus (Johann
Müller, of Königsberg, _Regius Mons_), had found the first notion of
tangents. It was from Alhazen’s _Twilight_ that the illustrious Kepler
took his ideas of atmospheric refraction; and it may be that Newton
himself owes to the Arabs, rather than to the apple in his orchard at
Woolsthorpe, the first apperception of the system of the universe; for
Muhammed ben Musa (quoted in the _Bibliot. arab. Philosophorum_) seems,
when writing his books on _The Movement of the Celestial Bodies_ and on
_The Force of Attraction_, to have had an inkling of the great law of
general harmony.

MEDICINE

The influence of the Arabs on all the natural sciences, chemical
or medical, is not less incontestable than their influence on the
mathematical sciences. Roger Bacon and Raymond Lully were as much their
pupils in the attempted science of alchemy, the “grand art,” as in the
actual science of numerical calculations. It was by them also that
Albertus Magnus (Albrecht Grotus or Gross, born in Swabia in 1193), that
universal scholar, the eminent master of St. Thomas Aquinas, whom, like
Gerbert, men called “the magician,” was initiated into all the learning
of the Aristotelian school. And even after the year 1600, Fabricius
Acquapendente could say, “Celsus amongst the Latins, Paulus Ægineta
amongst the Greeks, and Albucasis amongst the Arabs, form a triumvirate
to whom I confess that I am under the greatest obligations.”

Even as the astronomer Albategnius in the domain of heaven, or the
geographer Edrisi in that of the earth, so Avicenna and Averrhoës reigned
supreme over medicine, during six hundred years, down to the sixteenth
century. At Montpellier and Louvain, commentaries on Avicenna were still
being made in the last century. Both Boerhaave and Haller concede this
long predominance to Arab medicine, and Brucker could say with perfect
truth: “Until the renascence of literature, not only among the Arabs, but
also indeed among the Christians, Avicenna rules all but alone.” When, in
the very beginning of the thirteenth century, the Portuguese doctor Pedro
Juan, who was archbishop of Braga and then pope under the title of John
XXI, wrote his _Treasury of the Poor_, or _Remedies for all Maladies_,
his _Treatise on Hygiene_, and his _Treatise on the Formation of Man_, he
was copying the Arabs.

It was from Spain then that all the doctors of Europe came, and that,
through them, the taste for science and letters was extended. “The
Spanish doctors,” says Haller, “while their people were gradually
recovering the country, communicated the love of letters to the
Italians.” It was to Spain, at all events, that the Jews, then so
renowned for their healing art, went to study, to afterwards scatter,
like young doctors leaving the university, through the various countries
of Europe. Kings and popes took their doctors from the Jews. To cite only
a few famous instances, we call attention to the fact that the physician
of Alfonso the Fighter, king of Aragon, Pedro Alfonso, author of some
Latin tales, part of which were translated in Francesco Sansovino’s
_Cento Novelle Antiche_, was a converted Jew; and Paul Ricius, physician
to the emperor Maximilian I, was a Jew who remained a Jew. The latter had
studied in Spain, where he translated the _at-Takrif_ of Albucasis, the
book which Haller calls the “common fountain” of modern medicine. We have
seen that the Arabs practised a multitude of surgical operations, unknown
to the ancients, and in like manner enriched pharmacy by a multitude of
new medicaments.

But one fact sums up in itself all the proofs of the influence which the
Arabs exerted on the medical art, and that is that the famous school
of Salerno, whose laws were once followed throughout Europe, owes its
origin to the Arabs. When (about 1000) the Norman, Robert Guiscard, took
Salerno from the people called Saracens, who had occupied the south
of Italy for more than two centuries, he found a school of medicine
established there by these infidels. He had the wisdom to preserve it,
enrich it, and to give it Constantine Africanus as chief. This man was a
Moor from Carthage, whom travels and adventures flung, like Edrisi, into
the power of the Normans of Sicily; who took the cowl at the monastery
of Monte Cassino under the celebrated abbot Desiderius, afterwards
Pope Victor III; and, in his retreat, translated into Latin all his
compatriots’ works on the healing art. He thus ended by founding the
school of Salerno, for it was from his works that all the aphorisms of
the _Medicina Salertina_ were taken. As the University of Montpellier had
for founders (about 1200) the Aragonese, to whom that town, which was
then almost modern and had not yet inherited the bishopric of Maguelonne,
at that time belonged, it may be asserted, according to the generally
received tradition, that its faculty of medicine was founded at least
indirectly by the Arabs, and that it was in that sense grounded on their
teaching--the sole adopted, the sole reigning one, the most enlightened
and scientific of the age.

ARCHITECTURE

As to the influence of Arabs on architecture, the only one of the fine
arts which religion permitted Moslems to cultivate, it seems that
it cannot be set in doubt that it appears with as much certainty as
distinction. The question has often been asked: Whence came it that the
architecture of the close of the Middle Ages, that which passed from
the round to the pointed arch, and from basilicas to cathedrals, was
called Gothic? As this name, if it implied a northern origin, would be
in flagrant contradiction with the facts, the question has remained
unanswered.

But we must remind ourselves that the name Gothic has not been given
only to the architecture which the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
saw prevailing. The handwriting and the missal, which in the year 1091
were replaced in Spain by the Latin (then called French) characters,
and by the Roman ritual, were also called Gothic. They had received and
preserved this name of Gothic because their use dated from the time when
Spain was the domain of the Goths. Might it not also be because the first
lessons in the new architecture came to Europe through Spain, that this
architecture, _e.g._, like the Spanish handwriting and liturgy, was named
Gothic?

This perfectly simple and natural explanation is, moreover, in complete
accordance with history. The conjectures of men versed in the matter
are agreed on this point--that modern architecture had its birth at
Byzantium, that second Rome where the arts took refuge when they were
driven out of Italy. The Byzantine architects, who were the first to
mingle the capricious and flowery style of the East with the sober and
regular style of ancient Greece, had two sorts of pupils--the Arabs and
the Germanic peoples. The former first founded the architecture called
Moorish or Saracen; and afterwards the latter, that which later on was
called Gothic. Starting from the same point the two architectures remain
analogous, almost similar, during two centuries, both preserving, with
the differences imposed by the climate, the traditions of their common
origin. Thus the mosque of Cordova, raised by a prince of Syria, and
the old basilicas of Germany are equally sprung from the Byzantine
style. Then they separate, to take each a style of its own. The Moslem
architecture preserves the system of surbased naves, and takes as its
special characteristic the horseshoe arch, that is to say, one narrowing
at its base, and having the form of an inverted crescent.

Christian architecture adopts the system of high, pointed naves, and its
distinctive characteristic becomes the pointed arch, substituted for the
pagan round arch. But it must be noticed that the Arabs had employed
the pointed arch before the Christians; that, in Spain especially, a
multitude of monuments prove their use of this form which was unknown to
antiquity; and that it is doubtless because the pointed arch, now become
the striking and characteristic feature of Christian architecture, had
passed from Spain into Europe, that the whole system was named Gothic.
Finally, these two architectures derived from Byzantium, the Arab and
the Germanic, becoming ever more and more assimilated, end by merging,
at the close of eight centuries, into the style called Renaissance.
No one denies, no one disputes, the striking resemblance which exists
between the Arab monuments and those of Europe in the Middle Ages. This
resemblance is not only found in the great edifices of the capitals, for
the construction of which Saracen architects were sometimes called in, as
happened in the case of Notre Dame de Paris itself. It can be traced even
in the humblest buildings of the little towns.

“Thus,” says Viardot,[m] “I have found the multilobar arch of the
Mezquita at Cordova in the cloisters of Norwich cathedral, and the
delicate colonnette of the Alhambra in the church of Notre Dame at Dijon.
This resemblance was, then, not merely casual and fortuitous; it was
general and permanent. Nothing further is needed to prove the thesis.
If Christian and Arab art resembled each other, and if one preceded the
other, it is evident that of the two one was imitated and the other the
imitator. Was it the Arab art which imitated the Christian art? No; for
the priority of its works is manifest and incontestable; for Europe, in
the Middle Ages, received all its knowledge from the Arabs, and must
also have received from them the only art whose cultivation the law of
religion permitted.”

MUSIC

The impossibility which exists, in spite of the efforts of all modern
scholars, of our having an acquaintance, even an imperfect and
approximate one, with the music of the Greeks, must teach and give a
conception of the great difficulty of procuring proofs of the state
of this art, or discovering and understanding monuments of it, once
the traditions are interrupted. It is a dead language in which none
can now read. In the preceding section we have had to limit ourselves
to demonstrating that the Arabs cultivated music as a very important
and very advanced art. In the archives of the chapter of Toledo, there
exists a precious monument of the influence which they exercised on
modern music. This is a manuscript, annotated in the hand of Alfonso the
Wise himself, and including the canticles (_cantigas_) composed by that
prince, with the music to which they were sung. In it we find not only
the six notes _ut_, _re_, _mi_, _fa_, _sol_, _la_, invented, towards
1030, by the monk Guido of Arezzo, but also the seventh note, the five
lines, and the keys, whose discovery was subsequent, and even the upward
and downward tails of the notes, the use of which was not introduced
into the musical writing of the rest of Europe until much later. Up till
then music had served only for the psalmodies of the church, for the
plain chant of hymns and antiphons. This manuscript, copied and cited in
the _Paleographia Castellana_ is, according to all appearance, the most
ancient monument of the regular application of music to ordinary and
profane poetry.

As Alfonso X owes his prodigious learning chiefly to the study of the
Arabs, it would be scarcely possible to doubt that, for this book as
for all his works, he borrowed from them a science already formed and
even then committed to writing by Al-Farabi, Abul-Faraj, etc., and which
Alfonso might very well have understood with the help of the Muzarabs of
Seville. This supposition, which would attribute to the Arabs a notable
share in the creation of modern music, has all the more the appearance
of truth since the first instruments adopted by the Spaniards, the
French, and the other nations of Europe were named _moresques_ in all
languages. To this day the _chirimia_ and _dulzaina_ of the Moors, so
often mentioned by Cervantes and his contemporaries, are still used in
the country of Valencia. As to the modern stringed instruments, they all
had as model the lute (_al-aoud_, whence _laud_ in Spanish) of the Arabs,
who have also given Spain the _kitara_ (_guitarra_), since become the
national instrument of the people whose masters they were in all things.

Several theorists, J. J. Rousseau amongst others, have proposed to
write music in figures, assuredly without suspecting that the Arabs had
already practised that mode of notation. Kiesewetter[n] calls attention
to the fact that, the Arab scale having seventeen intervals, the Arabs
were able to write and actually did write music with their figures,
employing the numbers one to eighteen for the first octave, one to
thirty-five for two octaves, and so on. May it not be from this ancient
use of the Arab figures in musical writing that the employment of the
same figures for the figured bass, in which a simple number denotes a
chord, came into vogue? It is possible and very probable.

The old Spanish music, that which is preserved in Andalusia under the
name of _cañas_, _rondeñas_, _playeras_, etc., differing greatly from the
_boleros_ of comic operas and eluding the modern notation, is certainly
of Arab origin. Who are they who have preserved it in the tradition of
this country? An eastern race, a nomadic race, that of those Bohemians
who, coming from Egypt about the fourteenth century, and perhaps before
that from India, spread themselves throughout Europe and were called
_gitanos_ in Spain, _zingari_ in Italy, gipsies in England, _zigeuner_ in
Germany, and _tzigani_ in Russia, whilst naming themselves _pharaons_.

These nomads, with their immutable customs, who are still to-day not
only in Spain but in Russia the same in physique and moral character
as Cervantes has depicted them, have carried and retained everywhere
the ancient songs of their problematic country. As the musicians of the
people, formed into troupes of singers and dancers, they have everywhere
spread the form and sentiment of their antique melodies. “It was through
them,” concludes Viardot, “that, in Russia as in Spain, popular music
took or kept the oriental character; it was from them that in Moscow, at
the foot of the towers of the Kremlin, I listened to the same songs as in
the gardens of the Alhambra of Granada. In both places I had heard from
their lips a living echo of the Arab music.”[m]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI. TRIBAL LIFE OF THE EPIC PERIOD

SPECIALLY CONTRIBUTED TO THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. JULIUS WELLHAUSEN[41]

Professor in the University at Göttingen

People who are unlearned in the law, are apt to assume that it executes
itself; or at least they think it absolutely necessary that law and the
execution of law should go hand in hand. But in the primitive stages of
human society it was not so. The law existed long before there was any
magistracy to carry it into effect, and even after magisterial authority
had been established, it frequently left, not only the pursuit, but the
execution of law to the parties concerned. An instructive picture of
such a state of things is found in the copious literature that has been
preserved with regard to the Epic Period of the ancient Arabs, _i.e._,
the period immediately preceding their amazing irruption into the world’s
history through the gate of Islam.

The desert has imprinted its stamp upon the Arabs. They are particularly
interesting for this very reason, that by the desert they have, so
to speak, been arrested at what is in many respects a very primitive
stage of development. Yet we must not imagine them roving about it like
wild animals, gathering together for temporary ends and dispersing
just as they please. As a matter of fact, they have no settled abodes,
they are not tied to the soil nor linked with one another by a fixed
domicile, and consequently they are not organised on the basis of
locality, according to districts, towns, and villages. But they have
instead an inner principle of association and organisation, of union and
distinction, inherent in the very elements of race. It is the principle
of consanguinity, of kinship. For the Arab, his political _genus_, his
_differentia specifica_, are innate as indelible characteristics. He
knows the clan to which he belongs, and the stock to which his clan
belongs; the tribe or nation of which the stock is a part, and the larger
group that includes the tribe or nation. Associations are regarded by
them as natural units, founded on consanguinity, and they stand in a
close and natural relationship, one to another, corresponding to nearer
or remoter degrees of consanguinity (by the father’s side) so that their
statistics assume the form of a genealogy.

Among the ancient Hebrews this form survived even after they had settled
in towns and villages; Isaac was the father of the nations of Israel
and Edom, Israel the father of twelve tribes, Judah the father of five
lineages, and each lineage in its turn father or grandfather of clans and
families. Such a principle of organisation is equally serviceable for
settlement or migration, for war or peace; and being independent of all
conditions of fixed localities, it makes the tribe as mobile as an army.
For an army, too, must possess an organisation adaptable to every place,
and as suitable to a hostile country as to its own. But an army is broken
up into artificial divisions; the men may be put into one branch or
another at will, and the place of the individual in the whole scheme is
notified by artificial marks of distinction. With the Arabs, on the other
hand, the form is indistinguishable from the substance, they are born
into their cadres, and their uniform is, as it were, innate to them. The
closer or remoter circles of kindred, from the clan to the nation, are
their companies, battalions, and regiments, which include not only the
fighting men, but their wives and children also, though the latter take
no direct part in any fight.

The two most important stages of the political affinity are the
highest and the lowest, the two poles, as it were, of the system; the
intermediate stages are less important, because they assume the qualities
of one pole or the other, according to circumstances. The highest
association, which we call the tribe, includes all the families which
migrate together regularly, _i.e._, which make the circuit of certain
hunting-grounds, often great distances apart, according to the season
of the year. One tribe will not contain more than a few thousand souls;
if it exceeds that number, it becomes too large for common migration
and pasturage and is obliged to divide. The lowest is the clan, which
consists of families within the nearest degrees of kinship, which
invariably pitch their tents close together in a common quarter (_dâr_).

Beyond the tribe the bond of consanguinity does not break off abruptly;
it embraces also the group of such tribes which stand in any sort of
historic relation to one another. But in this wider circle the ties of
kinship cease to be really effective.

The Arabs as a whole, though linked together by community of speech, of
intellectual acquirements and social forms, are not really a nation;
neither can the larger groups into which they have split up be called
nations; the nation is the tribe. The tribe is the source and the limit
of political obligation; what lies outside the tribe is alien. This does
not mean that a perpetual and open _bellum omnium contra omnes_ prevails
in Arabia; the relations of the tribes among themselves vary greatly,
and may be friendly as a result of kinship and treaty. But inasmuch as
the idea of common duty of man to man does not exist among them, and no
moral law is valid beyond the tribe, everybody alien from the tribe is
an enemy as a matter of course. If he is caught in the hunting-grounds
of the tribe without a special security, he is an outlaw and fair game.
“When I and my people were tormented with hunger,” says an old Bedouin,
“God sent me a man who was travelling alone with his wife and his herd of
camels; I slew him and took his wife and camels for my own.” He considers
the murder perfectly lawful, and is only surprised that a stranger should
presume to rove about the country with his wife and his cattle and
without a strong escort.

Yet the narrow bounds of the tribal community are capable of enlargement.
There are means whereby even the alien can attain the security of a
member of the tribe. If he seizes the hem of his enemy’s garment from
behind, or ties a knot in the end of his turban, or knots his rope with
his own, he has nothing further to fear. If he succeeds in creeping
into the other’s tent, or in being introduced and entertained there by
the wife or child, his life is sacred. The sanctity of the hearth is
unknown among the Arabs, even their altar is not a hearth and is without
any fire; but, on the other hand, the tent and those within it are
sacred, and even to touch the tent-cords from outside renders a stranger
safe from attack. By a sacramental act, accompanied with a simple form
of words, he disarms his enemy and assures his own safety. Of course
protection is not always stolen, as it were, in this fashion, it may
be extended voluntarily; for example, there are cases when the man who
grants protection flings his mantle over the one who implores it, thus
making him out as his own property which no man may injure.

If a foreign trader desires to travel through the tribe without peril,
one of its members must give him a safe-conduct; very often he merely
gives him some recognisable piece of his own property to take with him as
a passport or charter of legitimation. The relations which arise in this
manner are, for the most part, transitory.[42]

But there are also permanent and hereditary relations of this sort, based
in part upon contract and oath. A member of a tribe may allow a stranger
to sojourn permanently with his clan, and by adoption into the clan the
sojourner is considered naturalised by the whole tribe. Not individuals
only, but whole clans and families can thus be naturalised, and instances
thereof are not uncommon. A fresh element is consequently grafted on the
pure tribal stock in these sojourners or protégés. In a few generations
they may amalgamate with the tribal stock, but as fresh batches are
constantly coming in from without, the distinction between the two
elements within the tribe remains.

Consanguinity and contiguity combine to weld the tribe together; external
bonds there are none. Blood-relationship is the higher and stronger
principle, and neighbourhood passes into brotherhood. All political and
military duties are looked upon as obligations of blood or brotherhood.
The relations of the individual to larger associations and the community
as a whole are precisely the same in character, though less intimate
in degree, as those which bind him to his own family. There is no _res
publica_ in contradistinction to domestic concerns, no difference, in
fact, between what is public and what is private. In principle, at least,
all men have the same rights and duties, and no man has one-sided rights
or duties. Everything is based on reciprocity, on loyalty and fellowship,
and the complementary notions of duty and right, of ruler and subject,
of patron and client, are expressed by one and the same word. There are
neither officers nor officials, neither jailers nor executioners. There
is no magisterial authority, no sovereign power, separable from the
association and the individual, with a revenue of its own drawn from
taxation and an independent administration by official organisation. The
functions of the community are exercised by all its members equally. The
prerogative and obligations of the state as we understand it, which can
only be fitly discharged by its civil officers, are to the Arab things
that the individual is bound to do, not under compulsion from without,
but from the corporate feeling of neighbourhood and brotherhood. By his
own active exertions the individual has constantly to create afresh those
things which with us are permanent organisations and institutions, which
lead or seem to lead an independent life of their own. The Arabs stop at
the foundations, building no upper story upon them which could be handed
over ready-made to their heirs and in which they might live at their ease.

In other words, among the Arabs political relations are moral, for
morality is confined within the limits of the tribe. Political
organisation is represented by the corporate feeling which finds
expression in the exercise of the duties of brotherhood. These require
a man to say “good day” to his fellows, or “God bless you,” if anyone
sneezes, not to shut himself up from others, nor to take offence easily,
to visit the sick, to pay the last honours to the dead, to feed the poor
in time of dearth, to protect and care for the widow and the orphan;
likewise to slaughter a camel now and again in winter, to arrange sports
and there regale the rest with its flesh, for no man slaughters for
himself alone, and every such occasion is a feast for the whole company.
Such are the common demonstrations of brotherly kindness by which
corporate spirit is kept alive under ordinary circumstances. But the
greatest duty in which all others culminate is to help a brother in need.
Political duty therefore occupies an essentially subordinate place. The
great thing in all cases is that the individual should act and should
see himself how to get along, but, of course, he is quite at liberty to
concert measures with his comrades. The rest are only bound to assist him
in time of need, and then they must answer to his call without asking
whether he is right or wrong; as he has brewed, so they must drink. The
whole tribe does not always rise at once, the primary obligation rests
with the clan. The clan has the right of inheritance together with the
next duty of paying the debts of any member of it, delivering him from
captivity, acting as his compurgators, and assisting him in procuring
vengeance or paying mulcts. The larger associations only become involved
when the need is great, and more particularly in cases of enmity with
another tribe.

It will readily be imagined that a community based so exclusively on
mutual fellowship does not fulfil its tasks very satisfactorily, and
that the system is not particularly workable. There are many indolent or
refractory members who do not fulfil their duties towards the community
for lack of coercion from without, and because the only pressure that
can be brought to bear upon them, the shame of falling short in the
eyes of their kinsfolk or in public opinion, is of no avail against
their cowardice or perverse obstinacy. Moreover, individual liberty of
action is too little restricted by a due regard for the interests of the
community. There is nothing to prevent a man from undertaking on his own
account a raid which may kindle a flame of war that will wrap his whole
tribe in its conflagration and even spread beyond. Or by the admittance
of a stranger into his tent and his clan, which he regards as an
obligation of honour and of religion, he may involve his tribe in great
difficulties by imposing on them the burden of henceforth protecting the
said stranger against his pursuers who may be seeking to arrest him for
some crime.

But a more fruitful source of discord than individual cases of friction
is the competition between the tribe and the clan. There is no doubt that
these polar associations did not spring from the same root, but differ
in their very origin; the tribe probably coalesced under the rule of a
communistic matriarchal system (endogamous), while the clan is based on
an aristocratic patriarchal system (exogamous). At the present time the
tribe is regarded as merely an expansion of the clan, both being held
together by the same paternal consanguinity. But the degrees of political
kinship vary, the ties of blood have not the same force throughout; they
act far more effectively in the smaller circle than in the larger. The
individual stands in no direct relation to the tribe; his connection
with it is through the intermediate links of the clan and the family;
his membership in the community is conditioned by his membership of the
subordinate groups. As a rule, therefore, the individual finds that his
skin is nearer to him than his shirt whenever the interests of tribe and
clan diverge. And it goes without saying that this is very often the case.

The defects of the system are to some extent compensated by certain
rudiments of government to be found among the Arabs. There is a leading
aristocracy; the clans have their chief, and a head chief, the _said_,
is at the head of every tribe. The position of all these chiefs depends
upon voluntary recognition of the fact that they are fitted to hold it
by their personal qualities and their fortune. They are spontaneously
appointed by the common voice, without election or any similar process,
and though there is an inclination to make the authority hereditary and
the sons reap the advantage of gratitude felt toward their fathers,
yet each man must, by his own ability, anew make good his claim to the
honours he has inherited if he is to remain in power and public esteem.
The word of these chieftains carries most weight in the assemblies
in which they meet every evening to talk, dispute, and deliberate.
The _said_ gives the casting vote. He decides, for instance, when the
tribe shall start on its migrations and when it shall encamp. Generally
speaking, however, the chiefs and the _said_ have no advantage over the
rest in privilege, but only in obligation. Among the Arabs _noblesse
oblige_ is no empty phrase, but a substantial truth. The nobles must
distinguish themselves above the rest in the duties incumbent upon all;
they must take on their shoulders the burden which others pass by, and
out of their own abundance make good the deficit caused by lack of
corporate feeling in the multitude. They must be liberal in all things;
must not spare their blood in feud nor their goods in peace; they must
entertain the stranger, maintain the widow and the orphan, feed the
hungry and help the debtor to pay. The principal share in bearing the
common burden falls to the _said_. In return he receives the fourth part
of all booty, but he nevertheless often spends his whole fortune for the
common stock; his position brings him honour and reputation, but never
gain, and therefore does not procure him the envy of baser natures.
But his most important duty is to maintain the unity of the tribe and
to check the disintegration to which it is liable from individual
selfishness and the particularism of the various clans. He is there to
step into the breach, as the biblical phrase has it. He is the born
mediator and peacemaker.

For all that, he can only negotiate and apply moral pressure. He is but
the first among equals; he has great authority but no supreme power, and
in the last resort that is not enough either for the external or internal
affairs of the community. In war there is no thought of compulsory
service, no idea of discipline, of absolute command and obedience. If one
clan will not go out with the rest, it separates from them and hardens
its heart against their mockery and contempt. If the men will not follow
their leader, he sometimes has recourse to an attempt to put them to
shame by setting up his sword and threatening to fall upon it, unless
he is obeyed. Danger from without is, however, the readiest means of
inducing them to submit to a single will, whereas the lack of a central
sovereign authority is much more sorely felt in internal affairs.

The only function of the ancient community, apart from self-defence,
is the maintenance of peace within its own borders, and the means to
this end is the law. The Old Testament, for instance, knows nothing of
administration as a function of the state; to rule is to judge, and the
generic term for ruler is judge.

The Arabs are not without law, though with them its limits are wider and
less strictly defined than with us and include the decision of questions
which do not lead to impeachments and law-suits, but refer to duties, not
rights.

They also have judges who administer justice. Disputes between fellow
tribesmen are brought under discussion in the daily palaver and are
there settled without any legal formalities. But international disputes,
_i.e._, matters disputed between members of different tribes, may also
be settled by law, if both parties agree to choose an arbitrator to
whom they will refer the decision. Anyone may undertake this office; in
difficult cases a seer or priest is frequently applied to, or some other
man who enjoys general confidence and has a reputation for exceptional
wisdom. The arbitrator sometimes makes the parties swear to accept his
verdict, whatever it may be, but his business is merely to discover and
interpret the law, and he has no power to enforce it. The disputants
consequently apply to the judge merely to learn the rules of the law, not
to sue for and obtain their rights. His judgment has no legal force and
does not entail the execution of the sentence, with which, in fact, it
has nothing to do.

An instance of what appears to us so singular a state of things, may make
the matter clearer. Shortly before Mohammed’s arrival at Medina, a man
of that city went to law with a Bedouin from the neighbourhood before a
wise woman about a sum of money, _i.e._, camels. The woman decided in
favour of the man of Medina; he was a well-known person, Suwaid, the son
of Samit, by name. When they came to the parting of the ways, Suwaid said
to the Bedouin, “Who will be surety that thou wilt pay me the camels?”
The other promised to send them as soon as he reached home. But Suwaid,
not satisfied with this, wrestled with his debtor, threw him, and bound
him. He then carried him off to Medina and kept him in custody, until his
kinsmen redeemed him by paying him what he owed.

Criminal jurisdiction, as we understand it, is rendered impossible by
the absence of a supreme authority, a magisterial tribunal. Although
fidelity to one’s kindred is a moral law and the violation of it a
sin, yet the Arabs have not reached the abstract conception of crime
against the community at large, still less of punishment inflicted by
the community--since for the community to cast off a troublesome or
unworthy member is not, strictly speaking, a punishment. They only
recognise private offences, and the punishment of these is the business
of the individual. There is no official process of investigation with the
coercive methods of vigorous cross-examination. If anything is stolen,
the owner proclaims his loss aloud and lays the thief under a curse
unless he restores the missing article, and all his accomplices likewise,
unless they tell what they know of it. If murder or manslaughter has been
committed by an unknown hand and this or that man is suspected of being
the perpetrator, his clan takes an oath of purgation for him, which may,
however, be counterbalanced by an oath to the opposite effect on the part
of the dead man’s clan.

The punishment of an offence is of course left to the sufferer. It is
his business to see how he can best get compensation for the wrong done
him and to seek for help wherever he may find it. He is not forbidden to
take vengeance into his own hands, nor is there any compulsion to make
him have recourse to law instead of so doing. The individual may, of
his own free will, refrain from violent measures, if he pleases, and
may enter into negotiations, which are then conducted on the basis of a
legal principle, of an inner material law. But if, instead of avenging
himself, he resorts to legal proceedings, the question is never one of
the punishment of a crime,--which, indeed, could hardly be settled by
agreement between the contending parties,--but merely of compensation
for a loss. Compensation can be given for everything for which vengeance
might be exacted. All crimes are treated in the same manner by the law,
and assessed as economic damage. Every loss of honour, property, or life
can be appraised by agreement; they all have their price in camels.
Vengeance is not thereby appeased, but if revenge is relinquished, the
law demands no more.

The worst and most serious crime is bloodshed. Malice or accident, war or
peace, make no difference to this. Its natural and primary consequence is
blood-revenge. This is, in the first place, the duty of the next heir,
but it quickly extends to others, for the clan of the slayer does not
desert him, but takes his part, and consequently also the slain man’s
whole clan naturally helps the avenger against them. The result is a
state of war between the two clans, which finds expression in occasional
murders, often at long intervals. All members of the clan are considered
accomplices; they espouse one another’s quarrel as in war, and fall
victims to vengeance without distinction of persons. Every new member
is a fresh motive for vengeance, and thus revenge incessantly breeds
revenge. Thus blood-revenge necessarily results in blood-feud between
the clans. It has been supposed that blood-feuds are only carried on
between two hostile tribes, and not between kindred clans belonging to
the same tribe, as that would constitute a breach of tribal unity. But
the preservation of tribal unity is a moral axiom only, and incapable of
keeping the centrifugal forces under effective control. The clan’s right
of feud is undisputed, and, as a matter of fact, blood-feuds are carried
on also within the tribe as well as without. The duty of vengeance is
more vividly realised than duty to the tribe; it is a sacred primary law
which takes precedence of all political considerations. Even if brother
slays brother in the same clan, the result is a blood-feud, though the
cases on record are as a rule supposititious, not real, just as similar
cases are treated by the Greeks as tragic problems in the _Oresteia_ and
the _Œdipodeia_.

Law can be substituted for revenge in murder as in other crimes, that
is to say, even blood-guiltiness can be paid off in money, _i.e._, in
camels. This is done by agreement between debtor and creditor or between
the clans of both; and when the agreement is brought about, the source
of the blood-feud is estopped. In quarrels within the tribe it is the
duty of the chiefs, and of the head chief more particularly, to induce
the disputants to consent to an accommodation by law. They then negotiate
as between two belligerent powers; they can only mediate for peace, not
impose it. Sometimes they are successful, sometimes not. Mecca and Medina
furnish the best instances of both results. Very often the disputants
do not make peace until their strength is utterly exhausted. Then the
balance-sheet is drawn up, the debit and credit in dead and wounded
compared, and the difference made up in camels.

But it is obvious that in this case the incongruity between what
vengeance demands and what the law accords is too glaring. The Arabs are
keenly alive to this fact, and it is not considered honourable to accept
camels as satisfaction for a murder--to sell blood for milk, as their
phrase goes. Vengeance is far better appeased by positive amends on a
less unequal scale, by blood for blood, an eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth. This is sometimes made by peaceful means, and that is what
is called _talio_. The criminal is not sheltered by his own people, but
is handed over to the avenger that he may requite him for what he has
done. If the heritage of vengeance has passed to a child, the execution
is often deferred till his majority.

By this means the quarrel is confined to the parties immediately
concerned, the clans are not implicated, blood-revenge does not
degenerate into blood-feud, nor does it exceed in the heat of passion
the measure of strict retribution. As a matter of fact talio appears to
have been common in cases of mere bodily injury. An amusing instance is
recorded in the life of Mohammed. At the battle of Bedr he ranged his
men in a long straight row, forming them into line with the shaft of a
spear. In so doing he struck somewhat heavily upon the body of a man
whose figure projected beyond the straight line, and the individual,
whose name and race are exactly recorded, complained of his violence.
Mohammed promptly offered his own body and said, “Take unto thyself the
talio,” which, however, the other magnanimously declined to do. From this
we see that also a military commander in the exercise of his official
functions differs in nothing from a private person in the eyes of the
law. Imagine a scene of this sort between officer and private on a modern
parade-ground!

If, however, it is not a question of satisfaction for mere corporeal
injuries, but of blood for blood, the situation becomes far more
difficult; for if mulct is unwillingly taken, talio is far more
unwillingly given. It is the direst disgrace for any clan to give up one
of its members, no matter what his crime, into the hands of another clan
which intends to put him to death; rather will they slay him themselves.
Hence the talio, though an efficacious means of keeping blood-revenge
within bounds and blunting its dangerous edges as far as the peace and
unity of the tribe are concerned, cannot be practically enforced in the
ancient Arabic community, because it has no sovereign power over the
tribe.

The first Arabic community with sovereign powers was established by
Mohammed in the city of Medina, not upon the basis of blood, which
naturally tends to diversity, but upon that of religion, which is equally
binding on all. There for the first time the talio becomes effective,
there it can be enforced. The community, at the head of which God
stands, and the prophet as God’s representative, has power to deliver
the shedder of blood over to the avenger, and it is the duty of the
community to see that this is done. “In the talio ye have the life,”
says the _Koran_; and a commentary is provided by the hideous anarchy,
conjured up by blood-feuds, which prevailed in Medina before the coming
of Mohammed--life was then indeed impossible. And in another place the
_Koran_ says, “If a man have slain one person unlawfully, it is as if
he had slain all men.” In other words the murder of an individual is to
be regarded as a crime committed against the whole community, and the
whole body must see to it that lawful vengeance may have its course. The
execution of vengeance is, however, still left to the rightful avenger;
and he is at liberty to exercise his right or renounce it, either freely
or for a price. The talio is not yet a punishment, it is only the
transition stage to it from revenge.

Originally even Islam knew nothing of the capital punishment publicly
inflicted, of a ritual execution by the community and its officers,
at least not in cases of murder or manslaughter. Even in the earlier
caliphate there were enormous difficulties in the way of the execution
of a Moslem who had not shed innocent blood. Apart from the talio the
official infliction of capital punishment was hardly possible, for
as long as Arab sentiment survived, the people could not grasp the
distinction between an executioner and a murderer. A change did not
take place until with the accession of the Abbasids the Iranians took
the reins of government from the Arabs and brought with them Iranian
conceptions of state and law.

On the other hand, the Hebrews, near kinsmen of the Arabs, arrived at
just conceptions of capital crime and capital punishment fifteen hundred
years earlier than they. According to the Hebrew view, the guilt of
sin, which is held to be an offence against the Deity, weighs upon the
whole community, until the actual perpetrator of the crime is extirpated
or purged out of its midst. The sentence of death is carried out by
the whole community and takes the form of stoning, its characteristic
features being that every man of the congregation takes part in it
and casts his stone. Murder and manslaughter, indeed, are not as yet
classed among the offences against God, for which capital punishment at
the hands of the community is due; bloodshed is in the main a private
wrong still, and its punishment is left to the injured person. But it is
not associated with blood-feud between clans, and the criminal is not
protected by his family. Blood-revenge is tamed already and restricted
by law to what we know as the talio. The shedder of blood is abandoned
by his family, the heir and avenger may pursue and slay him. Should he
take refuge in a sanctuary, he is safe if he has shed blood by mischance
only. Otherwise the sanctuary affords him no protection. It is the
right and duty of the community, represented by its elders, to drag
him away from the altar and hand him over to the avenger. The act of
slaughter is always left to the latter; the ceremonial infliction of
capital punishment, execution by the congregation, is never the penalty
assigned for murder or manslaughter. But the avenger is not allowed to
take a ransom for the murderer or give him his life. For here the idea
insinuates itself that bloodshed is not only a wrong and injury done to
the individual, but a crime, that is to say an offence against God. The
murderer has sinned also against the Deity, and his guilt lies upon the
whole community, until they are rid of him.

Thus the religious obligation of the community, to wash away the blood
shed within its borders, goes hand in hand with the individual obligation
of vengeance. If the murderer cannot be discovered, vengeance is
impossible; but a symbolical ceremony is substituted for the purification
of the community, and the city within whose borders a man is found dead
by an unknown hand must slay a cow in place of the murderer.

We see that among the Hebrews the ideas of crime and punishment had their
root in religion; the crime is an offence against God, and its punishment
is the purging of the community from this offence; execution is the only
real punishment, and must be distinguished from talio on the one hand and
mere chastisement on the other.

Among the Arabs the religious root of the penal law has withered away
and nothing but human vengeance is left. This can hardly be the ancient
conception. Vengeance itself is in its origin not a human passion merely,
it is likewise a religious duty. True, this duty was originally believed
to have been imposed, not by the Almighty, but by a demon. And this demon
was the wrathful spirit of the murdered man himself, who would not let
his clan rest until they had given him to drink the murderer’s blood for
which he thirsted. We can still find traces of this belief among the
Arabs. Amongst them the avenger of blood is under a solemn vow, exactly
like the man who has to offer sacrifice or fulfil any other religious
duty; he may not wash nor comb his hair, nor drink wine, with many other
prohibitions of the same kind. As he accomplishes the act of vengeance,
he must call upon the name of him for whom he takes it, in a brief form
of words; then he is free and returned from the state of sanctification
and uncleanness to that of cleanness and common life; exactly like a
sacrificer after he has made a sacrifice.

But these are petrified remains, as it were, of a motive that has no
present potency. The poetry which has come down to us invariably speaks
only of the ungovernable rage of the avenger, not of the person to be
avenged; of burning pain in the breast of the survivor, which demands
relief at any price; and of the shame which weighs him down as long
as the murderer still treads the earth alive. Moreover--and this is a
particularly striking point--religion has not retained any influence upon
actual law amongst the ancient Arabs, apart, perhaps, from the process of
inquiry by curse and oath.

Ancient Arab law is singularly profane, dry, and formless; it is
throughout a matter of bargain and contract, for even the penal law
operates only through compensation and payment.

Such, in brief outline, is the picture of the Arabic community, a
community devoid of supreme authority and executive power. We are fond
of calling it patriarchal, but what do we mean by the phrase? Of the
amenities of family life we find no trace, nor any trace of patriarchal
guardianship. Each man has to give his help, if anything is to be done.
There is more scope in such a community for the display of courage,
self-sacrifice, and brotherly kindness than in our own, where the state
seems to work like a machine for which we have merely to provide the
fuel. It is a pity, however, that so fair an opportunity is not put to
the fullest use. In critical cases, the corporate feeling on which the
whole system depends is often shown by but few. There are hitches and
difficulties everywhere, though in the desert the conditions of life are
very simple, narrow, and easy to understand, its interests very uniform.
No progressive civilisation can develop in this fashion; the desert is
enough in itself to render development difficult. These weak foundations
will bear no aspiring superstructure. Not even individual liberty, as we
understand it, reaps advantage from the absence of the coercion of the
state. For if the sense of kinship be too weak to control the wicked and
force the indolent to fulfil the duties incumbent upon them, yet it is
strong enough to prevent the growth of intellectual freedom in circles
that possess and exercise it. Such liberty can only thrive in a state
which, like Noah’s ark, contains all kinds of animals and lets them do as
they please, not in a society of kinsmen which lays a spell upon their
members from within, though it can impose no coercion from without.

The communities of Europe started, as there are many evidences to show,
from primitive conditions like those in which the Arabs of the desert
have remained. It is well that we should bear this in mind, and so
estimate, _quantæ molis erat romanam condere gentem_, what amount of
labour was required to create a stable system of law, independent of the
individual.

FOOTNOTES

[41] [The subject-matter of this article originally appeared as an
address delivered January 27th, 1900, at the university at Göttingen. It
was published in pamphlet form, but is now for the first time translated
and given wider currency by special arrangement with the author.]

[42] A guest whom the shadow of the tent has rendered sacred is after a
certain time dismissed and resumes his journey.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XII. THE PRINCIPLES OF LAW IN ISLAM

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. I. GOLDZIHER

Professor in the University of Vienna, etc.

In studying the lines along which Islam has developed we are confronted
with a singular antithesis within the faith itself. It is the outcome of
a revolutionary movement which arose to declare war against the past of
the Arab nation and of all other nations which it subdued by the ruthless
sword of Islam. Yet it had scarcely taken the first step in its career,
before investing with little short of sacramental importance an idea so
wholly alien to the spirit of subversion and revolution that it seems to
us rather a palladium of the most rigid conservatism. This is the idea of
the sunna.

Sunna means traditional usage, or custom hallowed by ancestral use, by
practice transmitted through past generations. He who violates this
custom trespasses against the Holy of holies, against something far above
any article of a legal code drawn up with all the mature consideration
and cool deliberation of the judicial mind; he had sinned against the
pious reverence due to the days of old. This is the view which underlies
the sanctity of the sunna. Translated into legal phraseology sunna might
accordingly be denominated right by custom, but a better idea of its
meaning may be gained by comparing it with the _mores majorum_ or _usus
longævus_ of the Romans. For the determining factor in it is not its
established character but the high esteem in which it has been held from
remote antiquity.

All this (to return to the proposition from which we started) is little
in accord with a system which originated with a prophet of revolution who
could not say, as Jesus said of himself, that he was “not come to destroy
but to fulfil”--at least, not as far as the traditional institutions of
the Arabs were concerned. Mohammed does, indeed, represent himself as
restoring what has been lost, as bringing back the golden age of religion
to man, the rule of the _din Ibrahim_ (the religion of Abraham) which had
been lost by corruption and wickedness, and obscured by gross heathenism
on its own native soil (for according to Mohammed the Kaaba at Mecca is
the temple of Abraham and Ishmael). But it is not this pretension which
will enable us to grasp the significance of the idea of the sunna in
Islam.

Amazing as it may sound, and accustomed as we are to associate the idea
of the sunna with the sheikhs who keep jealous watch over the holy places
of Islam, sunna is not primarily an Islamite word, nor is the idea it
expresses peculiar to Islam. It is deeply rooted in the ethical sentiment
of the very heathenism which the prophet arose to overthrow. Sunna is
an idea which Islam adopted from Arab heathenism, and which, in the
change of meaning it underwent in this new sphere, became one of the main
pillars of the new system.

The conception involved in the sunna, as defined at the beginning of this
essay, represents the heathen Arab’s ideal of life and the primitive
idea of laws and morals in tribal life. In this respect there was no
difference between the two classes which went to make up the sum total
of the Arab world, between the Bedouins and the dwellers in towns.
The _mores majorum_ were their law and their religion. The customs of
their forefathers were their dogmas; the practices that had come down
to them from the remote past were their sacraments. To infringe these
was criminal sacrilege. If the cult of tribal fellowship and regard for
the duties arising out of this association constitute the sum total of
morality, how much more imperatively did the principle apply to the
maintenance of a supersensual fellowship with the generations of the past.

Hence, in the persecution with which the world of Arab heathenism
received his preaching, Mohammed was not confronted by opponents who
defended the old state of things by arguments based on religion, or
wielded the weapons of serious controversy to refute his doctrines.
The heathen Arabs had but one argument against the message proclaimed
to them by the visionary of Mecca--it was an innovation. He represents
his heathen fellow-countrymen as putting forward this argument against
himself in exactly the same manner as he represents the heathen nations
of old as hurling it at their prophets. “If one saith to them, ‘Obey the
laws which Allah sends you,’ then they say, ‘We follow the customs of our
fathers.’ If one saith to them, ‘Come and adopt the religion which Allah
hath revealed to his ambassador,’ they answer, ‘We are satisfied with
the religion of our fathers.’ When the evil-doers commit an evil deed
they say, ‘Thus we saw it done by our fathers, it is Allah who commands
such things.’ But they say, ‘We found that our fathers were on this road
and we tread in their steps.’ Speak and say--do I not proclaim to you a
better thing than that whereat ye found your fathers?”

This plea, which constitutes, so to speak, the methodology of the
struggle of the heathen against the prophet, is, as it were, a
constant element that pervades all the laments of the _Koran_ over the
stubbornness of the heathen. They hate the prophet because he insults
their forefathers, who were likewise his own. He is lacking in filial
piety. And the touchstone of his error is his antagonistic attitude
towards the remote past. To the heathen his idols are dear as “heritages
from the worthies who have bequeathed this inheritance.”

Only a few decades elapsed before Islam had its own sunna. The element of
antiquity in this case was, of course, a figment; it anticipated for its
justification the generations yet to be born, who should look up to this
new standard as to something hallowed by tradition. It had no warrant
in the actual experience of successive generations which had already
regarded it as inviolable.

The _Koran_, the oldest and most authoritative document of the Islamite
movement, is not a book which offers to the believer a comprehensive
body of religious instruction sufficient to satisfy all inquiries.
What it pre-eminently does is to predispose religious sentiment to the
acceptance of the religion which arose on this foundation. Nor is it more
complete if regarded as a statutory guide in questions of law, since
it takes note of only a small and very limited department of juridical
needs. What it does is to predispose ethical sentiment in favour of the
new aspects in which social life and the legal relations it involves are
to be considered.

While these sentiments gave precision to the form of these new standards,
investing them with the character of divinely instituted laws, their
substance drew its nourishment from alien sources, from new views,
which were a consequence of the great career in history upon which the
new Islamite community entered soon after it came into existence. Much
fresh territory was conquered. It was impossible that contact with
foreign elements should fail to implant fresh ideas in the Semitic mind,
singularly receptive as it is--ideas which were destined to give its
final shape to the faith of Islam with which its adherents had embarked
on their conquering career.

Without the effect produced on the religious sentiment of Mohammedans
by questions that arose under the influence of Greek philosophy, there
would have been no formulated system of Mohammedan dogmatics, and in like
manner the first impulse towards the creation of a Mohammedan system of
law was given by contact with two great spheres of civilisation--the
Romaic and the Persian, the former in Syria and the latter in
Mesopotamia. It has already been remarked that the influence of Roman
law on the sources of a legal system in Islam is attested by the very
name given to jurisprudence in Islam from the beginning. It is called
_al Fikh_, reasonableness; and those who pursue the study of it are
designated _Fukaha_ (singular _Fakih_). These terms, which, as we cannot
fail to see, are Arabic translations of the Roman (_juris_) _prudentia_,
and _prudentes_, would be a clear indication of one of the chief sources
of Islamite jurisprudence, even if we had no positive data to prove that
this influence extended both to questions of the principle of legal
deduction and to particular legal provisions.

The positive laws of the _Koran_, and the few legal decisions made
in particular cases by the first caliphs and other companions of the
prophet at Medina in the early days of Islam, together with all the
legal customs retained from heathen days, were inadequate to serve for
the state of things brought about by the great conquests and immense
expansion of the Moslem empire. Even if all elements which had previously
and all which had come into being to meet the primary requirements of
the new Mohammedan society had sufficed for an Arab commonwealth on an
Islamite basis, the sum total of it all would nevertheless have been
inadequate to the needs of the new political fabric of Islam in countries
subject to entirely different economic and social conditions, and amidst
conquered peoples whose lives were ordered on a systematic legal basis.
When Islam subdued such ancient civilised peoples with the edge of the
sword, it could not impose upon them the primitive conditions of life
under which it had come forth into the wide world from the steppes and
oases of Arabia. It could mould the results of the historic past into
harmony with its own religious sentiment; but it could not destroy it,
if for no other reason than that it had nothing to put in its place.
Hence it had to leave many institutions in the conquered countries
substantially as it found them. The problem first presented itself in
Syria, the first halting-place of the victorious advance of Islam. The
_Koran_ and its earliest applications in practice made provision for
family and matrimonial rights and rights of succession, but proved
worse than meagre when applied to the privileges attaching to landed
property in a great agricultural state, or to the laws of contract and
obligation which, in the countries conquered by Islam, were ordered by
the fixed standards of Roman law. In this department the heads of the new
government had to take over very many ordinances of Roman law.

But, even apart from the adoption of legal standards, Roman law exercised
a notable influence upon the legal thought of the new intruders into a
country whose jurists had been trained in the scientific jurisprudence of
the school of Berytus. The influence exercised by the Roman legal methods
on the system of legal deduction in Islam is a more important factor
in the history of Moslem civilisation than even the direct adoption of
particular points of law. By what systematic rules or what devices can
deductions be drawn from positive laws, written or traditional, which
shall apply to newly arising cases at law and to the decision of legal
questions for which the positive written law provides no answer? In
dealing with this juridical problem the Arab _Fukha_ took their stand
entirely upon the instruction they had gained from circles familiar
with the work of Rome in the domain of law. The dualism of written law
(Arabic, _nazz_) and unwritten law is a mere reflection of the dualism of
_leges scriptæ_ (_chakhamim_), and _leges non scriptæ_. Just so, about
half a century before, the Jewish jurists (a word which in its legal
application is likewise a translation of the Roman term _jurisprudentes_)
had been moved by their intercourse with the Romans to make the hitherto
unrecognised distinction between the _tora she-bitche-thab_, or written
law, and the _tora she-be’al-peh_, or oral law.

The application of principles and rules borrowed from the methodology
of Roman jurisprudence first made it possible to extend the limited
legal material supplied by the _Koran_ and the old decisions which were
accepted as the basis of the law, to other departments of juridical
activity, of which these authorities had had no prevision. The _ratio
legis_ (_illa_), the principle of presumption was applied to analogies
(_kyas_) in words and things; nay, just as Roman legal practice gave
great weight to the _opinio prudentium_ in legal deduction, so the
Islamite _prudentes_ assumed the prerogative of an authoritative
subjective _opinio_; for _ra’j_, as it is called in Arabic, is a
literal translation of the Latin term. Of all these principles (which
are not exhausted by the examples just cited) none more strikingly
demonstrates the profound influence of Roman law on the development of
legal opinion in Islam, than that which is known in Arabic as _maclaha_
or _istilah_,--_i.e._, the public weal and regard for the same. The
significance of this principle lies in the license it grants to the
interpreter of the law to apply the legal standard in the manner best
fitted to serve the public weal and interests. Here we recognise the
Roman standard of the _utilitas publica_, which gives the interpreter of
the law the right, by interpretation, an application to wrest a plain and
unambiguous law into something quite different from its original meaning,
in the interests of the public weal.

Such principles, derived from foreign instructors, served for the
deduction of Mohammedan law, as soon as the teachers of the people felt
the necessity of withdrawing the domain of law from the capricious
action of the sovereign and his instruments in the administration and
judicature, which had free play by reason of the meagreness of positive
legal matter based upon generally recognised authority. The Islamite
jurists declared that the conclusions at which they had arrived on the
basis of these principles (which, as we have seen, were no part of Islam)
were in harmony with the true spirit of Islam, the rightful outcome of
its original character. This phenomenon, which early came to maturity
and was widely accepted in Mohammedan theological circles as legal and
of indubitable authority, is of profound importance to our historic
estimate and judgment of Islam. Whatever the ignorant men who stood by
its cradle may have thought to be the meaning of the new word which they
were charged to proclaim to the oriental world, the first step which
conquering Islam took on its victorious career taught it to accommodate
itself to an alien spirit, and to mould its own intellectual heritage by
influences which seem absolutely heterogeneous to a superficial observer.

In more than one point of its doctrinal fabric, Islam in its early
days was a borrower. Its founders were anxious, it is true, to avoid
the appearance of appropriating other men’s property. But loudly as
they trumpet the principle, “Be different from them in all things”
(_Chalifuhum_) the reference here being chiefly to Jews and Christians,
their documents are crammed with borrowings from the Scriptures of the
very confessions which, on their own assertion, it was their leading
principle to oppose. The stubborn antagonism of Islam to the rest of the
world, its inflexible protest against the influence of foreign elements,
is an illusion which historical study of the movement must dissipate
if it is to rise to a scientific comprehension of this great historic
phenomenon.

Though contact with the Romæi was the influence which caused the first
seeds of law in Islam to germinate, we must not overlook another side
upon which Islam in its early days came into direct contact with a
foreign national element, the influence of which was very important
in the development of its legal system. We refer to its contact with
the people and the religion of Persia. This can be traced back to
pre-Islamite times, and even Mohammed himself was not absolutely free
from the influence of the religious ideas of the Parsees (_madjus_,
magians), whom he classes in the _Koran_ with Jews and Christians, and
contrasts with the heathen as confessors of more favoured religions.

But Persian nationality did not become a formative element in Islam until
the latter subjugated the geographical sphere of the old Parsee religion,
and by the right of conquest imposed the faith of the prophet of Mecca
and Medina upon the followers of Zoroaster. The Mohammedan occupation of
’Irak is one of the most telling factors in the religious and juridical
development of Islam.

Persian theologians carried their inherited views into the new religion
they had adopted, the conquering power enriched the poverty of its own
religious store with elements supplied by the experience of a profound
religious life, such had been a native growth among the conquered
Persians from of old. Hence it is hardly possible to overestimate
the importance of the part played in the development of Islam by the
spiritual movement which came to birth in ’Irak and is associated with
the schools of Bacra and Kufa. In analysing the elements of which Islam
is composed we are not surprised to find many of Persian origin, the
outcome of this connection.[43]

These influences are brought into fullest play by the great revolution
which befel the Moslem empire in about the hundred and twenty-eighth
year of its existence--the fall of the Omayyads and the usurpation of
the sceptre of the caliphs by the Abbasids. The worldly spirit which
had guided the policy of the fallen dynasty--a spirit genuinely
Arab, devoid of any real comprehension of the religious aims and the
transcendental interests of Islam--now makes way for a theocratic bias,
which drew its ideas in the main from the character of the Persian
“divine monarchy.” It is the Sassanid spirit in an Islamite garb. The
indifferentism of the ruling powers gives place to the encouragement of
religious tendencies. The religious tolerance of earlier days is at an
end. Sectarianism, pietism, harsh dogmatism, and, linked with them, the
persecuting spirit--are the dominant notes of public life. Disputations
concerning matters of religion impress their characteristic stamp upon
the intellectual tendencies which find favour in high places. Opposing
religious parties come into the field and frame their subtlest arguments.

Moreover, this was the opportune moment for working up into practical
juridical systems the suggestions in the department of jurisprudence
derived in earlier days from Roman law. In the second century of the
Hegira, Islamite jurisprudence enters upon the classic period of its
efflorescence and completion. The scene of its glory is the scholarly
world of Mesopotamia, which sheds its rays upon every quarter of the
Mohammedan empire. Even such advances in the sphere of law as come to
light outside this birthplace of systematised jurisprudence are the fruit
of the intellectual movement on the soil of the ancient empire of Persia.
And even the demonstrations of antagonism to the aspirations which took
shape there (for it aroused tremendous opposition) are affected by its
influence.

Abu Hanifa (699-767) of Kufa, the grandson of a Persian, is recognised in
Islam as the father of that jurisprudence which, by the employment of the
free speculative method already described, found ways and means to make
provision for the whole vast sphere of legal activity (which includes
both law and religious ceremonial) out of the scanty stock of positive
legal documents. This completion of the legal system of Islam was arrived
at by laborious development along the lines of its main principles, by
modification of the method evolved in some particular school, by open
contravention of the fundamental ideas of some particular tendency,
and, lastly, by deliberate compromise between antagonistic lines of
thought. It was reached with a rapidity which is characteristic of all
the intellectual creations of Islam. It is a singular feature of the
whole literature of Islam that everything reaches its prime with amazing
rapidity, only to decline as rapidly. In the fourth century of the Hegira
every branch of Arabic literature had come to full maturity, to flourish
for a brief while, and enter upon its period of decadence about the
beginning of the sixth.

By the end of the third century (ninth century A.D.) jurisprudence had
reached its classic prime. Leaving out of account some other heads of
schools who soon retire from the scene, there are four men in particular
to whom it does honour as to its founders and fathers, four men whose
disciples represent the main currents which flow side by side through
the construction of Islamite law: (1) Abu Hanifa (died 767), the true
representative of the ’Irak method; (2) Malik b. Anas (died 795), the
most celebrated imam in the prophet’s city of Medina; (3) Mohammed b.
Idris al-Shafii, a pupil of the latter (died 820), most famous for his
educational work in Egypt, where his sepulchral chapel (in the Karafa at
Cairo) is reverenced by the natives as a place of pilgrimage; and (4)
Akhmed b. Hanbal (died 855), the pious teacher of Baghdad, the principal
champion and valiant apostle of the old conservative views in religion,
whose tomb in the Harbiah graveyard at Baghdad has, in the phrase of
Guy l’Estrange, the writer of the monograph on the ancient city of the
caliphs, “become the object of a devotion savouring of idolatry.”

The views which have been enumerated, borrowed from the method of legal
deduction in Roman law, were not employed to the same extent by all
schools of jurisprudence. While in that of Abu Hanifa the validity of the
_opinio_ goes so far as to accord recognition to the personal inclination
of the administrator of the law, other schools were not disposed to give
such free scope to the subjective judgment. The principle of _istiçhab_
(_præsumptio_) was most fully recognised in the school of Shafii; that of
regard for the public weal (_istiçlah_) in that of Malik.

In the erudite world which busied itself with the theoretical exposition
of the law there were, however, large bodies of scholars, who took up
their parable to proclaim that, generally speaking and on principle, they
could not profess to recognise principles of method which depended for
their authority on the subjective work of the human reason. They would
recognise two things only as the sole basis of legal deduction--Scripture
and tradition; that is to say, the _Koran_ and the traditions or positive
decisions of the prophet, his companions and their successors, of whom
it could be safely assumed that they had acted and given judgment in the
spirit of the founder of the faith. Only in cases of extreme necessity,
and when these authoritative sources obstinately refused to yield an
answer, was it lawful to admit the authority of _ra’j_ (_opinio_), or
more particularly, of _kiga_ (analogy). These latter were “like the
vulture, the eating of which was permitted as an exception in time of
dearth when other food could by no means be obtained.” Under normal
circumstances it was not permissible to reason; the only right course was
to abide by the letter of tradition, since nothing outside of that could
be set on a par with it. Truth manifests itself not in answer to the
question “What is reasonable?” but in answer to “What did the prophet say
and how did he act?”

Here we find ourselves face to face with the idea of the sunna which had
come down from the Arabs of old (the idea explained at the beginning of
this article), in its most rigid form, but with this difference--that the
sunna, as now understood, does not look back to a remote antiquity but to
a very recent past. The genuine sunnist only feels solid ground beneath
his feet when he can base his judgment and conduct on the authentic
text, or on well-accredited tradition concerning the words and deeds of
the earliest authorities recognised by the Islamite world. Of all the
four schools, the Hanoblalite, the one founded by the youngest teacher,
was that in which this rigid view found most favour. In modern times it
has been brought into prominence as a principle of government by the
puritanical state of the Wahabees, the “_Tempelstürmer von Hocharabien_,”
as they are called by Karl von Vincenti in a historical novel in which he
describes their proceedings.

It is, however, an easy thing to say, “Tradition and nothing but
tradition!” But what if, with the best will in the world, no answer can
be wrung from tradition to the most pressing questions of ordinary life?
The judge must give judgment; the shepherd of souls must lay down rules
for his flock on questions which hourly crop up for decision in a state
of life ordered by religious laws in even the most trifling details;
and in doubtful cases the mufti must be able to expound the meaning of
the divine law with no uncertain voice. What, then, if Scripture and
tradition be dumb, and no effort can draw forth the least enlightenment
from them? Where all the sources of tradition ran dry, men had to make
concessions, whether they would or not, to individual opinion and the
right of speculative interpretation. This led to the rise of a school
of thought which endeavoured to reconcile the two sharply antagonistic
tendencies. It was absolutely necessary to discover a middle course
between excessive subjectivism and rigid traditionalism, and to define
accurately the juridical spheres of the two conflicting elements. It was
necessary to discover rules, in accordance with which speculative methods
might be used to supplement tradition in the work of legal deduction, and
to set up standards for the right use of traditional data in the correct
formulation of the law. This work of reconciliation was done by the
founder of the second school on the list, at Shafii.

Moreover there was another point of view from which the systemisation
of the use of speculation as a source of law on the one hand and of
tradition on the other proved an imperative necessity. If, in the
one case, it was requisite to curb the arbitrary exercise of the
subjective reason, it was no less necessary to check the rank growth of
traditional matter, which, as it increased, hampered more and more the
use of authentic tradition. The one-sided partisans of the sunna needed
traditional matter for the establishment of such a legal system as they
desired to see. Nor was any refutation of their theses, nor any opinion
advanced against them, in their eyes worth discussing unless it could
appeal to the authority of tradition. As a result, where no traditional
matter was to be had, men speedily began to fabricate it. The greater
the demand, the busier was invention with the manufacture of apocryphal
traditions in support of the respective theses.

For the verification of didactic records, whether sacred or profane,
Islam has adopted a singular form, which imparts to Islamite tradition a
character altogether peculiar to itself, to which we can find no parallel
(at least in such a mature and consistent shape) in any other literature.
This is the _hadith_. The word _hadith_ means simply communication, or
narrative. If any such narrative is to be put forth with pretensions
to authenticity the actual text must be preceded by what is called the
_sanad_ or _isnad_ (literally, ‘support’). This enumerates in correct
and unbroken sequence the authorities who have handed the narrative down
from mouth to mouth, from the last person responsible for its circulation
up to its original author. The examination of this sanad allows free and
unbiased criticism the opportunity of judging whether these men on whose
authority any particular narrative has been passed from mouth to mouth
and from generation to generation, and set down as an actual occurrence,
were persons deserving of full credit.

From this point of view an unbroken chain of oral tradition constitutes
a surer and more valuable guarantee of authenticity than any written
document, whether contemporary or based upon contemporary records. Even
if a written document bears all the outward tokens of authenticity,
it must be able to show a consistent sanad reaching in uninterrupted
sequence from the first author to the last teller of the tale, if its
claim is to be admitted. Every narrative and every matter of tradition,
without regard to its quantitative or qualitative importance, must be set
forth with its “genealogy.” This genealogy is the sanad. In theological
matters, more particularly, it is the backbone without which no record
can stand upright.

The literature of historic research also avails itself of this form of
verification. Readers of the classic work of Muhammed Jarir al-Tabari,
the “father of Islamite history” are familiar with this method of
historic authentication. Each record takes the form of an appendage to
a chain of tradition which reaches back to some direct authority, and
to this chain the record is appended in the very words of the first
narrator. It sometimes happens that a record of the same event occurs in
narratives that are traced back to different authorities, and not merely
in different words and with trifling variations. The facts themselves
are represented in a totally different fashion, or the narratives of
different authorities set them or their accompanying circumstances in a
different light. All these divergent narratives are simply placed side by
side, in a manner which cannot be compared with the different authorities
for the narratives of the Pentateuch; for, unlike the latter, the
traditional records of Arab history are not anonymous. On the contrary,
they owe their distinctive character to this circumstantial system of
authentication and the enumeration by name of the successive vouchers for
their truth. Again, they show no trace of an attempt on the part of any
editor to reduce conflicting accounts to harmony; they are simply set
side by side, instead of being welded together. This circumstance has
greatly facilitated the critical study of the periods from which such
parallel narratives date. Wellhausen has recently given to the world a
masterly study, in which he skilfully discriminates between the various
points of view, and the particular bias of each of the authorities for
the narrative of the victory at Tabari (_Skizzen und Vorarbeiten_, VI).

The same state of things prevails in the statements of tradition in
matters of law and religion. Each statement, cast into the traditional
form, and relying for authentication in the first instance upon the
testimony of an actual eye-witness, professes to show the practice of
the prophet at certain times of prayer, or what judgment was given by
him or his companions in certain legal questions. During the first
century of Islamism divergencies of practice in minor details of law and
worship had grown up in different congregations of believers. Every one
of these divergent forms can appeal to the authority of a formal and
well-attested traditional account, with a sanad in which the names of the
most trustworthy witnesses are adduced in support of theses diametrically
opposed to one another.

In order to obviate this incongruity, there soon developed in Islam
a science of textual criticism, a study in which Islamite erudition
outstripped that of Europe by several centuries. Its object was to decide
the claims of the various authorities, to judge of the degree of credit
to be given to each, to weigh the possibility that sectarian or party
tendencies might have vitiated the _bona fides_ of men otherwise above
reproach. The climax of this work of criticism is to be found in certain
systematised compilations of traditions, the editors of which start with
the definite object of sifting what appears to them authentic out of
the vast body of obviously spurious material. The most famous of these
compilations are those of Buchari (died 870) and Muslim (died 875). The
general consent of Islam presently invested these compilations with
canonical authority.

Other works of the same kind were also held in great honour. In course of
time other compilations from among those made in the ninth century were
added to the first two, and in these the sifting of tradition was carried
out upon the most liberal principles. From the thirteenth century onward,
six codices have been recognised as the sources of authentic traditional
records. Out of these theological science gathers the evidence of
tradition in questions of law, and with the _Koran_, they constitute the
canonical literature of Islam.

Judged by a scientific criterion, only a very small part, if any, of the
contents of these canonical compilations can be confidently referred
to the early period from which they profess to date. Minute study soon
reveals the presence of the tendencies and aspirations of a later day,
the working of a spirit which wrests the record in favour of one or other
of the opposing theses in certain disputed questions.

What we gather from these traditional authorities is by no means a
homogeneous system of instruction. The voice of thoroughly well-attested
tradition can be quoted in support of the most diverse, nay, of the most
contradictory teachings on certain points of ritual and law. This is
one of the principal causes of divergences of practice in minor details
of religious usage and of the law. These differences, together with the
vexed question of the use of the subjective factor in legal deduction,
lie at the root of the controversies between the four great schools of
law (the founders of which we have already enumerated) which occupy the
whole field of orthodox Islam. These schools are in accord upon the
great fundamental doctrines of religion, and the outward differences in
practice are not regarded as elements of division. The Islamites consider
them of equal validity, with equal claims to pass for orthodox.

Sunnite Islam early formulated and put into the mouth of Mohammed the
doctrine that “Differences of opinion in my congregation are to be
regarded as tokens of the mercy of God.” Like Lessing, the Islamites
think that all trees cannot have the same bark. It is therefore a
great error, and one which leads to a total misunderstanding of the
whole character of Islam, to describe these four currents of thought,
or _madsahib_, as the Mohammedans call them, as “sects,” or use such
language as recently appeared in a widely circulated journal, which said:
“We need only recall the question which resulted in a schism in Islam,
as to whether ablutions should be begun at the elbow or at the wrist.”
(_Münchener Allgemeine Zeitung_, Beilage No. 209, Sept. 12th, 1901.)
The fact that these differences of ritual exist cannot be denied. But
schisms take their rise from dogmatic and juridical questions of a far
more radical character, and lie far beyond the sphere of the points in
controversy between the four schools of the law.

On the other hand, in the present state of the Islamite world, orthodoxy
is wholly confined to these four main schools of thought, which rank as
the right and recognised modalities of correct religious usage and of the
practical interpretation of the law. To borrow an image from philology,
they and they alone are legitimate dialects of the one fundamental
language of Islam. _Quintum non datur._ Zealous religious associations,
which take their stand on the fundamental principles of Islam, yet
cannot be classed in either of these four categories, are looked upon as
dissenters of dubious character, although they themselves regard it as
their one object in life to purify Islam and imbue it with fresh vigour.
They are styled _chums_ or _chawamis_, from a word meaning “fifth,” to
mark their independence of the four parallel streams of orthodoxy. Such,
for example, are the Senussis, a religious association in north Africa,
whose proceedings are at present engaging the serious attention of the
leaders of French colonial policy. They are not adherents of the school
of Malik, which predominates in north Africa, and are therefore regarded
as _chawamis_ by the Moslem “high churchmen” of the locality.

One of the cardinal points of orthodox Islam in every sphere of religion
and law is the “general consent and practice of the whole body of
believers” (_consensus ecclesiæ_). The Arabic name for this mighty
principle is _ijma_. The general consent of the whole body of believers
on certain points of faith and law is of binding force, no less than
Scripture and tradition. Nay, even the authority of all the primary
sources of the Islamite religious system, as historically developed,
derives its force from this consensus, which constitutes its principal
title to recognition. The acceptance of such compilations of tradition
as are received as canonical, and subsequently of the standard juridical
codes, rests on no other legal basis than this general consent of the
whole body of believers, by which they have been invested with binding
authority. This great principle--which, if any man fail to realise and
rightly appreciate the development of Islam and Islamite institutions,
must remain a sealed book to him--was in process of time defined as the
doctrine accepted alike by all the four orthodox schools of thought.
This definition of the idea of ijma is the result of the self-imposed
limitation of the principle itself in practical application. In process
of time it was found impossible to verify this general consent by any
other method than by confining it to the well-defined sphere of the
schools of the law. Thus this free intellectual outlook lost the vital
force which might have made it an element of far-seeing and liberal
development.

The recognition of the principle of the ijma as a fundamental element
is a point on which all schools of orthodox Islam are at one. The
_schi’itic_ branch of Islam, however, has not adopted it as one of
its fundamental doctrines. It takes its stand on blind obedience to
authority. In its eyes the visible and invisible heads of the whole
body of true Islamites are the successors of ’Ali, the infallible
imams. They alone are the legitimate rulers of the faithful, both as
the rightful chiefs of the state, and as the true organs of the divine
will in matters of law and doctrine. To this sect every historical and
political development of Islam, which derives its title to authority
from the consensus, is a usurpation and an impiety which the last
imam, the Mahdi who is yet to come, will bring to a terrible end. From
their point of view the recognition of the consensus is mere error and
heresy, and the sentiment and will of the whole body of believers is
not entitled to be recognised as a criterion. In its stead they set the
word of the infallible imams, the lawful successors of the prophet and
the interpreters of his will, which is one with the divine will. Thus
perishes the last remnant of the autonomous authority which the body of
orthodox Islamites have assumed by the recognition of the principle of
the consensus.

FOOTNOTES

[43] I have treated this subject more fully in the address delivered
before the meeting of the _Congrès d’Histoire des Religions_ at Paris
(Sept. 6th, 1900) and entitled _Islamisme et Parsisme_, Actes I, pp.
119-147 and _Revue de l’Histoire des Religions_, XXII, pp. 1-29.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. THE PARTHIAN EMPIRE

[b] JUSTIN, _History of the World abridged from Trogus_ (translated by J.
Turnbull).

[c] A. VON GUTSCHMID, _Geschichte Irans_.

CHAPTER II. THE EMPIRE OF THE SASSANIDS

[b] TH. NÖLDEKE, _Aufsätze zur persischen Geschichte_.

[c] DION CASSIUS, _History of Rome_.

[d] A. VON GUTSCHMID, _op. cit._

CHAPTER III. EARLY HISTORY OF THE ARABS

[b] HERODOTUS, _The History of_.

[c] ARTEMIDORUS, _Geographica_.

[d] DIODORUS, _The Historical Library_.

[e] PLINY, _Historia Naturalis_.

[f] AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS, _History of Rome_.

[g] ERATOSTHENES, _Chronographia_.

[h] The Holy Bible, according to the authorised version of King James I.

[i] Inscriptions of Tehutimes and Ramses I.

[j] Inscriptions of Tiglathpileser III, Sargon, Asshurbanapal, etc.

[k] MAX DUNCKER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[l] W. G. PALGRAVE, article on “Arabia” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

CHAPTER IV. MOHAMMED

[b] L. A. SÉDILLOT, _Histoire générale des Arabes_.

[c] The _Koran_.

[d] E. GIBBON, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

[e] SIR WILLIAM MUIR, _The Life of Mahomet_.

[f] GEORG WEBER, _Weltgeschichte_.

[g] IBN SAAD, _Sirat_ or _Biography of Mohammed_.

CHAPTER V. THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

[b] S. OCKLEY, _History of the Saracens_.

[c] EL-MAKIN, _History of_.

[d] ABULFEDA, _Life of Mohammed_.

[e] GUSTAV WEIL, _Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre_.

[f] W. C. TAYLOR, _The History of Mohammedanism and its Sects_.

[g] E. GIBBON, _op. cit._

[h] ABUL-FARAJ, _Dynasties_.

[i] EUTYCHIUS, _Annales_.

[j] H. H. MILMAN, _Notes to Gibbon’s Rome_.

[k] AL-LATIF, _Historiæ Ægypti, Compendium Arabice et Latini_.

[l] JOSEPH WHITE, _Ægyptiaca_.

[m] MAKRIZI, _Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks de l’Égypte_.

[n] IBN KHALDUN, _History of the Beginnings of Nations_.

[o] HAJI KHALFA, _Takwim al-Tawarikh_ (“Revision of History”).

[q] J. A. ST. MARTIN, various articles.

[r] JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL, _History of the Assassins_ (translated
from the German by O. C. Wood).

[s] A. L. SILVESTER DE SACY, various writings.

[t] F. A. NEALE, _Islamism_.

CHAPTER VI. THE OMAYYADS

[b] F. A. NEALE, _op. cit._

[c] STANISLAS GUYARD, article on “The Eastern Caliphate” in the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[d] G. WEBER, _op. cit._

CHAPTER VII. THE ARABS IN EUROPE

[b] “Ben-Hazil of Granada” in _Bibliothèque Arabico-Hispanica_.

[c] E. GIBBON, _op. cit._

[d] S. A. DUNHAM, _History of Spain and Portugal_.

[e] R. DOZY, _Essai sur l’histoire de l’Islamisme_.

CHAPTER VIII. THE ABBASIDS

[b] L. A. SÉDILLOT, _op. cit._

CHAPTER IX. THE DECLINE OF THE MOSLEMS IN SPAIN

[b] SAMPIRO, Bishop of Astorga, in “Regno Ordonii II,” etc. (in Florez,
_España Sagrada_).

[c] S. A. DUNHAM, _op. cit._

[d] L. A. SÉDILLOT, _op. cit._

CHAPTER X. ARAB CIVILISATION

[b] SIMON OCKLEY, _op. cit._

[c] R. DOZY, _op. cit._

[d] ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, _Cosmos_.

[e] GIRAULT DE PRANGEY, _Monuments Arabes et Mauresques_.

[f] EUSEBIUS OF CÆSAREA, _Life of Constantine_.

[g] L. A. SÉDILLOT, _op. cit._

[j] HAURÉAU, _Philosophie scholastique_.

[k] J. E. MONTUCLA, _Histoire des Mathématiques_.

[l] J. S. BAILLY, _Histoire de l’astronomie_.

[m] L. VIARDOT, _Histoire des Arabes et des Maures d’Espagne_.

[n] KIESEWETTER, _Die Musik der Araber_.

PART XIII

THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES
AND OF THE PAPACY

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

ABULFEDA, CHOISEUL D’AILLECOURT, BOHA AD-DIN, JAMES BRYCE, WILLIAM
DENTON, JOHN WM. DRAPER, EINHARD, EDWARD GIBBON, J. C. L.
GIESELER, HENRY HALLAM, HENRY C. LEA, J. F. MICHAUD,
CHARLES MILLS, H. H. MILMAN, J. L. VON MOSHEIM,
LEOPOLD VON RANKE, O. J. REICHEL,
GEOFFREY DE VILLEHARDOUIN

TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF STUDY OF

THE VALUE OF THE CRUSADES IN THE LIGHT OF
MODERN HISTORY

THE REV. WILLIAM DENTON

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

C. BARONIUS, PHILIPPE DE BEAUMANOIR, STEPHEN DE BOURBON, J. BURCARDUS,
P. A. BAMBINO, CIACCONIUS, F. B. CORBO, RICHARD DEVIZES, J. J. I.
DÖLLINGER, VICTOR DURUY, K. F. EICHORN, C. FLEURY, OTTO VON
FREISING, THOMAS FULLER, GREGORY OF TOURS, GREGORY THE
GREAT, RICHARD GARNETT, THOMAS GREENWOOD, G. W. F.
HEGEL, J. G. VON HERDER, IMAD AD-DIN, S.
INFESSIORA, INNOCENT THE THIRD, JEAN DE
JOINVILLE, A. JOURDAIN, CHARLES KINGSLEY, LIUTPRAND, ANSELMO DI
LUCCA, MAKRISI, MATTHEW OF PARIS, J. BASS MULLINGER, MURATORI,
GUIBERT DE NOGENT, B. PLATINA, MARTINUS POLONUS, ROGER OF
HOVEDEN, PAUL VON ROTH, MARIANUS SCOTUS, SIGEBERT
OF GEMBLOURS, CARL SPANNAGEL, HENRY STEBBING,
J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS, ANDREAS THIEL, GEOFFREY
DE VINSAUF, FR. WILKEN AND WILLIAM OF TYRE

_All rights reserved._

THE HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES AND THE PAPACY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

BOOK I.--THE CRUSADES

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE VALUE OF THE CRUSADES IN THE LIGHT
OF MODERN HISTORY. BY THE REV. WILLIAM DENTON, M.A. 311

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE CRUSADES 314

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES 320

CHAPTER II. THE FIRST CRUSADE 338

CHAPTER III. THE SECOND CRUSADE 358

CHAPTER IV. THE THIRD CRUSADE 379

CHAPTER V. THE FOURTH TO THE SIXTH CRUSADES 410

CHAPTER VI. THE LAST CRUSADES 431

CHAPTER VII. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES 467

APPENDIX A. FEUDALISM 481

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 502

BOOK II.--THE PAPACY

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE PAPACY 503

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY 519

CHAPTER II. “THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY,” CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE
GREAT 555

CHAPTER III. THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY 589

CHAPTER IV. FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY 623

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 651

BOOK I. THE CRUSADES

_PREFATORY ESSAY_

THE VALUE OF THE CRUSADES IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN HISTORY

BY THE REV. WILLIAM DENTON, M.A.[44]

The interest with which we continue to regard the Crusades is, in
its way, as significant as the enthusiasm which led to their being
undertaken. It is easy now to underrate the dangers which they averted,
and to forget the obligations which the civilised world is under to
Charles Martel, to the crusaders, to Don John of Austria, and to John
Sobieski; yet to these men we owe it that Europe is not now Bulgaria; and
that Italy, France, and England--that the whole of the countries from the
Black Sea to the Atlantic, from Archangel to Sicily, are not trampled
upon and desolated as Syria is at this moment. It is not easy for us to
comprehend how recently the terror once inspired by the Turk has ceased.
We need to be reminded that down to the time of the Stuarts the English
and Irish channels were infested with Turkish corsairs, and our ports
blockaded by Turkish ships of war in quest of slaves.

It is only indeed since the eighteenth century that collections of money
to redeem English captives from the intolerable evils of Turkish slavery
have ceased to be made in our churches. That such captivity is not
national, and only occasional and individual, is one of the inestimable
fruits of the Crusades. At the time when these were undertaken, the
whole of Asia, from the borders of China to the Bosporus, was subject to
the Turks; and had these people been able to cross into Europe, and to
hold the countries on the south of the Danube as a basis for military
operations four hundred years earlier than they succeeded in doing,
or indeed at any time whilst the Moors of Spain and of Sicily were in
their full career of victory, the whole of Europe would inevitably have
fallen under the dominion of the Moslems, and industrial progress had
been stayed and civilisation extinguished. So recently has this danger
disappeared that, at the close of the seventeenth century, a statesman
as calm and unenthusiastic as Richelieu seriously meditated the renewal
of the Crusades, in order to avert the evil which even then threatened
to overwhelm the civilised world. That he did so is sufficient to remove
from the leaders and projectors of the Crusades the charge of being moved
by blind, unreflecting fanaticism.

In the eighteenth century, indeed, the school of historians represented
by Voltaire and Gibbon, which discredited all great efforts of past
times when prompted by religious zeal, treated the Crusades with
unphilosophical ridicule. It was an easy task to do this. We are arrested
in every page of their history with the lamentable consequences of
popular ignorance, with the selfishness of many of the leaders, with the
record of personal ambition and unworthy jealousy which too frequently
hindered the success of these expeditions. The whole, however, is not
heard when we have listened to accounts of popular fanaticism, of royal
insincerity, of military ambition, and of papal selfishness, which
chequer the history of the crusaders, as these faults chequered the
history of Europe at the time when the Crusades were undertaken. The
great, the imminent danger of Turkish conquest inspired the minds of
the people with fear before it induced the chieftains to combine in
averting the danger. The anarchy which pervaded Europe in the ages of
feudalism was, indeed, the chief source of danger in any advance of the
Turkish forces, and this was in a great measure cured by the enthusiasm
communicated from the people to the great landed proprietors, who, more
jealous of their independence than careful of their obligations to their
sovereign, yet felt the necessity of union and of submission to military
discipline in the hour of peril.

The First Crusade was one undertaken without sufficient leaders, with
but little preparation, and with smaller knowledge of the countries to
be traversed and the difficulties to be overcome. It was a spontaneous
effort of terror and of zeal, in which we can at least satisfy ourselves
of the reality of the fear which pervaded all men, and which we know to
have been warranted by the merciless character of the horde which, having
subjugated Asia, was on its way to attempt the subjugation of Europe.
Men have come to see that the Turk is now what he always has been; it is
well to bear in mind the correlative truth that essentially he always was
what he is now; and when we recall the massacres of the last century, the
bloody scenes of Scio and Aleppo, of Jiddah and of Lebanon, of Bosnia and
Bulgaria, we may without effort understand what he was when Asia lay at
his feet, and Europe was terrified at the rumours of his attempt to cross
the Bosporus.

It is too much the practice of those who would deprecate our obligation
to those who strove to arrest the progress of the Turks, to dwell upon
some instances of magnanimity or of mercy, of justice or chivalrous
conduct which lighten up the pages of the history of the Saracens, and
to insinuate from these instances that the Turks possess the same claim
to our admiration. The Turks, however, are not Arabs, neither have they
ever manifested any of that care for intellectual pursuits which has
thrown a lustre on the career of the Saracens of Asia and the Moors
of the Spanish peninsula. On the contrary, the career of the Osmanli
has been marked by deeds of savage atrocity, by an indifference to the
obligations of oaths, as well as by his brutal ignorance and hatred of
all intellectual progress; and at the present day his inferiority to the
Arab in statesmanship, in honesty, and in intelligence is acknowledged.

In estimating the effects of the Crusades the reader will do well to
consider the calm judgment and weighty words of a modern historian, who
thus expresses our obligation to the devotion and bravery of those men
whose deeds are here briefly recorded. “By arresting the progress of the
Turks,” says Mr. Sharon Turner, “by stunning them with blows which a less
hardy, fanatic, and profuse population could not have survived, and by
protracting their entry into Europe until its various states had grown up
into compacted kingdoms--until the feudal system had been substantially
overthrown; until free government and humanising law had blended and
concentrated individual energy and self-will into national unity and
co-operating strength; until polity had begun to be a science, and that
order of men whom we both venerate and revile (statesmen and politicians)
had everywhere arisen--the crusaders preserved Europe from Turkish
desolation, if not from conquest. And when the Ottoman power, recovering
from its alarms by their discontinuance, arose in renovated vigour to a
new struggle for the sovereignty of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries--though it conquered Greece, overran Hungary,
Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, attempted Russia and Poland, and
endangered Vienna--yet the rest of Europe had then become prepared to
resist its further progress; and has hitherto successfully kept it at
bay, notwithstanding its mighty population and desperate fanaticism,
until its political infirmity has become decided, the period of its
decrepitude arrived, and its political dissolution has commenced.”

Since these words were written the decrepitude of the Turks has
increased, though their cruelty has not diminished; nay, in some
instances, the periodical massacres of their Christian subjects, which
have ever marked the rule of this race, have been carried out more
systematically and with circumstances of greater horror than of old. We
are, indeed, no longer alarmed at the progress of their arms, and have
no fear for our own safety. We may gather, however, from the accounts of
the suffering of the Christians dwelling in our own days among the Turks,
how natural it was for Europe to be terrified at the prospect of their
invasion; and from the generous indignation which thrilled the heart of
England at the time of the Armenian massacres, we may faintly understand
why it was that Europe was so moved at the rude eloquence of Peter the
Hermit, as he detailed the sufferings of the Christians of Asia Minor
when first subjected to the yoke of the Turk.

FOOTNOTES

[44] [Reprinted by permission from _A History of the Crusades_ by W. E.
Dutton, to which work it is an introduction.]

[Illustration]

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE CRUSADES

[Sidenote: [1096-1291 A.D.]]

Pilgrimages to Jerusalem, which were in use from the earliest ages
of Christianity, had become very frequent about the beginning of the
eleventh century. The opinion which then very generally prevailed, that
the end of the world was at hand, induced vast numbers of Christians to
sell their possessions in Europe, in order that they might set out for
the Holy Land, there to await the coming of the Lord. So long as the
Arabs were masters of Palestine, they protected these pilgrimages, from
which they derived no small emoluments. But when the Seljukian Turks, a
barbarous and ferocious people, had conquered that country (1075), under
the caliphs of Egypt, the pilgrims saw themselves exposed to every kind
of insult and oppression. The lamentable accounts which they gave of
these outrages on their return to Europe excited the general indignation,
and gave birth to the romantic notion of expelling these infidels from
the Holy Land.

Gregory VII was the projector of this grand scheme. He addressed circular
letters to all the sovereigns of Europe, and invited them to make a
general crusade against the Turks. Meantime, however, more pressing
interests, and his quarrels with the emperor Henry IV, obliged him to
defer the projected enterprise; but his attention was soon recalled to
it by the representation of a pilgrim, called Peter the Hermit, a native
of Amiens in Picardy. Furnished with letters from the patriarch of
Jerusalem to the pope and the princes of the West, this ardent fanatic
traversed the whole of Italy, France, and Germany; preaching everywhere,
and representing, in the liveliest colours, the profanation of the sacred
places, and the miserable condition of the Christians and poor pilgrims
in the Holy Land. It proved no difficult task for him to impart to
others the fanaticism with which he was himself animated. His zeal was
powerfully seconded by Pope Urban II, who repaired in person to France,
where he convoked the council of Clermont (1095), and pronounced, in full
assembly, a pathetic harangue, at the close of which they unanimously
resolved on the Holy War. It was decreed that all who should enrol their
names in this sacred militia should wear a red cross on their right
shoulder; that they should enjoy plenary indulgence, and obtain remission
of all their sins.

From that time the pulpits of Europe resounded with exhortations to
the Crusades. People of every rank and condition were seen flocking in
crowds to assume the signal of the cross; and, in the following year,
innumerable bands of crusaders, from the different countries of Europe,
set out, one after another, on this expedition to the East. The only
exception was the Germans, who partook but feebly of this universal
enthusiasm, on account of the disputes which then subsisted between the
emperor and the court of Rome. The three or four first divisions of
the crusaders [comprising about 273,000 men, under the leadership of
Peter the Hermit, Walter de Pexejo, and Walter the Penniless] marched
without order and without discipline; pillaging, burning, and wasting the
countries through which they passed. Most of them perished from fatigue,
hunger, or sickness, or by the sword of the exasperated nations whose
territories they had laid desolate. [The four thousand that crossed
the Bosporus were annihilated by Kilidj Arslan, the sultan of Rum, or
Iconium.] To these unwarlike and undisciplined troops succeeded regular
armies, commanded by experienced officers, and powerful princes: the
Crusades proper were inaugurated.[45]

THE FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1099 A.D.)

1096 A well-organised military force of 200,000-300,000 men
sets out by different routes. Its leaders are:

(1) Godfrey de Bouillon--Duke of Lower Lorraine, with his
brothers (2) Baldwin, (3) Eustace.

(4) Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror.

(5) Robert, Count of Flanders.

(6) Stephen, Count of Chartres.

(7) Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse.

(8) Hugh of Vermandois.

(9) Bohemond, Duke of Tarentum.

(10) Tancred, his nephew.

Arriving at Constantinople, all except Raymond do homage to
Alexius Comnenus, the emperor. Crossing the Bosporus they
invade the territory of Kilidj Arslan, sultan of Rum, or
Iconium.

1097 With the help of the crusaders, Alexius recovers Nicæa.
Victory of the crusaders at Dorylæum. Siege of Antioch is
begun. Baldwin and Tancred attempt a private war over question
of precedence of their banners. Baldwin withdraws his troops
from the army, and answering an appeal for help from the Greek
or Armenian ruler of Edessa, marches thither, makes himself its
master, and founds the Latin county Edessa (_q.v._).

1098 Surrender of Antioch, betrayed to Bohemond by the
Armenian, Firuz. Kerboga, emir of Mosul besieges the crusaders
in Antioch but is defeated and driven off. The crusaders rest
in Antioch and quarrel among themselves.

1099 Siege and capture of Jerusalem. Foundation of the kingdom
of Jerusalem (_q.v._). The county of Antioch founded (_q.v._)
with Bohemond at its head.

THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM (1099-1291 A.D.)

1099 =Godfrey de Bouillon= elected king of the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem. He makes laws for its government. The military order
of the Knights Hospitallers founded. He defeats the Fatimites
at Askalon.

1100 Death of Godfrey. His brother, =Baldwin I=, summoned from
Edessa and made king.

1101 A large body of crusaders, headed by Welf of Bavaria and
William of Aquitaine arrives in Asia Minor, but is destroyed
and dispersed by Kilidj Arslan before it can reach Jerusalem,
together with another one that arrived the previous year. Death
of Stephen of Chartres at Ramla.

1104 Baldwin captures Acre (Ptolemais) from the Turks. The
Turks fail in an attempt to regain Jerusalem. Death of Raymond
of Toulouse.

1109 Baldwin, with the assistance of a Venetian fleet, captures
Tripolis. He afterwards takes Berytus and Sidon.

1118 Death of Baldwin. His cousin, =Baldwin (II) de Bourg=, of
Edessa succeeds. The order of Knights Templar founded by Sir
Hugh de Pagano.

1119 Baldwin defeats the Turks at Antioch. The Emperor Joannes
Comnenus wins a victory over the Knights Hospitaller on the
Mæander.

1122 The Saracens take Baldwin prisoner.

1124 Conquest of Tyre by the crusaders, assisted by the
Venetians. The latter have a third of the city allotted them.

1127 Baldwin ransomed. He attacks Aleppo and is defeated.

1131 Death of Baldwin, after being defeated near Damascus. He
bequeaths the kingdom to his son-in-law, Fulk of Anjou.

1144 Death of Fulk, by accident. His young son, =Baldwin III=,
succeeds, under the regency of Queen Melusina.

1148 The Second Crusade besieges Damascus and Askalon, but is
unable to take them.

1149 Defeat of the Christians by Nur ad-Din, near the Orontes.

1153 Capture of Askalon by Baldwin III. Nur ad-Din takes
Jerusalem.

1162 Death of Baldwin. His brother, =Almeric= or =Amaury I=,
succeeds.

1168 Almeric invades Egypt. Capture and sack of Heliopolis. He
is defeated by the generals Shirkuh and Saladin.

1173 Death of Almeric. His young son, =Baldwin IV=, a leper,
succeeds under the guardianship of Count Raymond III, of
Tripolis.

1183 Baldwin IV is compelled by his disease to resign his
crown in favour of his infant nephew, =Baldwin V=, still under
regency of Raymond.

1186 Death of Baldwin V. His mother, =Sybilla=, sister of
Baldwin IV, inherits the crown, which she shares with her
husband, =Guy de Lusignan=.

1187 Saladin attacks the kingdom of Jerusalem. Great defeat and
capture of Guy at Tiberias. Saladin takes Jerusalem and then
besieges Tyre, whence he is repelled by Conrad of Montferrat.

1188 Liberation of Guy, who renounces his title to Saladin.
Conrad defends Tripolis.

1189 The Third Crusade arrives. Guy besieges Acre, assisted by
a fleet of Danes, Frisians, and Flemings.

1191 Conquest of Cyprus by Richard Cœur de Lion, on his way
to the Holy Land. He adds it to the kingdom of Jerusalem.
Surrender of Acre. Defeat of Saladin at Azotus. Joppa and
Askalon surrender to the Christians. Murder of Conrad of
Montferrat, who by marriage with Sybilla’s sister, Isabella,
has acquired right of succession to the kingdom. Foundation of
the order of Teutonic Knights.

1192 Isabella marries =Henry of Champagne=, to whom Guy
relinquishes his title, retaining that of king of Cyprus.

1193 On death of Saladin, his sons give Acre to the Knights of
St. John--hence called St. John d’Acre.

1194 Death of Guy de Lusignan. His brother, Almeric succeeds as
king of Cyprus.

1196 Death of Henry. His widow marries =Almeric (II) de
Lusignan=, who reunites the kingdoms of Cyprus and Jerusalem.

1206 Death of Almeric. His son, Hugo I, succeeds in Cyprus.
Jerusalem falls to =Mary=, daughter of Isabella and Conrad of
Montferrat.

1210 Mary marries =Jean de Brienne=, who becomes king of
Jerusalem.

1217 The Turks take Jerusalem from the Saracens.

1218 Jean de Brienne leads the Christians into Egypt and

1219 captures Damietta.

1221 Destruction of the Christian army in Egypt. The Turks
regain Damietta.

1225 The emperor Frederick II declares that Jean de Brienne
has, since Mary’s death, no claim to his title, and that it
belongs to himself, since he has married Yolande, the daughter
of Mary.

1228 After many delays, Frederick starts for the Holy Land.

1229 =Frederick II= makes a treaty with the sultan Malik
al-Kamil, by which he recovers Jerusalem and other cities. He
is the recognised king of Jerusalem.

From this time on (see Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Crusades) the
Christian kingdom in Palestine may be considered a part of the
Holy Roman Empire until 1291, when the sultan Khalil takes Acre
and drives the last of the Christians out of Syria.

THE COUNTY OF ANTIOCH (1099-1268 A.D.)

A vassal state of the kingdom of Jerusalem founded 1099 by the
crusaders with =Bohemond of Tarentum= at its head. Bohemond
is captured by the Turks (1105) and Tancred goes to Antioch
to govern. Bohemond released the following year. The emperor
Alexius claims Antioch, but Bohemond successfully resists him.
He goes to Europe, and after various adventures dies there in
1111. Tancred dies the following year. For eight years the
principality is united to the kingdom of Jerusalem, but in 1126
Baldwin II of Jerusalem gives it to =Bohemond II=. =Bohemond
III= rules 1162 to 1201. Some of the princes of Antioch rule in
virtue of their wives’ right to the throne. In 1268 Bibars, the
sultan of Egypt, captures Antioch and the principality comes to
an end.

THE COUNTY OF TRIPOLIS (1109-1289 A.D.)

A vassal state or county of the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1109,
when the city of Tripolis is captured by the crusaders and
=Raymond of Toulouse= placed at its head. The Christians rule
until 1289, when it falls into the hands of Kalaun, the sultan
of Egypt, who destroys the city.

THE COUNTY OF EDESSA (1097-1146 A.D.)

In 1097 =Baldwin I=, brother of Godfrey de Bouillon, in
consequence of a quarrel with Tancred, leaves the main body of
the crusaders, conquers Edessa, and founds the vassal state of
that name.

1100 Baldwin, made king of Jerusalem, gives Edessa to his
cousin, =Baldwin (II) de Bourg=.

1118 Baldwin II is made king of Jerusalem and =Jocelyn (I) de
Courtenai= takes his place in the county of Edessa. He wins
many victories over the Saracens.

1131 =Jocelyn II= succeeds.

1144 Capture of Edessa by Zenki, emir of Mosul.

1146 Jocelyn regains Edessa, but the same year Nur ad-Din,
Zenki’s son and successor, retakes and destroys it. End of the
county of Edessa. On account of this event Bernard of Clairvaux
preaches.

THE SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1149 A.D.)

1146 In the council of Vézelay, Louis VII of France assumes the
cross; the emperor, Conrad III, follows his example some months
later.

1147 The armies of Conrad and Louis start from Ratisbon and
Metz respectively, marching through Hungary to Asia Minor. The
German army in advance is nearly annihilated in Phrygia through
the treachery of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel, by Masud I, the
sultan of Rum. Conrad, with the remnant of his force, joins the
French army along the seacoast.

1148 Unsuccessful attempt of the Second Crusade to capture
Damascus and Askalon. Conrad, in ill health, returns to
Constantinople and thence to Germany.

1149 Louis returns to France. Bernard is reproached for the
failure of the crusade.

THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1192 A.D.)

The disastrous defeat and capture of Guy de Lusignan at
Tiberias by Saladin, and the latter’s capture of Jerusalem
(1187), reawakens the crusading spirit. Gregory VIII urges a
new crusade.

1188 William, archbishop of Tyre, induces Henry II of England
and Philip Augustus of France to assume the cross.

1189 Death of Henry. Richard (I) Cœur de Lion eagerly pursues
his father’s project. The emperor, Frederick (I) Barbarossa,
sets out with an army through Hungary. He spends the winter at
Hadrianopolis.

1190 Frederick reaches Asia Minor with assistance of Isaac
Angelus, and takes Iconium. Sudden death of Frederick. His son,
Frederick of Swabia, leads the crusaders to Acre, which Guy de
Lusignan, having regained his liberty, is besieging. Richard
and Philip Augustus start by sea for the Holy Land. They spend
the winter in Sicily, quarrel and are reconciled.

1191 Richard stops at and conquers Cyprus on his way to
the Holy Land. Richard and Philip arrive at Acre. Death of
Frederick of Swabia during the siege. Surrender of Acre.
Compact with Saladin, binding him to surrender the true cross
and pay a large sum. Philip quarrels with Richard and returns
to France.

1192 Richard makes unsuccessful attempt to take Jerusalem. He
relieves Joppa and makes truce with Saladin entitling pilgrims
to visit Jerusalem unmolested, for a short time. Richard sails
for England. Is shipwrecked near Aquileia. Seized near Vienna
by Leopold, duke of Austria, who surrenders him (1193) to the
emperor, Henry VI. Henry imprisons him, and he is released for
a large ransom in 1194 and returns to England.

THE FOURTH CRUSADE (1195-1198 A.D.)

The Knights of St. John start in 1193 to organise a crusade.
They are encouraged by Pope Celestine III, who hopes that the
troublesome emperor Henry VI will be induced to take part in
it. Henry also promotes the project, but has no idea of taking
part in it.

1195 Henry makes use of one division of the crusaders to
conquer the kingdom of Sicily. Two other divisions proceed to
Syria.

1196 Defeat of the Turks between Tyre and Sidon.

1197 The crusaders besiege the fortress of Thoron, but make a
disgraceful retreat on hearing of the approach of an army from
Egypt.

1198 The Saracens capture Joppa. The count of Montfort
concludes a three years’ truce with the Saracens. The crusade
leaders return to Europe.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE (1201-1204 A.D.)

Pope Innocent III, on his elevation (1198), with the assistance
of Fulk of Neuilly, preaches a new crusade.

1201 The company is organised by Simon de Montfort, Walter de
Brienne, and Geoffrey de Villehardouin. Boniface of Montferrat
chosen leader. The party proceeds to Venice. Treaty between
Venice and the leaders for transportation. Unable to pay sum
demanded, the doge, Dandolo, agrees to remit the sum lacking if
the crusaders will capture for him the town of Zara, taken from
Venice by the king of Hungary.

1202 Arrival at Venice of Alexius, son of the deposed emperor
Isaac, with whom the crusaders agree to restore Isaac. In spite
of Innocent’s protests the fleet sails for Zara, which is taken
and handed over to Venice.

1203 The crusaders proceed to Constantinople. Alexius III, the
reigning emperor, tries in vain to treat with them. Flight
of Alexius. The crusaders enter Constantinople. Isaac II and
Alexius IV restored. Constant friction between the emperor and
crusaders leads

1204 to the second capture of Constantinople. The reigning
family driven out. Foundation of the Latin Empire of Romania
and other states. (See “History of the Eastern Empire.”)

THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE (1212 A.D.)

Seems to have arisen from the idea that the main cause of the
failure of the Crusades was the sinfulness of the pilgrims.
None but the innocent and pure could accomplish the mission.
In 1212, thirty thousand boys and girls set out under the boy,
Stephen, and twenty thousand from Germany, under Nicholas, a
peasant boy. Most of them perish on the way; and others are
sold into slavery.

THE SIXTH CRUSADE (1217-1229 A.D.)

When Innocent III crowns Frederick II emperor, in 1215, he
extracts a promise from Frederick to conduct a crusade, but the
latter, seeing in the pope’s action a plan to outwit him in
the then imminent struggle between emperor and pope, defers his
departure.

1217 Andrew II of Hungary, incited by Honorius III, Innocent’s
successor, sets out for Jerusalem. He is joined by the king of
Cyprus. The crusaders visit Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and Tripolis,
but the Saracens make such havoc in their numbers that Andrew
returns to Hungary.

1218-1221 Jean de Brienne’s expedition to Damietta. (See
“Kingdom of Jerusalem”).

1228 Frederick II, after many disputes with the pope, sets
out for Jerusalem, the throne of which he claims through his
marriage to Yolande.

1229 Frederick makes treaty with the sultan Kamil, receiving
Jerusalem and other places. Frederick crowns himself king of
Jerusalem, and returns to Europe.

THE SEVENTH CRUSADE (1239-1240 A.D.)

Gregory IX preaches a new crusade (1238). The sultan Kamil dies
that year.

1239 King Thibaut of Navarre leads an army to Palestine to
break the truce made between Kamil and the Templars. The sons
of Kamil defeat him and capture Jerusalem.

1240 Richard, earl of Cornwall, proceeds to Acre, and receives
offers of peace from the sultan of Egypt. Jerusalem, and other
places in Palestine, are restored to the Christians. Richard
returns to England.

THE EIGHTH CRUSADE (1248-1254 A.D.)

In 1244, Jerusalem is taken by the Khwarizmians, who have been
driven from their own country by Jenghiz Khan. This leads to a
new crusade. Louis IX of France, in a fit of illness, vows to
lead an army against the Khwarizmians.

1248 Departure of Louis and his crusaders. He winters in Cyprus.

1249 Louis proceeds to Egypt, and takes Damietta. He then sets
out for Cairo.

1250 Battle of Mansura. Defeat and capture of Louis by Turan
Shah, sultan of Egypt. Louis is released by the restoration of
Damietta, and the promise to abstain from further hostilities.
The crusaders return to St. Jean d’Acre. Louis remains four
years in Syria, fortifying Acre and other cities, and

1254 returns to France.

THE NINTH CRUSADE (1270-1272 A.D.)

In 1260, the mamelukes, on the death of their sultan, Ibeg,
choose Bibars as his successor. This vigorous warrior at once
drives the Khwarizmians out of Syria, and takes Damascus and
Jerusalem from them. He then proceeds to exterminate the
Christians in Syria; in consequence of which, by 1267, a new
crusade has been planned. Louis IX of France, and Prince Edward
of England, are among those who assume the cross.

1268 Antioch surrenders to Bibars without a siege.

1270 After many difficulties in raising an army, the crusaders
sail for the Holy Land. Stopping at Sardinia, Louis changes his
plans, and proceeds against the king of Tunis. Shortly after
reaching there, the plague breaks out, and Louis dies. King
Charles of Naples arrives and makes a truce with the Tunisians,
who pay him tribute. The whole fleet returns to Europe, and is
wrecked on the Sicilian coast. Charles plunders the French and
Genoese vessels. Prince Edward leaves the French in Tunis, and
proceeds to Acre.

1271 Edward besieged at Acre by Bibars. Edward drives the
mamelukes away and seizes Nazareth. An attempt is made to
assassinate Edward.

1272 Edward concludes a ten years’ truce with Bibars, and
returns to Europe.

1274 Gregory X fails in an attempt to start a new crusade.
Bibars and his successors, Kalaun and Khalil, continue the
process of exterminating the Christians.

1289 Tripolis is taken. Acre is the last important possession
of the Christians. The mamelukes make a treaty with the king of
Cyprus.

1291 Capture of Acre by Khalil. Tyre, Berytus, and other towns,
submit. The last possessions of the Christians in the Holy
Land are abandoned. Other crusades are planned, but they are
never carried to execution. The military orders are eventually
suppressed.

FOOTNOTES

[45] [From _The Revolutions of Europe: being an historical view of the
European nations from the subversion of the Roman Empire in the West to
the abdication of Napoleon_. By Christopher W. Koch, formerly professor
of Public Jurisprudence at Strasburg. Translated from the French by
Andrew Crichton. Second edition, London, 1839.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES

“God willeth it,” the whole assembly cry;
Shout which the enraptured multitude astounds!
The Council roof and Clermont’s towers reply;--
“God willeth it!” from hill to hill rebounds,
And, in awe-struck countries far and nigh,
Through “Nature’s hollow arch” that voice resounds.

--WORDSWORTH.

[Sidenote: [306-1096 A.D.]]

The history of the Middle Ages presents no spectacle more imposing than
the Crusades, in which are to be seen the nations of Asia and of Europe
armed against each other, two religions contending for superiority,
and disputing the empire of the world. After having been several times
threatened by the Moslems, and a long time exposed to their invasions,
all at once the West arouses itself, and appears, according to the
expression of a Greek historian (Anna Comnena), to tear itself from its
foundation, in order to precipitate itself upon Asia. All nations abandon
their interests and their rivalries, and see upon the face of the earth
but one single country worthy of the ambition of conquerors. One would
believe that there no longer exists in the universe any other city but
Jerusalem, or any other habitable spot of earth but that which contains
the tomb of Jesus Christ. All the roads which lead to the Holy City are
deluged with blood, and present nothing but the scattered spoils and
wrecks of empires.

In this general confusion we may contemplate the sublimest virtues
mixed with all the disorders of the wildest passions. The Christian
soldiers have at the same time to contend against famine, the influence
of climate, and enemies the most formidable; in the greatest dangers,
in the midst of their successes and their constant discords, nothing
can exhaust either their perseverance or their resignation. After four
years of fatigue, of miseries, and of victories, Jerusalem is taken by
the crusaders; but as their conquests are not the work of wisdom and
prudence, but the fruit of blind enthusiasm and ill-directed heroism,
they create nothing but a transient power.

The banner of the cross soon passes from the hands of Godfrey de
Bouillon into those of his weak and imbecile successors. Jerusalem, now
a Christian city, is obliged again to apply for succour to the West.
At the voice of St. Bernard, the Christians take arms. Conducted by
an emperor of Germany and a king of France, they fly to the defence of
the Holy Land; but they have no longer great captains among them, they
have none of the magnanimity or heroic resignation of their fathers.
Asia, which beholds their coming without terror, already presents a new
spectacle. The disciples of Mohammed awaken from their apathy; they are
at once seized with a frenzy equal to that which had armed their enemies;
they oppose enthusiasm to enthusiasm, fanaticism to fanaticism, and in
their turn burn with a desire to shed their blood in a religious war.

[Sidenote: [1147-1532 A.D.]]

The spirit of discord which had destroyed their power is no longer felt
but among the Christians. Luxury and the manners of the East weaken the
courage of the defenders of the cross, and make them forget the object
even of the holy war. Jerusalem, which had cost the crusaders so much
blood, falls again into the power of the infidels, and becomes the
conquest of a wise and warlike prince, who had united under his banner
the forces of Syria and Egypt.

The genius and fortune of Saladin inflict a mortal blow upon the
ill-assured power of the Christians in the East. In vain an emperor of
the West, and two kings celebrated for their bravery, place themselves at
the head of the whole powers of their states to deliver Palestine; these
new armies of crusaders meet everywhere with brave enemies and invincible
barriers, and all their united efforts produce nothing but illustrious
disasters. The kingdom of Jerusalem, for whose ruins they contend, is no
longer anything but a vain name; soon even the captivity and the miseries
of the Holy City cease to inspire the sentiments of piety and enthusiasm
that they had given birth to among the Christians. The crusaders, who
had taken up arms for its deliverance, suffer themselves to be seduced
by the wealth of Greece, and stop short to undertake the conquest of
Constantinople.

From that time the spirit of the crusaders begins to change; whilst a
small number of Christians still shed their blood for the deliverance
of the tomb of Jesus Christ, the princes and the knights are deaf to
everything but the voice of ambition. The popes complete the corruption
of the true spirit of the crusaders, by urging them on, by their
preaching, against other Christian people, and against their own personal
enemies. The holy wars then degenerate into civil wars, in which both
religion and humanity are outraged.

These abuses of the Crusades, and the dire passions which had mixed
themselves with them, plunge Europe in disorder and anarchy; when a
pious king undertakes once more to arm the powers of the West against
the infidels, and to revive among the crusaders the spirit which had
animated the companions of Godfrey. The two wars directed by this pious
chief are more unfortunate than all the others. In the first, the world
is presented with the spectacle of a captive army and a king in fetters;
in the second, that of a powerful monarch dying in its ashes. Then it is
that the illusion disappears, and Jerusalem ceases to attract all the
attention of the West.

Soon after, the face of Europe is changed; intelligence dissipates
barbarism; the Crusades no longer excite the same degree of enthusiasm,
and the first effect of the civilisation it begins to spread is to
weaken the spirit of the fanaticism which had given them birth. Some few
useless efforts are at times made to rekindle the fire which had burned
so fiercely in Europe and Asia. The nations are so completely recovered
from the pious delirium of the Crusades, that when Germany finds itself
menaced by the Mussulmans who are masters of Constantinople the banner of
the cross can with difficulty gather an army around it; and Europe, which
had risen in a mass to attack the infidels in Asia, opposes but a feeble
resistance to them on its own territories.

Such is, in a few words, the picture of the events and revolutions which
the historian of the Crusades has to describe.

We do not now require much sagacity to discover in our ancient chronicles
what is fabulous and what is not. A far more difficult thing is to
reconcile, upon some points, the frequent contradictory assertions of the
Latins, the Greeks, and the Saracens, and to separate, in the history of
the Crusades, that which belongs to religious fanaticism, to policy, or
to human passions.

In an age in which some value is set upon an opinion of the Crusades,
it will be first asked if the wars of the Crusades were just. Upon this
head we have but little to answer. Whilst the crusaders believed that
they were obeying God himself by attacking the Saracens in the East, the
latter, who had invaded a part of Asia possessed by Christian people, who
had got possession of Spain, who threatened Constantinople, the coasts of
Italy, and several countries of the West, did not reproach their enemies
with making an unjust war, and left to fortune and victory the care of
deciding a question almost always useless.

We shall think it of more importance here to examine what was the cause
and the nature of these remote wars, and what has proved to be their
influence on civilisation. The Crusades were produced by the religious
and military spirit which prevailed in Europe during the Middle Ages.
The love of arms and religious fervour were two dominant passions which,
mingling in some way, lent each other a mutual energy. These two great
principles, united and acting together, gave birth to the holy war;
and carried, among the crusaders, valour, resignation, and heroism of
character to the highest degree of eminence. Some writers have seen
nothing in these great expeditions but the most deplorable excesses,
without any advantage to the ages that succeeded them; others, on the
contrary, maintain that we owe to them all the benefits of civilisation.
It is not, at present, our business to examine these two conflicting
opinions. Without believing that the holy wars have done either all the
good or all the harm that is attributed to them, it must be admitted that
they were a source of bitter sorrow to the generations that saw them or
took part in them; but, like the ills and tempests of human life, which
render man better and often assist the progress of his reason, they have
forwarded the experiences of nations; and it may be said that, after
having for a time seriously agitated and shaken society, they have, in
the end, much strengthened the foundations of it. This opinion, when
stripped of all spirit of exaggeration or system, will perhaps appear the
most reasonable.

EARLY CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGES

[Sidenote: [306-335 A.D.]]

From the earliest ages of the church, a custom had been practised
of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Judea, full of religious
remembrances, was still the promised land of the faithful; the blessings
of heaven appeared to be in store for those who visited Calvary, the tomb
of Jesus Christ, and renewed their baptism in the waters of the Jordan.
Under the reign of Constantine, the ardour for pilgrimages increased
among the faithful; they flocked from all the provinces of the empire
to worship Jesus Christ upon his own tomb, and to trace the steps of
their God in that city which had but just resumed its name, and which
the piety of an emperor had caused to issue from its ruins. The Holy
Sepulchre presented itself to the eyes of the pilgrims surrounded by
a magnificence which redoubled their veneration. An obscure cavern had
become a marble temple, paved with precious stones and decorated with
splendid colonnades. To the east of the Holy Sepulchre appeared the
church of the Resurrection, in which they could admire the riches of
Asia, mingled with the arts of Greece and Rome. Constantine celebrated
the thirty-first year of his reign by the inauguration of this church,
and thousands of Christians came, on occasion of this solemnity, to
listen to the panegyric of Christ from the lips of the learned and holy
bishop Eusebius.

[Sidenote: [335-493 A.D.]]

St. Helena, the mother of the emperor, repaired to Jerusalem, at a very
advanced age, and caused churches and chapels to be built upon Mount
Tabor, in the city of Nazareth, and in the greater part of the places
which Christ had sanctified by his presence and his miracles. From this
period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land became much more frequent. The
pilgrims, no longer in dread of the persecutions of the pagans, could
now give themselves up, without fear, to the fervour of their devotion;
the Roman eagles, ornamented with the cross of Jesus Christ, protected
them on their march; they everywhere trampled under foot the fragments of
idols, and they travelled amidst the abodes of their fellow-Christians.

[Illustration: A FRENCH CRUSADER]

When the emperor Julian, in order to weaken the authority of the
prophecies, undertook to rebuild the temple of the Jews, numerous were
the prodigies related by which God confounded his designs, and Jerusalem,
for that attempt even, became more dear to the disciples of Jesus Christ.
The Christians did not cease to visit Palestine. St. Jerome, who, towards
the end of the fourth century, had retired to Bethlehem, informs us in
one of his letters that pilgrims arrived in crowds in Judea, and that
around the holy tomb the praises of the Son of God were to be heard,
uttered in many languages. From this period, pilgrimages to the Holy Land
were so numerous that several doctors and fathers of the church thought
it their duty to point out the abuses and danger of the practice. They
told Christians that long voyages might turn them aside from the path of
salvation; that their God was not confined to one city; that Jesus Christ
was everywhere where faith and good works were to be found; but such was
the blind zeal which then drew the Christians towards Jerusalem that the
voice of the holy doctors was scarcely heard. As soon as the people of
the West became converted to Christianity, they turned their eyes to the
East. From the depths of Gaul, from the forests of Germany, from all the
countries of Europe, new Christians were to be seen hastening to visit
the cradle of the faith they had embraced.

[Sidenote: [493-750 A.D.]]

When the world was ravaged by the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals,
pilgrimages to the Holy Land were not at all interrupted. Pious
travellers were protected by the hospitable virtues of the barbarians,
who began to respect the cross of Christ, and sometimes even followed
the pilgrims to Jerusalem. In these times of trouble and desolation, a
poor pilgrim who bore his scrip and staff often passed through fields of
carnage, and travelled without fear amidst armies which threatened the
empires of the East and the West.

Illustrious families of Rome came to seek an asylum at Jerusalem, and
upon the tomb of Jesus Christ. Christians then found, on the banks of
the Jordan, that peace which seemed to be banished from the rest of the
world. This peace, which lasted several centuries, was not troubled
before the reign of Heraclius. Under this reign, the armies of Chosroes,
king of Persia, invaded Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; the Holy City fell
into the hands of the worshippers of fire; the conquerors bore away into
captivity vast numbers of Christians, and profaned the churches of Jesus
Christ. All the faithful deplored the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and shed
tears when they learned that the king of Persia had carried off, among
the spoils of the vanquished, the cross of the Saviour, which had been
preserved in the church of the Resurrection. Heraclius, after ten years
of reverses, triumphed, and brought back to Jerusalem the Christians
whose chains he had broken. Then was to be seen an emperor of the East,
walking barefooted in the streets of the Holy City, carrying on his
shoulders to the summit of Calvary the wood of the true cross, which he
considered the most glorious trophy of his victories.

But the joy of the faithful was not of long duration. Towards the
beginning of the seventh century there had arisen, in an obscure
corner of Asia, a new religion, opposed to all others which preached
dominion and war. Mohammed had promised the conquest of the world to
his disciples, who had issued almost naked from the deserts of Arabia.
By his passionate doctrine he was able to inflame the imagination of
the Arabs, and on the field of battle knew how to inspire them with his
own impetuous courage. His first successes, which must have greatly
exceeded his hopes, were like so many miracles, increasing the confidence
of his partisans and carrying conviction to the minds of the weak and
wavering. After the death of the prophet of Mecca, his lieutenants and
the companions of his first exploits carried on his great work.

JERUSALEM UNDER THE SARACENS

[Sidenote: [750-860 A.D.]]

Amidst the first conquests of the Saracens, they had turned their eyes
towards Jerusalem. According to the faith of the Moslems, Mohammed had
been in the city of David and Solomon; it was from Jerusalem that he
set out to ascend into heaven in his nocturnal voyage. The Saracens
considered Jerusalem as the house of God, as the city of saints and
miracles. The Christians had the grief of seeing the church of the Holy
Sepulchre profaned by the presence of the chief of the infidels. Although
Omar had left them the exercise of their worship, they were obliged to
conceal their crosses and their sacred books. The caliph ordered a mosque
to be erected on the spot whereon the temple of Solomon had been built.
In the meantime, the presence of Omar, of whose moderation the East
boasts, restrained the jealous fanaticism of the Moslems. After his death
the faithful had much more to suffer; they were driven from their houses,
insulted in their churches; the tribute which they had to pay to the new
masters of Palestine was increased, and they were forbidden to carry
arms or to mount on horseback. A leathern girdle, which they were never
allowed to be without, was the badge of their servitude; the conquerors
would not permit the Christians to speak the Arab tongue, sacred to the
disciples of the _Koran_; and the people who remained faithful to Jesus
Christ had not liberty even to pronounce the name of the patriarch of
Jerusalem, without the permission of the Saracens.

[Illustration: HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM]

All these persecutions could not stop the crowd of Christians who
repaired to Jerusalem, the sight of the Holy City sustaining their
courage as it heightened their devotion. There were no evils, no
outrages, that they could not support with resignation, when they
remembered that Christ had been loaded with chains and had died upon
the cross in the places they were about to visit. The Christians of
Palestine, however, enjoyed some short intervals of security during the
civil wars of the Mussulmans. The dynasty of the Omayyads, which had
established the seat of the Moslem empire at Damascus, was always odious
to the ever-formidable party of the Alids, and employed itself less in
persecuting the Christians than in preserving its own precarious power.
Merwan II, the last caliph of this house, was the most cruel towards the
disciples of Christ; and when he, with all his family, sank under the
power of his enemies, the Christians and the infidels united in thanks to
heaven for having delivered the East from his tyranny.

The Abbasids, established in the city of Baghdad which they had founded,
persecuted and tolerated the Christians by turns. The Christians, always
living between the fear of persecution and the hope of a transient
security, saw at last the prospect of happier days dawn upon them with
the reign of Harun ar-Rashid, the greatest caliph of the race of Abbas.
Under this reign the glory of Charlemagne, which had reached Asia,
protected the churches of the East. His pious liberality relieved the
indigence of the Christians of Alexandria, of Carthage, and Jerusalem.
The two greatest princes of their age testified their mutual esteem by
frequent embassies: they sent each other magnificent presents; and, in
the friendly intercourse of two powerful monarchs, the East and the West
exchanged the richest productions of their soil and their industry. There
was no doubt policy in the marks of esteem which Harun lavished upon
the most powerful of the princes of the West. He was making war against
the emperors of Constantinople, and might justly fear that they would
interest the bravest among Christian people in their cause. To take from
the Franks every pretext for a religious war, which might make them
embrace the cause of the Greeks, and draw them into Asia, the caliph
neglected no opportunity of obtaining the friendship of Charlemagne;
and caused the keys of the Holy City and of the Holy Sepulchre to be
presented to him.

Whilst the Arabians of Africa were pursuing their conquests towards the
West, whilst they took possession of Sicily, and Rome itself saw its
suburbs and its churches of St. Peter and St. Paul invaded and pillaged
by infidels, the servants of Jesus Christ prayed in peace within the
walls of Jerusalem. To the desire of visiting the tomb of Jerusalem
was joined the earnest wish to procure relics, which were then sought
for with eagerness by the devotion of the faithful. All who returned
from the East made it their glory to bring back to their country some
precious remains of Christian antiquity, and above all the bones of holy
martyrs, which constituted the ornament and the riches of their churches
and upon which princes and kings swore to respect truth and justice. The
productions of Asia likewise attracted the attention of the people of
Europe.

[Sidenote: [860-1050 A.D.]]

In short, the Christians of Palestine and the Moslem provinces, the
pilgrims and travellers who returned from the East, seemed no longer to
have any persecutions to dread, when all at once new storms broke out in
the East. The children of Harun soon shared the fate of the posterity of
Charlemagne, and Asia, like the West, was plunged into the horrors of
anarchy and civil war. The gigantic empire of the Abbasids crumbled away
on all sides, and the world, according to the expression of an Arabian
writer, was within the reach of him who would take possession of it. The
Greeks then appeared to rouse themselves from their long supineness,
and sought to take advantage of the divisions and the humiliation
of the Saracens. Nicephorus Phocas took the field at the head of a
powerful army, and recaptured Antioch from the Moslems. Deprived of the
powerful stimulus of fanaticism, Nicephorus found among the Greeks more
panegyrists than soldiers, and could not pursue his advantages against
the Saracens. His triumphs were confined to the taking of Antioch, and
only served to create a persecution against the Christians of Palestine.

Zimisces resolved to avenge the outrage inflicted upon religion and
the empire. On all sides preparations were set on foot for a fresh
war against the Saracens. The nations of the West were no strangers
to this enterprise, which preceded, by more than a year, the first of
the Crusades. After having defeated the Mussulmans on the banks of the
Tigris, and forced the caliph of Baghdad to pay a tribute, Zimisces
penetrated, almost without resistance, into Judea, took possession of
Cæsarea, of Ptolemais, of Tiberias, Nazareth, and several other cities of
the Holy Land.

After this first campaign, the Holy Land appeared to be on the eve
of being delivered entirely from the yoke of the infidels, when the
emperor died poisoned. His death at once put a stop to the execution of
an enterprise of which he was the soul and the leader. The Christian
nations had scarcely time to rejoice at the delivery of Jerusalem, when
they learned that the Holy City had again fallen into the hands of the
Fatimite caliphs, who, after the death of Zimisces, had invaded Syria
and Palestine. Hakim, the third of the Fatimite caliphs, signalised his
reign by all the excesses of fanaticism and outrage. Unfixed in his own
projects, and wavering between two religions, he by turns protected and
persecuted Christianity.

The inconstancy of Hakim, in a degree, mitigated the misfortunes of
Jerusalem, and he had just granted liberty to the Christians to rebuild
their churches, when he died by the hand of the assassin. His successor,
guided by a wiser policy, tolerated both pilgrimages and the exercise of
the Christian religion. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was not entirely
rebuilt till thirty years after its destruction; but the spectacle of its
ruins still inflamed the zeal and the devotion of the Christians. In the
eleventh century the Latin church allowed pilgrimages to suffice instead
of canonical penitences; sinners were condemned to quit their country
for a time, and to lead a wandering life, after the example of Cain.
There existed no crime that might not be expiated by the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. Even the weak and timid sex was not deterred by the perils of
a long voyage.[b]

CHARACTER OF THE PILGRIMS

[Sidenote: [1000-1050 A.D.]]

Though pilgrimages were generally considered acts of virtue, yet some of
the leaders of the church accounted them useless and criminal. Gregory,
bishop of Nyssa, in the fourth century, dissuades his flock from these
journeys. They were not conscientious obligations, he said, for in the
description of persons whom Christ had promised to acknowledge in the
next world the name of pilgrim could not be found. A migratory life was
dangerous to virtue, particularly to the modesty of women.

The necessity of making a pilgrimage to Rome and other places was often
urged by ladies, who did not wish to be mewed in the solitary gloom of
a cloister, “chaunting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.” In the
ninth century, a foreign bishop wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury,
requesting, in very earnest terms, that English women of every rank and
degree might be prohibited from pilgrimising to Rome. Their gallantries
were notorious over all the continent. “_Perpaucæ enim sunt civitates
in Longobardia, vel in Francia, aut in Gallia, in qua non sit adultera
vel meretrix generis Anglorum: quod scandalum est, et turpitudo totius
ecclesiæ._” Muratori, _Antiquitates Italiæ Med. Ævi, Dissert. 58_, vol.
V., p. 58. “There are few cities in Lombardy, in France, or in Gaul, in
which there is not an English adultress or harlot, to the scandal and
disgrace of the whole church.” Morality did not improve as the world
grew older. The prioress in Chaucer, demure as she is, wears a bracelet
on which was inscribed the sentence, “_Amor vincit omnia._” The gallant
monk, in the same pilgrimage, ties his hood with a true-lover’s knot.

Horror at spectacles of vice would diminish with familiarity, and
the moral principle would gradually be destroyed. Malice, idolatry,
poisoning, and bloodshed disgraced Jerusalem itself; and so dreadfully
polluted was the city that, if any man wished to have a more than
ordinary spiritual communication with Christ, he had better quit
his earthly tabernacle at once than endeavour to enjoy it in places
originally sacred, but which had been since defiled. Some years after the
time of Gregory, a similar description of the depravity at Jerusalem was
given by St. Jerome, and the Latin father commends a monk who, though a
resident in Palestine, had but on one occasion travelled to the city.
The opinions of these two venerable spiritual guides could not stem the
torrent of popular religion. The coffers of the church were enriched by
the sale of relics, and the dominion of the clergy became powerful in
proportion to the growth of religious abuses and corruptions. Pilgrims
from India, Ethiopia, Britannia, and Hibernia went to Jerusalem; and the
tomb of Christ resounded with hymns in various languages. Bishops and
teachers would have thought it a disgrace to their piety and learning if
they had not adored their Saviour on the very spot where his cross had
first shed the light of his Gospel.

[Illustration: A PILGRIM AND SHRINE]

The assertion, that “the coffers of the church were enriched by the
sale of relics,” requires some observations; because the sale of one
relic in particular encouraged the ardour of pilgrimages, and from the
ardour the Crusades arose. During the fourth century, Christendom was
duped into the belief that the very cross on which Christ had suffered
had been discovered in Jerusalem. The city’s bishop was the keeper
of the treasure, but the faithful never offered their money in vain
for a fragment of the holy wood. They listened with credulity to the
assurance of their priests that a living virtue pervaded an inanimate
and insensible substance, and that the cross permitted itself every day
to be divided into several parts, and yet remained uninjured and entire.
Thus Erasmus says, in his entertaining dialogue on pilgrimages, that “if
the fragments of the cross were collected, enough would be found for
the building of a ship.” It was publicly exhibited during the religious
festivities of Easter, and Jerusalem was crowded with pious strangers
to witness the solemn spectacle. But after four ages of perpetual
distribution, the world was filled with relics, and superstition craved
for a novel object. Accordingly, the Latin clergy of Palestine pretended
that on the vigil of Easter, after the great lamps in the church of the
Resurrection had been extinguished, they were relighted by God himself.
People flocked from the West to the East in order to behold this act
of the Divinity, and to catch some portion of a flame which had the
marvellous property of healing all diseases, mental as well as bodily, if
those who received it had faith.[c]

[Sidenote: [1050-1076 A.D.]]

The inclination to acquire holiness by the journey to Jerusalem became at
length so general that the troops of pilgrims alarmed by their numbers
the countries through which they passed, and although they came not as
soldiers they were designated “the armies of the Lord.” In the year 1054,
Litbert, bishop of Cambray, set out for the Holy Land, followed by more
than three thousand pilgrims from the provinces of Picardy and Flanders.

Ten years after, seven thousand Christians set out together from the
banks of the Rhine. This numerous caravan, which was the forerunner of
the Crusades, crossed Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Thrace, and was
welcomed at Constantinople by the emperor Constantine Ducas. After having
visited the churches of Byzantium, the pilgrims of the West traversed
Asia Minor and Syria without danger; but when they approached Jerusalem,
the sight of their riches aroused the cupidity of the Bedouin Arabs,
undisciplined hordes, who had neither country nor settled abode, and who
had rendered themselves formidable in the civil wars of the East. The
Arabs attacked the pilgrims of the West, and compelled them to sustain a
siege in an abandoned village; and this was on a Good Friday. The emir
of Ramala, informed by some fugitives, came happily to their rescue,
delivered them from the death with which they were threatened, and
permitted them to continue their journey. After having lost more than
three thousand of their companions, they returned to Europe, to relate
their tragical adventures, and the dangers of a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land.

THE TURKS IN POWER

[Sidenote: [1076-1088 A.D.]]

New perils and the most violent persecutions at this period threatened
both the pilgrims of the West and the Christians of Palestine. Asia was
once again about to change masters, and tremble beneath a fresh tyranny.
During several centuries the rich countries of the East had been subject
to continual invasions from the wild hordes of Tatary. The Turks, issuing
from countries situated beyond the Oxus, had rendered themselves masters
of Persia. Palestine yielded to the power of the Turks. The conquerors
spared neither the Christians nor the children of Ali, whom the caliph
of Baghdad represented to be the enemies of God. The Egyptian garrison
was massacred, and the mosques and the churches were delivered up to
pillage. The Holy City was flooded with the blood of Christians and
Mussulmans.

Other tribes of Turks, led by Suleiman, penetrated into Asia Minor.
They took possession of all the provinces through which pilgrims were
accustomed to pass on their way to Jerusalem. The standard of the prophet
floated over the walls of Edessa, Iconium, Tarsus, and Antioch. Thousands
of children had been circumcised. Everywhere the laws of the _Koran_ took
the place of those of the Evangelists and of Greece. The black or white
tents of the Turks covered the plains and the mountains of Bithynia and
Cappadocia, and their flocks pastured among the ruins of the monasteries
and churches. The Greeks had never had to contend against more cruel and
terrible enemies than the Turks. In the midst of revolutions and civil
wars, the Greek Empire was hastening to its fall.

Whilst the empire of the East approached its fall and appeared sapped by
time and corruption, the institutions of the West were in their infancy.
The empire and the laws of Charlemagne no longer existed. Nations had
no relations with each other; and mistaking their political interests,
made wars without considering their consequences or their dangers, and
concluded peace without being at all aware whether it was advantageous
or not. Royal authority was nowhere sufficiently strong to arrest the
progress of anarchy and the abuses of feudalism. At the same time that
Europe was full of soldiers and covered with strong castles, the states
themselves were without support against their enemies, and had not an
army to defend them.

Ten years before the invasion of Asia Minor by the Turks, Michael
Ducas, the successor of Romanus Diogenes, had implored the assistance
of the pope and the princes of the West. He had promised to remove all
the barriers which separated the Greek from the Roman church, if the
Latins would take up arms against the infidels. Gregory VII then filled
the chair of St. Peter. The hope of extending the religion and the
empire of the holy see into the East made him receive kindly the humble
supplications of Michael Ducas. Excited by his discourses, fifty thousand
pilgrims agreed to follow Gregory to Constantinople, and thence to Syria;
but the affairs of Europe suspended the execution of his projects.

Every day the power of the popes was augmented by the progress of
Christianity, and by the ever-increasing influence of the Latin clergy.
Rome was become a second time the capital of the world, and appeared to
have resumed, under the monk Hildebrand, the empire it had enjoyed under
the cæsars. Armed with the two-edged sword of Peter, Gregory loudly
proclaimed that all the kingdoms of the earth were under the dominion
of the holy see, and that his authority ought to be as universal as the
church of which he was the head. These dangerous pretensions, fostered by
the opinions of his age, engaged him immediately in violent disputes with
the emperor of Germany. He desired also to dictate laws to France, Spain,
Sweden, Poland, and England; and thinking of nothing but making himself
acknowledged as the great arbiter of states, he launched his anathemas
even against the throne of Constantinople, which he had undertaken to
defend, and gave no more attention to the deliverance of Jerusalem.

After the death of Gregory, Victor III, although he pursued the policy
of his predecessor and had to contend against the emperor of Germany
and the party of the anti-pope Guibert (Clement III), did not neglect
the opportunity of making war against the Mussulmans. The Saracens,
inhabiting Africa, disturbed the navigation of the Mediterranean, and
threatened the coast of Italy. Victor invited the Christians to take
arms, and promised them the remission of all their sins if they went to
fight against the infidels. The inhabitants of Pisa, Genoa, and several
other cities, urged by their zeal for religion and their desire to defend
their commerce, equipped fleets, levied troops, and made a descent upon
the coasts of Africa, where, if we are to believe the chronicles of the
time, they cut in pieces an army of one hundred thousand Saracens.[b]

PETER THE HERMIT

[Sidenote: [1088-1095 A.D.]]

The true story of the first Crusade is, as Kugler[d] says, sufficiently
marvellous. It was a vast awakening in which religion, adventure, and
design forced the European peoples out of their narrow lines of life and
brought the West and East again in contact, and it grows in strangeness
as we trace the story in detail. But monkish, uncritical writings which
record the vague traditions of that great uprising have not rested
satisfied with the marvellous truth: they have added much that is
legendary. Among the legends that have failed to stand the test of recent
scholarship, is the famous one which made Peter the Hermit the originator
of the first Crusade. We may now feel sure that it was not Peter but
Urban II who set going the great impetus; but the legend of Peter the
Hermit has grown into the story of the first Crusade, and won its place
in history from the belief of centuries. The reader must, however, be
aware, as he reads it, that we have no authentic account of Peter’s
preaching before the Council of Clermont. He was probably one of the
preachers who scattered the enthusiasm of that council in northeastern
France. His preaching was likely limited to the land where he could be
understood in the vernacular, and his real influence is rather to be
estimated by the rabble that followed him and Walter the Penniless, to
leave their bones by the Danube or Bosporus. So much prefaced, let us
turn to the story.

As the legend runs, Peter, an obscure hermit, came from his retreat,
and followed into Palestine the crowd of Christians who went to visit
the holy places.[a] The sight of Jerusalem excited him much more than
any of the other pilgrims, for it created in his ardent mind a thousand
conflicting sentiments. In the city, which exhibited everywhere marks of
the mercy and the anger of God, all objects inflamed his piety, irritated
his devotion and his zeal, and filled him by turns with respect, terror,
and indignation. After having followed his brethren to Calvary and the
tomb of Christ he repaired to the patriarch of Jerusalem. The white
hairs of Simeon, his venerable figure, and above all the persecution
which he had undergone, bespoke the full confidence of Peter, and they
wept together over the ills of the Christians. The patriarch resolved to
implore, by his letters, the help of the pope and the princes of Europe,
and the hermit swore to be the interpreter of the Christians of the East
and to rouse the West to take arms for their deliverance.

[Illustration: A HERMIT OF THE MIDDLE AGES]

After this interview, the enthusiasm of Peter knew no bounds; he was
persuaded that heaven itself called upon him to avenge its cause. One
day, whilst prostrated before the Holy Sepulchre, he believed that he
heard the voice of Christ, which said to him: “Peter, arise! hasten to
proclaim the tribulations of my people; it is time that my servants
should receive help, and that the holy places should be delivered.” Full
of the spirit of these words, which sounded unceasingly in his ears, and
charged with letters from the patriarch, he quitted Palestine, crossed
the seas, landed on the coast of Italy, and hastened to cast himself at
the feet of the pope. The chair of St. Peter was then occupied by Urban
II, who had been the disciple and confidant of both Gregory and Victor.
Urban embraced with ardour a project which had been entertained by his
predecessors; he received Peter as a prophet, applauded his design, and
bade him go forth and announce the approaching deliverance of Jerusalem.

[Sidenote: [1095-1096 A.D.]]

Peter the Hermit traversed Italy, crossed the Alps, visited all parts of
France, and the greatest portion of Europe, inflaming all hearts with the
same zeal that consumed his own. He travelled mounted on a mule, with a
crucifix in his hand, his feet bare, his head uncovered, his body girded
with a thick cord, covered with a long frock, and a hermit’s hood of the
coarsest stuff. The singularity of his appearance was a spectacle for the
people, whilst the austerity of his manners, his charity, and the moral
doctrines that he preached caused him to be revered as a saint wherever
he went.

He went from city to city, from province to province, working upon the
courage of some and upon the piety of others; sometimes haranguing from
the pulpits of the churches, sometimes preaching in the high-roads or
public places. His eloquence was animated and impressive, and filled
with those vehement apostrophes which produce such effects upon an
uncultivated multitude. He described the profanation of the holy places,
and the blood of the Christians shed in torrents in the streets of
Jerusalem. He invoked, by turns, heaven, the saints, the angels, whom
he called upon to bear witness to the truth of what he told them. He
apostrophised Mount Zion, the rock of Calvary, and the Mount of Olives,
which he made to resound with sobs and groans. When he had exhausted
speech in painting the miseries of the faithful, he showed the spectators
the crucifix which he carried with him; sometimes striking his breast
and wounding his flesh, sometimes shedding torrents of tears. The people
followed the steps of Peter in crowds. The preacher of the holy war was
received everywhere as a messenger from God.

THE APPEAL OF THE EMPEROR ALEXIUS

In the midst of this general excitement, Alexius Comnenus, who was
threatened by the Turks, sent ambassadors to the pope, to solicit
the assistance of the Latins. “Without the prompt assistance of all
the Christian states,” he wrote, “Constantinople must fall under the
most frightful domination of the Turks.” He reminded the princes of
Christianity of the holy relics preserved in Constantinople, and conjured
them to save so sacred an assemblage of venerated objects from the
profanation of the infidels. After having set forth the splendour and
the riches of his capital, he exhorted the knights and barons to come
and defend them; he offered them his treasures as the reward of their
valour, and painted in glowing colours the beauty of the Greek women,
whose love would repay the exploits of his liberators. Thus, nothing was
spared that could flatter the passions or arouse the enthusiasm of the
warriors of the West.

COUNCILS OF PLACENTIA AND CLERMONT

In compliance with the prayers of Alexius and the wishes of the faithful,
the sovereign pontiff convoked a council at Placentia, in order there
to expose the dangers of the Greek and Latin churches in the East. The
preachings of Peter had so prepared the minds and animated the zeal of
the faithful, that more than two hundred bishops and archbishops, four
thousand ecclesiastics, and thirty thousand of the laity obeyed the
invitation of the holy see. The council was so numerous that it was
obliged to be held in a plain in the neighbourhood of the city. The
Council of Placentia, however, came to no determination upon the war
against the infidels. The deliverance of the Holy Land was far from
being the only object of this council: the declarations of the empress
Adelaide, who came to reveal her own shame and that of her husband,
anathemas against the emperor of Germany and the anti-pope Guibert,
occupied, during several days, the attention of Urban and the assembled
fathers.

A new council assembled at Clermont, in Auvergne. Before it gave up its
attention to the holy war, the council at first considered the reform of
the clergy and ecclesiastical discipline; and it then occupied itself in
placing a restraint upon the license of wars among individuals. In these
barbarous times even simple knights never thought of redressing their
injuries by any other means than arms. It was not an uncommon thing to
see families, for the slightest causes, commence a war against each other
that would last during several generations; Europe was distracted with
troubles occasioned by these hostilities. In the impotence of the laws
and the governments, the church often exerted its salutary influence
to restore tranquillity; several councils had placed their interdict
upon private wars during four days of the week, and their decrees had
invoked the vengeance of heaven against disturbers of the public peace.
The Council of Clermont renewed the Truce of God, and threatened all who
refused “to accept peace and justice” with the thunders of the church.
One of its decrees placed widows, orphans, merchants, and labourers
under the safeguard of religion. They declared, as they had already
done in other councils, that the churches should be so many inviolable
sanctuaries, and that crosses, even, placed upon the high-roads, should
become points of refuge against violence.

Humanity and reason must applaud such salutary decrees; but the sovereign
pontiff, although he presented himself as the defender of the sanctity
of marriage, did not merit the same praises when he pronounced in this
council an anathema against Philip I. But such was then the general
infatuation, that no one was astonished that a king of France should be
excommunicated in the very bosom of his own kingdom. The sentence of
Urban could not divert attention from an object that seemed much more
imposing, and the excommunication of Philip scarcely holds a place in
the history of the Council of Clermont. The faithful, gathered from all
the provinces, had but one single thought; they spoke of nothing but
the evils the Christians endured in Palestine, and saw nothing but the
war which was about to be declared against the infidels. Enthusiasm and
fanaticism, which always increase in large assemblies, were carried
to their full height. Urban at length satisfied the impatience of the
faithful--impatience which he, perhaps, had adroitly excited, and which
was the surest guarantee of success.

The council held its tenth sitting in the great square or place of
Clermont, which was soon filled by an immense crowd. Followed by his
cardinals, the pope ascended a species of throne which had been prepared
for him; at his side was Peter the Hermit, clad in that whimsical and
uncouth garb which had everywhere drawn upon him the attention and the
respect of the multitude. Urban, who spoke after Peter, represented,
as he had done, the holy places as profaned by the domination of the
infidels.

As Urban proceeded, the sentiments by which he was animated penetrated to
the very souls of his auditors. When he spoke of the captivity and the
misfortunes of Jerusalem, the whole assembly was dissolved in tears; when
he described the tyranny and the perfidy of the infidels, the warriors
who listened to him clutched their swords, and swore in their hearts to
avenge the cause of the Christians. Urban redoubled their enthusiasm
by announcing that God had chosen them to accomplish his designs, and
exhorted them to turn those arms against the Moslems which they now bore
in conflict against their brothers. They were not now called upon to
revenge the injuries of men, but injuries offered to divinity; it was now
not the conquest of a town or a castle that was offered to them as the
reward of their valour, but the riches of Asia, the possession of a land
in which, according to the promises of the Scriptures, flowed streams of
milk and honey.

“Christian warriors,” he exclaimed, “who seek without end for vain
pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have to-day found true ones. You who
have been so often the terror of your fellow-citizens, go and fight
against the barbarians, go and fight for the deliverance of the holy
places; you who sell for vile pay the strength of your arms to the fury
of others, armed with the sword of the Maccabees, go and merit an eternal
reward. If you triumph over your enemies, the kingdoms of the East will
be your heritage; if you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying
in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will not forget that
he shall have found you in his holy ranks. This is the moment to prove
that you are animated by a true courage; this is the moment in which you
may expiate so many violences committed in the bosom of peace, so many
victories purchased at the expense of justice and humanity. If you must
have blood, bathe your hands in the blood of the infidels. I speak to
you with harshness, because my ministry obliges me to do so: soldiers of
hell, become soldiers of the living God! When Jesus Christ summons you to
his defence, let no base affections detain you in your homes; see nothing
but the shame and the evils of the Christians; listen to nothing but the
groans of Jerusalem, and remember well what the Lord has said to you: ‘He
who loves his father and his mother more than me, is not worthy of me;
whoever shall abandon his house, or his father, or his mother, or his
wife, or his children, or his inheritance, for the sake of my name, shall
be recompensed a hundredfold, and possess life eternal.’”

At these words the auditors of Urban displayed an enthusiasm that human
eloquence had never before inspired. The assembly arose in one mass
as one man, and answered him with a unanimous cry, “It is the will of
God! It is the will of God!”[46] Pity, indignation, despair, at the
same time agitated the tumultuous assembly of the faithful; some shed
tears over Jerusalem and the fate of the Christians; others swore to
exterminate the race of the Moslems; but, all at once, at a signal from
the sovereign pontiff, the most profound silence prevailed. Cardinal
Gregory, who afterwards occupied the chair of St. Peter under the name of
Innocent II, pronounced, in a loud voice, a form of general confession,
the assembly all fell upon their knees, beat their breasts, and received
absolution for their sins. All the faithful decorated their garments
with a red cross. From that time, all who engaged to combat the infidels
were termed “bearers of the cross,”[47] and the holy war took the name
of “Crusade.” The faithful solicited Urban to place himself at their
head; but the pontiff, who had not yet triumphed over the anti-pope
Guibert, who was dealing out at the same time his anathemas against the
king of France and the emperor of Germany, could not quit Europe without
compromising the power and the policy of the holy see. He refused to be
chief of the crusade, and named the bishop of Puy apostolic legate with
the army of the Christians.

THE FRENZY OF EUROPE

He promised to all who assumed the cross the entire remission of their
sins. Their persons, their families, their property, were all placed
under the protection of the church and of the apostles St. Peter and
St. Paul. The council declared that every violence exercised upon the
soldiers of Christ should be punished by anathema, and recommended its
decrees in favour of the bearers of the cross to the watchful care of
all bishops and priests. It regulated the discipline and the departure
of those who had enrolled themselves in the holy ranks, and for fear
reflection might deter any from leaving their homes, it threatened with
excommunication all those who did not fulfil their vows.

[Illustration: MONKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES]

It might be said that the French had no longer any other country than the
Holy Land, and that to it they were bound to sacrifice their ease, their
property, and their lives. This enthusiasm, which had no bounds, was
not long in extending itself to the other Christian nations; the flame
which consumed France was communicated to England, still disturbed by the
recent conquest of the Normans; to Germany, troubled by the anathema of
Gregory and Urban; to Italy, agitated by its factions; to Spain, even,
although it had to combat the Saracens on its own territory.

The devotion for pilgrimages, which had been increasing during several
centuries, became a passion and an imperative want for most Christians;
everyone was eager to march to Jerusalem, and to take part in the
crusade, which was, in all respects, an armed pilgrimage. The situation
in which Europe was then placed no doubt contributed to increase the
number of pilgrims. “All things were in such disorder,” says William of
Tyre, “that the world appeared to be approaching to its end, and was
ready to fall again into the confusion of chaos.” Everywhere the people
groaned under a horrible servitude; a frightful scarcity of provisions,
which had during several years desolated France and the greater part of
the kingdoms of the West, had given birth to all sorts of brigandage and
violence; and these proving the destruction of agriculture and commerce
increased still further the horrors of the famine. Villages, towns even,
became void of inhabitants, and sank into ruins. The people abandoned a
land which no longer nourished them, or could offer them either repose
or security: the standard of the cross appeared to them a certain asylum
against misery and oppression. According to the decrees of the Council
of Clermont, the crusaders were freed from all imposts, and could not
be pursued for debts during their voyage. At the name of the cross the
very laws suspended their menaces, tyranny could not seek its victims,
nor justice even the guilty, amidst those whom the church adopted for
its defenders. The assurance of impunity, the hope of a better fate, the
love of license, and a desire to shake off the most sacred ties, actuated
a vast proportion of the multitude which flocked to the banners of the
crusade.

Many nobles who had not at first taken the cross, and who saw their
vassals set out, without having the power to prevent them, determined
to follow them as military chiefs, in order to preserve some portion of
their authority. It was known that two or three hundred Norman pilgrims
had conquered Apulia and Sicily from the Saracens. The lands occupied by
the infidels appeared to be heritages promised to knights whose whole
wealth consisted in their birth, their valour, and their sword.

We should nevertheless deceive ourselves if we did not believe that
religion was the principle which acted most powerfully upon the greater
number of the crusaders. In ordinary times men follow their natural
inclinations, and only obey the voice of their own interest; but in the
times of the Crusades, religious fever was a blind passion which spoke
louder than all others. Religion permitted not any other glory, any
other felicity to be seen by its ardent defenders, but those which she
presented to their heated imagination. Love of country, family ties, the
most tender affections of the heart, were all sacrificed to the ideas and
the opinions which then possessed the whole of Europe. Moderation was
cowardice, indifference treason, opposition a sacrilegious interference.
The power of the laws was reckoned as nothing amongst men who believed
they were fighting in the cause of God. Subjects scarcely acknowledged
the authority of princes or lords in anything which concerned the holy
war; the master and the slave had no other title than that of Christian,
no other duty to perform than that of defending his religion, sword in
hand.

They whom age or condition appeared to detain in Europe, and whom the
council had exempted from the labours and perils of the crusade, caused
the heaven which called them to the holy war to speak aloud. Women and
children imprinted crosses upon their delicate and weak limbs, to show
the will of God. Monks deserted the cloisters in which they had sworn
to die, believing themselves led by a divine inspiration; hermits and
anchorites issued from forests and deserts, and mingled with the crowd of
crusaders. What is still more difficult to believe, thieves and robbers,
quitting their secret retreats, came to confess their crimes, and
promised, whilst receiving the cross, to go and expiate them in Palestine.

Europe appeared to be a land of exile, which everyone was eager to quit.
Artisans, traders, labourers, abandoned the occupations by which they
subsisted; barons and lords even renounced the domains of their fathers.
The lands, the cities, the castles, for which they had but of late been
at war, all at once lost their value in the eyes of their possessors, and
were given up, for small sums, to those whom the grace of God had not
touched, and who were not called to the happiness of visiting the holy
places and conquering the East.

Contemporary authors relate several miracles which assisted in heating
the minds of the multitude. Stars fell from the firmament; traces of
blood were seen in the heavens; cities, armies, and knights decorated
with the cross were pictured in the clouds. We will not relate all the
other miracles reported by historians, which were believed in an age in
which nothing was more common than prodigies, in which, according to the
remark of Fleury, the taste for the wonderful prevailed greatly over that
for the true. Our readers will find quite enough of extraordinary things
in the description of so many great events for which the moral world, and
even nature herself, seemed to have interrupted their laws. What prodigy,
in fact, can more astonish the philosopher, than to see Europe, which may
be said to have been agitated to its very foundations, move all at once,
and like a single man march in arms towards the East?

The Council of Clermont, which was held in the month of November,
1095, had fixed the departure of the crusaders for the festival of the
Assumption of the following year. During the winter nothing was thought
of but preparations for the voyage to the Holy Land. As soon as the
spring appeared, nothing could restrain the impatience of the crusaders,
and they set forward on their march to the places at which they were to
assemble. The greater number went on foot; some horsemen appeared amongst
the multitude; a great many travelled in cars; they were clothed in a
variety of manners, and armed, in the same way, with lances, swords,
javelins, iron clubs, etc. The crowd of crusaders presented a whimsical
and confused mixture of all ranks and all conditions; women appeared in
arms in the midst of warriors, prostitution not being forgotten among the
austerities of penitence. Old age was to be seen with infancy, opulence
next to misery; the helmet was confounded with the frock, the mitre with
the sword. Around cities, around fortresses, in the plains, upon the
mountains, were raised tents and pavilions; everywhere was displayed a
preparation for war and festivity. Here was heard the sound of arms or
the braying of trumpets; whilst at a short distance the air was filled
with psalms and spiritual songs. From the Tiber to the ocean, and from
the Rhine to the other side of the Pyrenees, nothing was to be seen
but troops of men marked with the cross, who swore to exterminate the
Saracens, and were chanting their songs of conquest beforehand. On all
sides resounded the war-cry of the crusaders: “It is the will of God! It
is the will of God!”

Families, whole villages, set out for Palestine, and drew into their
ranks all they met with on their passage. They marched on without
forethought, and would not believe that he who nourishes the sparrow
would leave pilgrims clothed with the holy cross to perish with want.
Their ignorance added to their illusion, and lent an air of enchantment
to everything they saw; they believed at every moment they were
approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The children of the villagers,
when they saw a city or a castle, asked if that was Jerusalem. Many of
the great lords, who had passed their lives in their rustic donjons, knew
very little more on this head than their vassals; they took with them
their hunting and fishing appointments, and marched with their falcons on
their wrists, preceded by their hounds. They expected to reach Jerusalem
enjoying themselves on the road, and to exhibit to Asia the rude luxury
of their castles.

In the midst of the general delirium, no sage caused the voice of reason
to be heard; nobody was then astonished at that which now creates so much
surprise. These scenes so strange, in which everyone was an actor, could
only be a spectacle for posterity.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[46] _Dieu le veut_ was pronounced in the language of the times _Dieu le
volt_, or _Diex le volt_.

[47] The cross which the faithful wore in this crusade was of cloth,
and sometimes even of red-coloured silk. Afterwards they wore crosses
of different colours. The cross, a little in relief, was sewed upon the
right shoulder of the coat or mantle, or else fastened on the front of
the helmet, after having been blessed by the pope or some bishop. The
prayers and ceremonies used on this occasion are still to be found in the
Romish ritual. On returning from the Holy Land, they removed this mark
from the shoulder and placed it on the back, or else wore it at the neck.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II. THE FIRST CRUSADE

There, armed and mounted, goes the pilgrim knight,
To meet the Saracen on Acre’s field:
The Cross is on his shoulders and his shield,
And on his banner and his helmet bright:
He knoweth not to truckle or to yield,
But valiantly for his dear Lord to fight;
For on his heart is this high purpose sealed,--
To see Jerusalem; O glorious sight!
To quench his thirst at Siloa’s sacred fount;
To bathe in Jordan’s stream without control;
To stand on Calvary’s thrice honoured mount,
And there the standard of the Cross unroll;
On that blest spot those sufferings to recount
Which He endured who died to save his sinful soul.

--JOHN HOLLAND.

[Sidenote: [1096-1147 A.D.]]

The 15th of August had been fixed in the Council of Clermont for the
departure of the pilgrims; but the day was anticipated by the thoughtless
and needy crowd of plebeians. Early in the spring, from the confines of
France and Lorraine, above sixty thousand of the populace of both sexes,
flocked round the first missionary of the Crusades, and pressed him with
clamorous importunity to lead them to the Holy Sepulchre. The hermit,
assuming the character, without the talents or authority, of a general,
impelled or obeyed the forward impulse of his votaries along the banks
of the Rhine and Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to
separate, and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though
needy soldier, conducted a vanguard of pilgrims, whose condition may be
determined from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen thousand foot.

The example and footsteps of Peter were closely pursued by another
fanatic, the monk Godescal [or Gottschalk], whose sermons had swept
away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages of Germany.
Their rear was again pressed by a herd of two hundred thousand, the most
stupid and savage refuse of the people, who mingled with their devotion
a brutal license of rapine, prostitution, and drunkenness. Some counts
and gentlemen, at the head of three thousand horse, attended the motions
of the multitude to partake in the spoil; but their genuine leaders (may
we credit such folly?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried in the
front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an infusion of the
divine Spirit. Of these, and of other bands of enthusiasts, the first
and most easy warfare was against the Jews, the murderers of the Son of
God. In the trading cities of the Moselle and the Rhine, their colonies
were numerous and rich; and they enjoyed, under the protection of the
emperor and the bishops, the free exercise of their religion. At Verdun,
Trèves, Mainz, Speier, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy people
were pillaged and massacred; nor had they felt a more bloody stroke
since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was saved by the firmness of
their bishops, who accepted a feigned and transient conversion; but the
more obstinate Jews opposed their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the
Christians, barricaded their houses, and precipitating themselves, their
families, and their wealth into the rivers or the flames, disappointed
the malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes.

PETER THE HERMIT AND HIS RABBLE

Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzantine monarchy
the crusaders were compelled to traverse an interval of six hundred
miles--the wild and desolate countries of Hungary and Bulgaria. Both
nations had imbibed the rudiments of Christianity: the Hungarians were
ruled by their native princes, the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the
Greek emperor; but on the slightest provocation their ferocious nature
was rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the disorders of
the first pilgrims. Agriculture must have been unskilful and languid
among a people whose cities were built of reeds and timber, which were
deserted in the summer season for the tents of hunters and shepherds. A
scanty supply of provisions was rudely demanded, forcibly seized, and
greedily consumed; and on the first quarrel, the crusaders gave a loose
rein to indignation and revenge. But their ignorance of the country, of
war, and of discipline exposed them to every snare. The Greek prefect
of Bulgaria commanded a regular force; at the trumpet of the Hungarian
king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial subjects bent their bows and
mounted on horseback; their policy was insidious, and their retaliation
on these pious robbers was unrelenting and bloody. About a third of the
naked fugitives, and the hermit Peter was of the number, escaped to the
Thracian Mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and
succour of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journeys to
Constantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their brethren.

For awhile they remembered their faults and losses; but no sooner were
they revived by the hospitable entertainment than their venom was again
inflamed; they stung their benefactor, and neither gardens, nor palaces,
nor churches were safe from their depredations. For his own safety,
Alexius allured them to pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosporus;
but their blind impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which
he had assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks who occupied the
road of Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had withdrawn from
the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, who
was worthy of a better command, attempted without success to introduce
some order and prudence among the herd of savages. They separated in
quest of prey, and themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the
sultan. By a rumour that their foremost companions were rioting in
the spoils of his capital, Suleiman tempted the main body to descend
into the plain of Nicæa; they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows;
and a pyramid of bones informed their companions of the place of their
defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand[48] had already
perished before a single city was rescued from the infidels, before their
graver and more noble brethren had completed the preparations of their
enterprise.

THE LEADERS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE

[Sidenote: [1096-1097 A.D.]]

None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their persons in the
First Crusade. The religious ardour was more strongly felt by the
princes of the second order, who held an important place in the feudal
system. The first rank both in war and council is justly due to Godfrey
de Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they
had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of that accomplished hero, a
worthy representative of Charlemagne, from whom he was descended in the
female line.

In the service of Henry IV, he bore the great standard of the empire,
and pierced with his lance the breast of Rudolf the rebel king; Godfrey
was the first who ascended the walls of Rome; and his sickness, his vow,
perhaps his remorse for bearing arms against the pope, confirmed an
early resolution of visiting the Holy Sepulchre, not as a pilgrim but a
deliverer. His valour was matured by prudence and moderation; his piety,
though blind, was sincere; and in the tumult of a camp he practised
the real and fictitious virtues of a convent. Superior to the private
factions of the chiefs, he reserved his enmity for the enemies of Christ;
and though he gained a kingdom by the attempt, his pure and disinterested
zeal was acknowledged by his rivals. Godfrey de Bouillon was accompanied
by his two brothers--by Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the
county of Boulogne, and by the younger, Baldwin, a character of more
ambiguous virtue.

In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the king’s presence, about
two months after the Council of Clermont, Hugh, count of Vermandois
was the most conspicuous of the princes who assumed the cross. But the
appellation of “the great” was applied, not so much to his merit or
possessions (though neither were contemptible) as to the royal birth
of the brother of the king of France. Robert, duke of Normandy, was
the eldest son of William the Conqueror; but on his father’s death he
was deprived of the kingdom of England by his own indolence and the
activity of his brother Rufus. For the trifling sum of ten thousand
marks he mortgaged Normandy, during his absence, to the English usurper;
but his engagement and behaviour in the holy war announced in Robert a
reformation of manners, and restored him in some degree to the public
esteem. Another Robert was count of Flanders; he was surnamed the
Sword and Lance of the Christians; but in the exploits of a soldier he
sometimes forgot the duties of a general. Stephen, count of Chartres, of
Blois, and of Troyes, was one of the richest princes of the age; and the
number of his castles has been compared to the 365 days of the year. His
mind was improved by literature; and in the council of the chiefs, the
eloquent Stephen was chosen to discharge the office of their president.
These four were the principal leaders of the French, the Normans, and
the pilgrims of the British Isles; but the list of the barons who were
possessed of three or four towns would exceed, says a contemporary, the
catalogue of the Trojan War.

[Illustration: THE FOUR LEADERS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE]

In the south of France, the command was assumed by Adhemar, bishop
of Puy, the pope’s legate; and by Raymond, count of St. Giles and
Toulouse, who added the prouder titles of duke of Narbonne and marquis
of Provence. The former was a respectable prelate, alike qualified for
this world and the next. The latter was a veteran warrior, who had fought
against the Saracens of Spain, and who consecrated his declining age
not only to the deliverance but to the perpetual service of the Holy
Sepulchre. A mercantile, rather than a martial spirit prevailed among
his provincials--a common name which included the natives of Auvergne
and Languedoc--the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles. From the
adjacent frontier of Spain, he drew a band of hardy adventurers; as he
marched through Lombardy, a crowd of Italians flocked to his standard,
and his united force consisted of one hundred thousand horse and foot.
If Raymond was the first to enlist and the last to depart, the delay may
be excused by the greatness of his preparation and the promise of an
everlasting farewell.

[Illustration: A CRUSADER]

The name of Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard, was already famous
by his double victory over the Greek emperor; but his father’s will
had reduced him to the principality of Taranto and the remembrance of
his eastern trophies, till he was awakened by the rumour and passage
of the French pilgrims. It is in the person of this Norman chief that
we may seek for the coolest policy and ambition with a small alloy of
religious fanaticism. His conduct may justify a belief that he had
secretly directed the design of the pope, which he affected to second
with astonishment and zeal. At the siege of Amalfi, his example and
discourse inflamed the passions of a confederate army; he instantly tore
his garment to supply crosses for the numerous candidates and prepared
to visit Constantinople and Asia at the head of ten thousand horse and
twenty thousand foot. Several princes of the Norman race accompanied this
veteran general; and his cousin Tancred was the partner, rather than the
servant, of the war. In the accomplished character of Tancred we discover
all the virtues of a perfect knight--the true spirit of chivalry, which
inspired the generous sentiments and social offices of man, far better
than the base philosophy, or the baser religion, of the times.

Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the Crusades, a revolution had
taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and the French, which was
gradually extended to the rest of Europe. The service of the infantry
was degraded to the plebeians; the cavalry formed the strength of the
armies, and the honourable name _miles_, or soldier, was confined to the
gentlemen who served on horseback and were invested with the character
of knighthood. The dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of
sovereignty, divided the provinces among their faithful barons; the
barons distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices of their
jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of each other and of
their lord, composed the noble or equestrian order, which disdained to
conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same species with themselves.
The dignity of their birth was preserved by pure and equal alliances;
their sons alone who could produce four quarters or lines of ancestry
without spot or reproach, might legally pretend to the honour of
knighthood: but a valiant plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled
by the sword and became the father of a new race. A single knight could
impart, according to his judgment, the character which he received; and
the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more glory from this personal
distinction than from the lustre of their diadem.

Such were the troops, and such the leaders, who assumed the cross for
the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. As soon as they were relieved
by the absence of the plebeian multitude, they encouraged each other,
by interviews and messages, to accomplish their vow and hasten their
departure. Their wives and sisters were desirous of partaking the danger
and merit of the pilgrimage; their portable treasures were conveyed
in bars of silver and gold; and the princes and barons were attended
by their equipage of hounds and hawks to amuse their leisure and to
supply their table. The difficulty of procuring subsistence for so many
myriads of men and horses engaged them to separate their forces; their
choice or situation determined the road; and it was agreed to meet in
the neighbourhood of Constantinople, and from thence to begin their
operations against the Turks.

ALEXIUS COMPELS HOMAGE

[Sidenote: [1097 A.D.]]

In some oriental tale there is the fable of a shepherd, who was ruined by
the accomplishment of his own wishes: he had prayed for water; the Ganges
was turned into his grounds, and his flock and cottage were swept away
by the inundation. Such was the fortune, or at least the apprehension,
of the Greek emperor Alexius Comnenus. In the Council of Placentia, his
ambassadors had solicited a moderate succour, perhaps of ten thousand
soldiers; but he was astonished by the approach of so many potent chiefs
and fanatic nations. The promiscuous multitudes of Peter the Hermit
were savage beasts, alike destitute of humanity and reason; nor was it
possible for Alexius to prevent or deplore their destruction. The troops
of Godfrey and his peers were less contemptible, but not less suspicious,
to the Greek emperor. Their motives might be pure and pious; but he was
equally alarmed by his knowledge of the ambitious Bohemond, and his
ignorance of the Transalpine chiefs; the courage of the French was blind
and headstrong; they might be tempted by the luxury and wealth of Greece,
and elated by the view and opinion of their invincible strength; and
Jerusalem might be forgotten in the prospect of Constantinople.

After a long march and painful abstinence, the troops of Godfrey
encamped in the plains of Thrace; they heard with indignation that their
brother, the count of Vermandois, was imprisoned by the Greeks; and
their reluctant duke was compelled to indulge them in some freedom of
retaliation and rapine. They were appeased by the submission of Alexius;
he promised to supply their camp; and as they refused, in the midst of
winter, to pass the Bosporus, their quarters were assigned among the
gardens and palaces on the shores of that narrow sea. But an incurable
jealousy still rankled in the minds of the two nations, who despised each
other as slaves and barbarians. Ignorance is the ground of suspicion,
and suspicion was inflamed into daily provocations; prejudice is blind,
hunger is deaf; and Alexius is accused of a design to starve or assault
the Latins in a dangerous post, on all sides encompassed with the waters.
Godfrey sounded his trumpets, burst the net, overspread the plain, and
insulted the suburbs; but the gates of Constantinople were strongly
fortified; the ramparts were lined with archers; and after a doubtful
conflict, both parties listened to the voice of peace and religion. The
gifts and promises of the emperor insensibly soothed the fierce spirit of
the western strangers; as a Christian warrior, he rekindled their zeal
for the prosecution of their holy enterprise, which he engaged to second
with his troops and treasures. On the return of spring, Godfrey was
persuaded to occupy a pleasant and plentiful camp in Asia; and no sooner
had he passed the Bosporus than the Greek vessels were suddenly recalled
to the opposite shore. The same policy was repeated with the succeeding
chiefs, who were swayed by the example and weakened by the departure of
their foremost companions. By his skill and diligence Alexius prevented
the union of any two of the confederate armies at the same moment under
the walls of Constantinople; and before the feast of the Pentecost not a
Latin pilgrim was left on the coast of Europe.

The same arms which threatened Europe might deliver Asia, and repel the
Turks from the neighbouring shores of the Bosporus and the Hellespont.
The fair provinces from Nicæa to Antioch were the recent patrimony of
the Roman emperor; and his ancient and perpetual claim still embraced
the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt. In his enthusiasm, Alexius indulged,
or affected, the ambitious hope of leading his new allies to subvert
the thrones of the East; but the calmer dictates of reason and temper
dissuaded him from exposing his royal person to the faith of unknown
and lawless barbarians. His prudence, or his pride, was content with
extorting from the French princes an oath of homage and fidelity, and a
solemn promise that they would either restore, or hold, their Asiatic
conquests, as the humble and loyal vassals of the Roman Empire. Their
independent spirit was fired at the mention of this foreign and voluntary
servitude; they successively yielded to the dexterous application of
gifts and flattery; and the first proselytes became the most eloquent and
effectual missionaries to multiply the companions of their shame.

The ceremony of their homage was grateful to a people who had long since
considered pride as the substitute of power. High on his throne, the
emperor sat mute and immovable; his majesty was adored by the Latin
princes; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or his knees, an
indignity which their own writers are ashamed to confess, and unable to
deny.

NUMBERS OF THE CRUSADERS

The conquest of Asia was undertaken and achieved by Alexander, with
thirty-five thousand Macedonians and Greeks; and his best hope was in
the strength and discipline of his phalanx of infantry. The principal
force of the crusaders consisted in their cavalry; and when that force
was mustered in the plains of Bithynia, the knights and their martial
attendants on horseback amounted to one hundred thousand fighting men,
completely armed with the helmet and coat of mail. The value of these
soldiers deserved a strict and authentic account; and the flower of
European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort, this formidable
body of heavy horse. A part of the infantry might be enrolled for the
service of scouts, pioneers, and archers; but the promiscuous crowd were
lost in their own disorder; and we depend not on the eyes or knowledge,
but on the belief and fancy of a chaplain of Count Baldwin, in the
estimate of six hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms, besides the
priests and monks, the women and children, of the Latin camp. The reader
starts; and before he recovers from his surprise, we shall add, on the
same testimony, that if all who took the cross had accomplished their
vow, above six millions would have migrated from Europe to Asia. Under
this oppression of faith we derive some relief from a more sagacious
and thinking writer, who, after the same review of the cavalry, accuses
the credulity of the priest of Chartres, and even doubts whether the
Cisalpine regions (in the geography of a Frenchman) were sufficient to
produce and pour forth such incredible multitudes. The coolest scepticism
will remember, that of these religious volunteers great numbers never
beheld Constantinople and Nicæa. Of enthusiasm the influence is irregular
and transient; many were detained at home by reason or cowardice, by
poverty or weakness; and many were repulsed by the obstacles of the way,
the more insuperable as they were unforeseen to these ignorant fanatics.
The savage countries of Hungary and Bulgaria were whitened with their
bones; their vanguard was cut in pieces by the Turkish sultan; and the
loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or climate, or fatigue, has
already been stated at three hundred thousand men. Yet the myriads that
survived, that marched, that pressed forwards on the holy pilgrimage,
were a subject of astonishment to themselves and to the Greeks. The
copious energy of her language sinks under the efforts of the princess
Anna Comnena; the images of locusts, of leaves and flowers, of the sands
of the sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly represent what she had
seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius exclaims, that Europe was
loosened from its foundations and hurled against Asia. The ancient
hosts of Darius and Xerxes labour under the same doubt of a vague and
indefinite magnitude; but we are inclined to believe that a larger
number has never been contained within the lines of a single camp than
at the siege of Nicæa, the first operation of the Latin princes. Their
motives, their characters, and their arms, have been already displayed.
Of their troops the most numerous portion were natives of France; the
Low Countries, the banks of the Rhine, and Apulia sent a powerful
reinforcement; some bands of adventurers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy,
and England, and from the distant bogs and mountains of Ireland or
Scotland issued some naked and savage fanatics, ferocious at home, but
unwarlike abroad.

THE SIEGE OF NICÆA

We have expatiated with pleasure on the first steps of the crusaders, as
they paint the manners and character of Europe; but we shall abridge the
tedious and uniform narrative of their blind achievements, which were
performed by strength, and are described by ignorance. From their first
station in the neighbourhood of Nicomedia, they advanced in successive
divisions; passed the contracted limit of the Greek Empire; opened a road
through the hills, and commenced, by the siege of his capital, their
pious warfare against the Turkish sultan. His kingdom of Roum extended
from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria, and barred the pilgrimage
of Jerusalem; his name was Kilij-Arslan, or Suleiman, of the race of
Seljuk, and son of the first conqueror; and in the defence of a land
which the Turks considered as their own, he deserved the praise of his
enemies, by whom alone he is known to posterity. Yielding to the first
impulse of the torrent, he deposited his family and treasure in Nicæa;
retired to the mountains with fifty thousand horse; and twice descended
to assault the camps or quarters of the Christian besiegers, which formed
an imperfect circle of above six miles.

The lofty and solid walls of Nicæa were covered by a deep ditch, and
flanked by 370 towers; and on the verge of Christendom, the Moslems were
trained in arms, and inflamed by religion. Before this city, the French
princes occupied their stations, and prosecuted their attacks without
correspondence or subordination; emulation prompted their valour; but
their valour was sullied by cruelty, and their emulation degenerated into
envy and civil discord. In the space of seven weeks, much labour and
blood were expended, and some progress, especially by Count Raymond, was
made on the side of the besiegers. But the Turks could protract their
resistance and secure their escape, as long as they were masters of the
lake Ascanius, which stretches several miles to the westward of the
city. The means of conquest were supplied by the prudence and industry
of Alexius; a great number of boats was transported on sledges from the
sea to the lake; they were filled with the most dexterous of his archers;
the flight of the sultana was intercepted; Nicæa was invested by land
and water; and a Greek emissary persuaded the inhabitants to accept his
master’s protection, and to save themselves, by a timely surrender, from
the rage of the savages of Europe. In the moment of victory, or at least
of hope, the crusaders, thirsting for blood and plunder, were awed by
the imperial banner that streamed from the citadel; and Alexius guarded
with jealous vigilance this important conquest. The murmurs of the chiefs
were stifled by honour or interest; and after a halt of nine days, they
directed their march towards Phrygia, under the guidance of a Greek
general, whom they suspected of a secret connivance with the sultan.
The consort and the principal servants of Suleiman had been honourably
restored without ransom; and the emperor’s generosity to the miscreants
was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.

BATTLE OF DORYLÆUM

Suleiman was rather provoked than dismayed by the loss of his capital;
he admonished his subjects and allies of this strange invasion of the
western barbarians; the Turkish emirs obeyed the call of loyalty or
religion; the Turkoman hordes encamped round his standard; and his whole
force is loosely stated by the Christians at 200,000, or even 360,000
horse. Yet he patiently waited till they had left behind them the sea and
the Greek frontier; and hovering on the flanks, observed their careless
and confident progress in two columns beyond the view of each other. Some
miles before they could reach Dorylæum in Phrygia, the left, and least
numerous, division was surprised and attacked and almost oppressed, by
the Turkish cavalry. The heat of the weather, the clouds of arrows, and
the barbarous onset, overwhelmed the crusaders; they lost their order and
confidence; and the fainting fight was sustained by the personal valour,
rather than by the military conduct, of Bohemond, Tancred, and Robert of
Normandy. They were revived by the welcome banners of Duke Godfrey, who
flew to their succour with the count of Vermandois and sixty thousand
horse; and was followed by Raymond of Toulouse, the bishop of Puy, and
the remainder of the sacred army. Without a moment’s pause, they formed
in new order, and advanced to a second battle. They were received with
equal resolution; and, in their common disdain for the unwarlike people
of Greece and Asia, it was confessed on both sides, that the Turks and
the Franks were the only nations entitled to the appellation of soldiers.

[Illustration: HELMET OF A CRUSADER OF THE FIRST CRUSADE]

As long as the horses were fresh and the quivers full, Suleiman
maintained the advantage of the day; and four thousand Christians were
pierced by the Turkish arrows. In the evening, swiftness yielded to
strength; on either side, the numbers were equal, or at least as great as
any ground could hold, or any generals could manage; but in turning the
hills, the last division of Raymond and his provincials was led, perhaps
without design, on the rear of an exhausted enemy, and the long contest
was determined. Besides a nameless and unaccounted multitude, three
thousand pagan knights were slain in the battle and pursuit; the camp
of Suleiman was pillaged. Reserving ten thousand guards of the relics
of his army, Suleiman evacuated the kingdom of Roum, and hastened to
implore the aid, and kindle the resentment, of his eastern brethren. In
a march of five hundred miles, the crusaders traversed the Lesser Asia,
through a wasted land and deserted towns, without either finding a friend
or an enemy. The geographer may trace the position of Dorylæum, Antioch
of Pisidia, Iconium, Archelais, and Germanicia, and may compare those
classic appellations with the modern names of Eskishehr the old city,
Akshehr the white city, Cogni, Erekli, and Marash.

PRINCIPALITY OF EDESSA FOUNDED

To improve the general consternation, the cousin of Bohemond and the
brother of Godfrey were detached from the main army with their respective
squadrons of five, and of seven, hundred knights. They overran in a rapid
career the hills and sea coast of Cilicia, from Cogni to the Syrian
gates; the Norman standard was first planted on the walls of Tarsus and
Malmistra; but the proud injustice of Baldwin at length provoked the
patient and generous Italian; and they turned their consecrated swords
against each other in a private and profane quarrel. Honour was the
motive, and fame the reward, of Tancred; but fortune smiled on the more
selfish enterprise of his rival. He was called to the assistance of a
Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been suffered under the Turkish yoke to
reign over the Christians of Edessa. Baldwin accepted the character of
his son and champion; but no sooner was he introduced into the city than
he inflamed the people to the massacre of his father, occupied the throne
and treasure, extended his conquests over the hills of Armenia and the
plain of Mesopotamia, and founded the first principality of the Franks or
Latins, which subsisted fifty-four years beyond the Euphrates.

SIEGE OF ANTIOCH

[Sidenote: [1097-1098 A.D.]]

Before the Franks could enter Syria, the summer, and even the autumn,
were completely wasted. The siege of Antioch, or the separation and
repose of the army during the winter season, was strongly debated in
their council. At the head of the Turkish emirs, Baghi Sian, a veteran
chief, commanded in the place; his garrison was composed of six or seven
thousand horse, and fifteen or twenty thousand foot. Notwithstanding
strong fortifications, the city had been repeatedly taken by the
Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks; so large a circuit must
have yielded many previous points of attack; and in a siege that was
formed about the middle of October, the vigour of the execution could
alone justify the boldness of the attempt. Whatever strength and valour
could perform in the field was abundantly discharged by the champions
of the cross; in the frequent occasions of sallies, of forage, of the
attack and defence of convoys, they were often victorious; and we can
only complain that their exploits are sometimes enlarged beyond the scale
of probability and truth. The sword of Godfrey divided a Turk from the
shoulder to the haunch; and one half of the infidel fell to the ground,
while the other was transported by his horse to the city gate. But the
reality or report of such gigantic prowess must have taught the Moslems
to keep within their walls; and against those walls of earth or stone,
the sword and the lance were unavailing weapons.

Indolence or weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the entire
circuit; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the wants and
recruited the garrison of the city. At the end of seven months, after
the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous loss by famine, desertion,
and fatigue, the progress of the crusaders was imperceptible, and their
success remote, if the Latin Ulysses, the artful and ambitious Bohemond,
had not employed the arms of cunning and deceit. The Christians of
Antioch were numerous and discontented; Firuz, a Syrian renegado, had
acquired the favour of the emir and the command of three towers. A secret
correspondence was soon established. Bohemond declared in the council
of the chiefs that he could deliver the city into their hands. But he
claimed the sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his service; and the
proposal which had been rejected by the envy, was at length extorted from
the distress, of his equals. The nocturnal surprise was executed by the
French and Norman princes, who ascended in person the scaling ladders
that were thrown from the wall; their new proselyte, after the murder
of his too scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the servants of
Christ; the army rushed through the gates; and the Moslems soon found,
that, although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent.

But the citadel still refused to surrender, and the victors themselves
were speedily encompassed and besieged by the innumerable forces of
Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who with twenty-eight Turkish emirs advanced
to the deliverance of Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent
on the verge of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and
the sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. In this
extremity they collected the relics of their strength, sallied from the
town, and in a single memorable day annihilated or dispersed the host of
Turks and Arabians, which they might safely report to have consisted of
six hundred thousand men. Their supernatural allies we shall proceed to
consider; the human causes of the victory of Antioch were the fearless
despair of the Franks, and the surprise, the discord, perhaps the errors,
of their adversaries.

In the eventful period of the siege and defence of Antioch, the crusaders
were alternately exalted by victory or sunk in despair; either swelled
with plenty or emaciated with hunger. A speculative reasoner might
suppose that their faith had a strong and serious influence on their
practice; and that the soldiers of the cross, the deliverers of the Holy
Sepulchre, prepared themselves by a sober and virtuous life for the
daily contemplation of martyrdom. Experience blows away this charitable
illusion; and seldom does the history of profane war display such scenes
of intemperance and prostitution as were exhibited under the walls of
Antioch. The grove of Daphne no longer flourished; but the Syrian air was
still impregnated with the same vices; the Christians were seduced by
every temptation that nature either prompts or reprobates; the authority
of the chiefs was despised; and sermons and edicts were alike fruitless
against those scandalous disorders, not less pernicious to military
discipline, than repugnant to evangelic purity. In the first days of the
siege and the possession of Antioch, the Franks consumed with wanton and
thoughtless prodigality the frugal subsistence of weeks and months; the
desolate country no longer yielded a supply; and from that country they
were at length excluded by the arms of the besieging Turks. Disease, the
faithful companion of want, was envenomed by the rains of the winter, the
summer heats, unwholesome food, and the close imprisonment of multitudes.
The pictures of famine and pestilence are always the same, and always
disgustful.

The remains of treasure or spoil were eagerly lavished in the purchase of
the vilest nourishment; and dreadful must have been the calamities of the
poor, since, after paying three marks of silver for a goat, and fifteen
for a lean camel, the count of Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner, and
Duke Godfrey to borrow a horse. Sixty thousand horses had been reviewed
in the camp; before the end of the siege they were diminished to two
thousand, and scarcely two hundred fit for service could be mustered
on the day of battle. Weakness of body and terror of mind extinguished
the ardent enthusiasm of the pilgrims; and every motive of honour and
religion was subdued by the desire of life. Among the chiefs, three
heroes may be found without fear or reproach: Godfrey de Bouillon was
supported by his magnanimous piety; Bohemond by ambition and interest;
and Tancred declared, in the true spirit of chivalry, that as long as he
was at the head of forty knights he would never relinquish the enterprise
of Palestine. But the count of Toulouse and Provence was suspected of a
voluntary indisposition; the duke of Normandy was recalled from the sea
shore by the censures of the church; Hugh the Great, though he led the
vanguard of the battle, embraced an ambiguous opportunity of returning
to France; and Stephen count of Chartres basely deserted the standard
which he bore, and the council in which he presided. The soldiers were
discouraged by the flight of William, viscount of Melun, surnamed the
Carpenter from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the saints were
scandalised by the fall of Peter the Hermit, who attempted to escape from
the penance of a necessary fast.[49]

A TYPICAL MIRACLE

[Illustration: A NORMAN CRUSADER]

In such a cause, and in such an army, visions, prophecies, and miracles
were frequent and familiar. In the distress of Antioch, they were
repeated with unusual energy and success; St. Ambrose had assured a
pious ecclesiastic that two years of trial must precede the season of
deliverance and grace; the deserters were stopped by the presence and
reproaches of Christ himself; the dead had promised to arise and combat
with their brethren; the Virgin had obtained the pardon of their sins;
and their confidence was revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and
splendid discovery of the holy lance. The policy of their chiefs has on
this occasion been admired, and might surely be excused; but a pious
fraud is seldom produced by the cool conspiracy of many persons; and
a voluntary impostor might depend on the support of the wise and the
credulity of the people. Of the diocese of Marseilles, there was a priest
of low cunning and loose manners, and his name was Peter Bartholemy.
He presented himself at the door of the council-chamber to disclose
an apparition of St. Andrew which had been thrice reiterated in his
sleep, with a dreadful menace, if he presumed to suppress the commands
of heaven. “At Antioch,” said the apostle, “in the church of my brother
St. Peter, near the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance
that pierced the side of our Redeemer. In three days, that instrument
of eternal, and now of temporal salvation, will be manifested to his
disciples. Search and ye shall find; bear it aloft in battle, and that
mystic weapon shall penetrate the souls of the miscreants.” The pope’s
legate, the bishop of Puy, affected to listen with coldness and distrust;
but the revelation was eagerly accepted by Count Raymond, whom his
faithful subject, in the name of the apostle, had chosen for the guardian
of the holy lance.

The experiment was resolved; and on the third day after a due preparation
of prayer and fasting the priest of Marseilles introduced twelve trusty
spectators, among whom were the count and his chaplain; and the church
doors were barred against the impetuous multitude. The ground was opened
in the appointed place; but the workmen, who relieved each other, dug
to the depth of twelve feet without discovering the object of their
search. In the evening, when Count Raymond had withdrawn to his post,
and the weary assistants began to murmur, Bartholemy in his shirt, and
without his shoes, boldly descended into the pit; the darkness of the
hour and of the place enabled him to secrete and deposit the head of a
Saracen lance; and the first sound, the first gleam of the steel, was
saluted with a devout rapture. The holy lance was drawn from its recess,
wrapped in a veil of silk and gold, and exposed to the veneration of
the crusaders; their anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of
joy and hope, and the desponding troops were again inflamed with the
enthusiasm of valour. Next day the gates of Antioch were thrown open;
the battle array was marshalled; the holy lance was carried by Raymond’s
chaplain; and the hosts of the enemy were annihilated or scattered.

In the season of danger and triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of
Marseilles was unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service
was accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal alms which the count
of Toulouse derived from the custody of the holy lance provoked the envy,
and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A Norman clerk presumed to sift,
with a philosophic spirit, the truth of the legend, the circumstances of
the discovery, and the character of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond
ascribed their deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ
alone. For a while, the provincials defended their national palladium
with clamours and arms; and new visions condemned to death and hell the
profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinise the truth and merit of the
discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the author to submit
his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A pile of dry fagots, four
feet high, and fourteen long, was erected in the midst of the camp; the
flames burned fiercely to the elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow
path of twelve inches was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate
priest of Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but
his thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired the
next day; and the logic of believing minds will pay some regard to his
dying protestations of innocence and truth. Some efforts were made by the
provincials to substitute a cross, a ring, or a tabernacle, in the place
of the holy lance, which soon vanished in contempt and oblivion.

The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion till the
decline of the Turkish Empire. Under the manly government of the first
three sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were united in peace and justice; and
the innumerable armies which they led in person were equal in courage,
and superior in discipline, to the barbarians of the West. But at the
time of the crusade the inheritance of Malik Shah was disputed by his
four sons. The twenty-eight emirs, who marched with the standard of
Kerboga, were his rivals or enemies; their hasty levies were drawn from
the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish veterans
were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the Tigris. The caliph
of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness and discord, to recover
his ancient possessions; and his sultan Afdal besieged Jerusalem and
Tyre, expelled the children of Ortok, and restored in Palestine the
civil and ecclesiastical authority of the Fatimites. They heard with
astonishment of the vast armies of Christians that had passed from Europe
to Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke the power
of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy. But the same
Christians were the enemies of the prophet; and from the overthrow of
Nicæa and Antioch, the motive of their enterprise, which was gradually
understood, would urge them forwards to the banks of the Jordan, or
perhaps of the Nile. An intercourse of epistles and embassies, which
rose and fell with the events of war, was maintained between the throne
of Cairo and the camp of the Latins; and their adverse pride was the
result of ignorance and enthusiasm. The ministers of Egypt declared in
a haughty, or insinuated in a milder, tone, that their sovereign, the
true and lawful commander of the faithful, had rescued Jerusalem from
the Turkish yoke; and that the pilgrims, if they would divide their
numbers, and lay aside their arms, should find a safe and hospitable
reception at the sepulchre of Jesus. In either fortune the answer of
the crusaders was firm and uniform; they disdained to inquire into the
private claims or possessions of the followers of Mohammed; whatsoever
was his name or nation, the usurper of Jerusalem was their enemy; and
instead of prescribing the mode and terms of their pilgrimage, it was
only by a timely surrender of the city and province, their sacred right,
that he could deserve their alliance, or deprecate their impending and
irresistible attack.

JERUSALEM BESIEGED

[Sidenote: [1098-1099 A.D.]]

Yet this attack, when they were within the view and reach of their
glorious prize, was suspended above ten months after the defeat of
Kerboga. The zeal and courage of the crusaders were chilled in the
moment of victory; and instead of marching to improve the consternation,
they hastily dispersed to enjoy the luxury of Syria. The causes of this
strange delay may be found in the want of strength and subordination. In
the painful and various service of Antioch, the cavalry was annihilated;
many thousands of every rank had been lost by famine, sickness, and
desertion; the same abuse of plenty had been productive of a third
famine; and the alternation of intemperance and distress had generated
a pestilence, which swept away above fifty thousand of the pilgrims.
Few were able to command, and none were willing to obey; and Count
Raymond exhausted his troops and treasures in an idle expedition into
the heart of Syria. The winter was consumed in discord and disorder. In
the month of May, the relics of this mighty host proceeded from Antioch
to Laodicea; about forty thousand Latins, of whom no more than fifteen
hundred horse, and twenty thousand foot, were capable of immediate
service. Their easy march was continued between Mount Libanus and the
sea shore; their wants were liberally supplied by the coasting traders
of Genoa and Pisa; and they drew large contributions from the emirs of
Tripolis, Tyre, Sidon, Acre, and Cæsarea, who granted a free passage and
promised to follow the example of Jerusalem. From Cæsarea they advanced
into the midland country; their clerks recognised the sacred geography
of Lydda, Ramla, Emmaus, and Bethlehem, and as soon as they descried the
Holy City, the crusaders forgot their toils and claimed their reward.

Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and importance
of her memorable sieges. It was not till after a long and obstinate
contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail against the obstinacy of
the people, the craggy ground that might supersede the necessity of
fortifications, and the walls and towers that would have fortified the
most accessible plain. By the experience of a recent siege, and a three
years’ possession, the Saracens of Egypt had been taught to discern,
and in some degree to remedy, the defects of a place, which religion as
well as honour forbade them to resign. Aladin, or Iftikhar, the caliph’s
lieutenant, was entrusted with the defence; his policy strove to restrain
the native Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the
Holy Sepulchre. His garrison is said to have consisted of forty thousand
Turks and Arabians; and if he could muster twenty thousand of the
inhabitants, it must be confessed that the besieged were more numerous
than the besieging army. Their siege was more reasonably directed against
the northern and western sides of the city. Godfrey de Bouillon erected
his standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary; to the left, as far
as St. Stephen’s gate, the line of attack was continued by Tancred and
the two Roberts; and Count Raymond established his quarters from the
citadel to the foot of Mount Zion, which was no longer included within
the precincts of the city. On the fifth day, the crusaders made a general
assault. By dint of brutal force, they burst the first barrier, but they
were driven back with shame and slaughter to the camp; the influence
of vision and prophecy was deadened by the too frequent abuse of those
pious stratagems; and time and labour were found to be the only means
of victory. The time of the siege was indeed fulfilled in forty days,
but they were forty days of calamity and anguish. On a Friday, at three
in the afternoon, the day and hour of the passion, Godfrey de Bouillon
stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on
every side by the emulation of valour; and about 460 years after the
conquest of Omar, the Holy City was rescued from the Mohammedan yoke.
In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed
to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils
of the great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver,
rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of Tancred.

A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of
the Christians; resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could
mollify, their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a
promiscuous massacre; and the infection of the dead bodies produced an
epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the
sword, and the harmless Jews had been burned in their synagogue, they
could still reserve a multitude of captives, whom interest or lassitude
persuaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the cross, Tancred
alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more
selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe conduct to
the garrison of the citadel.

The Holy Sepulchre was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to
accomplish their vow. Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and
in a humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud
anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of
the world, and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of
their redemption.[b]

THE ARAB ACCOUNT

It is well in a moment of such historic import as this to see how the
other side accepts the crisis. The Arab historian Ibn Guzi[d] wrote
as follows: “The Franks, when they set out from Antioch, numbered one
million men, of whom five hundred thousand were fit for war. The rest
consisted of workmen and those employed on the swivel-guns and other
instruments of war. They marched along the sea shore. Jerusalem at that
time belonged to the Egyptians. Their commander was named Iftikhar
ad-Daulah, or ‘the glory of the empire.’

“The siege lasted forty days. The Franks built two towers to command the
walls of the town, one in the direction of the gate of Sidon, the other
in that of the gates of Asbat and Amud, or the gates of the Tribes and
of the Column. The besieged succeeded in burning the tower near the gate
of Sidon; the second was brought up close to the walls. Then the Franks
set all their machines to work at the same time; attacking like one
single man, they put the Moslems to flight and entered the town by force.
The inhabitants took refuge in the mosque Alacsa and its dependencies;
the Franks, following them there, killed it is said one hundred thousand
persons, and made an equal number prisoners. They did not even spare the
aged of both sexes.

“In this spot immense riches were stored. They found seventy lamps,
twenty of which were of gold and the others of silver; they also carried
off a _tennur_ or large silver lamp, weighing forty Syrian pounds. The
Jews they shut up in their synagogue, and burned them there. Jerusalem
had been in the power of Islam without a break since the reign of Caliph
Omar, in the sixteenth year of the Hegira (637 A.D.). A Moslem author
named Ibn Zulak,[d] thinking no doubt to give greater importance to this
event, declares that at the moment when the Christians entered the Holy
City the sun was eclipsed, the earth was hidden in darkness, and the
stars appeared in broad daylight.”[d]

The Moslem poets describe the horrors of massacre in vehement terms,
bewailing the butchery of the women and the children and the fate of
their fathers who “but lately masters of Syria, now found no other refuge
than the backs of swift camels or even the entrails of the vultures!”[a]

GODFREY ELECTED KING (1099 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1099-1147 A.D.]]

Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not live
to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a king to guard
and govern their conquest in Palestine. The jealousy and ambition of
Raymond were condemned by his own followers; and the free, the just,
the unanimous voice of the army proclaimed Godfrey de Bouillon the
first and most worthy of the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity
accepted a trust as full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his
Saviour had been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the
name and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem
contented himself with the modest title of Defender and Baron of the Holy
Sepulchre. His government of a single year, too short for the public
happiness, was interrupted in the first fortnight by a summons to the
field by the approach of the vizir or sultan of Egypt, who had been too
slow to prevent, but who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem.
His total overthrow in the battle of Askalon sealed the establishment of
the Latins in Syria, and signalised the valour of the French princes, who
in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.

After suspending before the Holy Sepulchre the sword and standard of
the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his departing
companions, and could retain only, with the gallant Tancred, three
hundred knights and two thousand foot soldiers, for the defence of
Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a new enemy, the only one
against whom Godfrey was a coward. Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled
both in council and action, had been swept away in the last plague of
Antioch; the remaining ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice
of their character; and their seditious clamours had required that
the choice of a bishop should precede that of a king. The revenue and
jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the Latin clergy;
the exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified by the reproach
of heresy or schism; and, under the iron yoke of their deliverers, the
oriental Christians regretted the tolerating government of the Arabian
caliphs. Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the
secret policy of Rome; he brought a fleet of his countrymen to the
succour of the Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor, the
spiritual and temporal head of the church. The new patriarch immediately
grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the toil and blood of the
victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and Bohemond submitted to receive
at his hands the investiture of their feudal possessions. Nor was this
sufficient; Daimbert claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and
Joppa; instead of a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with
the priest; a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and the
modest bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the rest, on
the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future acquisition of a
new seat at Cairo or Damascus.

[Illustration: A CRUSADER

(From an effigy on a tomb in Florence)]

Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have been almost stripped
of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem and Joppa, with
about twenty villages and towns of the adjacent country. Within this
narrow verge, the Mohammedans were still lodged in some impregnable
castles; and the husbandman, the trader, and the pilgrim were exposed to
daily and domestic hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the
two Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne, the
Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at length they equalled,
in the extent of their dominions, though not in the millions of their
subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and Israel. After the reduction
of the maritime cities of Laodicea, Tripolis, Tyre, and Askalon, which
were powerfully assisted by the fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and
even of Flanders and Norway, the range of sea coast from Scanderoon to
the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian pilgrims. If the
prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy, the counts of Edessa and
Tripolis owned themselves the vassals of the king of Jerusalem; the
Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four cities of Hems, Hamah,
Damascus, and Aleppo were the only relics of the Mohammedan conquests in
Syria.

The laws and language, the manners and titles, of the French nation
and Latin church, were introduced into these transmarine colonies. The
whole legal militia of the kingdom could not exceed eleven thousand
men, a slender defence against the surrounding myriads of Saracens and
Turks. But the firmest bulwark of Jerusalem was founded on the knights
of the Hospital of St. John, and of the Temple of Solomon; on the
strange association of a monastic and military life, which fanaticism
might suggest, but which policy must approve. The flower of the nobility
of Europe aspired to wear the cross, and to profess the vows of these
respectable orders; their spirit and discipline were immortal; and the
speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand farms, or manors, enabled them
to support a regular force of cavalry and infantry for the defence of
Palestine. The austerity of the convent soon evaporated in the exercise
of arms; the world was scandalised by the pride, avarice, and corruption
of these Christian soldiers. But in their most dissolute period, the
knights of the Hospital and Temple maintained their fearless and fanatic
character; they neglected to live, but they were prepared to die, in the
service of Christ; and the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring
of the Crusades, has been transplanted by this institution from the Holy
Sepulchre to the Isle of Malta.

No sooner had Godfrey de Bouillon accepted the office of supreme
magistrate, than he solicited the public and private advice of the
Latin pilgrims, who were the best skilled in the statutes and customs
of Europe. From these materials, with the counsel and approbation of
the patriarchs and barons of the clergy and laity, Godfrey composed the
_Assize of Jerusalem_--a precious monument of feudal jurisprudence.

The justice and freedom of the constitution were maintained by two
tribunals of unequal dignity, which were instituted by Godfrey de
Bouillon after the conquest of Jerusalem. The king, in person, presided
in the upper court, the court of the barons. Of those the four most
conspicuous were the prince of Galilee, the lord of Sidon and Cæsarea,
and the counts of Joppa and Tripolis, who, perhaps with the constable
and marshal, were in a special manner the compeers and judges of each
other. But all the nobles who held their lands immediately of the crown
were entitled and bound to attend the king’s court; and each baron
exercised a similar jurisdiction in the subordinate assemblies of his own
feudatories. The trial by battle was established in all criminal cases
which affected the life, or limb, or honour, of any person; and in all
civil transactions, of or above the value of one mark of silver.

Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the yoke of feudal
tyranny, the institution of cities and corporations is one of the most
powerful; and if those of Palestine are coeval with the First Crusade,
they may be ranked with the most ancient of the Latin world. Many of the
pilgrims had escaped from their lords under the banner of the cross;
and it was the policy of the French princes to tempt their stay by the
assurance of the rights and privileges of freemen. It is expressly
declared in the _Assize of Jerusalem_, that after instituting, for his
knights and barons, the court of peers, in which he presided himself,
Godfrey de Bouillon established a second tribunal, in which his person
was represented by his viscount. The jurisdiction of this inferior court
extended over the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was composed of a
select number of the most discreet and worthy citizens, who were sworn
to judge, according to the laws, of the actions and fortunes of their
equals. In the conquest and settlement of new cities, the example of
Jerusalem was imitated by the kings and their great vassals; and above
thirty similar corporations were founded before the loss of the Holy
Land. Another class of subjects, the Syrians, or oriental Christians,
were oppressed by the zeal of the clergy, and protected by the toleration
of the state. Godfrey listened to their reasonable prayer, that they
might be judged by their own national laws. A third court was instituted
for their use, of limited and domestic jurisdiction; the sworn members
were Syrians, in blood, language, and religion; but the office of the
president (in Arabic, of the _rais_) was sometimes exercised by the
viscount of the city. At an immeasurable distance below the nobles, the
burgesses, and the strangers, the _Assize of Jerusalem_ condescends
to mention the villeins and slaves, the peasants of the land and the
captives of war, who were almost equally considered as the objects of
property. The relief or protection of these unhappy men was not esteemed
worthy of the care of the legislator; but he diligently provides for the
recovery, though not indeed for the punishment, of the fugitives. Like
hounds, or hawks, which had strayed from the lawful owner, they might
be lost and claimed; the slave and falcon were of the same value; but
three slaves, or twelve oxen, were accumulated to equal the price of the
war-horse; and a sum of three hundred pieces of gold was fixed, in the
age of chivalry, as the equivalent of the more noble animal.[b]

RESULTS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE

As if obeying the impetus it had received, the new state continued the
spirit of conquest under Godfrey’s first two successors--Baldwin I
(1100-1118) and Baldwin II of Bourg (1118-1131). But after these two
reigns decadence began in discord. The atabegs who ruled at Mosul and
Damascus took Edessa and massacred its people in 1144. There needed
nothing less than this bloody disaster, which left Palestine exposed, to
drive Europe to the renewal of crusade.

The First Crusade was very different from the seven others. It kindled
all Europe, profoundly stirred the masses, both people and peers, and was
the symptom of a great upheaval of sentiments and ideals. Those of the
two following centuries had not the same motive. They were almost all
conducted by kings who had kept aloof from the first; and even if faith
were never absent, politics was often superior.

The Second Crusade felt still a vivid reflection of the spirit of
devotion that animated the First; but it was no longer the work of
the people but of princes--the emperor Conrad III and King Louis VII
of France, who took the cross in spite of the prudent counsels of his
minister, Abbé Suger. This Crusade was preached in France and Germany
by St. Bernard; but already the zeal was somewhat chilled. A general
tax levied on the whole kingdom of France, and on every class--nobles,
priests, or peasants--roused much protest; at Sens the people killed
the abbé of St. Pierre le Vif, ruler of part of their city, because of
an impost he had wished to collect. “The king,” said a contemporary,
“started on his way in the midst of curses.” St. Bernard had been offered
the command of the expedition, but remembering Peter the Hermit, he
refused.[e]

This Peter the Hermit, who for all his meek and lowly manner had unhinged
all Europe and led a huge rabble to the slaughter in Asia Minor, had
received an address of thanks in Jerusalem when the city had been taken;
and then retiring to his native France had built a monastery at Huy on
the Maas, where he lived quietly and died obscurely in 1115, recking
nothing of the series of bloody wars that were to follow as the aftermath
of his perfervid oratory and fanatic frenzy.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[48] [The reader will be cautious in giving some of these numbers his
full credence, but there are often no existing documents on which to base
a modification or substitution, and we can only quote the old chronicler
and take his figures with a liberal pinch of salt.]

[49] Peter and William fled, during the night, from the distress which
prevailed in the camp of the crusaders before the capture of Antioch. In
the morning they were pursued by Tancred, brought back, and obliged to
swear publicly that they would never again desert the army.--WILKEN,[c]
I, p. 184.

[Illustration: HORSE ARMOUR OF THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III. THE SECOND CRUSADE

Winged is each heart, and winged every heel;
They fly, yet notice not how fast they fly;
But by the time the dewless meads reveal
The fervent sun’s ascension in the sky,
Lo, towered Jerusalem salutes the eye!
A thousand pointing fingers tell the tale;
“Jerusalem!” a thousand voices cry,
“All hail, Jerusalem!” hill, down, and dale
Catch the glad sounds, and shout, “Jerusalem, all hail!”

--TASSO (_Jerusalem_, Canto iii).

[Sidenote: [1147-1189 A.D.]]

The enthusiasm of the First Crusade is a natural and simple event, while
hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit
of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite
our pity and admiration: that no instruction should have been drawn from
constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have
repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations
should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them;
and that men of every condition should have staked their public and
private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering
a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two
centuries after the Council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced
a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land;
but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending
or recent calamity; the nations were moved by the authority of their
pontiffs and the example of their kings; their zeal was kindled, and
their reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy orators; and among
these, Bernard, the monk or the saint, may claim the most honourable
place.

ST. BERNARD

[Sidenote: [1115-1147 A.D.]]

About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem he was born
of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of twenty-three he buried
himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervour
of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third
colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux in Champagne; and was
content till the hour of his death with the humble station of abbot of
his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal
and indiscriminate disdain, the honours of these spiritual heroes. The
meanest among them are distinguished by some energies of the mind; they
were at least superior to their votaries and disciples; and in the
race of superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers
contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard stood high above his
rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not devoid of wit and
eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much reason and humanity as
may be reconciled with the character of a saint. In a secular life he
would have shared the seventh part of a private inheritance; by a vow
of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world,
by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux
became the oracle of Europe, and the founder of 160 convents. Princes and
pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures; France,
England, and Milan consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the
church; the debt was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent II; and his
successor, Eugenius III, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard.

It was in the proclamation of the Second Crusade that he shone as the
missionary and prophet of God, who called the nations to the defence of
the Holy Sepulchre. At the parliament of Vézelay he spoke before the
king; and Louis VII, with his nobles, received their crosses from his
hand. The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of
the emperor Conrad; a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his language, was
transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his
progress from Constance to Cologne was the triumph of eloquence and zeal.
Bernard applauds his own success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms
that cities and castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes
that only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows.
The blind fanatics were desirous of electing him for their general; but
the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes; and while he assured
the crusaders of the divine favour, he prudently declined a military
command in which failure and victory would have been almost equally
disgraceful to his character.[b]

In the consternation throughout Palestine which the fall of Edessa
occasioned, all classes of people beckoned their compatriots in the
West. The news of the loss of the eastern frontier of the Latin kingdom
reached France at a time peculiarly favourable for foreign war. After
having reduced his vassal the count of Champagne to obedience, Louis VII
the French king exceeded the usual cruelty of conquerors, and instead of
sheathing his sword, when the inhabitants of Vetri submitted, he set fire
to a church, to which more than thirteen hundred of them had fled for
refuge. His sacrilegious barbarity excited the indignation of the clergy
and laity. A fit of sickness calmed his passions; his conscience accused
and condemned him, and he resolved to expiate his sins by a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. Louis VII was the first sovereign prince who engaged himself
to fight under the banner of the cross. The news of the calamities in
Palestine quickened his holy resolution, and like other men he was
impetuously moved by the eloquence of St. Bernard, the great oracle of
the age.

The wish of Louis for a crusade was applauded by Pope Eugenius III. His
intention was pronounced to be holy; and Bernard was ordered to travel
through France and Germany, and preach a plenary indulgence to those
who followed the royal example. Eugenius wrote to the faithful sons
of the church, urging them to cross the seas to Palestine. The first
crusaders had provoked the wrath of heaven by their dissoluteness and
folly; but the new soldiers of Christ ought to travel simple in dress,
and disdaining the luxury of falcons and dogs of the chase. As Peter had
represented the scandal of suffering the sacred places to remain in the
hands of the infidels, the eloquent Bernard thundered from the pulpit
the disgrace of allowing a land which had been recovered from pollution
again to sink into it. He was admitted to the thrones of princes, as well
as to the pulpits of their churches; to public assemblies and to private
meetings. In a parliament held at Vézelay, in the season of Easter,
1146, Louis was confirmed in his pious resolve; and having on his knees
received the holy symbol, he joined with Bernard in moving the barons and
knights to save the sanctuary of David from the hands of the Philistines.
No house could contain the multitude; they assembled in the fields
and Bernard addressed them from a lofty pulpit. As at the Council of
Clermont, so on this occasion shouts of “_Deus id vult_” rent the skies;
the crosses which the man of God had brought with him to the meeting fell
far short of the number of enthusiasts; and he therefore tore his simple
monkish garment into small pieces, and affixed them to the shoulders of
his kneeling converts. The successful incendiary then crossed the Rhine;
and every city and village from Constance to Carinthia echoed the call to
war.

[Sidenote: [1147-1148 A.D.]]

But the emperor Conrad III made a long and firm denial. As politics
prevented the exercise of religious fervour, the preacher endeavoured
to impress him with the belief that were he in arms for the kingdom
of God, heaven would protect his kingdom in Europe. Still the emperor
wanted faith; but when the holy orator, in a moment of peculiar energy,
drew an animated picture of the proceedings of the day of judgment, of
the punishments which would be inflicted on the idle, and the rewards
which would be showered upon the Christians militant, then it was
that conviction flashed across the mind of the royal auditor; and the
profession was made that the lord of the Germans knew and would perform
his duty to the church. Encouraged by this example, the barons and people
flew to arms.[50]

Mainz was the rendezvous of the French crusaders, and Ratisbon of those
from Germany. The French levies were of priests, of people, and of
soldiers; and of the last class the number of men armed with the helmet
and coat of mail was seventy thousand. The civil wars of England had
been closed by the weakness of all parties; but some of the nobility,
restless when not engaged in deeds of blood, joined themselves to the
force of Louis. Conrad had an army quite as large and formidable, with a
due proportion of light-armed men, and simple pilgrims. The enthusiasm
of the crusade realised the dreams of romancers, and heroines as well
as heroes had prepared themselves to make war upon the paynim brethren.
A considerable troop of women rode among the Germans; they were arrayed
with the spear and shield, but (like Virgil’s Camilla) some love of
usual delights had mingled itself with the desire of great exploits, for
they were remarkable by the splendour of their dress, and the bold leader
was called “the golden-footed dame.”[51] The emperor marched through
Hungary and solicited the friendship of the Grecian court.

[Illustration: ST. BERNARD FEEDING THE POOR]

Manuel, the grandson of Alexius, was on the throne, and although like
his ancestor he beheld with secret dread the armaments of Europe, yet
for the protection of his subjects he entered into a treaty with Conrad
for the regular purchase and sale of provisions. There was frequent
matter of charge and recrimination between the Greeks and the Germans in
the march of the latter to Constantinople; and circumstances occasioned
many negotiations between the two emperors. But Conrad apprehended the
duplicity of Manuel, and in indignation at the Grecian’s infraction of
the treaty relating to intercourse, he crossed the Bosporus without
meeting or conferring with the emperor.

Manuel received the king of France as an equal. He met him in the court
of his palace, and after mutual embraces conducted him into an apartment,
where they sat with equal dignity. In the midst of feasts and public
rejoicings the French monarch learned that the emperor and the sultan of
Iconium were in correspondence. The impatience of the barons and knights
to visit Jerusalem overcame every suggestion to revenge, and made them
think that the defence of the Holy Land, and not the destruction of the
Greek Empire, was the object for which they had taken up arms. But there
were not wanting men who urged that the time was arrived for removing the
barrier between Europe and Asia.

DISASTERS OF THE GERMANS

The passage through Bithynia completed, Conrad entered Lycaonia, the
heart of the dominions of the Seljuk Turks. The sultan had assembled
from every quarter of his states all the troops that could possibly be
brought into the field, and the number was so great that the rivers could
not satisfy their thirst or the country furnish provisions. The imperial
guides conducted the objects of their care either through deserts where
the soldiers perished from hunger, or led them into the jaws of the
Moslems. In their occasional transactions, the bread which the crusaders
purchased was mixed with chalk, and various other cruel frauds were
practised by the Greeks. The assaults of the Turks were incessant. The
staff of the pilgrim was a poor defence from a scimitar, and the heavily
armed Germans could not retreat from the activity of the Tatars. Only a
tenth part of the soldiers and palmers that had left the banks of the
Danube and the Rhine escaped the arrows of the Moslems, and with their
commander secured their retreat to the French army. Louis had been lulled
into security by the flattering assurances of Manuel that Conrad, so far
from standing in need of succour, had even defeated the Turks and taken
Iconium. The French king was lying in camp on the borders of the lake
near Nicæa, when some wretched German fugitives arrived with news of
the perfidy of the Greeks, and the triumph of the Moslems. The allied
monarchs soon met and consulted on the road which the champions of the
cross should take. They united their crusaders, turned aside from the
path which had been trodden by the feudal princes of Europe, and marched
in concert as far as Philadelphia in Lydia; but the Germans had lost
their baggage, and on a prospect of new calamities, many returned to
Constantinople, and near Ephesus (to which place the army directed its
course) the emperor himself embarked, and went to Jerusalem by ship.

THE FRENCH FAILURE

[Illustration: DUBBING A KNIGHT ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE]

The French recruited themselves on the shores of the Ægean Sea, and
pursued their march in an easterly direction. They rejected with disdain
an offer of Manuel of a protection from Moslem fury, and they gallantly
kept up their course with the usual portion of suffering, till they
arrived at the banks of the Mæander. They found there the Turks, who
having safely deposited their spoils came to dispute with the Latins the
passage of the river. The battle was not of long duration; the French
made so great a slaughter of their foe, that the bones of the Moslems
were conspicuous for years. The crusaders proceeded in good order and
discipline through the town of Laodicea, into the barrier mountains
between Phrygia and Pisidia. The vanguard of the army advanced beyond
the appointed rendezvous. The rearguard, in which was the king, moved
forwards with perfect confidence that the heights before them were in
possession of their friends. Their ravenous enemy, who always hovered
round them, seized the moment when the ranks of the Christians were
divided, and casting aside their bows and arrows, fell upon them with
tumultuous rapidity, sword in hand. It was in a defile of the mountains
that the Turkish tempest burst on the Latin troops. Rocks ascending to
the clouds were above the crusaders, and fathomless precipices beneath
them. The French could not recover from the shock and horror of the
surprise. Men, horses, and baggage were cast into the abyss. The Turks
were innumerable and irresistible. The life of the king was saved more by
fortune than by skill. He escaped to an eminence with a few soldiers, and
in the deep obscurity of the night made his way to the advanced guard.
The snows of winter, deficiency of stores, and the refusal of the Greeks
to trade with them, were the evils with which the French had to contend.
They marched, or rather wandered, for they knew not the roads, and the
discipline of the army was broken. They arrived at Attalia (Adalia), the
metropolis of Pamphylia, seated on the sea shore near the mouth of the
Cestrus. But the unchristian Greeks refused hospitality to the enemies of
the infidel name.

[Sidenote: [1148-1149 A.D.]]

Famine had so dreadfully thinned the ranks of the army, and so many
horses and other beasts of burden had perished, that the most sage and
prudent among the crusaders advised their companions to turn aside from
scenes of desolation, and proceed by sea to Antioch. The king and his
soldiers embarked for Antioch. The way-worn pilgrims and the sick were
committed to the charge of Thierry, count of Flanders, who was to march
with them to Cilicia. But when Louis quitted the harbour, the Turks fell
upon the Christians who were left behind, and the escort was found to
be feeble and ineffective. The people of Attalia not only declined to
open their gates, but even murdered the sick. Every day the Turks killed
hundreds of the pilgrims, and as it was evident that flight alone could
save the remainder, Thierry escaped by sea. Seven thousand wretched
votaries of the cross attempted to surmount the higher difficulties of
the land journey to Jerusalem; but the Holy City never opened to their
view, and in perishing under Moslem vengeance they thought that the loss
of the completion of the pilgrimage was compensated by the glories of
martyrdom.

The nobility, the clergy, and people of Antioch received the French king
with every demonstration of respect; but no blandishments of persuasion
or petulant threats of divorce from his wife Eleanora, could move Louis
from his purpose of marching into Palestine. He repaired to the Holy
City; entered it in religious procession, while crowds of ecclesiastics
and laymen were singing the psalm, “Blessed is he that cometh in the name
of the Lord.” His arrival had been preceded by that of the emperor of
Germany, the dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, and the ruined German band.

A council was held at Ptolemais, composed of the princes, barons, and
prelates of Syria and Palestine, and the new commanders from Europe.
The misfortunes of the Edessenes were forgotten, or yielded to higher
feelings, for though the recapture of the principality of the Courtenais
was the great object of the crusade, yet there were Moslem cities in
Syria far more dangerous to Jerusalem than the remote city of Edessa. The
decree for a march to Damascus was passed, and the emperor of Germany and
the kings of France and Jerusalem brought their troops into the field;
but the best disciplined parts of the army were the knights of the Temple
and St. John. Eager to relieve Damascus from the yoke under which she
had groaned for nearly five centuries, the champions of Christianity
soon arrived under her walls. Numerous and of long continuance were the
engagements between the Latins and the Syrians. The city was apparently
in the power of the crusaders, and the people abandoned themselves
to despair. But instead of taking possession of Damascus the Latins
anticipated the event and thought only to whom the prize should be given.
Much time was wasted in intrigues, and after sustaining for a short time
the sallies of reinforcements, and rejecting in a council of war the
advice of some unsubdued spirits for an attack on Askalon, the Christian
army raised the siege of Damascus, and retrograded to Jerusalem in sorrow
and in shame. Conrad soon returned to Europe with the shattered relics
of the German host, and his steps were a year afterwards traced by the
French king, the queen, and most of the French lords.

Among the few men whose virtues and abilities spread some rays of moral
and intellectual light over the twelfth century was Suger, the abbot of
the celebrated religious fraternity of St. Denis, in France. Strongly
imbued with the superstition of his time, his fondest wish was for the
overthrow of the Moslems. As minister of Louis VII, however, he had
exposed to his royal master the embarrassment of the state finances, the
fierce and menacing aspect of the crown vassals, and other circumstances
of a political nature, to deter him from quitting his dominions. But
the spirit of romantic devotion in the heir of Charlemagne could not
be quenched, and Louis well consulted the interests of his kingdom in
delivering the sceptre to the charge of the abbot of St. Denis. After his
return from Palestine, the king ardently wished to recross the seas, and
by martial achievements to obliterate the memory of former disasters.
When all thoughts of a crusade had apparently died away, France was
astonished at the appearance of a martial missionary in the person of
him who had opposed the second holy war. The clergy of the East implored
Suger to restore the fortunes of the Holy Land, knowing that he possessed
more credit in France than all the other princes and prelates, and that
his piety equalled his authority. Papal benediction was bestowed upon
him, though the pope was at first amazed at the enthusiasm of a man
nearly seventy years of age; but his influence was exerted in vain. Angry
at the timidity of his countrymen, his own courage rose; he resolved to
conduct a small army to Palestine himself, and his reliance on the favour
of heaven made him hope that the vassals of St. Denis alone would be more
powerful than the congregated myriads of Europe. All aspirations for
glory were humbled by a fever; he died at St. Denis, and his successor in
the abbacy pursued the usual duties of his station, without superadding
those of a martial description.[c]

THE FALL OF THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM

[Sidenote: [1149-1154 A.D.]]

The very question that had proved a stumbling-block to the Germano-Roman
world, namely, the right of women to succeed to the throne, also kept the
knightly ecclesiastical colony of the kingdom of Jerusalem in perpetual
unrest. War broke out between Melusina--who, assuming the management of
public affairs at the death of her husband Fulk, gave great power into
the hands of her cousin, the constable of Manassa--and her son, King
Baldwin III, around whom rallied a number of barons, all ill-disposed
to acknowledge the new rule. The feud was fought out by the mother and
son near the Holy Sepulchre in 1152, with the result that Melusina was
obliged to relinquish all her pretensions.

Hodierna, Melusina’s sister, on the other hand, was given guardianship
over her youngest son, after the murder of her husband, Raymond I of
Tripolis. The remainder of the countship of Edessa passed to Greece, by
reason of a pact which assured to the widowed countess and her children a
considerable income; Jocelyn II was taken prisoner by the Turkomans and
died in captivity. Raymond of Antioch had also been killed while bravely
fighting in 1149, and his widow Constantia now became the object of the
liveliest contention. It was at first feared that she would listen to the
many proposals made to her by Greeks; but when she finally accepted the
French knight, Rainald de Chatillon, a struggle broke out between him
and the patriarchs, who had hitherto held the preponderance of power,
laming the forces of both sides. Under such circumstances there could be
as little thought of establishing one solid supremacy and power in the
Orient as of accomplishing a like result in France at the same period.

[Sidenote: [1154-1163 A.D.]]

The wonder was that there had actually risen to prominence on the side of
the Abbasids and Seljuks, during the late struggles for the possession
of Aleppo, Edessa, and Damascus, a well-consolidated might--that of
the atabegs of Mosul, who disposed of a particularly warlike element
in the Kurds, with whom their borders were overrun from the north. Nur
ad-Din vigorously pursued the policy laid down by his father, Zenki.
He was by far the more capable and enlightened of the two; since the
days of the Omayyads, so historians tell us, there had been no prince
so liberal and law-abiding, and there never reigned one more just. Four
times each week he sat in judgment. He made no personal use of the state
revenues, looking upon them as a sacred trust placed in his hands to be
expended for the public good. He was equally zealous in the conduct of
the holy war. All the dust that settled on his shoes and garments during
his various battles against unbelievers, he caused to be collected in a
sack which was to be placed under his head when he was dead. As already
related, he conquered Damascus (1154), which was under the rule of a weak
prince who had in vain sought safety on the side of the Christians, and
took up his residence in the immediate neighbourhood of that kingdom. He
was a brave and worthy representative of the Abbasid caliphate, which
he had formerly served in the capacity of Emir al-Omara. At times the
Christians rallied for a successful feat of arms, and under the sacred
symbol of the cross, which after preliminary worship in the king’s tent
they gave into the keeping of the archbishop of Tyre, they even inflicted
defeat on Nur ad-Din (1158). Also Baldwin III, who died in 1162 at the
age of thirty-three, achieved some fame and several victories. He was
brave and circumspect--in every way a fit man for the particular kind of
warfare he was obliged to carry on. Still it was not in these battles
alone that the real issue lay; the result was determined as much by the
weakness of the Fatimites in Egypt as by the strength of the atabegs in
Syria.

Neither had the power of the Ismailite doctrines, founded on those in
circulation before the beginning of the Fatimite caliphate, suffered
any diminution; rather it had recently taken on a new form in the most
singular and hideous of all religious sects. Who has not heard of the
Assassins and of their leader, the Old Man of the Mountain? Unlike the
Sunnite caliphate which had been restored to power by the victories
of the great Seljuk sultans, the sect founded by the Persian, Hassan,
towards the end of the eleventh century, rose to prominence by reason
of teachings based on the extremest Ismailite beliefs, and compounded
of fanaticism, sensuality, and blind obedience, which raised up men to
be assassins and general instruments of terror. Mainly by the agency of
that Ridwan of Aleppo who fought with the crusaders before Antioch, and
wavered in allegiance between the Abbasids and the Fatimites, there was
planted in northwestern Syria a colony of Assassins which, under the
rule of a certain sheikh, Al-Jebel, grew to occupy an important place in
history--if such can be said of a purely destructive principle. It was by
the Assassins that Raymond of Tripolis was slain. But their dagger struck
Moslem as well as Christian, Shiite as well as Sunnite, since a foe of
their nature lies outside all partisanship--is in fact beyond the pale of
any human ordinance.

That the Fatimite caliphate profited nothing by this latest religious
movement is apparent from the symptoms of decay that shortly afterward
began to be manifest. The caliphs themselves were given over to a life
of luxury and disorder, and vizirs, who bore the title of sultan, were
constantly engaged in quarrels with each other, in which right was
decided by might alone. The conditions were similar to those which
preceded the fall of the Abbasid caliphate in the tenth century. In the
year 1163 the sultan and vizir Shawer was deposed and supplanted by his
rival Dargham, who enjoyed for some time the fruits of his usurpation.
But Shawer eventually returned, and with him the emir and Kurd chieftain,
Shirkuh, whom Nur ad-Din, regardless of religious differences, had sent
to his assistance. Dargham was murdered and Shawer again assumed the
sultanate, but he could not reconcile himself to fulfilling the promise
he had made the Kurds, that he would pay over to them one third of the
revenues of Egypt. To protect himself more fully against his extortionate
allies, he besought assistance of Almeric, king of Jerusalem, brother and
successor of Baldwin III.

[Sidenote: [1163-1168 A.D.]]

Inheriting the desire of Baldwin I for ascendency in Egypt, Baldwin
III had besieged and taken Askalon in 1153. The garrison had defended
itself ably, even to the point of driving back a body of Templars that
had penetrated within the walls, and the king had reason to believe that
all was lost. But the support of the Jerusalem patriarchs enabled him to
press the siege, and a successful sally on the part of the knights of St.
John, who with their grand master had been particularly active, finally
placed Askalon at his mercy. At this the inhabitants, in despair, having
received no reinforcements from either Damascus or Egypt, called upon
their military commander to surrender. Without doubt Almeric (1162-1173)
was the most important of the later kings of Jerusalem. Like Louis VII he
was tireless, despite his corpulence, in the hunt and in war, and took
no pleasure in any kind of diversion. In theological questions he often
revealed an acuteness that brought his prelates to confusion; with a firm
hand he held the troublesome barons in subjection, even giving precedence
over them to certain newly arrived Franks--Milo de Plancy, for example.

[Illustration: ITALIAN ARMOUR, TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES]

It could escape no one that there was danger to the kingdom in allowing
the Kurds of Nur ad-Din to become firmly established in Egypt. Losing
no time in reflection, Almeric took decisive steps at once, and fortune
so far favoured him that he succeeded in confining the Kurds within
Pelusium (1164); he was obliged to grant them a free withdrawal, however,
in consequence of domestic troubles that had befallen Nur ad-Din. A
Christian knight addressed Shirkuh, who was striding with uplifted axe
behind his followers: “Think you we do not mean to keep our pact with
you?” “You dare not break it!” was the reply.

No sooner had they returned home than the Kurds began preparations for
a second and greater expedition; Shirkuh incited the Sunnites to wrath
against the perfidious caliph in Cairo, and in 1167 he set out for Egypt.
Almeric also assembled his forces at the same time, and in Egypt the
native populations consolidated with the Pullanes in a formal alliance.
That the caliph might be encouraged by the support of their presence, the
Christian delegates were conducted into the palace. Scarcely could they
repress their admiration and astonishment at the wonders that everywhere
met their gaze. When they arrived in a splendid hall that was divided
in the middle by a curtain embroidered in gold and pearls, the vizir
prostrated himself and went through the form of taking a solemn oath;
at the conclusion of this ceremony the curtain was drawn aside and the
figure of the caliph was revealed. From his golden chair he extended his
right hand to the Christian knights, but the hand was enveloped in a
veil. Hugo of Cæsarea objected that in entering upon a pact both sides
must act with perfect fairness and good faith; whereupon the caliph
uncovered his hand, but with exceeding ill grace, as though his royal
dignity had been affronted. To the Christian knights was entrusted the
defence of the walls and towers of Cairo.

[Sidenote: [1168 A.D.]]

Compelled to abandon his position opposite Cairo on the left bank of
the Nile, Shirkuh withdrew his forces in the direction of Upper Egypt.
Almeric pursued him hotly at the head of a mixed band of Frankish and
oriental troops, such as were never again brought together in that land
until the time of Napoleon. The two armies met in the pass of Babein.
Shirkuh was about to cross over to the other side of the river with the
intention of fleeing into the regions beyond, when a mameluke of Nur
ad-Din overtook him and exclaimed: “What, you who rejoice in all the
blessings of Islam are about to fly from the enemy? Do you not know
that the atabegs will take from the Kurds all the lands they may find
on the other side?” Thus it came about that Shirkuh remained where he
was, and taking up his position with a picked band of men on the right
flank of the main body of his troops, he overcame the king while the
latter was making an attack on the enfeebled centre. So hard was Almeric
beset that he could scarcely cut his way back to his own forces. He
retained sufficient power, however, to surround and harass Alexandria,
which Shirkuh had left in the charge of his nephew, Saladin, the son of
Eyyub. Shirkuh was induced to conclude a peace, according to the terms of
which both sides, Christians as well as Kurds, were obliged to evacuate
Egypt. As the price of this concession Shirkuh received from Shawer fifty
thousand pieces of gold, while to the Christians, so Abulfeda tells us,
were promised a special magistracy in Cairo and an important yearly
revenue.

It is well to contemplate closely these events, as they offer not only
the final standpoint from which to judge the kingdom of Jerusalem,
but the highest and best from which to take cognisance of the entire
Christian world of that time in its relation to Islam. The main fact
derived by history is that the establishment of the Franks in the Orient
was made possible only by the antagonism that subsisted between the
Abbasid and Fatimite dynasties; so long as this antagonism continued the
colonial kingdom could be upheld, but let it once subside and the whole
structure would fall to the ground. At the period of which we write the
Cairo caliphate had sunk into a state of impotency and demoralisation;
in order to prevent its falling into the hands of the Mohammedans of
Syria the kings of Jerusalem must either take forceful possession of
Egypt themselves, or must sustain it in its present show of independence
by the most rigid political conjunction. For the first course they were
far too weak, as the sequel showed, and as might have been expected from
a study of the circumstances by which they were surrounded; but for the
second they possessed quite sufficient strength, as was evidenced by
the successes of Almeric. Indeed in all respects this was the better
course to pursue, since by the exercise of a moderate degree of wisdom
affairs would doubtless, even in the natural course of events, so have
shaped themselves that to the Christian element would gradually fall a
peaceful sovereignty over the whole realm of Egypt. What a position in
the world would have been gained to the Latin races by such a solution!
Entrance into all the Indian waters would have been open to the Italian
sea powers, and it was furthermore to be expected that northern Africa,
cut off entirely from the powers of the East, would eventually fall into
the hands of the Spaniards or of the Sicilian Normans.

[Illustration: A NORMAN ARCHER OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY]

It is not to be denied, however, that mankind at that period was not yet
ripe to exercise complete ascendency either over the Orient or over any
other considerable portion of the world. The religions of both divisions
of humanity permitted not the slightest compromise with unbelievers,
and the very factors that had brought about the first amazing successes
later acted as a check on the progress of their cause towards complete
fulfilment. It seemed to be self-evident that no kind of serious
alliance could ever permanently subsist between the crusaders and the
caliphs; nay, there was something almost against nature in the thought
of Christians defending the towers of Cairo on behalf of infidels in a
struggle of Moslem against Moslem. Religious antagonism was stronger in
the guardians of the Holy Sepulchre than loyalty and good faith.

Almeric united with Manuel of Byzantium,[52] who had already formed a
league with the Lombards and the pope, and allowed himself to be drawn
into a joint scheme of conquest in Egypt. This union between Greeks and
Latins was the more easily effected inasmuch as the king had married a
Greek and the emperor a Syrian princess. The idea of the expedition seems
to have emanated from Manuel who, in his all-embracing policy, kept a
constant watch on both East and West, in search of undertakings that
might promise him success. Influence was brought to bear on Almeric to
gain his consent by the grand-master of the knights of St. John; but the
Templars were strongly opposed to the project, seeing in it a shameful
violation of the peace.

Without waiting for the arrival of the Greek forces, the Christians of
Jerusalem opened the war in November, 1168. They took Pelusium, and
advanced on Cairo--at a very slow rate of progress, to be sure, as they
were awaiting ransom for a son of Shawer, whom they had taken prisoner.
The ransom was brought them, but at the same time they learned that the
invincible Shirkuh had set out from his desert in their direction. Both
Shawer and the caliph had overcome their former repugnance and had
addressed an appeal for aid to Nur ad-Din. Thus the supporters of the two
caliphs came together in a coalition similar to that formed by the Greeks
and Latins. The bravest and hardiest Turkomans composed the troops led by
Shirkuh and Saladin. Almeric had courageously advanced into the desert
to meet them, but Shirkuh passed him by; it was destined that the Franks
should depart from Egypt in dishonour. And now fate hurried events on to
the climax. Arrived in Jerusalem Shirkuh and Saladin opened hostilities
with the sultan, Shawer, who was accused of having plotted to murder the
Turkoman emirs. An opportunity was given Saladin to become possessed of
the sultan’s person on the occasion of a visit the latter made to the
grave of a Moslem saint. The caliph gave his consent to the captive’s
execution, and was further persuaded to appoint Shirkuh his vizir.

[Sidenote: [1169-1174 A.D.]]

On the death of Shirkuh, shortly after, Saladin acceded to the vacant
post (1169). He looked upon himself as in truth the chief power under Nur
ad-Din, who persistently urged him to overthrow the Fatimite caliphate.
But Saladin shrewdly withheld compliance[53] until he had obtained
complete possession of the capital and had rid himself of all his
enemies, even delaying until the Fatimite Aladid, who was still young,
fell sick unto death. He died in 1171 and Saladin, who had meanwhile
repulsed an attack by Almeric and a Byzantine fleet from Damietta,
and torn from the Franks the harbour of Ailah, on the Red Sea, took
possession of the entire treasure of the Fatimites and became master over
all Egypt.

[Sidenote: [1174-1181 A.D.]]

A momentary advantage accrued to the Christians from this usurpation,
inasmuch as a continuance of friendly relations between the new master
of the Nile and his supreme chief, the atabeg in Damascus, was not to
be thought of. Saladin immediately sought to cut himself loose from all
allegiance to Nur ad-Din. That no hostages might be left in the hands of
the atabeg ruler, he caused his entire family to come to him in Egypt,
giving to his aged father, Eyyub, the post of guardian of his treasure.
Nur ad-Din first conceived suspicions as to his subordinate’s fealty
when the latter refused to assist him in conquering certain Frankish
settlements that guarded the route from Damascus to Egypt. He was
stricken by death, however (1174), in the midst of preparations for an
expedition that was to punish the faithless emir. Now Saladin’s plans
took on wider expansion, and his aspirations soared to greater heights.
Nur ad-Din had left behind him but one minor son, Malik as-Salih, and it
was his name that appeared on the coins Saladin at first caused to be
struck off. But the Syrians were highly dissatisfied with the rule that
had succeeded that of Nur ad-Din, and were inclined to welcome Saladin
whenever he should present himself among them. Without drawing sword he
entered Damascus in 1174, and Emesa, Hama, and Baalbek also fell into
his power. Malik as-Salih was allowed to retain Aleppo on condition that
he should withdraw from Damascus. At his death (1181) Saladin gained
possession of Aleppo and little by little extended his territory as far
as Mesopotamia; eventually the entire heritage of Nur ad-Din fell into
his hands.

In this manner there arose in the course of a few years a might that,
springing as it did from a union of Egypt and Syria, threatened great
danger to the Christians, and even placed in question the further
existence of the many Frankish colonies that were scattered about the
Orient. The forces at the command of the consolidated power were trained
to obey the slightest gesture of a single chief, and were saturated with
the doctrines of a single religion. Of lateral religious branches there
was no longer any question, save as they still survived in the sect of
the Assassins of Lebanon, whose leader, the Old Man of the Mountain,
occasionally instigated some fresh disturbance. Saladin himself was
one day set upon by three assailants, but his strong arm successfully
defended his life. He immediately thereafter started out to exterminate
the Assassins, and devastated their entire domains, making his name
a terror wherever he went. All Saladin’s prowess and success was the
outgrowth of a remarkable personality. Like Zenki and Nur ad-Din, he
was a devout Mohammedan; it was even his custom to read the _Koran_ to
armies about to rush upon each other in battle. He scrupulously made up
for all fasts that he missed, and never failed to say the five prayers
through to the end. He drank nothing but water, wore garments of harsh
wool, and allowed himself to be summoned before the bar of judgment. He
personally instructed his children in the tenets of Islam; but his own
close observance of religion did not prevent him from unlawfully usurping
power. When fortune favoured him, as on the achievement of some brilliant
victory, he delighted in exhibiting a certain careless magnanimity
that greatly enhanced the majesty of his bearing. In misfortune he was
steadfast and patient, never once turning aside from the aim he had in
view. He was brave and crafty, contriving to win for himself supporters
even among the ranks of his enemies, and he governed his subjects with
justice and moderation. As a ruler he possessed all the qualities
necessary to accomplish the building up of a state and its conservation
in prosperity and power; and to a far greater degree than had the atabegs
he became the hero of reconstructed Islam, the man of fate in the
destinies of the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Had the Christians then but known how to make the most of the little
time that was left them, all might yet have been well; but it is not to
be denied that simultaneously with the rise of the new oriental might
occurred the rapid and shameful decay of the Christian administration in
the East. The western laws of succession which had been transplanted in
full force, and which secured the throne to the direct line of descent
whether male or female, dealt the finishing blow to the tottering
kingdom. In a community of which the head should be above all a military
commander, where the commonweal could be secured only by holding the
whole state in constant readiness for war, the rule frequently fell into
the hands of feeble, incompetent youths, the whole question of succession
was repeatedly and violently reopened by the marriages of female heirs to
the throne; and regencies were successively established, disputed, and
destroyed. There was no permanent, inflexible power to hold in check the
inordinate ambition of the knights, and a general lawlessness prevailed
that penetrated to every rank of political and religious life.

[Sidenote: [1173-1185 A.D.]]

Almeric died before Nur ad-Din in 1173. He was succeeded by his
thirteen-year-old son, Baldwin IV, who was a victim to the terrible
disease of leprosy, and up to the time of his early death in 1185 never
really came into possession of the rule. During the first part of his
reign Raymond II of Tripolis, son of Hodierna, acted as vicegerent, and
in 1175 he concluded a truce with Saladin by which he bound himself
not to oppose the latter in any of his struggles for the succession of
Nur ad-Din. It was this act that lost for Raymond all his authority in
the realm. The knights now looked towards the West for a ruler more to
their liking, and Longaspada, marquis of Montferrat, arrived among them
in answer to their summons in October, 1176, shortly afterward marrying
Sybilla, the eldest sister of the minor king. He had firmly established
himself in the respect and confidence of all when his untimely death
occurred (1177). His successor was Philip of Flanders and Vermandois,
a former adversary of Henry II of England and an adherent of Becket,
who was obliged to make this pilgrimage to Jerusalem in expiation of
certain violent acts he had committed. There was some reluctance felt
at placing the government in the hands of this prince, the general
opinion being that only one who was bound by self-interest to the kingdom
could effectually serve it. Philip was willing either to assume the
authority himself or to relinquish it into the hands of the count of
Bethune, provided the latter would cede to him certain possessions in the
vicinity. The project had been formed of organising, in alliance with the
Greeks, an expedition against Saladin; but Philip proved to be totally
inadequate to the command of such an enterprise, and returned home
without having performed a single act of moment.

A prince who fulfilled in all respects the requirements of the knights
next assumed the vicegerency, Rainald of Chatillon, who had taken part
in the siege of Askalon, and was afterwards chosen as husband and the
guardian of her son by Constantia, widow of Raymond of Antioch. In this
noble were represented all the warlike tendencies of the times. He
defeated Saladin in November, 1178, near Askalon, as he had only a short
time previously defeated Saladin’s brother, Turan Shah, near Damascus.
A breathing space fell to the kingdom after these victories that was
utilised to construct near Paneas, on the Jordan, a citadel which was
entrusted to the Templars to defend. Near this very place, however,
Saladin achieved a victory over the Christians in a battle wherein fell
the grand master of the Templars, Odo de St. Amand. On his death Saladin
laid siege to the stronghold and carried it by storm. The defeated
Templars sought death by remaining behind in the burning citadel,
plunging into the waters of the Jordan, or precipitating themselves from
the top of a steep cliff.

About this time the bishops of the oriental Latin church began to assume
prominence in the Council of Lateran; among them being Archbishop
William of Tyre, historian of the kingdom, who in chronicling the defeat
of the Templars employed the language of the Bible: “The Lord, their
God, departed from them.” The eyes of all were now turned towards the
West. Nothing would have so fully met the aspirations of Alexander III
as another crusade, entered upon in the spirit that had marked that
of Urban II; shortly before his death he even caused a petition to be
drawn up urging the advisability of such an undertaking. It was then
generally assumed that in case the two great western monarchs, the kings
of England and France, should again decide to invade the Orient, they
could count on the support and assistance of the emperor Manuel, who
had maintained friendly relations with the Christians of Syria while
engaging in fresh wars with the Seljuks of Asia Minor. Most reluctantly
had he given up the expedition against Egypt, even after Saladin had
made himself master of the land; he could not have been induced to do
so at all, in fact, had not the knights of Jerusalem been so tardy in
rendering aid. Unfortunately for the Christian cause he died in the year
1180; conditions in the West at that time were also unfavourable to the
undertaking of any important enterprise, Frederick I being deeply engaged
in war with Henry the Lion and in negotiations for a treaty with the
Lombards while the sons of Henry II kept France and England in a state of
constant turmoil. Thus the kingdom of Jerusalem, being deprived of all
hope of outside aid, was thrown completely on its own resources.

[Illustration: A CRUSADER OF THE SECOND CRUSADE]

Life was not utterly intolerable there, nor was hope definitively
abandoned so long as Saladin was kept from entering into possession
of the entire inheritance of Nur ad-Din. The knights still gained an
occasional victory over him, as in the plain of Belveir and Ferbelet
in 1182; and he was compelled to raise the siege of Berytus at the
approach of the Christian troops. The daring Rainald de Chatillon even
succeeded in his bold attempt to reconquer the harbour of Ailah, on the
Mediterranean sea. The Latin fleet proceeded thence to the coast of
Arabia, where it threatened Mecca and Medina, but was finally overcome
near Haura, and the knights were slain in a battle with the Arab prophet.
By this defeat Ailah was again lost to Jerusalem. Brave to the point of
foolhardiness as was Rainald de Chatillon in his undertakings against
Saladin, and knightly as was the spirit by which he was moved, he failed
to achieve any serious result for the cause to which he was devoted.

The affairs of the opposite side now took a decisive turn. In 1181 Malik
as-Salih, prince of Aleppo and Nur ad-Din’s son, had died, leaving no
kinsman worthy to succeed him. Imad ad-Din had essayed to fill the
difficult post of ruler, but was totally incompetent, and when Saladin
marched against him in 1183 he surrendered Aleppo without a struggle, and
made no attempt to regain any of the fortresses that had already been
taken from him. Saladin made his formal entry into Aleppo in June, 1183.
He was universally accepted as the bravest and mightiest warrior that
had ever fought on the side of Islam, and religious fervour, once more
risen to great height among the Mohammedans, further aided to smooth all
difficulties from his path.

[Sidenote: [1185-1187 A.D.]]

In contrast to this success disaster followed disaster in the Frankish
camp. In 1185 Baldwin IV succumbed to his fatal malady, and was
succeeded by his nephew, Baldwin V, the son of Sybilla and of William
Longaspada, who was but five years old. As if this misfortune were not
enough, Sybilla espoused in second marriage, contrary to the wishes of
all her advisers, a certain knight, Guy de Lusignan, of an ancient and
noble family of Poitou, whom no one believed capable of successfully
defending the kingdom in case of need.[54]

[Illustration: SALADIN]

At this juncture Raymond of Tripolis again assumed the vicegerency, and
as before held a compact with Saladin to be the only means by which he
could preserve authority over the realm. A truce was concluded on the
only terms possible--the payment by Raymond of a certain tribute. A fresh
disturbance arose when Sybilla gave the crown, which she had claimed for
herself on the death of Baldwin V in 1186, over to her husband, Guy de
Lusignan. This was done in direct opposition to Raymond, who had planned
to usurp the crown himself, and endangered his newly concluded pact
with Saladin. While Guy de Lusignan, at the head of the whole body of
knighthood which had gone unhesitatingly over to the side of the rightful
heiress, was preparing to attack Raymond at Tiberias, the latter appealed
for aid to Saladin, who sent him a band of Turkish horsemen. It had come,
then, to this, that a master Templar was obliged to fly to Saladin in
his distress, and march out, at the head of an army of infidels, to do
battle against his fellow Templars of Jerusalem! All bonds of honour
and tradition were severed at a single blow. The clergy made itself
particularly obnoxious at this crisis, being incited thereto by the
patriarch Heraclius of Jerusalem. Thus, eaten up by corruption from
within and left by its natural supporters in the West to face alone an
enemy that was practically all-powerful, the kingdom that had once given
such rich promise for the future was now tottering helplessly to its fall.

[Illustration: A CROSSBOW MAN OF THE SECOND CRUSADE]

Saladin, standing ready to seize the first favourable opportunity, had
some show of justice on his side in choosing the present crisis as the
most suitable for attack, since Rainald de Chatillon, now in command
of certain citadels on the other side of the Jordan, had recently, in
flagrant breach of the truce, fallen upon and plundered a passing caravan
in which was the mother of the sultan. After in vain demanding indemnity
of Rainald, Saladin rallied all his forces for another great sacred war,
and at head of countless warriors made forcible irruption into Galilee.

As on many previous occasions the Christian army again assembled near the
spring of Saffuria. The grand master of the Templars had contributed an
important sum, sent him by Henry II of England, toward the preparations
for war, and Count Raymond of Tripolis was present in person. Once
more the holy cross of Jerusalem was worshipped by the Christian army
on the eve of battle. The very first day’s operations were disastrous,
however, as the army, impelled by the knights, hurried to the relief of
beleaguered Tiberias. On the evening of July 4th, 1187, after a battle
that brought victory to neither side, Saladin’s light horse drove the
Christians back to a parched and arid eminence in the neighbourhood of
Hittin, named by tradition as the scene of Christ’s sermon on the mount.
Here, at the close of a torrid summer day, they were obliged to pass the
night in the tortures of thirst. On July 5th Saladin resumed his attack
on the enfeebled, exhausted Christians, of whom very few survived the
battle that ensued. Count Raymond escaped, thanks to the clemency of the
Saracens, who opened their ranks before him and his body of knights,
as before one who had once been their friend. King Guy and as many of
his followers as had not been slain, together with the holy cross, fell
into the hands of Saladin, who this time knew no mercy. All the captured
Templars and knights of St. John were put to death, while with his own
hand the angry monarch struck down Rainald de Chatillon, the perjured
violator of the truce.[d]

MOSLEM ACCOUNTS OF THE BATTLE OF TIBERIAS

[Sidenote: [1187 A.D.]]

Imad ad-Din, the Moslem historian, who took part in the battle, remarks
with astonishment that as long as the Christians kept in the saddle
they were unharmed, for they were covered from head to foot with a
protecting mail woven of iron rings; but when the horse fell, the rider
was lost. “That battle,” adds the writer, “took place on a Saturday. The
Christians, like lions at the beginning of the fray, were as scattered
lambs at the end. Of many thousands, but a small number survived. The
battle-field was covered with the dead and dying. I myself walked over
Mount Hittin; it was a horrible spectacle. I saw all that a happy nation
had done to a miserable people. I saw the condition of their leader--who
could describe it? I saw severed heads; dull, dead eyes; dust-covered
bodies, twisted limbs; severed arms; crushed bones; gashed and bloody
necks; broken thighs; feet no longer joined to the leg; bodies in two
pieces; torn lips and split foreheads. On seeing their faces strewn over
the ground and covered with blood and wounds, I recalled these words of
the _Koran_: “The infidel shall say ‘What am I but dust!’ What sweet
odour is exhaled from this victory!”

After these reflections, which show well the Arab taste, the writer
presents another picture: “The tent ropes,” he says, “did not suffice to
bind the prisoners. I saw thirty or forty men bound by the same rope; I
saw one or two hundred of them placed together and guarded by a single
man. These warriors, who formerly exhibited extraordinary prowess and
enjoyed might and power, now with lowered brows and naked bodies were
indeed a miserable sight. Counts and Christian lords had become the prey
of the hunter, the knights that of the lion. Those who had humiliated
others were humbled in their turn; the free man was in irons. Those who
accused the truth of falsehood and treated the _Koran_ as imposture had
fallen into the hands of the true believers.”

After the battle Saladin retired to his tent and caused King Guy and the
principal prisoners to be brought before him. It was his will that the
king be seated at his side; and as the prince was suffering from thirst
he had melted snow brought to him. The king, after drinking, offered the
cup to Rainald, but Saladin cried: “It is not I who have asked that
wretched man to drink; I am in no way bound to him.” In fact, according
to Imad ad-Din’s statement, it was the custom with the Arabs never to
kill a prisoner to whom drink or food had been offered. Now Saladin
had on two occasions vowed to kill Rainald did the lord of Karak ever
fall into his hands--the first, when the knight planned to attack Mecca
and Medina; the second, when he captured a caravan in times of peace.
The sultan turned to Rainald and in terrible tones reproached him with
these two deeds; then rushed upon him with uplifted sword. Following his
example the emirs threw themselves upon Rainald and severed head from
body. The trunk rolled to the feet of the king, who at the sight trembled
in great fear; but Saladin hastened to reassure him and promised to
respect his life.

Imad ad-Din relates later that what had most angered Saladin against
Rainald was that on the occasion of the above-mentioned seizure of the
Moslem caravan he called in jest to his captives to invoke Mohammed to
see whether the prophet would come to their assistance, and that before
killing him the sultan said to him: “Well, how does it seem to thee?
Have I not sufficiently avenged Mohammed for thy outrages?” Finally,
adds Imad ad-Din, he proposed to Rainald to become a Mohammedan; the
latter refused, saying that he preferred to die. Imad ad-Din relates on
his own side that when Saladin reproached Rainald with his perfidies and
bad faith, the lord replied by interpreter that such was the custom of
princes and that he in this respect had but followed the beaten path.

Finally the sultan had the king brought to Damascus, the captive lords
with him. With regard to the Templars and Hospitallers, Ibn al-Atir
relates that the sultan collected all he had in one place and cut off
their heads. He ordered also all those in his army who had any belonging
to these religious orders in their hands to put them to death; then
judging that the soldiers would not be sufficiently generous to make
this sacrifice, he offered fifty pieces of gold for each Templar or
Hospitaller surrendered to him. Two hundred of these warriors who were
brought to him were at once decapitated. What led the sultan to these
extreme measures was that the Templars and Hospitallers made war by
profession upon Islam and were its most cruel enemies. Thus Abul-Faraj in
his _Syrian Chronicle_ puts on this occasion these words into Saladin’s
mouth: “Since killing when it can be turned to the good of their religion
seems to them so sweet a thing, let us kill them in their turn.” Saladin
sent also to his lieutenant in Damascus ordering to be put to death all
the knights held in that city, whether they were his own property or that
of others; and this was done.

We read in Imad ad-Din, an eye-witness, that during the massacre of the
knights Saladin looked on with smiling countenance and that the victims
were sunk in hopeless despair. The Moslem army was drawn up in battle
array, the emirs in two rows. Some of the executioners performed their
duty, adds the author, with a degree of skill that brought deserved
praises; some, however, refused to act and left it to their companions.
Before beheading, a proposition was made to the prisoners to embrace
Islamism but the opportunity was taken by a very small number.

Such is the manner in which the Arabian chroniclers describe the battle
of Tiberias. The compiler of _The Two Gardens_ gives several letters
written on that occasion. We read in one of them, sent to Baghdad, that
of the forty-five thousand men composing the Christian army scarcely one
thousand survived, and since one poor Mohammedan soldier, having taken a
prisoner, exchanged him for a pair of sandals, posterity may know that
the number of prisoners was so great that they were sold for footgear.
Imad ad-Din says in another place that all Islam rejoiced in this victory
which was but the prelude to the conquest of Jerusalem and the source of
greater triumphs.[e]

THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

A panic terror now overspread the land, and under its resistless impulse
all hastened to place themselves in subjection to the conqueror. Even
the most strongly fortified coast towns fell one after the other; Tyre,
Tripolis, and Antioch alone upheld their independence. Askalon demanded
as the price of its surrender the release of the captive king. Jerusalem
held out in its own defence a few days longer; but what could the few
knights that remained avail against an enemy so mighty? On the 2nd of
October, 1187, Saladin took formal possession of the Christian capital,
to shouts of “_Allah akbar!_” instead of the “Christ victorious!” that
had been heard in former times.[d]

Jerusalem became the refuge for such of the Christians as had escaped the
swords or the chains of the Turks. One hundred thousand people are said
to have been in the place; but so few were the soldiers, and so feeble
was the government of the queen, that the Holy City was no object of
terror. Saladin declared his unwillingness to stain with human blood a
spot which even the Turks held in reverence, as having been sanctified
by the presence of many of God’s messengers. He offered the people, on
condition of the surrender of the city, money and settlements in Syria.
Prudence suggested the acceptance of this offer, but, clinging to that
feeling of superstition which had given birth to the holy wars, the
Christians declared that they would not resign to the infidels the place
where the Saviour had died. Saladin was indignant at this rejection of
his kindness, and swore to enter the place sword in hand, and retaliate
the dreadful carnage which the Franks had made in the days of Godfrey
de Bouillon. The people cast their eyes on Balean of Ibelin as their
commander. The veteran organised the forces, and put arms into the hands
of the citizens.

During fourteen days there were various engagements; but the Christians,
though brave to desperation, could never destroy the military engines
of the Moslems. At the end of fourteen days the Latins discovered that
the walls near the gate of St. Stephen’s were undermined. From that
moment the defence of the city was abandoned; the clergy prayed for the
miraculous protection of heaven, the soldiers threw down their arms
and crowded into the churches. The consternation was augmented by the
discovery of a correspondence between some Greeks that were in the place
and the Moslems. The Latins then recollected the proffered clemency of
Saladin, and a deputation of them implored a renewal of it. But he urged
the force of the oath which he had taken, and that it was ridiculous to
capitulate for a fallen town. “But,” said he, “if you will surrender the
city to me, I will behave to you with mercy, and allow you to redeem the
inhabitants.”

After some deliberation, the Christians resolved to trust the generosity
of the conqueror. Saladin stipulated that the military and nobles
should be escorted to Tyre, and that the Latin population should become
slaves, if they were not ransomed at the rate of ten crowns of gold for
a man, five for a woman, and one for a child. After four days had been
consumed by the miserable inhabitants in weeping over and embracing the
Holy Sepulchre and other sacred places, the Latins left the city and
passed through the enemy’s camp. Children of all ages clung round their
mothers, and the strength of the fathers was used in bearing away some
little portion of their household furniture. In solemn procession the
clergy, the queen, and her retinue of ladies followed. Saladin advanced
to meet them, and his heart melted with compassion, when they approached
him in the attitude and with the air of suppliants. The softened warrior
uttered some words of pity, and the women, encouraged by his sympathising
tenderness, declared that one word of his would remove their distress.

It is the generous remark of an enemy that Saladin was in nothing a
barbarian but in name. With courteous clemency he released all the
prisoners whom the women requested, and loaded them with presents. This
action, worthy of a gentle and Christian knight, was not the consequence
of a transient feeling of humanity; for when he entered the city of
Jerusalem, and heard of the tender care with which the military friars of
St. John treated the sick, he allowed ten of the order to remain in their
hospital till they could complete their work of humanity.

[Sidenote: [1188-1189 A.D.]]

The infidels were once more established in Jerusalem. The great cross was
taken down from the church of the sepulchre, and for two days dragged
through the mire of the streets. The bells of the churches were melted,
and the floors and walls of the mosque of Omar were purified with
Damascene rose-water. Prayers and thanksgivings were offered to heaven
for the victory; all individual merit was forgotten, and the conquest
of Jerusalem was attributed to the bounty of God, and his desire for
the universal influence of Islamism. Askalon, Laodicea, Gabala, Sidon,
Nazareth, Bethlehem--all those places and their territories fell when
their great support was gone, and Tyre was almost the only town of
consequence which remained to the Christians.

Saladin attacked it with all his efforts, but the spirit of freedom
triumphed over the thirst of conquest, and the Moslems were necessitated
to raise the siege. Some time after the capitulation of Askalon, Guy de
Lusignan, the grand master of the Templars, and others obtained their
liberty; and the husband of Sybilla solemnly renounced to Saladin his
title to the kingdom of Jerusalem. The unprincipled Guy took the road for
Tyre, and announced his resolve to enter the city as sovereign lord.

After the fall of Jerusalem, Saladin carried his conquering army into the
principality of Antioch. Five and twenty towns submitted, and Antioch
itself became tributary to the Moslems. The victories of Saladin and
the loss of Jerusalem were melancholy contrasts to those hopes of the
triumphs of Christianity over Islamism which the Council of Clermont
had held out to Europe. In the eighty-eight years that the crusaders
possessed the Holy City, peace seldom dwelt about her walls; surrounded
by numerous hostile nations, she was in a continual siege, and as great a
number of her wars were undertaken for the maintenance of her existence
as for the purposes of conquest. In the time of Godfrey de Bouillon, Asia
was in a state of more than usual imbecility. The Arabian and Tatarian
storms were spent, the caliphs were pontiffs rather than sovereign
princes, and the great empire of their predecessors was dismembered and
scattered.

But states which are formed by arms, not by policy, are as quick in their
rise as rapid in their decay, and ruin and disorder are the scenes of
ambition. The passions and abilities of the enterprising lords of Syria
raised several powerful governments; the hostile aspect of the Moslems
increased in terror when the imperial and royal crowns of Germany and
France were broken; and the crescent triumphed over the cross when
Saladin united and led the Moslem nations to the conquest of Jerusalem.
In the strength of body, and personal and military prowess, the Turks
and the Franks were equal; but the Turks were in multitudes, the Franks
were few; and as the twelfth century was an age of war rather than of
policy, the Latins did not by intellectual superiority raise themselves
above their enemies. The Christians scrupled not to break treaties[55]
with the Moslems; they never attempted to conciliate the foe, or to
live in terms of large and liberal intercourse. Except in the case of
Egypt, they allowed the Saracenian nations to unite, without making any
endeavour to break their force; and they were too proud and too ignorant
to win any members to their cause from the great confederacy of atabegs.
Conciliation could only be the result of weakness; a tender pitying
forbearance of error was held a criminal indifference by armed saints.
The Moslem contempt of infidels was not more sincere than was the hatred
which the Christians felt for the supposed enemies of God.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[50] Germany was not affected by the First Crusade in an equal degree
with Lorraine, Flanders, France, and Italy. Saxo Grammaticus says that
when the Germans saw the troops of men, women, and children, on horseback
and on foot, passing through their country on their way to Greece, they
laughed at them as mad for quitting their homes to run after imaginary
good in the midst of certain dangers, renouncing their own property in
search of that of other people. Ekkehard mentions the same circumstance,
and adds that the cause of the want of enthusiasm in Germany was that the
divisions between the emperor and the pope prevented the preaching of
the Crusade in that country. Signs, however, in the heavens, and other
wonderful things, made many Germans take the cross and join the armies in
the course of their march.

[51] The ladies of the twelfth century did not merely thread pearls, and
amuse themselves with other employments equally delicate and elegant.
The sword, and not merely the tongue, decided their disputes. Of this
practice Ordericus Vitalis, p. 687, has given a remarkable instance. The
love of “brave gestes” was the passion of the ladies as well as of the
knights of chivalry.

[52] [Gibbon says “The emperor of Constantinople either gave or promised
a fleet to act with the armies of Syria, and the perfidious Christian
[Almeric] unsatisfied with spoil and subsidy aspired to the conquest of
Egypt.”]

[53] After the death of Shirkuh, several emirs of the Syrian army came
forward to fill his place: but the caliph chose Saladin and conferred on
him the dignity of vizir, with the title of _malik nassir_ or general
protector. According to the atabeg historian, “what induced the caliph to
choose Saladin in preference to the others, was both his youth and his
weakness. He imagined that by choosing Saladin, a man without an army and
without strength, he could keep him dependent on him and could do with
him whatever he wished. He also hoped to win over one part of the Syrian
army and to drive away the other, which would restore his power to him
and at the same time put him in a position to resist Nur ad-Din and the
Franks.”

Ibn al-Atir makes the caliph’s advisers speak in the following manner
on this occasion: “Among all the emirs of the Syrian army, there is not
one weaker or younger than Joseph. He is the one to choose. As for him,
he will do what we please; we will place in the army men devoted to our
cause; we will put ourselves in a state of defence, and then we will
decide whether to seize Joseph or to banish him to Egypt.”

But according to the remark of the atabeg historian, “God had decided
differently,” and the caliph was to meet his ruin where he had founded
his hopes. Besides, continues the same author, Saladin at first resisted.
Frightened at the high rank to which they wished to raise him, it was
necessary to persuade him by all possible means, like those beings of
whom it is said that “they must be dragged with chains to be made to
enter paradise.” At last he decided to go to the palace, and the caliph
clothed him in the dress, cap, and other signs of the dignity of vizir.[e]

[54] [“Such,” says Gibbon, “were the guardians of the Holy City; a leper,
a child, a woman, a coward, and a traitor; yet its fate was delayed
twelve years by some supplies from Europe, by the valour of the military
orders, and by the distant or domestic avocations of their great enemy.”]

[55] It was impossible that any respect could be entertained for people
like the Latins, who were not only cruel invaders and sanguinary
persecutors, but common robbers. At one time Baldwin III gave the Moslems
liberty of pasturage round Paneas. As soon as the ground was covered with
flocks of sheep, the Christian soldiers broke into the country, carried
away the animals, and murdered their keepers. The principle of not
keeping faith with infidels seems consequent on a dogma in the Decretals:
“_Juramentum contra utilitatem ecclesiasticam præstitum non tenet._”
Tancred and St. Louis were almost the only two eminent crusaders who
distinguished themselves for preferring honesty and truth to utility and
convenience.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV. THE THIRD CRUSADE

King Richard shall warrant,
There is no flesh so nourissant
Unto an Englishman,
Partridge, plover, haron, ne swan,
Cow ne ox, sheep ne swine,
As the head of a Sarezyn.
There he is fat and thereto tender;
And my men be lean and slender.
While any Saracen quick be,
Livand now in this Syrie;
For meat will we nothing care,
Abouten fast we shall fare,
And every day we shall eat
All so many as we may get.
To England will we nought gon,
Till they be eaten every one.

--_Old Romance of Richard Cœur de Lion._

[Sidenote: [1189-1193 A.D.]]

Europe rang with invectives against the holy Bernard, when the thousands
of men whom his eloquence and miracles had roused to arms perished in the
rocks of Cilicia. A general or a statesman would have pointed out errors
in the policy or conduct of the crusaders; but the preacher sheltered
himself under the usual defence of impostors, and declared that the sins
of the people had merited divine punishment, and that the men of his day
resembled in morals the Hebrews of old, who perished in the journey from
Egypt to the Promised Land. This language was justly felt to be cruel and
insulting; it did not exculpate the saint in the opinion of the world,
and the nations of the West were not again disposed to make religious
wars the common concern of Christendom. In the third council of the
Lateran, which met twenty years after the return to Europe of Louis and
Conrad, the policy of King Almeric had been applauded; Egypt was more
dreaded than Syria, and the possession of Damietta was held out as the
object to which all the efforts of the Christians should tend.[56] The
clergy called on the world to arm, but the recollection of misery was too
fresh, and the decrees of the council were heard of with sullenness and
discontent. Louis, however, always cherished the hope of returning to the
Holy Land, and of reviving his faded glory; and at length he found his
wishes met by a brother sovereign. Since virtue was his policy as well as
his duty, Henry II in the height of his disputes with Thomas à Becket had
professed great sanctity; and following the example of the French king,
he and his barons commanded that for one year a tax of two-pence, and for
four subsequent years a tax of a penny in the pound should be levied on
the movables of the people of England. Among the deeds of virtue which
washed from Henry the guilt of Becket’s murder was the supporting of two
hundred knights Templar in Palestine for a year, and an agreement with
the pope to go and fight the infidels in Asia, or in Spain, for thrice
that time if his holiness should require it. In the year 1177, Henry and
Louis agreed to travel together to the Holy Land. But the English monarch
was prudent and fond of peace, and the illness and subsequent death of
the French king terminated the project.

[Sidenote: [1177-1188 A.D.]]

The count of Tripolis, while regent of Jerusalem, endeavoured to
strengthen his kingdom by new draughts of men from Europe. The importance
of the embassy which he sent to the West was apparent from the dignity
of the legates, for they were the patriarch of Jerusalem and the grand
masters of the Templars and Hospitallers.

While fanaticism was rekindling the torch of religious war, news arrived
in the West of the fall of Jerusalem into the hands of the infidels. The
event was felt as a calamity from one end of Europe to the other. Nothing
could exceed the terror which seized the court of Rome. In the moment of
weakness and humiliation, the cardinals acknowledged the dignity and the
force of virtue. They resolved to take no bribes in the administration of
justice, to abstain from all luxury of living and splendour of dress, to
go to Jerusalem with the scrip and staff of simple pilgrims, and never
to ride on horseback while the ground of their Saviour was trodden under
the feet of the pagans. Pope Urban III died about this period; and his
death, like every direful event of the time, was attributed to grief at
the intelligence of the Saracenian victories. William, archbishop of
Tyre, our great guide in history, was one of the messengers of the news;
and his friend, Gregory VIII, successor of Urban, not only endeavoured to
deprecate the wrath of heaven by ordaining fasting and prayer throughout
Christendom, but issued a bull for a new crusade, with the usual
privileges to the crusaders.

The emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, summoned a council at Mainz for the
purpose of considering the general propriety of a new crusade. Prelates
and barons were unanimous in the wish for it, and William of Tyre, and
Henry, bishop of Albano, legates of the papacy, arrived at the assembly
in time to confirm and approve its holy resolve. The emperor, and his son
the duke of Swabia, the dukes of Austria and Moravia, and sixty-eight
temporal and spiritual lords, were fired with the same enthusiasm.

At the solicitation of the archbishop of Tyre, Philip Augustus, king
of France, and Henry II, king of England, met at a place between Trie
and Gisors, in Normandy, February, 1188, in order to deliberate on the
political state of the times. The prelate of the eastern Latin church
appeared, and pleaded the cause of religion before the two monarchs. So
pathetic was his description of the miseries of the Latins in Syria, so
touching were his reflections on those who engaged in petty national
wars, when even the stones of the temple called on all people to avenge
the cause of God, that Philip and Henry wept, embraced, and vowed to go
together to the Holy Land. They received the cross from the hands of the
archbishop. The count of Flanders entered into their intentions. They
agreed that the French crusaders should wear red crosses, the English
should be indicated by white ones, and the Flemish by green.

THE SALADIN TITHE

[Sidenote: [1188-1190 A.D.]]

One opinion and one feeling influenced every breast; and, by universal
consent, a tax similar everywhere in name and in nature was imposed on
those who would not be crossed. This imposition was called the Saladin
tithe; it was to last for one year; and it extended both to movable and
unmovable property. Persons who actually assumed the cross were not only
exempted, but were even allowed to take the fiscal part of their tenants’
property. If the collectors of the tithe were dissatisfied with what a
man offered to pay, they were authorised to appoint four or six men of
his parish to make an assessment. The crusaders, too, might mortgage
their land for three years, and the mortgagee should receive the rents
even to the prejudice of former creditors. The English council forbade
the pilgrims from sensual pleasures,[57] from all manner of gaming, and
from the luxury of dressing in ermine and sables. Henry wrote to the king
of Hungary and the emperor of Constantinople requesting a safe passage
for his troops. The request was granted.

Though ships continually sailed from England and France, bearing martial
pilgrims to the Holy Land, the ambition and restlessness of Philip
Augustus, and of Prince Richard, diverted the government and the great
body of the people from the salvation of Palestine. The ignominious peace
which England was compelled to make with France, and his mental agony at
the rebellion and ingratitude of his sons, brought on the death of the
English monarch (July, 1189). The love of military honour inflamed the
French king, and the bold, ardent, and valiant Richard Cœur de Lion had
more of the warlike spirit than of the religious feelings of the age.
None of the principles which originally caused the Crusades influenced
the actions of either.

So eager was Richard to equip a large military force, that he sold the
crown lands, and offices of trust and dignity were no longer to be
acquired by desert or favour. The king of Scotland obtained for ten
thousand marks Richard’s renunciation of the fortresses of Roxburgh and
Berwick, and of the claims of England on the allegiance of Scotland.
Richard crossed the channel in December, and soon after Christmas met his
brother sovereign. The monarchs renewed their protestations of perpetual
friendship, and swore that in case of necessity they would defend each
others’ territories with all the warmth of self-interest. If either of
the princes should die during the Crusade, the survivor was to use his
men and money for the accomplishment of the great design. The period
of departure was deferred from Easter to the ensuing midsummer. During
his stay in Normandy, Richard made some singular laws for regulating
the conduct of the pilgrims in their passage by sea. Murder was to be
punished by casting into the water the deceased person, with the murderer
tied to him. He that drew his sword in anger should lose his hand. If a
man gave another a blow, he was to be thrice immersed; an ounce of silver
was the penalty for using opprobrious language. A thief was to have
boiling pitch and feathers put upon his head, and was to be set on shore
at the first opportunity.

Philip Augustus received the staff and scrip at St. Denis, and Richard at
Tours (June, 1190). They joined their forces at Vézelay; the number was
computed at one hundred thousand soldiers, and the march to Lyons was
conducted in union and with harmony. At that city the monarchs parted;
the lord of France pursued the Genoese road; his noble compeer that of
Marseilles, and Sicily was named as the rendezvous.

BARBAROSSA’S CRUSADE AND DEATH

[Illustration: A CRUSADER OF THE THIRD CRUSADE]

The heroic Frederick Barbarossa was among the first of those whose grief
rose into indignation after the fall of Jerusalem. In his letters to the
sacrilegious Saladin, he demanded restitution of the city, and threatened
him in the event of non-compliance to pour into Asia all the military
force of the German states. But the triumphant infidel replied that he
would oppose his Turkomans, his Bedouins, and Syrians to the German
hordes. Tyre, Tripolis, and Antioch, he continued, were the only places
which at that time belonged to the Christians, and if those cities were
resigned to him, he would restore the true cross, and permit the people
of the West to visit Jerusalem as pilgrims. Germany was indignant at this
haughty reply; all the powers took up arms against the man who had defied
them; but in prudent remembrance of the disorders and calamities which
popular impatience had occasioned in the First and Second Crusades, an
imperial edict was issued, that no one should go who could not furnish
his own viaticum for a twelvemonth. The consecrated standards of the
German princes were surrounded by innumerable hosts of crusaders, drawn
out of every class of life, from honourable knighthood down to the
meanest vassalage. Their emperor conducted them from Ratisbon, their
rendezvous, through the friendly Hungarian states; but when he reached
the territories of the great lord of the East, he had to encounter the
hostility of a violent yet timid foe.

The emperor Isaac Angelus displayed both enmity and cowardice. He did
not deny the Germans the liberty to purchase provisions, but in his
communications with Frederick he carefully avoided giving him imperial
titles; and the Greek governors were perplexed by one day receiving
orders to preserve the fortifications of their towns, and at another
time by commands for their destruction, lest they should become stations
of the Germans. Barbarossa marched with prudence and humanity. In his
indignation at the haughtiness and duplicity of Isaac, he generally
spared the people, and passed the Hellespont without having deigned to
enter the imperial city. He entered the territories of the Mussulmans
in triumph, and not only defeated the Turks in a general engagement,
but took Iconium. The sultan then repented of his perfidy, and with the
independent emirs of Asia Minor, deprecated the further vengeance of
the Germans. They continued their march with more honour and dignity
than had ever accompanied the early crusaders, but they were deprived
by death of their venerable hero. It was in the spring of the year that
they passed the Isaurian mountains, from which issues the small river
of the Calycadnus. In this stream Frederick bathed, but his aged frame
could not sustain the shock.[58] His son, the duke of Swabia, was a brave
and experienced general, yet the death of the emperor so much revived
the courage of the Saracens, that the course of the Christians was
continually harassed. Saladin had been compelled to withdraw most of his
soldiers from Antioch, and the Germans had little difficulty in renewing
a Christian government in that city.

In the autumn of 1190, the duke of Swabia arrived at Acre, and importance
was given to the German force by the formation of a Teutonic order of
knighthood. The Vatican confirmed the establishment; Pope Celestine III
gave it the rule of St. Augustine for its general law, and accorded to
it the privileges which distinguished the other military fraternities.
The service of the poor and sick, and the defence of the holy places,
were the great objects which the pope commanded them to regard; and their
domestic economy was to be preserved by chastity and equal participation
of property. They were divided into three classes, knights, priests, and
serving brothers. All the members were to be Germans, and those of the
first class could only be men of noble birth and extraction. The order
of the Teutonic knights of the house of St. Mary in Jerusalem was their
title, and their dress was a white mantle with a black cross, embroidered
with gold.

THE SIEGE OF ACRE OR PTOLEMAIS (1189-1191 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1189-1191 A.D.]]

While the kings of England and France were marshalling their hosts for
a foreign war, the Christians in the Holy Land slowly recovered from
their panic, and joined Lusignan. Greeks, Latins, Syrians, Templars, and
Hospitallers, emerged from their places of secrecy, burning for revenge
on the infidel spoliators. Acre had opened its gates to the conqueror a
few days after the battle of Tiberias, and that city, by reason of its
situation and magnitude, was worthy the bravest efforts of its former
lords. The sea washed its fortifications on the north and west; a noble
pier defended the port from the storms and the enemy; and the city on the
land side was fortified by double walls, ditches, and towers.[b]

GEOFFREY DE VINSAUF’S ACCOUNT OF ACRE

If a ten-years’ war made Troy celebrated; if the triumph of the
Christians made Antioch more illustrious, Acre will certainly obtain
eternal fame, as a city for which the whole world contended. In the form
of a triangle, it is narrow on the western side, while it extends in a
wider range towards the east, and full a third part of it is washed by
the ocean on the south and west. The port, which is not so convenient as
it should be, often deceives and proves fatal to the vessels which winter
there; for the rock which lies over against the shore, to which it
runs parallel, is too short to protect them from the fury of the storm.
And because this rock appeared a suitable place for washing away the
entrails, the ancients used it as a place for offering up sacrifices, and
on account of the flies which followed the sacrificial flesh, the tower
which stands above it was called the Tower of Flies.

There is also a tower called the Cursed, situated on the wall which
surrounds the city; and if we are to credit common report, it received
its name because it is said that the pieces of silver for which Judas
betrayed his Lord, were made there. The city, then named Ptolemais, was
formerly situate upon Mount Turon, which is close to the city, whence, by
an error of antiquity, some call Acre Ptolemais. There is a hill called
the Mosque, near Mount Turon, where the ancients say is the sepulchre of
Memnon; but by whose kind offices he was brought thither, we have learned
neither by writing nor by hearsay. The river which flows by the city is
named Belus, and although its bed is narrow, and not deep, Solinus has
rendered it celebrated by numbering it amongst the wonders of the world
as being enriched with glassy sand. For there was a certain sandy foss,
the sand of which supplied materials for making glass; these, if taken
out, were altogether useless; but, if let in, from the secret virtue of
the place assumed a glassy nature.

Not far from the river is pointed out a low rock near the city, at
which it is said that the three divisions of the world, Asia, Europe,
and Africa meet; and though it contains separately the other parts of
the world, the place itself, dependent on none, is distinct from and
independent of all three. Mount Carmel rises aloft on the southern side
of the city, where Elijah the Tishbite is known to have had a habitation
of modest cost, as his cave still testifies; but although we are often
wont in a description to wander away to the pleasant parts of the
circuit, we must at present overlook the attractions of the surrounding
places, while we turn our attention to the course of the war.[g]

When Richard and Philip Augustus reached the Holy Land, the siege of
Acre had lasted twenty-two months. The most patient attention would
be exhausted by a minute detail of the operations of that period, and
a liberal curiosity will be satisfied by a notice of the chief and
characteristic circumstances.

So perfect was the self-security of Saladin, that he did not attempt
to overwhelm the foe; and when he at length found the necessity of
personally attempting the relief of his city, the force of the king of
Jerusalem was appallingly numerous. The people of France and England
could not wait the tardy march of their organised armies; they answered
with impatience the signals of distress which Palestine hung out; indeed
every country of Europe poured forth its population with disorderly
rapidity, and Lusignan was at one time the commander of one hundred
thousand soldiers. The Christians were encamped on the plain to the
south of Acre, and the general station of Saladin was near the town and
mountain of Kharuba, still further to the south. Among the bravest of the
Christian lords were the count of Champagne, the duke of Gelderland, the
landgraf of Thuringia, and James d’Avesnes. Many of the clergy wore the
casque and the cuirass; the archbishops of Pisa and Ravenna, the bishops
of Salisbury, Beauvais, Cambray, Acre, and Bethlehem, deserved the honour
of ecclesiastical knighthood; and on one occasion the valour of Baldwin,
archbishop of Canterbury, saved the camp. The Christians plied the
battering-rams and mangonels against the walls, and they only ceased from
their labour when Saladin called them to battle on the plain.

The engagements were as sanguinary and obstinate as any which had marked
the holy wars. If the Latins at any time prevailed, they speedily lost
their advantages, by abandoning themselves to plunder, and allowing
the vigilant enemy to collect his broken battalions. When the Saracens
conquered, the Christians kept within the shelter of their fortified
camp,[59] and did not again take the field till pressed to action by some
new bands of crusaders. The conflicts between the Moslems and Christians
were by sea as well as by land; but the naval forces were so equally
balanced, that the Latins could not finally prevent the Egyptians from
succouring Acre, and Europe kept up its communications with the camp. In
the last year of the siege the deaths by famine and pestilence exceeded
the destruction which former battles had occasioned. Both armies were
wasted by a swift decay, for the presence of such numbers had exhausted
the Mussulman as well as the Christian neighbourhood. At the siege of
Acre, as well as at the old siege of Antioch, the morals of the holy
warriors were as depraved as their condition was miserable. Yet an
appearance of holiness pervaded the camp. Religious exercises were
performed, and vice was reprehended. The crusaders were seemingly devout,
but in reality were dissolute,[60] and compromised for personal excesses
by pharisaical scrupulosity and uncharitableness.

Conrad, marquis of Tyre, had joined, and afterwards left his friends,
and to his departure all the miseries of the Christians from famine were
attributed. But his own principality was his most important charge, and
he could not furnish provisions for his people and for the whole of the
army at the same time. Disease reached and destroyed princes as well as
plebeians; and when Queen Sybilla and her two young children died, Guy de
Lusignan lost his principal political support. New competitors appeared
for the visionary kingdom. Isabel, the sister of Sybilla, had been
married at the early age of eight years to Humphry lord of Thoron; but
when the warm passions of youth succeeded the indifference of infancy,
the gallantry and knightly accomplishments of Conrad, marquis of Tyre,
gained her affections. In the Middle Ages consanguinity or some canonical
impediment was always discovered, when disgust or ambition urged the
dissolution of the marriage contract; and when the will is resolved the
mind is not scrupulous in its choice of arguments of justification. The
church terminated the union of Humphry and Isabel, and the day after
the proclamation of the divorce the bishop of Beauvais married the
amorous fair one to the marquis of Tyre. As husband of the princess,
Conrad claimed the honours of respect which were due to the king of
Jerusalem; Humphry was too prudent to contend for an empty distinction,
but Lusignan, who had once enjoyed the crown would not forego the hope of
recovering it. The Christian cause was scandalised and injured by these
divisions among the chiefs, but the candidates for the pageant sceptre
were obliged to submit to the general opinion of the army, and reserve
the decision of their claims for the judgment of the French and English
monarchs.

RICHARD’S VOYAGE

[Sidenote: [1190-1191 A.D.]]

Richard’s fleet had not arrived at Marseilles at the appointed time; and
so great was his impatience that after waiting for it only eight days he
hired some galleys and put to sea. He went to Genoa, and conferred with
the French king, whose illness had kept him in that city. He then made a
brief stay at Pisa, and shortly afterwards an accident which happened to
his vessel compelled him to enter the Tiber.

He made some stay in Naples, and then travelled on horseback to Salerno,
where he resolved to wait till he should hear of the arrival of his
navy in the Mediterranean. The English fleet had been dispersed off
Portugal by a violent storm, but the ships finally reached Lisbon, and
circumstances enabled them to pay their obligation of gratitude. The
Moors of Spain and Africa were menacing Portugal, five hundred English
soldiers joined the king and marched to Santarem. Their warlike aspect
awed the Saracens, and the fortunate death at this juncture of the
Moorish commander broke the union of the enemy, and the country was
saved. The English fleet coasted Portugal, and the southern part of
Spain, and arrived at Marseilles. It then set sail for Messina, and
reached that place a few days before the arrival of Philip and the French.

[Illustration: A KNIGHT OF THE THIRD CRUSADE]

Richard left Salerno on the 13th of September, and on the 21st reached
Mileto. He then pursued his journey, accompanied only by one knight.
He assembled all the English ships, and entered the harbour of Messina
with so much splendour and such clangour of horns and trumpets that
the Sicilians and French were astonished and alarmed. Tancred, the
illegitimate son of Roger, duke of Apulia, was at that period the king of
the island.

Among the precautions which Tancred took for the establishing of his
authority was the imprisonment of the widow of William the Good, his
immediate predecessor. She was the sister of Richard, king of England,
but on the arrival of that monarch in Sicily, the usurper restored
her to freedom. But her dowry was still withheld, and her brother was
resolved to avenge her wrongs. In all his measures he was violent and
unjust. He placed her in a fortress which he seized from the Sicilians,
and drove out the religious inhabitants of a monastery in order that it
might contain his stores. Those circumstances and the dissoluteness of
his people were the occasion of much altercation between the natives and
the strangers. Philip Augustus had favoured the Sicilians’ cause, and
the English monarch, therefore, regarded him as an enemy, and planted
his standard on the quarters of the French. The mediation of the barons
prevented a war between Philip and Richard, and the latter showed his
goodwill to his royal companion by delivering Messina to the soldiers
of the military orders till Tancred should equitably settle the claims
of his sister. Peace was then concluded. Richard renounced all claims
on Sicily. Messina was given to the French king, and Richard encamped
without the walls. Various regulations were made for intercourse between
the different nations during the winter months. Merchants were not to
purchase bread or corn in the army for the purpose of re-sale, and the
profits on their general transactions were restricted to one denarius in
ten. Gaming was permitted to the knights and clergy, to the exclusion
of the rest of the army. No individual, however, was to lose more than
twenty shillings in one day or night. For some time there was a frequent
interchange of good offices between the French and English. Richard gave
Philip several ships, and was so prodigal of his money among the soldiers
that it was commonly said he was more bountiful in a month than his
father had been in a year. But the disputes at Messina had rankled in the
mind of Philip, and contemporary English historians have charged him with
offering his assistance to Tancred for the expulsion of Richard.

THE FRENCH SAIL TO ACRE

In the month of March, 1191, Philip left Sicily and sailed to Acre. His
appearance was regarded as a divine blessing; in the moment of elation
the attacks were renewed; but orders were soon given for suspending
them till the arrival of Richard, and it is more rational to think that
the improbability of success without him was Philip’s motive, and not
the specious reason that as the cause was common, the victory should
be common also. Before his departure from Sicily, Richard avowed that
he would lead a life of virtue, and with all humility submitted his
back to the scourges of his clergy. He was detained for a short time on
account of the expected arrival of his mother Eleanor with the princess
Berengaria of Navarre, to whom he had been affianced, long before his
treaty with Philip gave him liberty of marriage.

About a fortnight after the departure of his rival, the English monarch
set sail. In the absence of numerical statements concerning the strength
of his army, we can conjecture that it was formidable from the fact that
his soldiers, horses, and stores filled two hundred ships of various
sizes. A storm dispersed his fleet, and he heard at Rhodes that two of
his vessels had been stranded on the shores of Cyprus, and that the
people of the island had plundered and imprisoned such of the crews as
had survived shipwreck. The vessel which carried the dowager queen of
Sicily had been refused entrance into port. The English therefore landed
on the shores of Cyprus; the archers as usual preceded to clear the
way; their barbed arrows fell like showers of rain on the meadows, and
supported by the heavily armed soldiers they drove the emperor and his
Greeks into the interior of the island. The ruler of Cyprus was of the
race of Comnenus, but he had changed his government into a kingdom. Isaac
was taken; the king of England became lord of Cyprus; he taxed the people
to the dreadful amount of the half of their movables, and then accorded
to them the rights they had enjoyed under the dominion of the Byzantine
emperors.

Richard reposed himself from the toil of conquest by celebrating his
marriage with Berengaria. But in a few weeks he roused himself to arms.
His fleet left Cyprus; a large troop ship[61] of Saladin crossed his
way; the light galleys surrounded and attacked her, but the lofty sides
of the Turk could not be mounted. “I will crucify all my soldiers if
she should escape,” exclaimed Richard. His men, more in dread of their
sovereign’s wrath than the swords of the foe, impelled the sharp beaks of
their vessels against the enemy; some of the soldiers dived into the sea,
and seized the rudder; and others came to close combat with the Saracens.
In order to make the capture an unprofitable one, the emir commanded
his troops to cut through the sides of their ship till the waters
should rush in. They then leaped on the decks of the English galleys.
But the sanguinary and ungenerous Richard killed or cast overboard his
defenceless enemies, or, with an avarice equally detestable, saved the
commanders for the sake of their ransom.

Shouts of warm and gratulatory acclamations saluted the English on
their arrival at Acre. The brilliant scene before them was calculated
to excite all the animating feelings of warriors. The martial youth of
Europe were assembled on the plain in all the pride and pomp of chivalry.
The splendid tents, the gorgeous ensigns, the glittering weapons, the
armorial cognisances, displayed the varieties of individual fancy and
national peculiarities. On the eminences in the distance the thick
embattled squadrons of the sultan were encamped. The mameluke Tatar was
armed with his bow; the people of the higher Egypt with their flails and
scourges; and the Bedouins with their spears and small round shields. The
brazen drum sounded the note of war; and the black banner of Saladin was
raised in proud defiance of the crimson standard of the cross.

DISSENSION BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH KINGS

The joy with which the French regarded the English was soon changed for
the bitter feelings of military envy and national hatred. The religious
objects of the war appeared to be forgotten. The Genoese and Templars
sided with Philip; and the Pisans and Hospitallers with Richard. The
king of France prepared his soldiers and their battering engines for a
vigorous and general assault on the walls of Acre; and murmured revenge
when his martial competitor declined co-operation on the ground of
illness. The choicest part of the French troops marched to the walls,
eager to shame the English.

But high as was the valour of the assailants, their numbers were not
adequate; and they were repulsed in every point. When Saladin, however,
attempted to carry destruction into the army and camp of his baffled
foes, he was driven back with loss. The French reappeared as assailants;
but once again displayed their imprudent spirit. In sickness and in
convalescence Richard was carried to his military engines on a mattress,
and was so active in making and using his _petrariæ_, that he soon
destroyed half of one of the Turkish towers. He preserved his machines
from the Greek fire of the city; and he rewarded his balistarii for every
stone which they removed from the walls. The ditch was filled up; the
tower was completely levelled; and the English heroes, particularly the
earl of Leicester and the bishop of Salisbury, prepared to enter the
breach. The conflict was close and sanguinary. The Pisans came to the
assistance of the English, but the fury of the Turks was irresistible and
the walls were cleared of the enemy.

[Illustration: A KNIGHT OF THE THIRD CRUSADE]

The failure of the ambitious attempts of each of the monarchs at the
capture of Acre without the aid of his rival, evinced the necessity of
their co-operation.[62] A reconciliation in consequence was effected
between Richard and Philip: and they determined that one should attack
the walls, while the other guarded the camp from the approaches of
Saladin. But Acre had suffered so dreadfully from a two years’ siege,
that the inhabitants were reduced to the melancholy necessity of
resolving to desist from defence. Saladin endeavoured to infuse his
own invincible spirit into the minds of his people, and revived for a
moment their languid courage, by directing their hopes to succour from
Egypt. The expected aid from Cairo did not arrive; and the citizens wrung
from Saladin his permission for them to capitulate. Their safety was
accordingly purchased by their agreeing to deliver unto the two kings the
city itself, and five hundred Christian prisoners who were in it. The
true cross was to be resigned, and one thousand other captives, and two
hundred knights selected by the allies from those who were in the hands
of Saladin; and unless the Mussulmans paid to Richard and Philip the sum
of two hundred thousand pieces of gold within forty days, the inhabitants
of Acre should be at the mercy of the conquerors.

These conditions were assented to, and, before the city changed its
lords, a proclamation was made in the French and English camps that no
one should injure or insult such of the Turks as quitted the place. The
Christians entered Acre; the banners of the two kings floated on the
ramparts; but precedence seems to have been given to Richard, for he and
his wife and sister inhabited the royal palace, while Philip occupied
the house of the Templars. They could not refuse the justice of their
soldiers’ claim, founded on the principle that those who had shared the
labours should divide the reward; but payment was so long deferred, that
many persons were forced by poverty to sell their military equipments,
and return to Europe. The kings were divided in opinion respecting
the title to the sovereignty over Palestine. The English monarch was
persuaded to espouse the cause of the weak and miserable Lusignan. The
disputes were sometimes heard of during the siege; but after the capture
they raged with violence. Negotiations however were entered into, and the
agreement reached that Lusignan should be styled king of Jerusalem, and
lord of Joppa and Askalon; yet that if Conrad should be the survivor, he
and his heirs were to have perpetual sovereignty. The English monarch
afterwards generously surrendered the isle of Cyprus to Lusignan.

A few weeks after the capitulation of Acre, and before the time had
elapsed for the performance of all the conditions of the treaty, Philip
Augustus expressed his wish of returning to Europe. The duke of Burgundy,
and the largest portion of the French army, it was stipulated, were to
remain in Syria under the command of Richard. Philip Augustus went to
Tyre, gave to the marquis of that city his moiety, both of Acre and of
the Turkish prisoners, and then set sail for Europe.[b]

REVIEW OF THE SIEGE

[Sidenote: [1189-1191 A.D.]]

Such was the confusion of this famous siege, which lasted nearly three
years, and in which the crusaders shed more blood and exhibited more
bravery than ought to have sufficed for the subjugation of the whole of
Asia. More than a hundred skirmishes and nine great battles were fought
before the walls of the city; several flourishing armies came to recruit
armies nearly annihilated, and were in their turn replaced by fresh
armies. The bravest nobility of Europe perished in this siege, swept
away by the sword or disease. Among the illustrious victims of this war,
history points out Philip, count of Flanders, Guy de Chatillon, Bernard
de St. Vallery, Vautrier de Mory, Raoul de Fougères, Eudes de Gonesse,
Renaud de Maguy, Geoffroi d’Aumale, viscount de Châtellerault, Josselin
de Montmorency, and Raoul de Marle; the archbishops of Besançon and
Canterbury; with many other ecclesiastics and knights whose piety and
exploits were the admiration of Europe.

In this war both parties were animated by religion; each side boasted of
its miracles, its saints, and its prophets. Bishops and imams equally
promised the soldiers remission of their sins and the crown of martyrdom.
Whilst the king of Jerusalem caused the Book of the Evangelists to be
borne before him, Saladin would often pause on the field of battle to
offer up a prayer or read a chapter from the _Koran_. The Franks and the
Saracens mutually accused each other of ignorance of the true God and
of outraging him by their ceremonies. The Christians rushed upon their
enemies crying, “It is the will of God! It is the will of God!” and the
Saracens answered by their war-cry, “Islam! Islam!”

Fanaticism frequently augmented the fury of slaughter. The Mussulmans
from the heights of their towers insulted the religious ceremonies of the
Christians. They raised crosses on their ramparts, beat them with rods,
covered them with dust, mud, and filth, and broke them into a thousand
pieces before the eyes of the besiegers. At this spectacle the Christians
swore to avenge their outraged worship, and menaced the Saracens with the
destruction of every Mohammedan pulpit. In the heat of this religious
animosity, the Mussulmans often massacred disarmed captives; and in
more than one battle they burned their Christian prisoners in the very
field of conflict. The crusaders but too closely imitated the barbarity
of their enemies; funeral piles lighted up by fanatical rage were often
extinguished in rivers of blood.

The Mussulman and Christian warriors provoked each other during single
combats, and were as lavish of abuse as the heroes of Homer. Heroines
often appeared in the mêlée, and disputed the prize of strength and
courage with the bravest of the Saracens. Children came from the city
to fight with the children of the Christians in the presence of the two
armies. But sometimes the furies of war gave place to the amenities of
peace, and Franks and Saracens would for a moment forget the hatred that
had led them to take up arms. During the course of the siege several
tournaments were held in the plain of Acre, to which the Mussulmans were
invited. The champions of the two parties harangued each other before
entering the lists; the conqueror was borne in triumph, and the conquered
ransomed like a prisoner of war. In these warlike festivities, which
brought the two nations together, the Franks often danced to the sound of
Arabian instruments, and their minstrels afterwards played or sang to the
dancing of the Saracens.

Most of the Mussulman emirs, after the example of Saladin, affected an
austere simplicity in their vestments and manners. An Arabian author
compares the sultan, in his court, surrounded by his sons and brothers,
to the star of night which sheds a sombre light amidst the other stars.
The principal leaders of the crusade did not entertain the same love
of simplicity, but endeavoured to excel each other in splendour and
magnificence. As in the First Crusade, the princes and barons were
followed into Asia by their hunting and fishing appointments, and the
luxuries of their palaces and castles. When Philip Augustus arrived
before Acre, all eyes were for a moment turned upon the falcons he had
brought with him. One of these having escaped from the hands of his
keeper, perched upon the ramparts of the city, and the whole Christian
army was excited by endeavours to recapture the fugitive bird. As it
was caught by the Mussulmans, and carried to Saladin, Philip sent an
ambassador to the sultan to recover it, offering a sum of gold that would
have been quite sufficient for the ransom of many Christian warriors.

The misery which so often visited the crusaders, did not at all prevent
a great number of them from indulging in excesses of license and
debauchery. All the vices of Europe and Asia were met together on one
spot. If an Arabian author may be believed, at the very moment in which
the Franks were a prey to famine and contagious diseases, a troop of
three hundred women from Cyprus and the neighbouring islands arrived in
the camp. These three hundred women, whose presence in the Christian
army was a scandal in the eyes of the Saracens, prostituted themselves
among the soldiers of the cross, and stood in no need of employing the
enchantments of the Armida of Tasso to corrupt them.

Nevertheless, the clergy were unremitting in their exhortations to
the pilgrims to lead them back to the morals of the Gospel. Churches,
surmounted by wooden steeples, were erected in the camp, in which
the faithful were every day called together. Not unfrequently the
Saracens took advantage of the moment at which the soldiers left their
entrenchments unguarded to attend mass, and made flying but annoying
incursions. Amidst general corruption, the siege of Acre presented many
subjects of edification. In the camp, or in the field of battle, charity
hovered constantly around the Christian soldier, to soothe his misery, to
watch his sick pallet, or dress his wounds. During the siege the warriors
from the north were in the greatest distress, and could gain little
assistance from other nations. Some pilgrims from Lübeck and Bremen came
to their aid, formed tents of the sails of their vessels to shelter their
poor countrymen, and ministered to their wants and tended their diseases.
Forty German nobles took part in this generous enterprise, and their
association was the origin of the hospitable and military order of the
Teutonic knights.

When the crusaders entered Acre, they shared the sovereignty of it
amongst them, each nation taking possession of one of the quarters of the
city, which had soon as many masters as it had had enemies. The king of
Jerusalem was the only leader that obtained nothing in the division of
the first reconquered place of his kingdom.

The capitulation remained unexecuted; Saladin, under various pretexts,
deferring the completion of the conditions. Richard, irritated by a
delay which appeared to him a breach of faith, revenged himself upon the
prisoners that were in his hands. Without pity for disarmed enemies, or
for the Christians he exposed to sanguinary reprisals, he massacred five
thousand Mussulmans before the city they had so valiantly defended, and
within sight of Saladin, who shared the disgrace of this barbarity by
thus abandoning his bravest and most faithful warriors.[63]

This action, which excited the regret of the whole Christian army,
sufficiently exposed the character of Richard, and showed what was to
be dreaded from his violence; a barbarous and implacable enemy could
not become a generous rival. On the day of the surrender of Acre, he
committed a gross outrage upon Leopold, duke of Austria, by ordering the
standard of that prince, which had been planted on one of the towers, to
be cast into the ditch. Leopold dissembled his resentment, but swore to
avenge this insult whenever he should find an opportunity.[c]

THE CRUSADERS MOVE ON JERUSALEM

[Sidenote: [1191-1192 A.D.]]

It was with difficulty that the soldiers would leave the pleasures
of Acre. A historian tells us that the wine in the city had already
changed the complexion of the gravest Christian knights, and, for the
preservation of discipline, women were prohibited from marching with
the army. The largesses of Richard to the duke of Austria, the count of
Champagne, and others, kept them from following Philip to Europe, and
Plantagenet was at the head of nearly thirty thousand French, German,
and English soldiers. These holy warriors left Acre and marched in
a southerly direction, generally within sight of their ships, which
coasted along the shores, bearing forage and provisions, and military
necessaries. Clouds of Turks overhung and burst on the advancing army;
the Red Cross knights in the van, and the military friars in the rear,
frequently broke the violence of the storm; but the safety of the
crusaders was principally owing to the indissoluble firmness of their
columns, and their resolute forbearance.[64]

Near Azotus a general engagement could no longer be avoided by Richard.
The right of his line was commanded by that heroic and hardy champion
of the cross, James d’Avesnes. The duke of Burgundy, a man of doubtful
virtue, headed the left; and Plantagenet himself was the stay and
bulwark of the centre. The hosts of Syria and Egypt, led by Saladin,
made a general and impetuous charge on their foe. The right wing of the
Christians was repulsed; the left drove back the Saracens, but it was
drawn by the enemy far from the other divisions of the army. Richard
hastened with a select band to the aid of the duke of Burgundy, and
Saladin, in his endeavour to strengthen his right wing, removed the
weight of hostility from James d’Avesnes. No deep impression had been
made on the English lines. The personal bravery of Richard achieved
wonders; his countenance, his gestures, his invocations to St. George,
seconded the ardour of his troops, and the Turks were driven back
with great slaughter to Azotus. The loss of the Christians, though
not numerous, was severe, for James d’Avesnes perished, and his death
was justly regretted by the king as the loss of a great pillar of the
Christian cause.

[Illustration: RICHARD THE LION-HEARTED]

The progress of Cœur de Lion was no longer molested, and he quickly
arrived at Joppa. That city was now without fortifications, for when the
tide of victory turned from the Mussulmans at Azotus, Saladin commanded
the dismantling of all his fortresses in Palestine. It was policy to keep
his enemies perpetually in the field, and to exhaust them by ceaseless
skirmishes and engagements. As the road to Askalon was open, Richard
wished to press his advantages; but the spirit of faction renewed its
baneful influence, and the French barons insisted on the necessity
of restoring the works of Joppa. Their opinion was in unfortunate
accordance with the inclinations of an army already attenuated by
incessant marching, and who thought with regret on the pleasures which
had been for a while familiarised and endeared to them at Acre. It was
resolved, therefore, that Joppa should be re-fortified. Plantagenet,
alive to every duty of a general, urged the completion of the works. The
soldiers, however, gradually sunk into that state of luxury and idleness,
from which they had been with such difficulty recovered by Richard.
The Mussulmans roused themselves from the distress and panic of their
late defeat at Azotus; they began to collect in the vicinity of Joppa,
and their military appearance awoke the English and French from their
disgraceful sleep of licentiousness.

Vinsauf[g] tells how Richard, as ardent in pleasure as in war, enjoyed
the amusement of falconry, heedless of the enemy. On one occasion the
royal party would have paid dearly for their temerity, if a Provençal
gentleman, named William de Pratelles, had not cried aloud, “I am the
king”; and by this noble lie the attention of the Saracens was drawn
upon himself, while the real sovereign escaped. Shortly afterwards a body
of Templars fell into an ambuscade of the Turks. Richard sent the earl
of Leicester to the aid of the brave but exhausted knights, and promised
to follow straight. Before he could buckle on his coat of steel, he
heard that the enemy had triumphed. Despising all personal solicitude,
and generously declaring he should not deserve the name of king if he
abandoned those whom he had vowed to succour, he flew to the place of
combat, plunged into the thickest of the fight, and his impetuosity
received its usual reward of success.

The fortifications of Joppa were at length restored, a vigorous renewal
of the war was determined on, and Plantagenet declared to the Saracens
that the only way of averting his wrath would be to surrender to him
the kingdom of Jerusalem, as it existed in the reign of Baldwin the
leper. Saladin did not reject this proposal with disdain, but made a
modification of the terms, in offering to yield Palestine from the Jordan
to the sea. The negotiation lasted for some time. Richard was deceived
and cajoled by the presents and blandishments of Saphedin [Saif ad-Din],
who was the brother of Saladin, and the Christians were ashamed that
their leader should be so friendly with an infidel. The barons soon
saw, and compelled their royal lord to see, the artifice of the Turks,
who resumed their attacks, and the negotiation was broken off. But the
Templars, Hospitallers, and Pisans, dissuaded the king from attacking
Jerusalem, on the argument that even if it should be taken they would
immediately have to fight with the Turks in the neighbourhood. Richard
commanded a retreat, and the army fell back upon Ramula, and then
continued its retrogression to Askalon, a city of high consequence in
the judgment of the Latins, because it was the link between the Turks in
Jerusalem and the Turks in Egypt.

Until the return of the spring, all commerce between Askalon and other
countries was cut off, and the army endured therefore the hardships of
famine in addition to the usual severities of the climate. The impatient
duke of Burgundy deserted the standard of Richard; some of the French
soldiers went to Acre and Joppa; and others found a welcome reception
at the court of the marquis of Tyre. But discontent gave place for a
while to better feelings; and, at the solicitation of Plantagenet, most
of the deserters returned to their duty. But Conrad disdained an answer
to the royal summons. The walls of Askalon were soon repaired, for the
proudest nobles and the most dignified clergy worked like the meanest of
the people. The duke of Austria was the only distinguished man who was
wrapped in haughty selfishness, and who could say that he was neither a
carpenter nor a mason. Before indeed the works were completed, Richard
lost the aid of his French allies, who, more mercenary than chivalric,
retired to Acre, because the royal coffers were exhausted, and the king
could not give them their stipulated pay. Commercial jealousy, as well
as military envy, obstructed the Crusades. The Genoese and Pisans made
Acre the theatre of their animosities; and an appearance of dignity and
disinterestedness was given to their feuds, when they fought in the name
and for the interests of their respective friends, Conrad and Guy. The
marquis of Tyre joined his troops to the Genoese, and the civil war would
have spread through all the Christian powers, if Plantagenet had not
marched from Askalon to Acre. Conrad prudently retraced his steps, and
by the address of the English king the breach between the republicans
was closed. Richard endeavoured to conciliate the marquis; but the young
nobleman aspired to independence and sovereign power, drew seven hundred
French soldiers from Askalon to Tyre, and allied himself with Saladin.
When Richard had retired from Jerusalem, and his army became broken,
Saladin had dismissed many of his troops to their families and homes; but
when he heard of the defection of Conrad, he thought that the moment of
active hostility was arrived, and he accordingly spread his standard, and
summoned his hosts.

[Illustration: ARMY OF RICHARD IN THE EAST]

Richard was cool and undismayed at the military port of his enemy, but
political disturbances in England demanded the presence of the monarch,
and he was compelled to yield to his necessities, and solicit his
generous foe to terminate the war. He declared that he required only the
possession of the sacred city, and of the true cross. But the Mussulman
replied that Jerusalem was as dear to the Moslem as to the Christian
world, and that he would never be guilty of conniving at idolatry by
permitting the worship of a piece of wood. Thwarted by the religious
principles of his enemies, Richard endeavoured to win upon their softer
affections. He proposed a consolidation of the Christian and Mohammedan
interests, the establishment of a government at Jerusalem, partly
European and partly Asiatic; and these schemes of policy were to be
carried into effect by the marriage of Saphedin with the widow of William
king of Sicily. The Mussulman princes would have acceded to these terms;
but the marriage was thought to be so scandalous to religion, that the
imams and the priests raised a storm of clamour, and Richard and Saladin,
powerful as they were, submitted to popular opinion.[65]

The necessity of Richard’s return to England grew stronger, and the
only cause of his delay was the choice of a military commander of the
Christians. The imbecile Guy had but few partisans, and the public voice
was in favour of the valiant Conrad; Richard generously overlooked the
circumstance, that the prince of Tyre was his enemy, and the friend of
Saladin, and consented to the public wish. But while preparations were
making for the coronation, Conrad was slain by two of the Assassins. In
the first moments of indignation, the French declared that Richard had
instigated the murderers. They demanded from the widow of Conrad the
resignation of Tyre, but she was too politic to encounter the anger of
the king. Count Henry of Champagne appeared in the midst of the tumult;
he took the throne upon the invitation of the people, and following the
approved precedent, he secured himself from opposition by marrying the
widow of Conrad. Richard confirmed the election of the people, and the
civil war was closed. The duke of Burgundy and the count of Champagne
joined Richard.

Disregarding the calls from England, the king led his English and Normans
to the fortress of Darum, reduced it, and gave it to the French, whose
preparations for the attack had been rendered needless by the superior
activity of their allies. Some new messengers from England brought fresh
accounts of the increasing power of Prince John, and the treachery of
Philip Augustus. The army continued its march towards Jerusalem, and
encamped in the valley of Hebron. The generals and soldiers vowed that
they would not quit Palestine without having redeemed the sepulchre.
Everything wore the face of joy when this resolution was adopted;
Richard participated in the feeling, and although he thought that his
presence in England would be the only means of restoring affairs there,
yet he professed to the duke of Burgundy, and the count of Champagne,
that no solicitation from Europe should prevail with him to leave
the allies until after the following Easter. Hymns and thanksgivings
testified the popular joy at this resolution.

The nearer the approach of the Christians the greater was the terror of
the Mussulmans in Jerusalem; many of them prepared to leave the city,
and even Saladin was alarmed for its safety. The crusaders were at
Bethlehem; the French nobility in the council were as clamorous as the
people without to press forward; but the mind of Richard vacillated,
and he avowed his doubts of the policy of the measure, as his force was
not adequate to a siege, and to the keeping up of communications with
its stores on the coast. He proposed that they should march to Berytus,
to Cairo, or Damascus; but as the barons of Syria, the Templars, and
Hospitallers, had a perfect knowledge of Palestine, he thought that their
decision should regulate the proceedings of the army.

THE ENTERPRISE ABANDONED

A council of twenty was accordingly appointed from the military orders,
the lords of the Holy Land, and also the French knights. They learned
that the Turks had destroyed all the cisterns, which were within two
miles of the city; they felt that the heats of summer had begun; and
for these reasons it was decided that the siege of Jerusalem should be
deferred, and that the army should march to some other conquest. As a
general, Richard was fully aware of the impolicy of advancing against
the sacred city, yet he was unable to suppress his bitter feelings of
mortification at a decision which would probably blast the proud hopes
that he had indulged of redeeming the sepulchre. A friend led him to
a hill which commanded a view of Jerusalem; but, covering his face
with a shield, he declared that he was not worthy to behold a city
which he could not conquer. The French soldiers uttered invectives and
complaints against the decision of the council; Cœur de Lion offered them
provisions, ships, and money, if they would obey its decree, and march
to Cairo; and although they acquiesced, yet as they were not zealous,
Richard remained in inactivity and indecision.

Active hostility against the Saracens was abandoned by the Christians for
the fiercer employment of civil rancour and dissensions; and if a retreat
had not been commanded, the army would have been totally destroyed by
Saladin. Richard could preserve but little order and discipline among the
soldiers. Some retired to Joppa, but Acre was the rendezvous of most of
the army.

By the quickest marches Saladin reached Joppa, and so vigorous was his
siege of it that in a few days one of the gates was broken down, and
such of the people as could not defend themselves in the great tower, or
escape by sea, were destroyed. Before the morning, however, the brave
Plantagenet reached Joppa. Abandoning the hope of rescuing the Holy Land
from infidel subjection, he was on the point of quitting Acre and of
returning to Europe, when the precipitancy of his Moslem rival opened
again all his visions of glory and conquest. The French refused to march;
but the Templars and Hospitallers, the Pisans and Genoese, the earl of
Leicester and the other English nobles, vowed to save their friends.
Richard and some of his troops went by sea to Joppa; other soldiers
took the land course, but were badly distressed by those impediments
which Saladin, in anticipation of their approach, cast in their way.
Plantagenet was the first who leaped on shore, and the most active with
his deadly sword.[b]

There have been few feats of arms more renowned than this all-day fight
of Richard, and the old chronicler, Geoffrey de Vinsauf, has written
of it in such strain of enthusiasm that we cannot forbear quoting the
splendid pictures, whose hyperbole is its own explanation and excuse.[a]

VINSAUF’S ACCOUNT OF RICHARD AT JOPPA

The king hearing of the danger to which the besieged were exposed and
pitying their condition interrupted the messengers.

“As God lives,” said he, “I will be with them, and give them all the
assistance in my power!” The words were hardly out of his mouth, before a
proclamation was made that the army should be got ready. But the French
would not vouchsafe even to honour the king with an answer, exclaiming
proudly that they should never again march under his command; and in this
they were not disappointed, for they never again marched under anybody’s
command, for in a short time they all miserably perished. Meanwhile,
however, the soldiers of all nations, whose hearts God had touched, and
the sufferings of their fellow-creatures excited to compassion, hastened
to set out with the king; namely, the Templars, the Hospitallers, and
several other valiant knights, all of whom marched by land to Cæsarea;
but the noble king trusting for his safety to his own valour, embarked
on board his fleet of galleys, which were equipped with everything that
could be necessary. A contrary wind arose, which detained the king’s
ships three days at Caiphas, where they had put in.

The king, vexed at this delay, exclaimed aloud, “O Lord God, why dost
thou detain us here? consider, I pray thee, the urgency of the case, and
the devoutness of our wishes.” No sooner had he prayed thus than God
caused a favourable wind to spring up, which wafted his fleet before
it into the harbour of Joppa, in the midst of the night of Friday
immediately preceding the Saturday on which they had agreed to surrender,
and all of them would have been given over to destruction. They fled up
the fortress as far as they were able, and there awaited the stroke of
martyrdom, shedding tears, and supplicating the mercy of the Almighty who
at length was appeased, and deigned to listen to their petition; their
deliverer was already come, his fleet was riding in the harbour, and his
soldiers were eager to land for their rescue!

The Turks, discovering the arrival of the king’s fleet, sallied down to
the seaside with sword and shield, and sent forth showers of arrows: the
shore was so thronged with their multitude that there was hardly a foot
of ground to spare. Neither did they confine themselves to acting on the
defensive, for they shot their arrows at the crews of the ships, and
the cavalry spurred their horses into the sea to prevent the king’s men
from landing. The king, gathering his ships together, consulted with his
officers what was the best step to take.

“Shall we,” said he, “push on against this rabble multitude who occupy
the shore, or shall we value our lives more than the lives of those poor
fellows who are exposed to destruction for want of our assistance?” Some
of them replied that further attempts were useless, for it was by no
means certain that anyone remained alive to be saved, and how could they
land in the face of so large a multitude?

The king looked around thoughtfully, and at that moment saw a priest
plunge into the water and swim toward the royal galley. When he was
received on board, he addressed the king with palpitating heart and
spirits almost failing him. “Most noble king, the remnant of our people,
waiting for your arrival, are exposed like sheep to be slain, unless the
divine grace shall bring you to their rescue.” “Are any of them still
alive, then?” asked the king, “and if so, where are they?” “There are
still some of them alive,” said the priest, “and hemmed in and at the
last extremity in front of yonder tower.” “Please God, then,” replied
the king, “by whose guidance we have come, we will die with our brave
brothers in arms, and a curse light on him who hesitates.”

The word was forthwith given, the galleys were pushed to land; the king
dashed forward into the waves with his thighs unprotected by armour, and
up to his middle in the water; he soon gained firm footing on the dry
strand; behind him followed Geoffrey du Bois and Peter de Pratelles, and
in the rear came all the others rushing through the waves. The Turks
stood to defend the shore, which was covered with their numerous troops.
The king, with an arbalest which he held in his hand, drove them back
right and left; his companions pressed upon the recoiling enemy, whose
courage quailed when they saw it was the king, and they no longer dared
to meet him. The king brandished his fierce sword, which allowed them no
time to resist, but they yielded before his fiery blows and were driven
in confusion with blood and havoc by the king’s men until the shore was
entirely cleared of them.

The king then, by a winding stair, which he had remarked in the house of
the Templars, was the first to enter the town, where he found more than
three thousand of the Turks turning over everything in the houses, and
carrying away the spoil. The brave king had no sooner entered the town
than he caused his banners to be hoisted on an eminence, that they might
be seen by the Christians in the tower, who, taking courage at the sight,
rushed forth in arms from the tower to meet the king, and at the report
thereof the Turks were thrown into confusion. The king, meanwhile, with
brandished sword, still pursued and slaughtered the enemy, who were thus
enclosed between the two bodies of the Christians, and filled the streets
with their slain. All were slain, except such as took to flight in time;
and thus those who had before been victorious were now defeated and
received condign punishment, whilst the king still continued the pursuit,
showing no mercy to the enemies of Christ’s cross, whom God had given
into his hands; for there never was a man on earth who so abominated
cowardice as he.

But the king had only three horses with him, and what were three among so
many? If we examine the deeds of the ancients, and all the records left
us by former historians, we shall find that there never was a man who so
distinguished himself in battle as King Richard did this day. When the
Turks leaving the town saw his banners floating in the air, a cry was
raised on right and left as he sallied forth upon them, and no hail-storm
or tempest ever so densely concealed the sky, as it was then darkened by
the flying arrows of the Turks. Saladin, hearing of the king’s arrival,
and of his brilliant contest with the Turks, of whom he had slain all who
opposed him, was seized with sudden fear, and like that timid animal, the
hare, put spurs to his horse and fled from before his face. The king,
with his men, still continued the pursuit, slaying and destroying, whilst
his arbalesters made such havoc of the horses that for two miles the
traces of their flight were visible. He now therefore pitched his tent in
the same place where those of Saladin had been, and thus by the divine
grace so small a body of men had defeated this large army of the Turks.
It was then given out among the Turks what a reproach it was to them, and
lasting scandal, that so large an army and so many thousands of the Turks
had been defeated by so small an army, and that Joppa had been recovered
from them by force of arms. In this manner they murmured to one another
at what had taken place, and trembled with confusion.

Meanwhile a certain depraved set of men among the Saracens, called
Menelones of Aleppo and Cordivi, an active race, met together to consult
what should be done in the existing state of things. They spoke of the
scandal which lay against them, that so small an army, without horses,
had driven them out of Joppa, and they reproached themselves with
cowardice and shameful laziness, and arrogantly made a compact among
themselves that they would seize King Richard in his tent, and bring him
before Saladin, from whom they would receive a most munificent reward.
But now, by the providence of God, who had decreed that his holy champion
should not be seized whilst asleep by the infidels, a certain Genoese
was led by the divine impulse to go out early in the morning into the
fields, where he was alarmed at the noise of men and horses advancing,
and returned speedily, but just had time to see helmets reflecting back
the light which now fell upon them. He immediately rushed with speed into
the camp, calling out “To arms! to arms!” The king was awakened by the
noise, and leaping startled from his bed, put on his impenetrable coat of
mail, and summoned his men to the rescue.

God of all virtues! lives there a man who would not be shaken by such
a sudden alarm? The enemy rushed unawares, armed against unarmed, many
against few, for our men had no time to arm, or even to dress themselves.
The king himself therefore, and many others with him, on the urgency
of the moment, proceeded without their cuishes to the fight, some even
without their breeches, and they armed themselves in the best manner they
could, though they were going to fight the whole day. Whilst our men were
thus arming in haste, the Turks drew near, and the king mounted his horse
with only ten other knights. These alone had horses, and some even of
those they had were base and impotent horses unused to arms; the common
men were skilfully drawn out in ranks and troops, with each a captain
to command them. Oh, who could fully relate the terrible attacks of the
infidels? The Turks at first rushed on with horrid yells, hurling their
javelins and shooting their arrows. The king ran along the ranks and
exhorted every man to be firm and not to flinch. The Turks came on like
a whirlwind, again and again, making the appearance of an attack, that
our men might be induced to give way, and when they were close up, they
turned their horses off in another direction. The king and his knights,
who were on horseback, perceiving this, put spurs to their horses and
charged into the middle of the enemy, upsetting them right and left,
and piercing a large number through the body with their lances; at last
they pulled up their horses, because they found that they had penetrated
entirely through the Turkish lines.

The king now looking about him, saw the noble earl of Leicester fallen
from his horse, and fighting bravely on foot. No sooner did he see this
than he rushed to his rescue, snatched him out of the hands of the enemy,
and replaced him on his horse. What a terrible combat was then waged!
A multitude of Turks advanced, and used every exertion to destroy our
small army; vexed at our success, they rushed towards the royal standard
of a lion, for they would rather have slain the king than a thousand
others. In the midst of the mêlée the king saw Ralph de Mauleon dragged
off prisoner by the Turks, and spurring his horse to speed, in a moment
released him from their hands, and restored him to the army; for the king
was a very giant in the battle, and was everywhere in the field--now
here, now there, wherever the attacks of the Turks raged the hottest. So
bravely did he fight, that there was no one, however gallant, that would
not readily and deservedly yield to him the pre-eminence.

On that day he performed the most gallant deeds on the furious army of
the Turks, and slew numbers with his sword, which shone like lightning;
some of them were cloven in two from their helmet to their teeth, whilst
others lost their heads, arms, and other members, which were lopped off
at a single blow. While the king was thus labouring with incredible
exertions in the fight, a Turk advanced towards him, mounted on a foaming
steed. He had been sent by Saphedin of Archadia, brother to Saladin, a
liberal and munificent man, if he had not rejected the Christian faith.
This man now sent to the king, as a token of his well-known honourable
character, two noble horses, requesting him earnestly to accept them, and
make use of them, and if he returned safe and sound out of that battle,
to remember the gift and recompense it in any manner he pleased. The king
readily received the present, and afterwards nobly recompensed the giver.
Such is bravery, cognisable even in an enemy; since a Turk, who was our
bitter foe, thus honoured the king for his distinguished valour.

The king, especially at such a moment of need, protested that he would
have taken any number of horses equally good from anyone, even more a foe
than Saphedin, so necessary were they to him at that moment. Fierce now
raged the fight, when such numbers attacked so few; the whole earth was
covered with the javelins and arrows of the unbelievers; they threw them
several at a time against our men, of whom many were wounded. Thus the
weight of the battle fell heavier upon us than before, and the galley-men
withdrew in the galleys which brought them, and so, in their anxiety to
be safe, they sacrificed their character for bravery. Meanwhile a shout
was raised by the Turks, as they strove who should first occupy the town,
hoping to slay those of our men whom they should find within.

The king, hearing the clamour, taking with him only two knights and
two cross-bow men, met three Turks, nobly caparisoned, in one of the
principal streets. Rushing bravely upon them, he slew the riders in
his own royal fashion, and made booty of two horses. The rest of the
Turks who were found in the town were put to the rout in spite of their
resistance, and dispersing in different directions, sought to make their
escape even where there was no regular road. The king also commanded the
parts of the walls which were broken down to be made good, and placed
sentinels to keep watch lest the town should be again attacked. These
matters settled, the king went down to the shore, where many of our men
had taken refuge on board the galleys. These the king exhorted by the
most cogent arguments to return to the battle and share with the rest
whatever might befall them. Leaving five men as guards on board each
galley, the king led back the rest to assist his hard-pressed army; and
he no sooner arrived, than with all his fury he fell upon the thickest
ranks of the enemy, driving them back and routing them, so that even
those who were at a distance and untouched by him, were overwhelmed by
the throng of the troops as they retreated.

Never was there such an attack made by an individual. He pierced into
the middle of the hostile army, and performed the deeds of a brave and
distinguished warrior. The Turks at once closed upon him and tried to
overwhelm him. In the meantime our men, losing sight of the king, were
fearful lest he should have been slain, and when one of them proposed
that they should advance to find him, our lines could hardly contain
themselves. But if by any chance the disposition of our troops had been
broken, without doubt they would all have been destroyed. What however
was to be thought of the king who was hemmed in by the enemy, a single
man opposed to so many thousands?

[Illustration: A SARACEN CHIEF]

The hand of the writer faints to tell it, and the mind of the reader
to hear it. Who ever heard of such a man? His bravery was ever of the
highest order, no adverse storm could sink it; his valour was ever
blooming. Why then do we speak of the valour of Antæus, who regained his
strength every time he touched his mother earth, for Antæus perished when
he was lifted up from earth in the long wrestling match. The body of
Achilles also, who slew Hector, was invulnerable, because he was dipped
in the Stygian waves; yet Achilles was mortally wounded in the very
part by which he was held when they dipped him. Likewise Alexander, the
Macedonian, who was stimulated by ambition to subjugate the whole world,
undertook a most difficult enterprise, and with a handful of choice
soldiers fought many celebrated battles, but the chief part of his valour
consisted in the excellence of his soldiers. In the same manner, the
brave Judas Maccabæus, of whose wars all the world discoursed, performed
many wonderful deeds worthy forever to be remembered, but when he was
abandoned by his soldiers in the midst of a battle, with thousands of
enemies to oppose him, he was slain, together with his brothers.

But King Richard, inured to battle from his tenderest years, and to whom
even famous Roland could not be considered equal, remained invincible
even in the midst of the enemy, and his body, as if it were made of
brass, was impenetrable to any kind of weapon. In his right hand he
brandished his sword, which in its rapid descent broke the ranks on
either side of him. Such was his energy amid that host of Turks that,
fearing nothing, he destroyed all around him, mowing men down with his
sword as reapers mow down the corn with their sickles. Who could describe
his deeds? Whoever felt one of his blows, had no need of a second. Such
was the energy of his courage, that it seemed to rejoice at having found
an occasion to display itself. The sword wielded by his powerful hand,
cut down men and horses alike, cleaving them to the middle.

The Turks were terror-struck at the sight, and giving way on all sides,
scarcely dared to shoot at him from a distance with their arrows. The
king now returned safe and unhurt to his friends, and encouraged them
more than ever with the hope of victory. How were their minds raised
from despair when they saw him coming safe out of the enemy’s ranks!
They knew not what had happened to him, but they knew that without him
all the hopes of the Christian army would be in vain. The king’s person
was stuck all over with javelins, like a deer pierced by the hunters,
and the trappings of his horse were thickly covered with arrows. Thus,
like a brave soldier, he returned from the contest, and a bitter contest
it was, for it had lasted from the morning sun to the setting sun. It
may seem indeed wonderful and even incredible that so small a body of
men endured so long a conflict; but by God’s mercy we cannot doubt the
truth of it, for in that battle only one or two of our men were slain.
But the number of the Turkish horses which lay dead on the fields is said
to have exceeded fifteen hundred; and of the Turks themselves more than
seven hundred were killed, and yet they did not carry back King Richard,
as they had boasted, as a present to Saladin; but, on the contrary, he
and his brave followers performed so many deeds of valour in the sight
of the Turks, that the enemy themselves shuddered to behold them. In the
meantime, our men having by God’s grace escaped destruction, the Turkish
army returned to Saladin, who is said to have ridiculed them by asking
where Melek Richard was, for they had promised to bring him a prisoner?
“Which of you,” continued he, “first seized him, and where is he? Why is
he not produced?” To whom one of the Turks that came from the farthest
countries of the earth replied; “In truth, my lord, Melek Richard, about
whom you ask, is not here; we have never heard since the beginning of
the world that there ever was such a knight so brave and so experienced
in arms. In every deed at arms, he is ever the foremost; in deeds, he is
without a rival, the first to advance and the last to retreat; we did our
best to seize him, but in vain, for no one can escape from his sword; his
attack is dreadful; to engage with him is fatal, and his deeds are beyond
human nature.”

From the toil and exertion of the battle, King Richard and several others
who had exerted themselves the most, fell ill, not only from the fatigue
of the battle, but the smell of the corpses, which so corrupted the
neighbourhood, that they all nearly died.[g]

PEACE BETWEEN THE KINGS

Richard now wished for peace, and Saladin, exhausted by wars, submitted
to necessity. They exchanged expressions of esteem, and as the former
avowed his contempt of the vulgar obligation of oaths, they only grasped
each other’s hands in pledge of fidelity. A truce was agreed upon for
three years and eight months; the fort of Askalon was to be destroyed;
but Joppa and Tyre, with the country between them, were to be surrendered
to the Christians. The people of the West were also at liberty to
make their pilgrimages to Jerusalem, exempt from the taxes which the
Saracenian princes had in former times imposed.

The French soldiers at Acre prepared to return to Europe; but wished
first to behold the sepulchre which was so dear and sacred to the
Christians. But Richard was indignant at the audacity of men who claimed
the benefit of a treaty which no efforts of their own had procured. They
had lost the laurel of holy warriors, and they deserved not to bear the
pilgrim’s palm. The rest of the army visited the hallowed places, and
Saladin, alive to every honourable obligation, prevented his subjects
from injuring the persons and insulting the feelings of the devout
palmers. In a familiar conversation with the bishop of Salisbury Saladin
expressed his admiration of the bravery of Plantagenet, but thought
that the skill of the general did not equal the valour of the knight.
The courteous prelate complimented the Mussulman by replying that there
were not two such warriors in the world as the English and the Syrian
monarchs. Often have we had occasion to observe the generosity of Saladin
in the moment of victory. At the solicitation of the bishop he allowed
establishments of Latin priests in the Holy Sepulchre, and in the
churches of Bethlehem and Nazareth. He had pity, too, on the different
barons whom his conquests had dispossessed. He gave to the lord of
Sajetta a handsome town near Tyre; to Belian of Ibelin a castle, four
miles from Acre; and he restored Caiphas, Cæsarea, and Azotus to their
respective lords. Count Henry of Champagne became master of Joppa.

The loss of many thousand soldiers on the plains of Acre, and the
bravery and conduct of the English monarch, had prevented some of the
anticipated issues of the battle of Tiberias; Palestine did not become
a Mussulman colony; and so much of the sea coast was in the hands of
the Christians, and so enfeebled were the enemy, that fresh hostilities
could safely be commenced whenever Europe should again pour forth her
religious fanatics, and military adventurers. Richard gained more honour
in Palestine than any of the emperors of Germany and kings of France who
had sought renown in foreign war; and although these distant ages may
censure his conduct as unprofitable to his country, yet his actions were
in unison with that spirit of the times which looked upon valour as more
important than empire, and esteemed achievements in battle more highly
than the consequences of victory. In the month of October, Richard, with
his queen, the English soldiers, and pilgrims, set sail for England. But
storms of violence, uncommon even for the boisterous season of autumn,
soon scattered the fleet. Many of the vessels were wrecked on hostile
shores, and the warriors of England, now penniless, naked, and famished,
were led into Saracen prisons. Other ships fortunately reached friendly
ports, and in time returned to Britain.[b]

END AND REVIEW OF THE THIRD CRUSADE

[Sidenote: [1189-1192 A.D.]]

[Illustration: RICHARD THE LION-HEARTED AS A CRUSADER]

Thus finished this Third Crusade, in which all the western powers in
arms obtained no greater advantages than the taking of Ptolemais and
the demolition of Askalon; in it Germany lost, without glory, one of
the greatest of its emperors and the finest of its armies. If we may
believe Arabian authors, six hundred thousand crusaders appeared before
Ptolemais, and scarcely one hundred thousand of these warriors saw their
native country again. Europe had the greater reason to deplore the losses
of this war, from the fact of her armies having been so much better
composed than in preceding expeditions; criminals, adventurers, and
vagabonds had been strictly excluded from the ranks. All that the West
could boast of the most noble and illustrious of its warriors had taken
up arms.

The crusaders that contended with Saladin were better armed and better
disciplined than any that preceded them in Palestine; the foot-soldiers
employed the cross-bow, which had been neglected or prohibited in the
Second Crusade. Their cuirasses, and their bucklers covered with thick
leather, defied the arrows of the Saracens; and on the field of battle,
soldiers were often seen bristling with arrows and darts, whom the Arabs
compared to porcupines, still keeping their ranks and fighting bravely.
The Saracens had likewise made some progress in the art of war, and
began to resume the use of the lance, which they did not employ when the
first crusaders arrived in Syria. The Mussulman armies were not confused
multitudes; they remained longer under their banners, and fought with
less disorder. The Kurds and Turks surpassed the Franks in the art of
attacking and defending cities and castles. The Mussulmans had, besides,
more than one advantage over the crusaders: they made war upon their
own territories and in their own climate; they were under the command
of one single leader, who communicated the same spirit to all, and only
presented to them one cause to defend.

In this crusade the Franks appeared to be more polished than they had
been till that time. Great monarchs making war against each other without
ceasing to give evidences of mutual esteem and generous feeling, was
a new spectacle for the world. Subjects followed the example of their
princes, and lost beneath the tent much of their barbarism. The crusaders
were sometimes admitted to the table of Saladin, and emirs received at
that of Richard. By thus mingling together, Saracens and Christians might
make a happy exchange of usages, manners, knowledge, and even virtues.
The Christians, rather more enlightened than during the first Crusades,
stood in less need of excitement from the visions of fanaticism. The
passion for glory was for them almost as powerful a principle as
religious enthusiasm. Chivalry also made great progress in this crusade;
it was held in such honour, and the title of knight was so glorious, even
in the eyes of the infidels, that Saladin did not disdain to be decorated
with it.

In this crusade, in which so many knights rendered themselves
illustrious, two men acquired an immortal glory, one by a useless
bravery and qualities more brilliant than solid, the other by real
successes and virtues that might have served as models to Christians.
The name of Richard remained during a century the terror of the East,
and the Saracens and Turks celebrated him in their proverbs a long time
after the Crusades. He cultivated letters and merited a place among the
troubadours; but the arts did not at all soften his character; it was his
ferocity as well as his courage that procured him the surname of Cœur
de Lion. Carried away by the inconstancy of his inclinations, he often
changed his projects, his affections, and his principles of action; he
sometimes braved religion, and very often devoted himself to its service.
Sometimes incredulous, as often superstitious; measureless in his hatred
as in his friendship, he was extravagant in everything, and only showed
himself constant in his love for war. The passions which animated him
scarcely ever permitted his ambition to have an aim or a determinate
object. His imprudence, his presumption, and the unsteadiness of his
plans, made him lose the fruits of his exploits. In a word, the hero of
this crusade is more calculated to excite surprise than to create esteem,
and appears to belong less to history than to the romances of chivalry.

[Illustration: CHRISTIANS PASSING BEFORE SALADIN]

With less rashness and bravery than Richard, Saladin possessed a more
firm character, one far better calculated to carry on a religious war.
He paid more attention to the results of his enterprises; more master of
himself, he was more fit to command others. When mounting the throne of
the atabegs, Saladin obeyed rather his destiny than his inclinations;
but when once firmly seated, he was governed by only two passions--that
of reigning, and that of securing the triumph of the _Koran_. On all
other subjects he was moderate, and when a kingdom or the glory of the
prophet was not in question, the son of Eyyub was admired as the most
just and mild of Mussulmans. We may add that the stern devotion[66] and
ardent fanaticism that made him take up arms against the Christians, only
rendered him cruel and barbarous in one single instance. He displayed
the virtues of peace amidst the horrors of war. “From the bosom of
camps,” says an oriental poet, “he covered the nations with the wings
of his justice, and poured upon his cities the plenteous showers of his
liberality.” The Mussulmans, always governed by fear, were astonished
that a sovereign could inspire them with so much love, and followed
him with joy to battle. His generosity, his clemency, and particularly
his respect for an oath, were often the subjects of admiration to the
Christians, whom he rendered so miserable by his victories, and of whose
power in Asia he had completed the overthrow.

The Third Crusade, which was so glorious for Saladin, was not entirely
without advantages for Europe. Many crusaders, on the way to Palestine,
stopped in Spain, and by their victories over the Moors, prepared the
deliverance of the kingdoms situated beyond the Pyrenees. A great number
of Germans, as in the Second Crusade, prevailed upon by the solicitations
of the pope, made war upon the barbarous inhabitants of the shores of
the Baltic, and thus, by useful exploits, extended the limits of the
Christian republic in the West. As in this war the greater part of
the crusaders went to Palestine by sea, the art of navigation made a
sensible advance; the maritime nations of Europe acquired an accession of
prosperity, their fleets became more formidable, and they were able, with
glory, to dispute the empire of the sea with the Saracens.

In several states of Europe, commerce, and the spirit of the holy wars
contributed to the enfranchisement of the lower classes. Many serfs, upon
becoming free, took up arms. It was not one of the least interesting
spectacles of this crusade, to see the standards of several cities of
France and Germany floating in the Christian army amongst the banners of
lords and barons. This crusade was particularly beneficial to France,
from which it banished both civil and foreign wars. By prolonging the
absence of the great vassals and the enemies of the kingdom, it weakened
their power, and gave Philip Augustus authority to levy imposts, even
upon the clergy. It afforded him an opportunity of surrounding his throne
with a faithful guard, to keep up regular armies, and prepare, though at
a distance, that victory of Bouvines which proved so fatal to the enemies
of France.

[Sidenote: [1192-1194 A.D.]]

[Illustration: AN ENGLISH CRUSADER, THIRD CRUSADE]

A long captivity awaited Richard on his return to Europe. The vessel in
which he embarked was shipwrecked on the coast of Italy, and fearing to
pass through France, he took the route of Germany, concealed under the
habit of a simple pilgrim. His liberality betrayed the monarch, and as
he had enemies everywhere, he was seized by the soldiers of the duke of
Austria. Leopold had not sufficient generosity to forget the outrages
received from Richard at the siege of Ptolemais, and detained him
prisoner.[67] The duke of Austria did not dare to detain his redoubtable
captive in his own hands, and gave him up to the emperor of Germany.
Henry VI, who had likewise insults to revenge, was rejoiced to get
Richard in his power, and kept him in chains, as if he had made him a
prisoner in the field of battle. The hero of the crusade, who had filled
the world with his renown, was cast into a dark dungeon, and remained
a long time a victim to the vengeance of his enemies--and they were
Christian princes. He was brought before the German diet, assembled at
Worms, where he was accused of all the crimes that hatred and envy could
invent. But the spectacle of a king in chains was so affecting, that no
one durst condemn Richard, and when he offered his justification, the
bishops and nobles melted into tears, and besought Henry to treat him
with less injustice and rigour.

Queen Eleanor implored all the powers of Europe for the release of her
son. The complaints and tears of a mother touched the heart of Celestine,
who had recently ascended the chair of St. Peter. The pope several times
demanded the liberty of the king of England, and even excommunicated
the duke of Austria and the emperor; but the thunders of the church
had so often been launched against the thrones of Germany, that they
no longer inspired fear. Henry braved the anathemas of the holy see;
the captivity of Richard lasted another year; and he only obtained his
liberty after engaging to pay a considerable ransom. His kingdom, which
he had ruined at his departure for the Holy Land, exhausted itself to
hasten his return; and England gave up even her sacred vases to break
the chains of her monarch. He was received with enthusiasm by the
English; his adventures, which drew tears, obliterated the remembrance
of his cruelties, and Europe only recollected his exploits and his
misfortunes.[c]

DEATH OF SALADIN; ARAB EULOGIES

In the year 589 (1193 A.D.), after the departure of the king of England,
Saladin having no longer anything to fear from the Christians, resolved
to pass some time at Damascus. This was always a favourite place of
sojourn, and he hoped there to recover his health, for he was feeling
severely the strain of so arduous a war. His plan, after resting a
while in Damascus, was to go to Egypt, which he had not visited for ten
years. He left Jerusalem and paid visits en route to Nablus, Tiberias,
and other scenes of his recent conquests. At Berytus, Bohemond, prince
of Antioch, came to pay allegiance. What most touched the sultan was
that Bohemond came of his own accord, without distrust, without escort,
without even having requested a safe conduct. As evidence of his
satisfaction the sultan gave him a splendid welcome, and granted him
several fiefs contiguous to his own principality. The lords who came with
him also received presents. Saladin finally arrived in Damascus amid
the acclamations of the populace. Great was the rejoicing, and poets
exercised their art for the occasion. The sultan immediately took in
hand the welfare of the inhabitants and reformed several abuses. In the
meanwhile he betook himself with his brother Malik Adil to the pleasures
of the chase. He was away a fortnight; his health seemed restored, and
already he began to believe himself beyond all danger, when suddenly he
fell ill of a bilious fever of which he died on the thirteenth day, March
5, 1193. Boha ad-Din, who at the time of Saladin’s death was in the city,
relates that grief was universal. “That day,” he says, “was the most
terrible that had ever dawned on Islam. The castle of Damascus, the city,
the whole universe was struck with a sorrow that God alone could measure.”

Saladin was born at Tekrit, on the Tigris, and died at the age of
fifty-seven lunar years, after having reigned twenty-four years over
Egypt and nineteen over Syria. Arabian historians represent him as a
most generous prince, who would ever willingly deprive himself of the
necessaries of life. Boha ad-Din avows that finally his steward felt
obliged, unknown to him, to put aside money in order to meet future
emergencies; at his death they found in his treasury forty-seven silver
pieces and one of gold. “This,” adds Boha ad-Din, “was all that remained
of the revenues of Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and a part of Mesopotamia.”

It always happened that when Saladin took possession of a new province
he performed deeds of great generosity in order to win over the people.
When he entered Damascus after the death of Nur ad-Din, he did not take
for himself any of this prince’s treasures, but distributed everything
among the emirs. “Saladin,” says Abulfeda, “had gentle manners, he bore
contradiction easily, and showed great indulgence to those who served
him. If anything wounded his feelings he did not exhibit it. He was
reserved in speech; and his example inspired the same thing in others. No
one dared attack his neighbour’s honour in the sultan’s presence.

“He never could see an orphan without being moved. If one of its parents
were still alive he gave it into this parent’s keeping, but himself
provided for the child’s maintenance and kept watch over its education.
Whenever he met an aged person he wept tenderly and bestowed some token
of generosity. Such was his manner of life until God called him to his
merciful bosom.”

Saladin was not insensible to domestic affection. He loved to spend
his time with his family, surrounded by his children, and taking part
in their sports. He was sincerely devoted to his religion and brought
up his children in the same way. Boha ad-Din has preserved for us the
sultan’s speech, a short time before his death, on the occasion of the
departure of his son Dhahir to the post of governor of Aleppo. “O my
son,” the sultan said, “I recommend to thee the fear of God, source
of all goodness. Do what God asks, and thou shalt find in that thy
salvation. Hold always the sight of blood in horror. Take care not to
shed or stain thyself with it, for the mark is never washed away. Look
to the well-being of thy subjects and inform thyself as to their needs.
Thou art for them God’s minister as well as mine. Take care to please
the emirs, the great men of the land, and the people of high estate. It
is by my righteous ways that I have reached this degree of power. Bear
no malice towards anyone whoever he may be, for we are all mortal. Be
attentive to thy duty to others, for in giving them satisfaction thou
obtainest the forgiveness of God better than looking to thy own account
with him, for repentance to cure all; for the Lord is good and merciful.”

He loved to read the _Koran_ and he had the book read to his servitors
and all those around him. Noticing one day a little child reading the
_Koran_ to his father, he was touched to tears by the sight and gave
money and land to both father and son. He admitted unreservedly all that
religion teaches, and hated philosophers and heretics. He once imprisoned
and put to death at Aleppo a young man named Sahraverdi, who mocked at
and insulted religion.

Boha ad-Din relates again: “Saladin was a great lover of justice; not
only was he strict on its being given, but he dispensed it himself as
far as his affairs would admit. He heard cases twice a week, Mondays and
Thursdays, assisted by cadis and people of the law. Great and small,
everyone found the door open. He did the same on his journeys as in his
capital, receiving all petitions presented to him, and rejecting no
demands. When a case demanded a great amount of attention he examined it
at leisure, sometimes in the day, sometimes at night, and judged it as
God prompted him. Never was his sense of justice invoked in vain; it was
the same for the princes of his family as for his other subjects, for he
made exception of no one.”

There would be no end were one to transcribe all that the Arab
chroniclers, particularly Boha ad-Din, relate concerning Saladin’s
justice and piety. The latter is especially devoted to bringing out
these virtues of his hero, and purposely omits to speak of the vices
that stained them. In the whole course of his reign Saladin encountered
no great opposition except on the part of the Christians, and especially
those of the West. So he had come to believe in no enemies but the
Franks. These he treated as enemies of God, and called the war they
brought upon him, “the holy war.”

“When God shall have put into my hands the other Christian cities,” he
told Boha ad-Din,[f] “I shall share my states with my children, leave
them my last instructions, and bidding them farewell, embark upon that
sea to subdue the western isles and lands. I shall never lay down my arms
while there remains a single infidel upon the earth, at least if from
here to there I am not stopped by death.”

Thus Saladin’s ambitions reached as far as the conquest of France, Italy,
and the other Christian countries. And lest one should believe the words
reported by Boha ad-Din to be a vain threat, we find the same idea in
the sultan’s reply to a letter from the emperor Barbarossa. What is more
singular is that the hate of Saladin was directed towards the Christians
only as a body of nations. Once in his power, he looked at them through
different eyes. Thus we can explain the magnificent and even exaggerated
eulogies of certain contemporary Christian and especially Italian
writers, eulogies which perhaps no Mohammedan writer has exceeded. For
example, there is the following passage in the Arab history of the
patriarchs of Alexandria, whose author was one of the Coptic Christians:

“Saladin in all the surrenders he had from the Franks was faithful to
his word. When a town capitulated he left the inhabitants their liberty,
with their wives, their children, and their belongings. As to their
Mohammedan captives, Saladin offered to buy them back, and mentioned a
sum greater than their value. If the Franks refused this he let them keep
their prisoners, saying, ‘I don’t want to interfere with your captives;
only treat them well, as I treat your people.’ Whenever his policy would
permit it Saladin sought to please everybody. ‘I much prefer,’ he said,
speaking of the Christians, ‘that they should remain contented and
happy.’”

Saladin’s two most glorious achievements in the eye of the majority of
the Mohammedan historians were the taking of Jerusalem and Palestine
from the Christians, and the destruction of the Fatimite caliphate in
Egypt. To these relate most of the titles and phrases in which they refer
to him and which may be found on many monuments of the period. “With
Saladin,” says Imad ad-Din, his secretary, “the great men perished, with
him disappeared people of true worth; good deeds diminished, and bad ones
increased; life became difficult, and earth was covered with shadows; the
century had its phœnix to deplore, and Islam lost its support.”[k]

FOOTNOTES

[56] Among the causes of the First Crusade we mentioned the influence
of the spirit of commerce on the love of pilgrimages. That spirit was
afterwards mingled with the desire of conquest, particularly in the
case of the Egyptian polities. Situated between the Red Sea and the
Mediterranean, Egypt was the communication between Europe and the Indies;
and the possession of that country would have rendered the Europeans
masters of commerce.

[57] There was a decree in these statutes forbidding a crusader to take
any woman with him, except a laundress on foot of good character. This
qualification of the exception was necessary; for in the Middle Ages the
words “lotrix” and “meretrix” were synonymous.

[58] It will not be worth while to inquire whether the emperor bathed in
the Cydnus or the Calycadnus: “If he went in to wash himself, he neither
consulted with his health nor honour. Some say, his horse foundered under
him as he passed the water; others, that he fell from him. But these
several relations, as variety of instruments, make a doleful concert
in this, that there he lost his life; and no wonder, if the cold water
quickly quenched those few sparks of natural heat left in him at seventy
years of age.”--FULLER.[i]

[59] The Christian camp was so well fortified, that the Saracens used to
say, “not even a bird can enter it.”

[60] Thus, as has often been the case, the extreme of misery produced
the effects of the extreme of luxury. Pagans and Christians considering
God as the author of temporal good and evil only, and observing that the
virtuous suffered as much as the wicked, concluded that moral conduct was
disregarded by heaven. Unbounded licentiousness followed. No laws of God
limited the people: the laws of man were equally inefficacious, because
the criminal thought that he might die before the day of trial, or if he
should live to that time, those who would have been his accusers might
have perished in the general calamity. Compare Thucydides’ account of the
plague at Athens.

[61] [Richard of Devizes[e] calls her “a wonderful ship, a ship than
which, with the exception of Noah’s ark, we do not read of any being
greater.” He says the Turks “fought fiercely because ‘the only hope for
the conquered is to have nothing to hope for.’”]

[62] [On the other hand Richard of Devizes[e] quotes Saladin’s brother
as saying, “Thanks be to God, Richard was burdened with the king of the
French and hindered by him like a cat with a hammer tied to its tail.”]

[63] [The Arab historian Imad ad-Din[d] speaks thus concerning the
prisoners put to death by Richard. “After the retreat of the Christians
into the town, we found the Mussulman martyrs exposed quite naked on the
sands. We went to inspect them. They recognised their friends and related
what they had suffered for God’s cause, what honours they had received,
what benefits they had acquired by martyrdom, what felicity they enjoyed
at the price of their blood.”]

[64] Defensive war was so completely the object of the crusaders, that
each man was covered with pieces of cloth, united together by rings, on
which he received without injury the enemy’s arrows. Boha ad-Din[f] (who
narrates this curious circumstance) adds, that he himself saw several
of the Christians who had not one or two, but ten arrows adhering to
their backs, and yet who marched forwards with a quiet step, and without
trepidation. “So close did they march, that if an apple had been thrown,
it must have struck either a man or a horse,” says Vinsauf.[g]

[65] According to Boha ad-Din[f] and Abulfeda,[j] in all these
negotiations, the people of the two armies lived in friendly intercourse,
and mingled in the tournament and dance. More than this, through the
whole of the war, Saladin and Richard emulated each other as much in the
reciprocation of courtesy, as in military exploits. If ever the king
of England chanced to be ill, Saladin sent him presents of Damascene
pears, peaches, and other fruits. The same liberal hand gave the luxury
of snow, in the hot seasons, according to Hoveden.[h] Saladin could not
but have felt some kindness for gallant warriors, whether Christians or
Mussulmans, if it be true, that as soon as he was old enough to bear
arms, he had requested and received the honour of knighthood from a
French cavalier, named Humphrey de Thoron. See Vinsauf.[g]

[66] Saladin had but little indulgence in religious matters. The abbé
Renaudot, in his manuscript history, relates that he caused a philosopher
to be strangled who ventured to preach new doctrines in the city of
Aleppo.

[67] [The well-known story of the discovery of Richard in Leopold’s
hands, by Blondel, through the singing of a song which king and minstrel
had composed together, is now believed to be apocryphal and quite
fabulous.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V. THE FOURTH TO THE SIXTH CRUSADES

Bound for Holy Palestine,
Nimbly we brush’d the level brine,
All in azure steel array’d;
O’er the wave our weapons play’d,
And made the dancing billows glow;
High upon the trophied prow,
Many a warrior-minstrel swung
His sounding harp, and boldly sung.

--WARTON, _The Crusade_.

[Sidenote: [1195-1229 A.D.]]

Wars and rebellions had filled all the thoughts of Saladin, and he had
established no principles of succession. Three of his numerous progeny
became sovereigns of Aleppo, Damascus, and Egypt; others had smaller
possessions, and the emirs and atabegs of Syria again struggled for
independence. The soldiers of the late sultan rallied round his brother
Saphedin [Saif ad-Din] whose wisdom and valour were familiar to them.
Both by stratagem and liberal policy he reared a large fabric of empire
in Syria, and he was the most powerful of all the Moslem princes, when
the time for the expiration of the peace arrived. The Saracenic power
was, however, palsied for a while by a dreadful famine in Egypt, and
the Latins in Palestine suffered also from the miserable state of this
general granary.

The knights of St. John cast their regards towards Europe, and
particularly to England, for succour, and entreated that new armies would
march to Palestine, and destroy the exhausted Moslems.

POPE CELESTINE III PROMOTES A CRUSADE (1195 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1195-1198 A.D.]]

Two years before this favourable moment, the daring and ambitious pope
Celestine III had again sounded the trumpet of war. France had not
revived from its losses in the Third Crusade, and Philip Augustus heard
the appeal with indifference. Many of the people of England enrolled
their names as holy warriors, obtained spiritual absolution, and then
abandoned their pious resolves. The pope hurled his thunders against
those who deserted their profession, except for some legitimate cause;
but all thoughts of a crusade gradually died away in England, for the
king was too much occupied in political concerns to encourage it. But
wild schemes of war were occasionally in his mind, and the early writers
have ascribed to his dauntless spirit the vast design of conquering Egypt
and, after having gained the Holy Land, of possessing himself of the
throne of Constantinople.

Designs equally ambitious were entertained by the emperor Henry, the
enemy of Plantagenet. Seconded by imperial influence, the clergy
successfully preached the crusade through all the German states. The
emperor declared that he would provide a passage for both rich and poor
who wished to go. But, though influenced, he was not absorbed by the
love of barren glory, and when the possession of Sicily seemed an easy
achievement, he postponed the gathering of laurels in Palestine till
he had added a great state to his empire in Europe. Tancred, prince of
Sicily, had lately died, and Henry, in right of his wife Constanza, put
in his claims. This defection from the holy war was declared to be in
accordance with the opinions of his wisest princes and lords, and it did
not quench the spirit of fanaticism and romance.

THE FOURTH (OR GERMAN) CRUSADE (1195-1198 A.D.)

From the north to the south of Germany the frenzy of crusading had
spread, and it had infected the bishops of Bremen, Würzburg, Passau,
and Ratisbon; the dukes of Saxony, Brabant, Bavaria, and the son of the
duke of Austria; the marquis of Brandenburg and Moravia; the landgraf
of Thuringia; the count Palatine, and the counts of Habsburg and
Schwembourg. The son of Henry duke of Limburg and the archbishop of Mainz
led the vanguard of the holy warriors; and in the passage through Hungary
they were joined by Margaret, sister of the French king and queen of
Hungary, who, as one mode of consolation for the loss of her husband,
had vowed to pass the remainder of her life in the pains of pilgrimage.
Though the time of peace, as settled by the treaty between Richard and
Saladin, had expired, yet the Christians and Mussulmans continued to
live in amity. When the new champions of the cross arrived at Acre, no
remonstrances of the Latins against fresh wars, no suggestions that all
new crusaders ought to be obedient to the discretion of the residents in
the Holy Land could abate the furious desire of the Germans for hostility.

Their aggressions were quickly returned by the Mussulmans, civil feuds
were hushed, and Saphedin again headed the veteran forces of Syria and of
Egypt. The important city of Joppa was taken by him before the Christian
army from Acre could relieve it. The care and expense of Richard were
dissipated in a moment; the fortifications were destroyed, and several
thousands of the people of Joppa were put to the sword. In these unhappy
moments another portion of the German force, under the command of the
dukes of the lower Lorraine and Saxony, arrived at Acre. They had made
the voyage from the northern ports of Germany, and in their route had
chastised the Moors of Portugal. Confident in their strength, the united
forces of Europe and Palestine, led by the duke of Saxony, directed
their march towards the city of Berytus; but Saphedin, ever observant
of events, quitted the vicinity of Joppa, and overtook his foes between
Tyre and Sidon. The close columns of the duke of Saxony’s army were
impenetrable to his vigorous and continual attacks. The victory of the
Christians appeared to be decisive, the enemy’s force was scattered, and
so extensive was the panic that the Saracens abandoned Laodicea, Gabala,
Joppa, Sidon, and Berytus. Nine thousand prisoners were redeemed without
ransom; and the statement that there were three years’ provisions for
the inhabitants of Berytus in the storehouses of that town shows the
importance of the day of Sidon. The exultation of the crusaders was still
further advanced by the arrival of a third body of friends, headed by
Conrad, bishop of Hidelsheim and chancellor of the German Empire. By the
usual process of ambitious princes Henry had subjugated Sicily; and now,
devoted to the conquest of the Holy Land, he sent his third army as his
immediate precursors.

It seemed that the hour was now at hand when Europe would receive the
reward of her invincible heroism. All the sea coast of Palestine was
already in the possession of the Christians: and even they who had
generally most desponded were now elevated with the conviction that the
cross must ere long surmount the walls of Jerusalem. But in their march
from Tyre towards the Holy City they made a fatal halt at the fortress
of Thoron. The lofty and solid pile of stones withstood the attacks of
the common engines of violence. But by a month’s labour of some Saxon
miners the rock itself which supported the fortress was pierced through;
and the battlements tottered to their foundation. The Saracens were now
at the feet of the Christians suing for clemency. A free passage into
the Moslem territories was all that they asked, and the fort might then
be at the disposal of the crusaders. After much time had been passed in
balancing considerations of revenge or mercy, a treaty founded on these
terms was signed; but although just principles of war prevailed with the
majority, yet the smaller party, who breathed nothing but slaughter,
impressed their menaces so deeply on the minds of the Saracens that the
latter vowed to submit to the last extremity, rather than confide in the
agreements and oaths of champions of the cross.

They gained resolution from despair; they met their foes in the passages
which had been mined in the rocks; and in every encounter the Moslem
scimitar reeked with Christian blood. Factious contentions disordered the
Latin council; insubordination and vice raged in the camp; and, to crown
their miseries, the crusaders heard that the infidel world had recovered
from its defeat at Sidon, and that the sultans of Egypt and Syria were
concentrating their levies. Daunted at the rumour of their march, the
German princes deserted their posts in the middle of the night, and fled
to Tyre. In the morning their flight was discovered by the soldiers, and
horror and despair seized every breast. The camp was deserted by those
who had strength to move; the feeble left their property, the cowardly
their arms behind them. The road to Tyre was filled with soldiers and
baggage in indiscriminate confusion; but so exhausted was the state of
the Mussulmans in Thoron, that the Christians were not molested in their
retreat by any accidents except those which their own imprudence and
precipitation occasioned (1197).

[Sidenote: [1198-1201 A.D.]]

When the fragments of the army were collected, and the soldiers were at
a distance from danger, everyone reproached the other as the cause of
the late disgraceful event. The Germans accused the Latins of cowardice;
and the barons of the Holy Land declared that they would not submit to
the domineering pride of the Germans. All the quarrels were conducted in
scriptural language. Treachery was the crime of which each party accused
the other; for the case of Judas was in the minds of all. Conrad and his
soldiers went to Joppa, and resolved to repair its fortifications and to
await the moment for revenge on the Latins of Syria. Saphedin marched
against them, and the Germans did not decline the combat. Victory was
on the side of the Christians; but it was bought by the death of many
brave warriors, particularly of the duke of Saxony, and of the son of the
duke of Austria. But the Germans did not profit by this success, for news
arrived from Europe that the great support of the Crusade, Henry VI, was
dead. The archbishop of Mainz, and all those princes who had an interest
in the election of a German sovereign, deserted the Holy Land. The queen
of Hungary was the only individual of consequence whose fanaticism was
stronger than worldly considerations. The remnants, and they were more
than twenty thousand, of this once powerful host fortified themselves in
Joppa. But a new storm arose in the Turkish states. It swept over Berytus
and the land of the Christians; and, on the 11th of November, while the
Germans were celebrating the feast of St. Martin, the Moslems entered the
city of Joppa and slew every individual whom they found.

Old Fuller[f] says, “At this time, the spring-tide of their mirth so
drowned their souls that the Turks, coming in upon them, cut every one
of their throats to the number of twenty thousand; and quickly they were
stabbed with the sword that were cup-shot before. A day which the Dutch
(the Germans) may well write in their calendars in red letters dyed
with their own blood, when the camp was their shambles, the Turks their
butchers, and themselves the Martinmasse beeves, from which the beastly
drunkards differ but a little.”

About the time of the massacre at Joppa, Henry, count of Champagne,
the acknowledged king of Jerusalem, died. The grand master of the
Hospitallers represented to Isabella the propriety of her marriage with
Almeric de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, who had lately succeeded his brother
Guy. It was thought that Acre and its vicinity could not remain in the
hands of the Latins unless they were governed by a king, and that, in
every circumstance, Cyprus, as a place of succour and retreat, would be
a valuable ally to Jerusalem. With equal truth it might have been argued
that, if there were a powerful king in Palestine, faction, the great
foe of the state, could not raise its head. Familiarised to the joys of
royalty and love, the widowed queen embraced with rapture new prospects
of happiness, and in her eyes Almeric was as estimable as she had found
her divorced husband Humphry, or her deceased lords Conrad and Henry.
The union was approved of by the clergy and barons, it was celebrated at
Acre, and Almeric and Isabella were proclaimed king and queen of Cyprus
and Jerusalem.

THE FIFTH CRUSADE (1201-1204 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1201-1204 A.D.]]

The Third and Fourth Crusades were created by the ordinary influence
of papal power and royal authority; but the Fifth sprang from genuine
fanaticism. At the close of the twelfth century a hero arose in France,
worthy of companionship with Bernard. Fulk, of the town of Neuilly, near
Paris, was distinguished by the vehemence and ability of his preaching,
and as in early life he had drank deeply of the cup of pleasure he
was well qualified to describe the different states of the sinner and
the saint. He did not involve himself in the speculative absurdities
of the day, but declaimed against the prevailing vices of usury and
prostitution. For two years he preached without success, but after that
time “heaven lent its aid to the efforts of the preacher, in order that
his words, like arrows from a powerful bow, might penetrate the depraved
hearts of men.” Accordingly, miracles attested celestial approbation,
and his sermons were received as oracles. With the extension of his fame
his wishes for religious good increased, and his soul was inflamed with
the desire of accomplishing the great aim of Christendom. He accordingly
assumed the cross, and war with the infidels became the copious matter of
his sermons.[c]

[Illustration: THIRTEENTH CENTURY CRUSADER]

The Fifth Crusade was an individual enterprise. Since the failure of
the Third, Jerusalem was forgotten and wars between kings and Christian
peoples took the place of the pious expeditions. England, Germany, and
France, once united for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, were now
armed one against the other. The emperor Otto IV was excommunicated;
Philip Augustus had been, John was to be. All these excommunicants gave
little thought to the Holy Land. The great pope Innocent III wanted to
bring it back to their minds and caused a new crusade to be preached,
promising the remission of all sins to those who served God for one year.
Fulk the curé was the pope’s mouthpiece. He visited a tournament that was
being held in Champagne, and his burning words made all the princes and
knights assembled there assume the cross. This time, as on the first, the
kings held aloof, and the people did also. Knighthood alone took part,
and rather to show strength of arms than any deep piety, for the affair
was nothing more, or little more, than a plundering expedition. Baldwin
IX, count of Flanders, and Boniface II, count of Montferrat, were at
its head. And it had been previously proved that the sea route was much
preferable to the land, the crusaders sought ships at Venice.

That city was even then the Queen of the Adriatic. Driven by Attila’s
invasion to the lagoons, the people from the mainland had prospered in
that most remarkable situation in the world. None of the invasions that
passed over Italy had reached them. Their trade had extended, and the
islands and shores of Istria and Illyria recognised their superiority.
When the crusaders appeared, the Venetians encouraged them not only
through piety but the spirit of gain as well. The Mohammedans and Greeks
were their rivals in the eastern Mediterranean and they found this a
good opportunity to dispossess them. The interested services rendered
the crusaders in 1130 had brought the Venetians the privilege of opening
in each town of the new kingdom of Jerusalem a quarter exclusively their
own, and at the same time they took possession of the Greek islands
of Rhodes, Samos, Scio, Mytilene, and Andros. In 1173 Venice had made
its dogeship elective, and established with its grand council that
aristocratic government which kept its power through many ages.

Such was Venice when the crusaders put in an appearance. Geoffrey de
Villehardouin,[g] seneschal to the court of Champagne, himself narrates
the mission in which he took part. It was a curious sight--that of the
feudal lords obliged, kneeling and in tears, to beg the people humbly for
ships. “We will grant them; we will grant them,” replied the sovereign
people. City of merchants and seamen, Venice could not but sell such a
service, and demanded 85,000 marks or 20,230 kilograms of silver, which
to-day would be equal to about £161,840 or $809,200, but in those days
was worth much more. The knights could not produce such a sum, and in
place of cash the Venetians offered to take in payment a hostile city
if the crusaders would capture it for them. They had already taken from
the Greeks the principal cities of the Dalmatian coast--Spalato, Ragusa,
and Sebenico. One alone remained to prevent their complete dominion over
the Adriatic--Zara, still occupied by the king of Hungary. In vain did
Innocent III thunder against this detour from the crusade; the Venetians
got Zara and Doge Dandolo, ninety years old, assumed the cross (1202).

The little account settled, they could go; but whither? The set-backs
of the last Crusades showed that it was necessary to have some point of
support in order to operate successfully in Palestine, and this point
must be either Egypt or the Greek Empire. The Venetians persuaded their
allies that the keys of Jerusalem were either at Cairo or Constantinople.
There was some truth in this idea, but there was much more commercial
interest. The possession of Cairo would give the Venetians the route
to India; that of Constantinople would assure them the commerce of the
Black Sea and the whole Grecian archipelago. The crusaders decided on
Constantinople, whither a young Greek prince, Alexius, offered to lead
them provided they would re-establish on the throne his father Isaac
Angelus who had been deposed (1203).

The account of the assault on Constantinople, given more fully in the
history of the Byzantine Empire, may be briefly sketched here. When
the French came in sight of Constantinople, saw its high walls, its
innumerable churches whose gilded domes glistened in the sun, and their
glances wandered, as Villehardouin says, “over the length and breadth
of the city, sovereign of all others, there was none so brave whose
heart did not tremble, and each one looked at the arms which he would
soon need.” Along the shore there was lined up a magnificent army of
sixty thousand men. The crusaders counted on a terrible battle. Barges
brought them fully armed to the shore. Before even touching the strand
“the knights jumped into the water up to their waists, fully armed, the
lance men, the sword bearers, the good archers, and the good sergeants,
and the good cross-bowmen. And the Greeks made much pretext to stop
them. And when the crusaders came with lowered lances, the Greeks turned
their backs and fled, leaving them the shore. And know that nothing more
glorious ever took place.” The 18th of July (1203) the city was carried
by assault; the old emperor was brought from his cell and put back on
the throne. Alexius had made the crusaders the most glowing promises; to
keep them he imposed new taxes and so angered the weakened people that
they strangled their emperor, set up another, Mourzoufle, and shut the
city’s gates. The crusaders attacked at once. Three days sufficed to get
them in again (March, 1204); this time they put it to the sack. One whole
quarter, a square league of territory, was burned. And what works of art
perished! Four hundred thousand marks were collected in a church for
distribution.[68]

Then they divided the empire up. Baldwin IV, count of Flanders, was
elected emperor of Romania. He won against his opponents, Dandolo and
Boniface of Montferrat. The Venetians did not like the idea of seeing
their doge on the imperial throne. They took (which pleased them better)
a portion of Constantinople with the shore of the Bosporus and the
Propontis, and a majority of the Archipelago islands, Candia, etc., and
dubbed themselves lords of a quarter and a half of the Eastern Empire.
The marquis of Montferrat was elected king of Macedonia; Villehardouin,
marshal of Romania, and his nephew, prince of Romania. The count of
Blois received the Asiatic provinces. There were dukes of Athens and
Naxos, counts of Cephalonia, and lords of Thebes and of Corinth. A new
France, with all its feudal customs, arose at the eastern end of Europe.
Members of the Comnenus family, however, managed to keep several portions
which they divided into principalities--Trebizond, Napoli of Argolis,
Epirus and Nicæa. But the crusaders were too few to hold their conquest
long. In 1261 this Latin Empire fell to pieces. But, up to the end of
the Middle Ages and the conquests of the Turks, there still subsisted
in certain parts of Greece remnants of the feudal principalities so
strangely established by the French in the ancient land of Miltiades and
Leonidas.[b]

[Sidenote: [1204-1261 A.D.]]

The establishment of the Latins in Constantinople was the important
though unlooked-for issue of the Fifth Crusade; but their dominion
lasted only fifty-seven years. The history of that period forms a part
of the annals of the Lower Empire, and not of the holy wars. But we may
remark, generally, that in a very few years fortune ceased to smile
on the conquerors. Their arrogant and encroaching temper awakened the
jealousy of the king of Bulgaria. The fierce mountaineers, who had so
often insulted the majesty of the Roman Empire, now redeemed themselves
from the sin of rebellion, by ceaseless war on the usurpers of their
former master’s throne. The change of the Greek ritual into the service
of the Latin church, was a subject of perpetual murmur and discontent.
The feudal code of the kingdom of Jerusalem was violently imposed on the
people, in utter contempt of their manners and opinions. The Greeks,
too, were not admitted into any places of confidence in the government,
and the nobility gradually retired from Constantinople, and associated
themselves with the princes of the deposed royal family. Several of
those princes formed states out of the ruins of the empire, and Manuel
Palæologus, the emperor of Nicæa, descendant of Lascaris, son-in-law
of the usurper Alexius, had the glory of recovering the throne of the
Cæsars, and of finally expelling the usurpers from Constantinople. On the
Asiatic side of the Bosporus the Latins never had much power.

The jealousy which Genoa entertained of her great rival, Venice, was
one of the most active causes of the fall of the Latin Empire. In
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, commercial concessions had often
purchased for Constantinople the military and naval aid of the sovereign
of the Adriatic; and at the time of the Fifth Crusade, the empire
appeared to acknowledge the equality of the republic. The imperial throne
gained the friendship of other Italian princes, and the Pisans as well
as the Venetians had almost unlimited commerce with the Grecian states.
Each of these allies had its church and its exchange in Constantinople;
its consuls decided the causes of their respective citizens, and both
nations enjoyed the rare and blessed privilege of exemption from payment
of public taxes. In the middle of the twelfth century, Genoa had obtained
commercial immunities; but it does not appear that they were so extensive
as those which had been acceded to the Venetians and Pisans. When the
crusaders captured Constantinople, the commerce of the Black Sea was
open to the Venetians, a commerce, which before that event had only been
slightly enjoyed by the Italians. The Genoese, alarmed at the maritime
progress of the Venetians, took up arms against them; fortune befriended
the inferior power, and in the year 1215 a treaty was concluded,
whereby the Genoese were confirmed in the commercial privileges which
they had enjoyed under the Greek emperor. But the political situation
of the Venetians continued a great source of superiority, and their
rivals incited and assisted the Greeks to throw off the Latin yoke, and
recapture Byzantium.[c]

RESULTS OF THE FIFTH CRUSADE

An old empire which moulders away, a new empire ready to sink into
ruins--such are the pictures that this crusade presents to us; never did
any epoch offer greater exploits for admiration, or greater troubles
for commiseration. The Greeks, a degenerate nation, honoured their
misfortunes by no virtue; they had neither sufficient courage to prevent
the reverses of war, nor sufficient resignation to support them. When
reduced to despair, they showed some little valour; but that valour
was imprudent and blind; it precipitated them into new calamities, and
procured them masters much more barbarous than those whose yoke they
were so eager to shake off. They had no leader able to govern or guide
them; no sentiment of patriotism strong enough to rally them; deplorable
example of a nation left to itself, which has lost its morals, and has no
confidence in its laws or its government! The Franks had just the same
advantages over their enemies that the barbarians of the north had over
the Romans of the Lower Empire. In this terrible conflict, simplicity
of manners, the energy of a new people for civilisation, the ardour for
pillage, and the pride of victory, were sure to prevail over the love
of luxury, habits formed amidst corruption, and vanity which attaches
importance to the most frivolous things, and only preserves a gaudy
resemblance of true grandeur.

This spirit of conquest, which appeared so general among the knights,
might favour the expedition to Constantinople; but it was injurious to
the holy war, by turning the crusaders aside from the essential object of
the crusade. The heroes of this war did nothing for the deliverance of
Jerusalem, of which they constantly spoke in their letters to the pope.
The conquest of Byzantium, very far from being, as the knights believed,
the road to the land of Christ, was but a new obstacle to the taking of
the Holy City; their imprudent exploits placed the Christian colonies in
greater peril, and only ended in completely subverting, without replacing
it, a power which might have served as a barrier against the Saracens. To
recapitulate in a few words our opinion of the events and consequences of
this crusade, we must say that the spirit of chivalry and the spirit of
conquest at first gave birth to wonders, but that they did not suffice
to maintain the crusaders in their possessions. The crusaders evinced a
profound contempt for the Greeks, whose alliance and support they ought
to have been anxious to seek; they wished to reform manners and alter
opinions, a much more difficult task than the conquest of an empire, and
only met with enemies in a country that might have furnished them with
useful allies.

We may add that the policy of the holy see, which at first undertook
to divert the Latin warriors from the expedition to Constantinople,
became, in the end, one of the greatest obstacles to the preservation of
their conquests. The counts and barons, who reproached themselves with
having failed in obedience to the sovereign pontiff, at length followed
scrupulously his instructions to procure by their arms the submission
of the Greek church, the only condition on which the holy father would
pardon a war commenced in opposition to his commands. To obtain his
forgiveness and approbation, they employed violence against schism and
heresy, and lost their conquest by endeavouring to justify it in the eyes
of the sovereign pontiff. The pope himself did not obtain that which he
so ardently desired. The union of the Greek and Roman churches could
not possibly be effected amidst the terrors of victory and the evils of
war; the arms of the conquerors had less power than the anathemas of the
church, to bring back the Greeks to the worship of the Latins. Violence
only served to irritate men’s minds, and consummated the rupture, instead
of putting an end to it. The remembrance of persecutions and outrages,
a reciprocal contempt, an implacable hatred arose and became implanted
between the two creeds, and separated them forever.

History cannot affirm that this crusade made great progress in the
civilisation of Europe. The Greeks had preserved the jurisprudence of
Justinian; the empire possessed wise regulations upon the levying of
imposts and the administration of the public revenues; but the Latins
disdained these monuments of human wisdom and of the experience of many
ages; they coveted nothing the Greeks possessed but their territories
and their wealth. Most of the knights took a pride in their ignorance,
and amongst the spoils of Constantinople, attached no value to the
ingenious productions of Greece. Amidst the conflagrations that consumed
the mansions and palaces of the capital, they beheld with indifference
large and valuable libraries given up to the flames. We may add that the
necessity for both conquerors and conquered of intercommunication must
have contributed to the spreading of the Latin language among the Greeks,
and that of the Greeks among the Latins.

The crusaders likewise profited by several useful inventions, and
transmitted them to their compatriots; and the fields and gardens of
Italy and France were enriched by some plants till that time unknown in
the West. Boniface sent into his marquisate some seeds of maize, which
had never before been cultivated in Italy; a public document, which
still exists, attests the gratitude of the people of Montferrat. The
magistrates received the innocent fruits of victory with great solemnity,
and, upon their altars, called down a blessing upon a production of
Greece, that would one day constitute the wealth of the plains of Italy.

Flanders, Champagne, and most of the provinces of France, which had
sent their bravest warriors to the crusade, fruitlessly lavished their
population and their treasures upon the conquest of Byzantium. We may say
that these intrepid fighters gained nothing by this wonderful war, but
the glory of having given, for a moment, masters to Constantinople, and
lords to Greece. And yet these distant conquests, and this new empire,
which drew from France its turbulent and ambitious princes, must have
been favourable to the French monarchy. Philip Augustus must have been
pleased by the absence of the great vassals of the crown, and had reason
to learn with joy that the count of Flanders, a troublesome neighbour,
and a not very submissive vassal, had obtained an empire in the East.
The French monarchy thus derived some advantage from this crusade; but
the republic of Venice profited much more by it. This republic, which
scarcely possessed a population of two hundred thousand souls, and had
not the power to make its authority respected on the continent, in the
first place, made use of the arms of the crusaders, to subdue cities,
of which, without their assistance, she could never have made herself
mistress. By the conquest of Constantinople, she enlarged her credit and
her commerce in the East, and brought under her laws some of the richest
possessions of the Greek emperors. She increased the reputation of her
navy, and raised herself above all the maritime nations of Europe. The
Venetians never neglected the interests or glory of their own country,
whilst the French knights scarcely ever fought for any object but
personal glory and their own ambition. Of her new possessions in the
East, Venice only retained such as she judged necessary to the prosperity
of her commerce, or the maintenance of her marine.[d]

THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE (1212 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1212 A.D.]]

Some of the best witnesses for the history of the Middle Ages affirm
that, seduced by the preaching of fanatics, the children of France and
Germany, about the year 1212, thought themselves authorised by heaven to
attempt the rescue of the Sepulchre, and ran about the country, crying,
“Lord Jesus Christ, restore thy cross to us.” Boys and girls stole from
their homes, “no bolts, no bars, no fear of fathers or love of mothers,
could hold them back,” and the number of youthful converts was thirty
thousand. They were organised by some fanatical wretches, one of whom
was taken and hanged at Cologne. The children drove down France, crossed
the Alps, and those who survived thirst, hunger, and heat, presented
themselves at the gates of the seaports of Italy and the south of France.
Many were driven back to their homes; but seven large ships full of them
went from Marseilles; two of the vessels were wrecked on the isle of
St. Peter, the rest of the ships went to Bougie and Alexandria, and the
masters sold the children to slavery. These singular events are mentioned
by four contemporary writers. (1) Alberic, monk of Trois Fontaines, in
his chronicle. (2) Godfrey of St. Pantaleon, in his annals. The editor
cites in his margin a Belgic chronicle as a testimony. (3) Sicard, bishop
of Cremona. (4) M. Paris. Roger Bacon, who flourished in the middle of
the thirteenth century, thus speaks of the Crusade of Children: “_Forsan
vidistis aut audistis pro certo quod pueri de regno Franciæ semel
occurrebant in infinita multitudine post quondam malignum hominem, ita
quod nec a patribus, nec a matribus, nec amicis poterant detineri, et
positi sunt in navibus et Saracenis redditi, et non sunt adhuc 64 anni._”
Honest Fuller says: “This crusade was done by the instinct of the devil,
who, as it were, desired a cordial of children’s blood, to comfort his
weak stomach, long cloyed with murdering of men.”[c]

[Illustration: A GERMAN NOBLE, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

This expedition beyond the seas, undertaken about 1212, and composed
entirely of children, if not one of the most striking events of the
Crusades, certainly appears not one of the least extraordinary. Whoever
is acquainted with the taste of the Middle Ages for the marvellous, and
has only read the incomplete account of the modern historians of the
Crusades, is at first tempted to range this expedition among fabulous
adventures; and to procure it any credit, it is necessary to produce
evidences worthy of our confidence.

With regard to the date, contemporary historians all place this crusade
under the year 1212, or 1213 at the latest. It is only by an error very
easy to be reconciled, that others advance it twelve years, or put it
back ten. As to the places that witnessed the birth and growth of such
an enterprise, it appears that the crusaders belonged to two nations,
and formed two troops, which followed different routes; one, leaving
Germany, traversed Saxony and the Alps and arrived on the shores of the
Adriatic Sea; France furnished the others, who, after collecting in the
environs of Paris, crossed Burgundy, and arrived at Marseilles, the place
of embarkation. Prestiges, fanaticism, the announcement of prodigies,
were all employed to rouse the youth of these countries and put them
in motion. It was reported, according to Vincent de Beauvais, that the
Old Man of the Mountain, who was accustomed to educate _arsacides_ from
the tenderest age, detained two clerks captives, and would only grant
them their liberty upon condition that they brought him back some young
boys from France. The opinion then was, that these children, deceived by
false visions, and seduced by the promises of these two clerks, marked
themselves with the sign of the cross.

The promoter of the crusade in Germany was a certain Nicholas, a German
by nation. “This multitude of children,” says Bezarre, “were persuaded
by the help of a false revelation, that the drought would be so great
that year that the abysses of the sea would be dry; and they went to
Genoa, with the intention of passing over to Jerusalem, across the arid
bed of the Mediterranean.” The composition of these troops corresponded
with the means employed to seduce them. There were children of all ages
and conditions, and of both sexes; some of them were not more than
twelve years old; they set out from villages and towns, without leaders,
without guides, without provisions, and with empty purses. It was in vain
their parents or friends thought to dissuade them by showing them the
folly of such an expedition; the captivity to which they condemned them
redoubled their ardour; breaking through doors, or opening themselves
passages through walls, they succeeded in escaping, and went to rejoin
their respective bands. If they were questioned upon the object of their
voyage, they answered that they were going to visit the holy places.
Although a pilgrimage commenced under such auspices, and stained with
all sorts of excesses, must have been an object of scandal rather than
of edification, there were people senseless enough to see in it an act
of the all-powerful God; men and women quitted their houses and their
lands to join these vagabond troops, believing they pursued the way of
salvation; others furnished them with money and food, thinking they aided
souls inspired by God, and guided by sentiments of divine piety. The
pope, when informed of their proceedings, exclaimed, with a groan: “These
children reproach us with being buried in sleep, whilst they are flying
to the defence of the Holy Land.” If some few of the clergy, endowed with
a little foresight, openly blamed this expedition, their censures were at
once attributed to motives of avarice and incredulity; and, in order to
avoid public contempt, wisdom and prudence were condemned to silence.

The event, however, proved that all which man undertakes without
employing the balance of reason and earnest reflection, does not come
to a fortunate issue; “for soon,” says Bishop Sicard, “this multitude
entirely disappeared: _quasi evanuit universa_.” But we must carefully
distinguish between the fate of the German and that of the French
crusaders, although a part of the latter directed their course towards
Italy. It required nothing beyond wearing the cross to be admitted into
the crusade; if the watchful care of princes and prelates in expeditions
directed by ecclesiastical and secular power could not succeed in
excluding from them men of bad morals, what sort of people must have been
mixed with a host got together without the least care, and under the eye
of no superior intelligence, the greater part of whom fled, like the
prodigal son, from the paternal dwelling, in order to give themselves up,
without restraint, to their vicious inclinations? The account of Godfrey
the Monk, therefore, does not at all astonish us when he says that
thieves insinuated themselves among the German pilgrims, and disappeared
after having plundered them of their baggage and the gifts the faithful
had bestowed upon them. One of these thieves, being recognised at
Cologne, ended his days on the rack.

To this first misfortune a crowd of evils quickly succeeded, the
necessary result of the want of foresight of the crusaders. The fatigue
of a long journey, heat, disease, and want, swept away a great number
of them. Of those who arrived in Italy, some, dispersing themselves
over the country, and plundered by the inhabitants, were reduced to
servitude; others, to the amount of seven thousand, presented themselves
before Genoa. At first the senate gave them permission to remain six
or seven days in the city; but reflecting afterwards upon the folly of
the expedition, fearing that such a multitude would produce famine,
and, above all, apprehending that Frederick, who was then in a state
of rebellion against the holy see and at war with Genoa, might take
advantage of the circumstance to excite a tumult, they ordered the
crusaders to depart from the city. Some, finding their error, turned
back towards their own country again; and these crusaders, who had been
seen advancing in numerous troops, and singing animating songs, returned
singly, robbed of everything, walking barefooted, undergoing the pangs of
hunger, and subjected to the scoffs and derision of the population of the
cities and countries they passed through; it is not to be wondered at,
that in such circumstances many young girls lost the chastity which had
been their ornament in their homes.

The crusaders from France experienced a nearly similar fate; a very
slender portion of them returned; the rest either perished in the
waves or became an object of speculation for two Marseilles merchants.
Hugh Ferrers and William Porcus, so were they named, carried on a
trade with the Saracens, of which the sale of young boys formed a
considerable branch. No opportunity for an advantageous speculation
could be more favourable; they offered to transport to the East all the
pilgrims who arrived at Marseilles, without any kind of charge for the
voyage; assigning piety as the motive for this act of generosity. This
proposition was joyfully accepted; and seven vessels, laden with these
pilgrims, set sail for the coast of Syria. At the end of two days, when
the ships were off the Isle of St. Peter, near the Rock of the Recluse, a
violent tempest arose, and the sea swallowed up two of them, with all the
passengers on board. The other five arrived at Bougie and Alexandria, and
the young crusaders were all sold to the Saracens or to slave-merchants.
The caliph bought forty of them, all of whom were in orders, and caused
them to be brought up with great care in a place set apart for the
purpose; twelve of the others perished as martyrs, being unwilling to
renounce their religion. None of the clerks purchased by the caliph,
according to the account of one of them who afterwards obtained his
liberty, embraced the worship of Mohammed; all faithful to the religion
of their fathers, practised it constantly in tears in slavery. Hugh and
William, having at a later period formed the project of assassinating
Frederick, were discovered, and perished in an ignominious manner, with
three Saracens, their accomplices, receiving, in this miserable end, the
wages due to their treachery.

Pope Gregory IX afterwards caused a church to be built in the island
of St. Peter, in honour of those who were shipwrecked, and instituted
twelve canonships to provide for the duties of it. In the time of Alberic
the spot was still pointed out where the bodies cast up by the waves
were buried. As for the crusaders who survived so many calamities, and
remained in Europe, with the exception of some old and infirm persons,
the pope would not release them from their vows; they were obliged either
to perform the pilgrimage at a maturer age, or to redeem it by alms.

Such was the issue of this crusade, so justly designated by two
chronicles, _expeditio nugatoria, expeditio derisoria_.

Two facts strike us as extraordinary in this account; the condition
attached by the Old Man of the Mountain to the liberty of the clerk of
whom Vincent de Beauvais speaks, and the trade in children carried on by
the merchants of Marseilles. Upon the first point we can offer nothing
but the opinion received among the nations of the West. It was generally
believed in the thirteenth century, that the Old Man of the Mountain kept
up a connection with Christian Europe; several princes were even accused
of having had recourse to the daggers of his Assassins to get rid of
their enemies. Frederick received ambassadors from him in Sicily. Roger
Bacon complains bitterly of the fascinations secretly employed by the
Saracens to seduce the young servants of Christ; the name of Assassins
had already passed into the vulgar tongue in the thirteenth century,
and was the object of general terror. In spite, then, of the opinion of
some critics, a more extended examination is necessary, before we reject
the account of Vincent de Beauvais. As to the trade in young boys, that
is not at all a new fact; many traces of it are found much anterior to
this period. The Greeks and Venetians practised it openly enough. Pope
Zacharias repurchased, in 748, many Christian slaves, who had been taken
away from Rome by Venetian merchants; the people of Verdun, as witnessed
by Liutprand, were about to sell to the Arabs of Spain some young boys
they had mutilated, and who were to serve as guards to the women of
seraglios. Besides, the fate of the young crusaders who embarked at
Marseilles, and found degradation and slavery instead of the sacred soil
promised to their blind zeal, is attested by two contemporary writers,
worthy of perfect confidence: Thomas de Champré and Roger Bacon.[e]

THE SIXTH CRUSADE (1217-1229 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1210-1215 A.D.]]

The successful heroism of the French adventurers before Constantinople
alarmed the Mussulmans, and Saphedin had gladly concluded a treaty
for six years’ peace with the Christians. Palestine soon again became
the theatre of ambition and of glory. Almeric and his wife died, and
Mary, the daughter of Isabella and Conrad of Tyre, was the new ideal
queen of Jerusalem, while Hugh de Lusignan, son of Almeric by his first
wife, was proclaimed king of Cyprus. Hugh had married the princess
Alice, half sister of the young queen, and daughter of Henry count of
Champagne, and Isabella. There was not at that time any nobleman of
rule or influence in Palestine capable of governing the state; and the
ecclesiastical and civil potentates resolved that Philip Augustus of
France should provide a husband for Mary. Philip Augustus fixed his eyes
on Jean de Brienne, son of the count of Brienne in Champagne. Though the
sovereignty over Jerusalem was titular, yet the command of the Christian
army in Palestine, and the possession of a young queen so desirable as
the ambassadors painted the daughter of Almeric, were circumstances so
flattering to the imagination of an aspiring cavalier, that Jean de
Brienne received the gift with joy; and the deputies were dismissed
with the promise that in two years he would join them in Palestine with
a powerful band. The truce of six years was on the point of expiring,
and Saphedin offered to renew it, and to resign to the regency any ten
castles or towns they might select, to be retained by them in perpetuity
if the Saracens broke their faith. The knights of St. John, and those
of the Teutonic order, argued strenuously for the acceptance of this
offer; but the spirit of party was always the enemy of Palestine, and the
Templars and clergy declared for war.

[Illustration: THIRTEENTH CENTURY CRUSADER]

At the appointed time Jean de Brienne arrived at Acre; the next day
he received the hand of Mary, and shortly afterward was crowned, and
received the oaths of allegiance of the barons. Only three hundred
knights had participated in his hopes of restoring the fortunes of
the Holy Land, for the enthusiasm and love of glory of the western
chivalry were diverted into new channels. England and Germany were torn
by internal disturbances, the court of France was watching the turn of
events, and Pope Innocent employed the penitents in putting an end to
the heresy of the Albigenses. The destroyers of heretics and of infidels
were alike praiseworthy; and a crusade into the south of France was
less dangerous than a voyage to Syria. From these various causes the
Mussulmans in Asia were forgotten or disregarded.[69] As peace had been
refused, Saphedin marched an army to the country round Tripolis. The king
displayed his valour in many a fierce encounter; and though he never
conquered his foes, yet he broke the impression of the enemy, and saved
his states from utter annihilation. He foresaw the approaching ruin of
the holy cause; every day the Saracens made some acquisition; and the
Latin barons, by every opportunity, and for every pretext, returned to
Europe. He wrote, therefore, to the pope that the kingdom of Jerusalem
consisted only of two or three towns, and that the civil wars between
the sons of Saladin alone suspended its fate.

[Sidenote: [1215-1217 A.D.]]

Every project of ambition which the daring genius of Gregory VII had
formed was embraced by the ardent spirit of Innocent III. In raising
a fabric of ecclesiastical policy on the ruins of gospel liberty, the
importance of guiding the military arm of Europe was not lost sight
of. The commands of the Vatican were hurled upon every part of Europe,
calling men to exterminate infidelity. The protection of St. Peter was
promised to the families and fortunes of the pilgrims. They who had bound
themselves to pay usury were released from their oaths; and secular
power should compel the Jews to remit their claims. The indulgences were
revoked which had been granted to those who quitted their homes in order
to exterminate heresy in Provence, and infidelity in Spain.

Among those who most loudly and successfully pleaded the cause
of religion was Robert de Courçon; a man inferior in talents and
consideration to St. Bernard, but whose fanaticism was as fervent as that
of Peter and Fulk. By parentage and birth he was an Englishman; but he
had been educated in the university of Paris, and in that famous seat of
learning had lived as a friend with a fellow student, who afterwards sat
in the papal chair, under the title of Pope Innocent III. The associate
of his holiness was promoted to various dignities in the church; his
talents for business were employed by Innocent in clerical embassies,
and his abilities as a public orator were matured under the care of Fulk
de Neuilly. He was the papal legate in France, and after having appeased
the foreign and internal distractions of that kingdom, he quitted Paris
in 1215, descended by the way of Burgundy to the southern provinces,
left no quarter of the south unvisited; and then, after having traversed
with speed and success the western provinces, the saint-errant returned
to the capital. Twenty years before he had preached the same theme to
the same people, as the humble assistant of Fulk. Clad in the Roman
purple, and armed with the authority of the vicar of Jesus Christ, the
cardinal gave every possible dignity to the office of missionary. But
his prudence kept not pace with his zeal, for, like Peter the Hermit,
he admitted everyone to take the cross. Women, children, the old, the
blind, the lame, the lepers, all were enrolled in the sacred militia. The
multitude of the crusaders was innumerable, and the voluntary offerings
of money which was put into the charitable boxes in the churches were
immense. Philip Augustus contributed the fortieth part of his revenues;
and it is singular that this money was to be employed for purposes of
the holy war, agreeably to the directions of the kings and barons of
France and England. But the alms of the people of France were not applied
exclusively to sacred purposes. Robert de Courçon was openly convicted of
peculation, and his papal friend was obliged to remit his own dignity,
and intercede with the French prelates, in order to save the legate from
punishment.

The pope, treading in the steps of his predecessors, convoked a general
council for the purpose of chastising vice, condemning heresy, and of
inducing the princes and people to undertake the sacred expedition. In
the month of November, 1215, the religious and political authorities
assembled in the church of the Lateran, and the greatness of their
number, and their exalted rank, testify the zealous preaching of the
pope’s legates. All the clergy (except those who were crusaders) were
for three years to contribute the twentieth part of their ecclesiastical
revenues; tournaments during the three years of the crusade were
forbidden, lest the representation of war should draw men’s attention
from war itself. Civil dissensions were to be suspended, and peace was
to reign in the Christian world during all the time of the holy contest.

The necessity of extirpating heresy, and quelling rebellion in the south
of France, was the pretence of the French king for not embracing the
crusade. The emperor Frederick II remained to establish his authority
in Apulia and Sicily, and to advance the favourite project of himself
and family, and of making Italy the seat of the empire of the West.[70]
The Hungarians who had been the scourge of the first crusaders, took
the lead on this occasion. Their king, Andrew, incited by the example
of his mother Margaret, the wish of his father, and certain political
considerations, made a vow to march to Jerusalem. The dukes of Austria
and Bavaria, and indeed all the ecclesiastical and secular potentates of
lower Germany, joined their forces to those of the monarch. The united
army marched to Spalato. The ships of Venice, and other ports of the
Adriatic, transported them to Cyprus; and after having enjoyed for a
while the pleasures of an island consecrated to Venus, the holy warriors
sailed for and arrived at Acre, in company with fresh crowds of crusaders
from Marseilles, Genoa, and Brundusium. The Mussulman powers were
astonished at, and unprovided for this sudden and large reinforcement of
the Latins. The sons of Saphedin were the lords of Syria, while Saphedin
himself, retired from the constant toils of royalty, was contented with
the respect of the army and people in times of difficulty and danger.
The Saracens pressed to the country about Nablus, but not in sufficient
numbers to meet the new crusaders, who ravaged the country and slew
thousands of their foes. But they did not confine their cruelties to
the infidels. The soil of Palestine, in the year in which the present
crusaders landed, had been less productive than in most seasons; the
soldiers had carried thither no provisions, and when not engaged in
distant excursions into the enemy’s territories, they took the shorter
course of robbing the private and religious houses of the Latins and
Syrians.

[Illustration: A KNIGHT’S ESQUIRE, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1217-1219 A.D.]]

Pious exercises, however, re-established order. The ecclesiastical chief
of the Latin Christians led the army in religious procession across the
river of Kishon, to the valley of Jezreel. They bathed in the Jordan,
made their pilgrimage to the Lake of Gennesaret, observed with devout
awe the scenes of various miracles performed by Christ, and returned to
Acre. But they soon repaired their wasted strength, and trod with holy
reverence the road to the scene of the transfiguration. The ascent to
Mount Tabor, however, was difficult; and the summit was defended by a
strongly garrisoned tower. Attached as much to pilgrimages as to war,
the crusaders went in holy order to Tyre and Sidon; but the inclemency of
the season drove them into disorder, and the Saracens made dreadful havoc
on their divided parties. The Christians separated for the remainder of
the winter. The kings of Cyprus and Hungary repaired to Tripolis; and
if the people were grieved at the death of the former of these princes,
their feelings were quickly changed into indignation against the latter.
Neither the entreaties nor the threats of the clergy could persuade the
unstable Andrew to remain in Palestine. Taking with him most of his
soldiers and stores, he traversed Armenia and the Greek Empire, and at
last returned to his kingdom, which had been so deeply exhausted by this
expensive expedition, that it did not for years recover its pristine
strength.

The king of Jerusalem, the duke of Austria, and the master of the
Hospitallers, took up a strong position on the plains of Cæsarea. The
Templars, the Teutonic knights, and Walter d’Avesnes, occupied Mount
Carmel, and their station was defended by a tower which the Templars
had formerly erected, for the defence and protection of the Jerusalem
pilgrims. In the spring of the following year they were joined by new
and zealous crusaders from the north of Germany. Cologne had been the
rendezvous, and nearly three hundred vessels sailed from the Rhine. Many
of the ships were wrecked by the violence of the autumnal winds, and the
remainder anchored off the Portuguese shore. By the aid of the Germans,
the queen of Portugal took Alcacer from the Moors. Conscience and valour
would be equally satisfied by the slaughter of Saracens, in whatever
country they might be. As soon as the Cologne reinforcements arrived, the
chiefs assembled in council, and it was agreed that siege should be laid
to Damietta, which was looked upon as the key of Egypt. A voyage of a few
days brought the Christian army within sight of Damietta. The catapults
and ballistæ shook the walls of the citadel to their foundations, and the
garrison was happy in surrendering to the discretion of the besiegers.

Before the joy of the Christians had subsided, news arrived of the death
of Saphedin. The power of his house had lately been strengthened by the
death of the sultan of Mosul, the last great supporter of the name of the
atabegs. But Saphedin did not live to complete the addition of all Mosul
to his empire of Damascus and Egypt. The brother of Saladin has been
variously represented, according to the different feelings with which he
was regarded. But the crusaders had such a limited knowledge of oriental
affairs, that their invectives cannot be opposed to the reputation which
he acquired for virtue and ability. His second son, Coradin, the prince
of Syria and Palestine, did not proclaim the death of his father till he
had secured himself in the possession of the royal coffers. Discord and
rebellion were universal throughout Egypt, when the news arrived of the
death of Saphedin; and his son Kamil, lord of that country, was compelled
to fly into Arabia for protection from his mutinous people.

After the surrender of the castle of Damietta, the acquisition of the
city appeared so easy an achievement, that the besieging army sunk into
inertness and dissoluteness. The sultan of Syria had anticipated the
fall of Damietta, the sultan of Egypt despaired of its defence, and no
wisdom could calculate the magnitude of the effects which its capture
might produce. Prudence suggested the policy of negotiation, and the
Latins were therefore offered the piece of the true cross, the city of
Jerusalem, and all the prisoners in Syria and Egypt. The Mussulmans
were to rebuild the walls of the sacred city. Of the whole kingdom
of Palestine they only proposed to retain the castles of Karak and
Montreal, as necessary for the safe passage of the Meccan pilgrims and
merchants. The evacuation of Egypt was the equivalent expected from the
Christians for these important concessions.

[Sidenote: [1219-1220 A.D.]]

All the legitimate consequences of the Crusades were at the command of
the soldiers of the cross. The king, the French, the earl of Chester,
and the Teutonic knights hailed with joy the prospect of the termination
of the war. But the legate, the bishops, the Italians, the Templars,
and Hospitallers were deaf to counsels of moderation. They contended
that no faith could be reposed upon the promises of infidels, unless
peace was made at the point of a victorious sword. The siege had already
lasted seventeen months, and it would be disgraceful to fly from the
fair prospect of success. Unhappily for the general interests of the
Christian cause, the mild suggestions of policy were disregarded amidst
the clamours of thoughtless valour. Hostilities were recommenced. The
besiegers interrupted all communication between the Egyptian army and the
garrison of Damietta. Resistance was fruitless, but the Mussulmans were
too brave and too proud to surrender. The legate and the king assaulted
the walls, and soon entered the city, with the same ruthless feelings
as had maddened the early crusaders, when they first leaped on the
battlements of Jerusalem.

But revenge sought its victims in vain. Damietta was one vast
charnel-house. Of a population, which at the beginning of the siege
consisted of more than seventy thousand souls, three thousand only were
the relics. The conquerors marched through a pestilential vapour. The
streets, the mosques, and the houses were strewn with dead bodies. From
scenes of death the Christians turned to plunder. Damietta was as rich a
city as any in Islam, and the terrible anathemas of the legate could not
prevent self-appropriation of spoil. Dominion over the place was given to
the king of Jerusalem. The splendid mosque was converted into a Christian
church, and dedicated to the Virgin and all the apostles. But the
soldiers were soon compelled to return to the camp, for pestilence was
in the city. Life and liberty were granted to the surviving Mussulmans,
on their performing the horrid and melancholy task of cleansing the city
from the remains of their relations and friends.

So great was the terror which the loss of Damietta spread among the
Mussulmans, that the fortress of Tanis surrendered. By this acquisition,
the way into Palestine was open. But instead of urging their advantages,
the army passed the winter in luxury and in discord, and in the spring
more than half of the soldiers returned to Europe. The power of the
legate was supreme, and the king of Jerusalem retired in disgust to Acre.
The duke of Bavaria, and many knights from Germany and Italy, arrived,
as soon as the weather would permit the passage; but they disdained
to submit to the command of a bishop, and Pelagius was compelled to
solicit with humility the return of the king. Jean de Brienne repaired to
Damietta, and a council was held on the subject of hostile operations.
The conquest of Egypt was resolved upon, and the army marched by the
eastern side of the Fatimite branch of the Nile, till their progress was
arrested by the canal of Ashmun. On the southern side of that canal the
Mussulman forces were posted. Every sultan of Syria had sent assistance
to their brother in the faith, and the allied troops under Kamil could
cope with the Latins in the field.

The sultan, however, would not trust his kingdom to the caprice of
fortune. He offered peace to the Christians on nearly the same terms
as those which had been proposed previously to the last assault on
Damietta. The legate refused with indignation these noble offers; but
instead of crossing the canal and giving the enemy battle, he remained
for more than a month inactive on his post expecting the unconditional
surrender of the sultan. During this time the Nile had rapidly increased
in height. The Mussulmans opened the sluices and inundated their enemy’s
camp. The Christians could neither advance nor retreat; and, to use the
humble simile of a Templar, they were enclosed like a fish in a net. When
the overflowings of the Nile had swept away all the tents and baggage,
Pelagius sent an embassy to the Mussulman camp, imploring a safe return
to Acre, and offering to surrender Damietta and Tanis to the Mussulmans.
The distress of the Christian army was mitigated by the humanity of
Kamil. The king of Jerusalem was one of the hostages, and in an interview
with the sultan, he wept for the miserable state of his army. “Why do you
weep?” inquired the sultan. “I have reason to weep,” replied the king,
“for the people whom God has given into my charge, are perishing in the
midst of the waters, or dying of hunger.” The sultan shed tears of pity,
and opened the Egyptian granaries for their relief. When, after eight
months’ possession by the Latins, Damietta was delivered into the power
of the Mussulmans, the hostages were exchanged, and the Christian army
retreated to the seacoast, through the road by which they had advanced in
full confidence of victory. The barons of Syria, and the military orders,
retired to Acre; and the volunteers returned to Europe.

[Sidenote: [1220-1227 A.D.]]

The pope cast all the odium on the emperor Frederick, a man who had
thrice sworn to redeem the Holy Land, and had compromised with his
conscience by merely sending soldiers and provisions. Frederick despised
the thunders of the Vatican; but although he was not awed by force, he
could not resist papal artifice. Honorius soothed his irritated mind, and
received him again as a faithful son of the church. Hermann von Salza,
master of the Teutonic order, returned to Europe, and gave the emperor
the hope of being the redeemer of Palestine. Yolande, the daughter of
the king of Jerusalem, could easily be obtained in marriage, and her
father would cede his rights, which he was wearied of endeavouring to
convert into an actual and firm dominion. The emperor and the pope
approved of this project. Frederick accepted from the king of Jerusalem a
renunciation of all his claims to the Holy Land, as the dowry of Yolande;
and he pledged his honour to the pope, the cardinals, and the masters of
the Hospitallers and Teutonic knights, that he would within two years
travel with a powerful army into the East, and re-establish the throne
of Godfrey de Bouillon. For the succeeding five years, rebellions in
Italy, and the insurrections of the Saracens in Sicily, detained the
emperor from his purpose. Honorius did not live to witness the event of
his exertions, but his successor, Gregory IX, was equally furious in the
cause.

At the time appointed for the sailing of the expedition, Brundusium
and its vicinity were crowded with soldiers. But the heats of summer
destroyed the health of the people of the north; thousands died, and
of those who endeavoured to return to their homes, the greatest part
perished through poverty or disease. Although the emperor did not escape
the common illness, yet he embarked at Brundusium. But after sailing
for three days, additional infirmity compelled him to return. Gregory
inherited the papal virtues of violence and ambition; he pronounced a
sentence of excommunication against the emperor, for declining to combat
the enemy of God.[71]

[Sidenote: [1227-1229 A.D.]]

The thunders of the Vatican rolled again and again over the head of
the emperor, but the author of them suffered more than the object. The
emperor sent troops into the papal territories, who ravaged the march
of Ancona, and the patrimony of St. Peter. Such of the Hospitallers and
Templars (the firm friends of the pope) as had estates in the imperial
dominions in Italy, were plundered and dispossessed.[72] The emperor
heavily taxed his subjects, both churchmen and laity, for the expenses
of the holy war. In defiance of Gregory’s warnings against his entering
on the crusade, till he should be relieved from the censures of the
church, Frederick embarked at Brundusium in August, 1228, and arrived
shortly afterwards at Acre. The joy of the Christians at the arrival of
the emperor was soon checked by letters which the patriarch received
from the pope, prohibiting the faithful from obeying a rebellious son
of the church. The Teutonic knights feared no clerical censures; and at
their head, and of some other soldiers, the emperor quitted Acre, went to
Joppa, and repaired the fortifications of that important city. He then
made further advances towards Jerusalem.

While matters were in this state, news was brought to the emperor of
an effectual method which the pope had taken of preventing him from
continuing the war in Palestine with the enemies of Christ. The pope’s
troops, of whom Jean de Brienne (the father-in-law of Frederick) was
one of the chief commanders, burned the imperial towns in Italy,
imprisoned, tortured, and robbed the people. The duke of Spalato, the
emperor’s lieutenant, had been unable successfully to resist, though
the imperial army had been but little impaired by Frederick’s foreign
expedition. These circumstances made the emperor anxious to return to
Europe; a treaty was immediately signed. For ten years the Christians
and Mussulmans were to live upon terms of brotherhood. Jerusalem,
Joppa, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and their appendages, were restored to the
Christians. The Holy Sepulchre likewise was given to them; and the people
of both religions might offer up their prayers in the place of devotion,
which the former class called the temple of Solomon, and the latter named
the mosque of Omar. The address of Frederick more effectually promoted
the object of the holy wars than the heroic frenzy of Richard; many of
the disasters consequent on the battle of Tiberias were wiped away, and
the serious and habitual hopes of Europe, for a permanent settlement
in Asia, seemed to be realised. But the barons of the Holy Land,
breathing interminable war, and secretly envying superior genius, avowed
indignation that a Christian sovereign should accept the friendship of
the infidels. The patriarch and clergy hated an excommunicated prince;
a man too who had given licence to the Saracens to adore their God
in a Christian temple. With some appearance of reason, however, they
contended that the treaty was not binding on the Mussulmans while the
approbation of the sultan of Damascus was withheld. But, despising the
blood-thirstiness of the barons, and the cruel bigotry of the priests,
Frederick asserted his royal prerogatives; and, as he had acquired some
of the old possessions of the Bouillon family, he avowed his intention
of having the crown placed upon his head in the Holy City agreeably to
constitutional forms.

Some persons, discontented with the conditions of the treaty, wished
to betray him into the hands of the sultan of Egypt. The guilt of this
treachery lies between the Hospitallers and the Templars. Kamil read
the letter which conveyed to him the news, exclaimed to his associates,
“See the fidelity of these Christian dogs”; and despatched a friend to
Frederick with the paper which he had received. The emperor repaired to
Jerusalem; but no hosannas welcomed his approach. By the command of the
patriarch no religious ceremonies were performed in the churches during
his stay. Even the German prelates preferred their spiritual to their
temporal allegiance; and the emperor, accompanied only by his courtiers
and the Teutonic knights, went to the church of the sepulchre. He boldly
took the crown from the altar, and placed it on his own head, and Hermann
von Salza pronounced a laudatory oration. Orders were then given for the
restoration of the city’s walls, and the emperor returned to Acre. In
that city too there was every demonstration of sorrow at his appearance.
Mass was performed in secret; the churches were deprived of their
ornaments; the bells were not rung, and the dead were interred without
any religious ceremony. But by some well-measured acts of severity, a
semblance of respect was at length shown to the emperor; and he then
returned to Europe, leaving the priests and people to thank Heaven for
his departure.

Few parts of the Crusades are more difficult to understand, and to reduce
into a clear and intelligible form, than the expedition of Frederick. He
was vilified by the Templars and Hospitallers, and other friends of the
pope; and their narratives of events are more numerous than those of the
imperial party. He gained more for the Christians than any prince had
acquired since the first establishment of the kingdom; and if the pope
had not hated him worse than his holiness hated the Saracens, and thereby
caused his return to Europe, there is every probability that after the
death of the sultan of Damascus, the emperor would have brought matters
to an issue completely triumphant. Gregory IX and his clergy had the
effrontery to tell the world that Frederick had left the sepulchre of
Christ in the hands of the infidels. But the fact was that it was given
to the Christians. The temple of Solomon indeed, or rather the mosque of
Omar, was left in the hands of the Mussulmans; a right of visiting it,
however, being allowed to the Christians.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[68] [It will be well to refer back to the earlier account of the sack
of Constantinople in Vol. 7, Chap. 11, p. 352. It is noteworthy how much
more atrocious was the barbarity of the crusaders to these their own
people, than was that of the Moslems themselves when they took the same
city in 1453.]

[69] According to Fuller’s[f] _Holy War_, “Pope Innocent III, having
lately learned the trick of employing the army of pilgrims in
bye-services, began now to set up a trade thereof. He levied a great
number of crusaders, whom he sent against the Albigenses in France.
These were reputed heretics, whom his holiness intended to root out
with all cruelty, that good shepherd knowing no other way to bring home
a wandering sheep than by worrying him to death. He freely and fully
promised the undertakers the self-same pardons and indulgences as he
did to those who went to conquer the Holy Land; and very conscionably
requested their aid only for forty days, hoping to chop up these
Albigenses at a bit. The place being nearer, the service shorter, the
work less, the wages the same with the voyage into Syria, many entered
themselves in this employment, and neglected the other.”

[70] The pope and emperor were struggling for supremacy, and the cunning
pontiff thought he could get rid of his rival by commanding him to take
the cross; and such was the state of the times that Frederick would not
have been considered a Christian if he had refused. Voltaire is right
in saying, “_L’empereur fit le vœu par politique; et par politique il
différa le voyage_.” _Essai sur les Mœurs des Nations_, Chap. 52.

[71] A curé at Paris, instead of reading the bull from the pulpit in the
usual form, said to his parishioners, “You know, my brethren, that I am
ordered to fulminate an excommunication against Frederick. I know not the
motive. All that I know, is, that there has been a quarrel between that
prince and the pope. God alone knows who is right. I excommunicate him
who has injured the other; and I absolve the sufferer.” The emperor sent
a present to the preacher, but the pope and the king blamed this sally;
_le mauvais plaisant_ was obliged to expiate his fault by a canonical
penance.

[72] The soldiers employed on these occasions were Saracens, subjects of
the emperor in Sicily. Like their master, they derided the papal bulls.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI. THE LAST CRUSADES

The poet, As-Sahib Jemal ad-Din ben Matrub made the following
verses on the failure of Saint Louis’ Crusade, his capture and
ransom:

“Bear to the king of France, when you shall see him, these
words, traced by a partisan of truth: The death of the servants
of the Messiah has been the reward given to you by God.

“You have landed in Egypt, thinking to take possession of it.
You have imagined that it was only peopled with cowards! you
who are a drum filled with wind.

“You thought that the moment to destroy the Mussulmans was
arrived; and this false idea has smoothed, in your eyes, every
difficulty.

“By your excellent conduct, you have abandoned your soldiers on
the plains of Egypt, and the tomb has gaped under their feet.

“What now remains of the seventy thousand who accompanied you?
Dead, wounded, and prisoners!

“May God inspire you often with similar designs! They will
cause the ruin of all Christians, and Egypt will have no longer
to dread anything from their rage.

“Without doubt your priests announced victories to you; their
predictions were false.

“Refer yourselves to a more enlightened oracle.

“Should the desire of revenge urge you to return to Egypt, be
assured the house of Lokman still remains, that the chain is
ready prepared, and the eunuch guard awake.”

[Sidenote: [1239-1314 A.D.]]

The council of Spoleto decreed that fresh levies should be sent into
Asia on the expiration of the truce with Kamil. The Franciscans and
Dominicans were the bearers of the resolutions to the princes and people
of Christendom. But it was soon apparent that the recovery of the Holy
Land was not the paramount consideration in the mind of Gregory IX, for
the preaching of the crusade once more became the means of filling the
papal coffers. By the different engines of persuasion and compulsion, the
missionaries gained numberless converts, and then allowed the unwilling,
and compelled the wealthy crusaders to give the church great largesses
in exchange for the vow. The once humble friars grew so rich by these
exactions, that their pride and magnificence were detestable in the
eyes of the people. These disgraceful scenes were acted in England for
two years; but the indignation of society at the avarice of the pope
was so strong, that the preaching ceased. Some of the English nobility
were inflamed by the love of warlike praise, and took the cross with no
intention of submitting to a pecuniary commutation. The earl of Chester,
and also Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother to King Henry II, prepared to
measure lances with the Saracens.

RICHARD OF CORNWALL’S CRUSADE (THE SEVENTH)

[Sidenote: [1236-1240 A.D.]]

The desire of crusading was influenced by events in Palestine. A truce
between the sultan of Aleppo and the Templars expired with the life of
the Mussulman prince; and when his successor renewed the war with them,
they sustained so severe a defeat, that every commandery in Europe
sent them succours; and even the Hospitallers resolved to avenge the
death of their rivals. Three hundred knights and a considerable body of
stipendiaries went from London.

The spirit of crusading burned in France, particularly in the middle
and southern provinces; and many barons assembled at Lyons in order to
concert the means of giving effect to their common desire. But a legate
of the pope interrupted their councils with announcing the commands of
his master for the dissolving of the assembly, and the return of the
members to their homes. The barons remonstrated against this versatility
of opinion in an infallible guide. The nuncio was contumeliously
dismissed. Most of the nobility pressed forwards to Marseilles, and
hoisted sail for the Holy Land. Indignant at their contempt of his
wishes, the emperor prohibited the governors of Apulia and other
countries from affording aid to the crusaders. This measure prevented
many parties of cavaliers from pursuing the voyage; but it did not impede
those fanatical and romantic warriors, the king of Navarre, the duke
of Burgundy, and the counts of Bar and Brittany, from continuing their
course to Acre.

News of the warlike preparations of Europe had been communicated to
the sultan of Egypt; and the first moment when the faith of treaties
opposed not a hostile course, he drove the Latins out of Jerusalem, and
overthrew the tower of David, which, until that time, had always been
regarded as sacred by all classes of religionists. After this capture
Kamil died; various princes of Syria and Egypt asserted their pretensions
to the vacant throne; but the military spirit was too active among the
Mussulmans, to allow the Christians rationally to hope that they should
eventually profit by these dissensions. The war began by a successful
irruption of the count of Brittany into the Damascene territories. But in
the vicinity of Gaza three hundred Frenchmen, who wished to imitate the
glory of the cavaliers of Brittany, were defeated by a smaller number of
Turks.

[Sidenote: [1240-1244 A.D.]]

The pope renewed his endeavours to persuade the English to commute their
piety for gold, but his ministers, the Franciscans and Dominicans, were
treated only with contempt; and in the spring of the year 1240, Richard,
earl of Cornwall, William Longespee or Longsword, Theodore, the prior of
the Hospitallers, and many others of the nobility, embarked at Dover.
The arrival of Richard and the other barons at Acre, took place shortly
after the signature of the discordant treaties between the Templars
and the emir of Karak, and the Hospitallers with the sultan of Egypt.
The English were astonished to find that the king of Navarre and the
count of Brittany had fled from the plains of Syria, when they received
intelligence of the departure of reinforcements from Europe. The emir of
Karak, too, could not fulfil his treaty, or even restore to the Templars
the prisoners which had been made in the battle of Gaza. Richard marched
to Joppa, but as the sultan of Egypt (then at war with the sultan of
Damascus) sent to offer him terms of peace, he prudently seized the
benefits of negotiation. With the consent of the duke of Burgundy, the
master of the Hospitallers, and other lords of high degree, he accepted
a renunciation of Jerusalem, Berytus, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Mount Tabor,
and most of the Holy Land. An exchange of prisoners was to cement the
union. The great object of the crusaders seemed now to be accomplished.
Palestine belonged to the Christians. Richard returned to Europe, and
was received in every town as the deliverer of the Holy Sepulchre. From
neglect or inability he had not induced the Templars to consent to his
completion of the hopes of the West; and in spleen and revenge the
cavaliers renewed those unfraternal altercations with other knights which
had hastened the ruin of the kingdom in the time of Saladin (1241).

The Hospitallers opened their treasury for the re-edification of the
walls of Jerusalem. The patriarch and clergy entered the sacred city,
and reconsecrated the churches. For two years Christianity was the only
religion administered in Jerusalem, and the faithful began to exult in
the apparent permanent downfall of infidelity, when a new enemy arose
more dreadful than even the Mussulmans.

THE TATAR CREVASSE

[Sidenote: [1244 A.D.]]

The great Tatarian princes, Jenghiz Khan and his successors, had
obliterated the vast empire of Khwarizm; and the expelled and defeated
Tatars fled to the south. The storm rolled on towards Egypt, the
Khwarizmians demanded a settlement; the sultan was the only Moslem prince
who entered into treaties with those barbarians; and he advised them to
fix themselves in Palestine. He sent one of his principal emirs, and a
large body of troops as their guides and coadjutors, and at the head of
twenty thousand horse, Barbacan, the Khwarizmian general entered the Holy
Land. The Christians in Jerusalem heard with dismay that the Tatarian
tempest had reached their territories. It was evident from the ruined
state of the walls that Jerusalem was no longer tenable. The cavaliers,
and many of the inhabitants, abandoned the sacred city.

The Khwarizmians entered it, spared neither lives nor property, and
violated both Christian and Mussulman sanctuaries. In the wantonness of
cruelty they disinterred the departed great, and made a cremation of
venerable remains. The insulting fanatics of savageness murdered priests
round the altars, exclaiming while they stabbed the holy men, “Let us
pour their blood on the place where they poured out wine in commemoration
of their crucified God.” As crafty as ferocious, they planted a banner
of the cross upon the walls, and, deceived by this joyful appearance,
several thousands of the fugitives returned to the city, but only to
partake of the miserable doom of their friends.

The repeated solicitations of the Templars at length brought four
thousand soldiers from their Syrian allies. The united Christian and
Mussulman forces were so far inferior to the Tatars, that policy required
a course of measures perfectly defensive. But the fury of the patriarch
precipitated the army into the gulf of destruction. The awful conflict
raged for two days. The soldiers of Damascus and Emesa were soon slain,
or scattered. The loss of every part of the army was great, almost beyond
example. Only sixteen Hospitallers, thirty-three Templars, and three
Teutonic cavaliers remained alive and free. These soldiers fled to Acre,
and that city became the refuge of the Christians. After having razed the
fortifications of Askalon, and the castle of Tiberias, the Khwarizmians
and Egyptians encamped on the plains of Acre, devastated the country, and
slew or led into captivity all straggling Franks.

A united force of Khwarizmians and mamelukes conquered Damascus,
and Europe heard with dismay that the Mussulman power was again
consolidating. But the members soon were separated, for the sultan of
Egypt, faithless as cruel, denied his allies a permanent settlement on
the shores of the Nile. The soldiers of fortune flew to the banner of
the Damascene prince, and assisted him in his efforts to recover his
capital. But the cause of the mamelukes was felt as the common interest
of the Moslem world, and all Syria, as well as all Egypt, was in arms in
order to exterminate the northern barbarians. In a general engagement
the Khwarizmians were defeated and scattered. Barbacan was slain, and
southern Asia recovered from its panic and distress.

THE CRUSADE OF ST. LOUIS (THE EIGHTH)

[Illustration: A TATAR]

The superstition of a French king, and the successes of the savage
Khwarizmians, gave birth to the Eighth Crusade. Pope Innocent IV
convoked a general council at Lyons; the Bishop of Berytus described
the effects of the Tatarian storm, and left his ecclesiastical brethren
to conclude, whether one effort should not be made for a restoration of
things to the state in which Richard, earl of Cornwall, had left them.
It was accordingly resolved that a crusade should be preached throughout
Christendom, and that for four years peace and seriousness should reign
over Europe. Such of the faithful as did not expose their persons in
the holy cause were to give the subsidiary aid of treasure; and the
contribution to be made by the cardinals was fixed at a tenth, and that
of the other ecclesiastics at a twentieth part of their yearly revenues.

The pope wrote to Henry III, king of England, urging him to press on his
subjects the necessity of punishing the Khwarizmians. But the spirit of
crusading raged more strongly in France than in any other country of the
West; and it revived in all its fierceness of piety and chivalry in Louis
IX. Agreeably to the temper of the times, he had vowed, whilst afflicted
by a severe illness, that in case of recovery he would travel to the Holy
Land. In the delirium of his fever, he had beheld an engagement between
the Christians and the Saracens; the infidels were victorious, and the
brave king of a valiant nation fancied it his duty to avenge the defeat.
The victories of the Khwarizmians were a realisation of part of his
dream, and his preparations had anticipated the decrees of the Lyonese
council. This vow was made about the year 1244, according to Nangis and
Chronicle of St. Denis, cited in Du Cange’s notes. From the moment of his
resolving to go to the Holy Land, St. Louis quitted all pomp of dress; he
exchanged his purple for black, a royal for a religious habit. During the
crusade he abstained from wearing scarlet, vair, or ermine. The example
of the monarch gave efficacy to the laws regarding simplicity of dress,
and the lord of Joinville assures us, that, during the whole time he was
attending the king on his crusade, he never once saw an embroidered coat
of arms. The French barons, however, when resident in Damietta, were less
rigid in morality than in dress. The cross was likewise taken by the
three royal brothers, the counts of Artois, Poitiers, and Anjou, by the
duke of Burgundy, the countess of Flanders, and her two sons, the count
of St. Paul, and many other knights.

Sentiments of respect for the king of France were not felt in his country
alone; the people of England revered his name, and avowedly in imitation
of his example, the bishop of Salisbury, William Longespee, Walter de
Lucy, and many other English nobles and gentlemen were crossed. William
Longespee was, or feigned himself, poor, and went to Rome to solicit
the aid of the pope. He returned to England, and extorted more than a
thousand marks from the religious, while the less scrupulous or more
powerful earl of Cornwall was insatiable in his avarice, and gained
from one archdeacon alone, six hundred pounds. Political circumstances
detained St. Louis in France for three years; but the money and troops
which he sent to the Holy Land invigorated the hopes of the Latin
Christians. The ranks of the military orders were recruited by hired
troops and regular knights from the different stations in Europe.

On the 12th of June, 1248, Louis, attended by his three brothers,
went to the abbey of St. Denis, and received from the pope’s legate
the oriflamme, the alms’ purse, and pilgrim’s staff. He sailed from
France at the end of August, and arrived in September at Cyprus, the
appointed rendezvous for his barons and their vassals. The king remained
eight months in Cyprus, employed in organising his troops, in works of
piety, and particularly in healing the breaches in charity between the
military orders. The Venetians and other people assisted the French
with provisions; on one occasion the supplies of the emperor Frederick
preserved the army, and the grateful king implored the pope to absolve
a man who had been benevolent to the soldiers of the church. The
ambassadors of a Tatarian prince appeared before Louis, offering their
master’s aid to root the Saracens and pagans out of the Holy Land.
The king sent a magnificent present to his ally, in order to bribe
him to become a Christian. Two black monks, who understood the Arabic
language, were charged with the missionary office, and their eloquence
and embroidered representation of some of the mysteries of Christianity
were to effect the conversion of the Scythian savage and his court. In
the spring of the year 1249, the soldiers of Louis were mustered, and his
ships prepared for sea; fifty thousand men formed his military force,
and eighteen hundred was the number of his transports, palendars, and
store ships. They set sail for Egypt; a storm separated the fleet, and
the royal division, in which were nearly three thousand knights and their
men-at-arms, arrived off Damietta.

[Sidenote: [1249 A.D.]]

The shores were lined by the sultan’s troops, who astonished the French
by the clangour of trumpets and brazen drums. The heralds of the king of
France instantly went to the sultan, Nejm ad-Din (a son of Kamil), near
Ashmun, and spared no language of exaggeration in describing the power of
their master. The only way to avoid the tempest was to receive priests
who would teach the Christian religion to the people of Egypt:[73]
otherwise he would pursue them everywhere, and God should decide to whom
the country should be given. The sultan replied that he also knew the
use of arms, and like the French, inherited valour. The cause of the
Mussulmans was that of justice; and the _Koran_ declared, that they who
made war unjustly should perish.

Some of the knights wished to dissuade the king from landing, till the
appearance of their brethren in arms; but on the second day after their
arrival, Louis commanded the disembarkation; he himself leaped into the
water; his shield was suspended from his neck, his helmet was on his
head, and his lance on his wrist. His soldiers followed him to the shore;
and the Saracens, panic-struck at their boldness and determination,
made but a slight show of defence, and fled into the interior of the
country. Although Damietta was better prepared for a siege than in those
days when it had sustained an attack of eighteen months’ duration, yet
the garrison sought safety in the fleetness of their horses. They were
received at Cairo with the indignation which their cowardice merited; and
the sultan (who had repaired thither from Ashmun) strangled fifty of the
chiefs. The people of Damietta loaded themselves with their most valuable
effects, set fire to the part of the city in which their merchandise
and plunder were collected, and then took flight for Cairo. Louis fixed
his residence in the city; a Christian government was established; and
the clergy, agreeably to old custom, purified the mosques. According to
ancient usage, one-third part of the spoil should have been allotted to
the general-in-chief, and the remaining portions had been usually divided
among the pilgrims; but, at the suggestion of the patriarch of Jerusalem,
Louis ordered that the corn and provisions should form a magazine for the
common benefit of the army; and he retained to himself the rest of the
movable booty.

Neither the religious character of the war, nor the importance of
preserving military discipline, had any effect on the conduct of the
holy warriors. So general was the immorality, that the king could
not stop the foul and noxious torrent. The hope of the reward of a
piece of gold for an enemy’s head, inspirited the Mussulmans to many
enterprises of difficulty and danger; but Louis prevented at length their
incursions into his camp, for he surrounded it with deep ditches, and
his cross-bowmen galled the approaching parties of Mussulman cavalry.
The French looked with impatience for the count of Poitiers and the
arrière-ban of France, the remainder of the force which had sailed from
Cyprus, and had been driven to Acre in the tempest. In October 1249 the
count of Poitiers reached Egypt. The French also were joined by two
hundred English knights.

THE BATTLE OF MANSURA

[Sidenote: [1250 A.D.]]

At the close of November, the army commenced its march to the capital of
Egypt. Until their approach to the vicinity of Mansura, they overcame the
open and insidious enmity of the Saracens. Soon after his departure from
Damietta, the king accepted the proffered aid of five hundred horsemen
of the sultan, and commanded his army to respect their guides. Vainly
thinking that this order was inflexible to circumstances, the Saracens
attacked the Templars, who formed the van of the army. But the valiant
knights rallied round their grand master, and invoking God to aid them
in this perilous conjuncture, they rushed upon and destroyed their
treacherous foes. Fakhr ad-Din, the Egyptian emir, and his army were
encamped on the opposite side of the Ashmun canal, which the French in
vain endeavoured to cross. They commenced a causeway over the canal; but
the Saracens ruined in a day the work of a month; and even crossed the
Nile by one of the passages which were familiar to them and gave battle
to the enemy.[b]

It is so hard for the layman to get a true idea of the chaos and
disintegrated nature of a battle, that a realistic account of how St.
Louis fought the Saracens is well worth quoting, especially from the pen
of the lord of Joinville whose sword was busy in these very scenes.[a]

DE JOINVILLE’S ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF MANSURA

A Bedouin had lately come to say that if we would give him five hundred
golden besants, he would show a safe ford, which might easily be crossed
on horseback. The day appointed for this purpose was Shrove-Tuesday,
which, when arrived, we all mounted our horses, and armed at all points,
followed the Bedouin to the ford. On our way thither, some advanced too
near the banks of the river, which being soft and slippery, they and
their horses fell in and were drowned. The king seeing it, pointed it out
to the rest, that they might be more careful and avoid similar danger.
Among those that were drowned was that valiant knight Sir John d’Orleans,
who bore the banner of the army. When we came to the ford, we saw on the
opposite bank full three hundred Saracen cavalry ready to defend this
passage. We entered the river, and our horses found a tolerable ford with
firm footing, so that by ascending the stream we found an easy shore,
and through God’s mercy we all crossed over with safety. The Saracens,
observing us thus cross, fled away with the utmost despatch.

Before we set out, the king had ordered that the Templars should form
the van, and the count d’Artois his brother should command the second
division of the army; but the moment the count d’Artois had passed the
ford with all his people, and saw the Saracens flying, they stuck spurs
into their horses and galloped after them; for which those who formed
the van were much angered at the count d’Artois, who could not make any
answer, on account of Sir Foucquault du Melle, who held the bridle of
his horse; and Sir Foucquault, being deaf, heard nothing the Templars
were saying to the count d’Artois, but kept bawling out, “Forward,
forward!” When the Templars perceived this, they thought they should be
dishonoured if they allowed the count d’Artois thus to take the lead,
and with one accord they spurred their horses to their fastest speed,
pursuing the Saracens through the town of Mansura, as far as the plains
before Babylon; but on their return the Turks shot at them plenty of
arrows and other artillery, as they repassed through the narrow streets
of the town. The count d’Artois and the lord de Coucy, of the name of
Raoul, were there slain, and as many as three hundred other[74] knights.
The Templars lost, as their chief informed me, full fourteen score men
at arms and horses. My knights, as well as myself, noticing on our left
a large body of Turks who were arming, instantly charged them; and when
we were advanced into the midst of them, I perceived a sturdy Saracen
mounting his horse, which was held by one of his esquires by the bridle,
and while he was putting his hand on the saddle to mount, I gave him such
a thrust with my spear, which I pushed as far as I was able, that he fell
down dead. The esquire, seeing his lord dead, abandoned master and horse;
but, watching my motions, on my return struck me with his lance such a
blow between the shoulders as drove me on my horse’s neck, and held me
there so tightly that I could not draw my sword, which was girthed round
me. I was forced to draw another sword which was at the pommel of my
saddle, and it was high time; but, when he saw I had my sword in my hand,
he withdrew his lance which I had seized and ran from me.

It chanced that I and my knights had traversed the army of the Saracens,
and saw here and there different parties of them, to the amount of about
six thousand, who, abandoning their quarters, had advanced into the
plain. On perceiving that we were separated from the main body, they
boldly attacked us, and slew Sir Hugues de Trichatel, lord d’Escoflans,
who bore the banner of our company. They also made prisoner Sir Raoul de
Wanon, of our company, whom they had struck to the ground. As they were
carrying him off, my knights and myself knew him, and instantly hastened,
with great courage, to assist him, and deliver him from their hands.
In returning from this engagement the Turks gave me such heavy blows,
that my horse, not being able to withstand them, fell on his knees, and
threw me to the ground over his head. I very shortly replaced my shield
on my breast, and grasped my spear, during which time the lord Errart
d’Esmeray, whose soul may God pardon! advanced towards me, for he had
also been struck down by the enemy; and we retreated together towards
an old ruined house to wait for the king, who was coming, and I found
means to recover my horse. As we were going to this house, a large body
of Turks came galloping towards us, but passed on to a party of ours
whom they saw hard by; as they passed, they struck me to the ground,
with my shield over my neck, and galloped over me, thinking I was dead;
and indeed I was nearly so. When they were gone, my companion Sir Errart
came and raised me up, and we went to the walls of the ruined house.
Thither also had retired Sir Hugues d’Escosse, Sir Ferreys de Loppei, Sir
Regnault de Menoncourt, and several others; and there also the Turks came
to attack us, more bravely than ever, on all sides. Some of them entered
within the walls, and were a long time fighting with us at spear’s
length, during which my knights gave me my horse, which they held, lest
he should run away, and at the same time so vigorously defended us
against the Turks, that they were greatly praised by several able persons
who witnessed their prowess.

Sir Hugues d’Escosse was desperately hurt by three great wounds in the
face and elsewhere. Sir Raoul and Sir Ferreys were also badly wounded
in their shoulders, so that the blood spouted out just like to a tun of
wine when tapped. Sir Errart d’Esmeray was so severely wounded in the
face by a sword, the stroke of which cut off his nose, that it hung down
over his mouth. In this severe distress, I called to my mind St. James,
and said, “Good Lord St. James, succour me, I beseech thee; and come to
my aid in this time of need.” I had scarcely ended my prayer, when Sir
Errart said to me, “Sir, if I did not think you might suppose it was done
to abandon you and save myself, I would go to my lord of Anjou, whom I
see on the plain, and beg he would hasten to your help.” “Sir Errart,” I
replied, “you will do me great honour and pleasure, if you will go and
seek succour to save our lives; for your own also is in great peril”;
and I said truly, for he died of the wound he had received. All were of
my opinion that he should seek for assistance; and I then quitting hold
of the rein of his bridle, he galloped towards the count d’Anjou, to
request he would support us in the danger we were in. There was a great
lord with him who wished to detain him, but the good prince would not
attend to what he urged, but, spurring his horse, galloped towards us
followed by his men. The Saracens, observing them coming, left us; but
when on their arrival they saw the Saracens carrying away their prisoner,
Sir Raoul de Wanon, badly wounded, they hastened to recover him, and
brought him back in a most pitiful state. Shortly after, I saw the king
arrive with all his attendants, and with a terrible noise of trumpets,
clarions, and horns. He halted on an eminence, with his men at arms, for
something he had to say; and I assure you I never saw so handsome a man
under arms. He was taller than any of his troop by the shoulders; and
his helmet, which was gilded, was handsomely placed on his head; and
he bore a German sword in his hand. Soon after he had halted, many of
his knights were observed intermixed with the Turks; their companions
instantly rushed into the battle among them; and you must know, that in
this engagement were performed, on both sides, the most gallant deeds
that were ever done in this expedition to the Holy Land; for none made
use of the bow, cross-bow, or other artillery. But the conflict consisted
of blows given to each other by battle-axes, swords, butts of spears, all
mixed together. From all I saw, my knights and myself, all wounded as we
were, were very impatient to join the battle with the others. Shortly
after, one of my esquires, who had once fled from my banner, came to me,
and brought me one of my Flemish war-horses; I was soon mounted, and rode
by the side of the king, whom I found attended by that discreet man, Sir
John de Valeri. Sir John seeing the king desirous to enter into the midst
of the battle, advised him to make for the riverside on the right, in
order that in case there should be any danger, he might have support from
the duke of Burgundy and his army, which had been left behind to guard
the camp; and likewise that his men might be refreshed and have wherewith
to quench their thirst; for the weather was at this moment exceedingly
hot.

[Illustration: THIRTEENTH CENTURY CRUSADER]

As this was doing, Sir Humbert de Beaujeu, constable of France, came up,
and told the king that his brother, the count d’Artois, was much pressed
in a house at Mansura, where, however, he defended himself gallantly,
but that he would need speedy assistance; and entreated the king to go
to his aid. The king replied, “Constable, spur forward, and I will follow
you close.” All of us now galloped straight to Mansura, and were in the
midst of the Turkish army, when we were instantly separated from each
other by the greater power of the Saracens and Turks. Shortly after, a
serjeant at mace of the constable, with whom I was, came to him, and said
the king was surrounded by the Turks, and his person in imminent danger.
You may suppose our astonishment and fears, for there were between us
and where the king was full one thousand or twelve hundred Turks, and
we were only six persons in all. I said to the constable, that since it
was impossible for us to make our way through such a crowd of Turks, it
would be much better to wheel round and get on the other side of them.
This we instantly did. There was a deep ditch on the road we took between
the Saracens and us; and, had they noticed us, they must have slain us
all; but they were solely occupied with the king, and the larger bodies;
perhaps also they might have taken us for some of their friends. As we
thus gained the river, following its course downward between it and the
road, we observed that the king had ascended it, and that the Turks were
sending fresh troops after him. Both armies now met on the banks, and the
event was miserably unfortunate; for the weaker part of our army thought
to cross over to the division of the duke of Burgundy, but that was
impossible from their horses being worn down, and the extreme heat of the
weather. As we descended the river, we saw it covered with lances, pikes,
shields, men, and horses, unable to save themselves from death. When we
perceived the miserable state of our army, I advised the constable to
remain on this side of the river to guard a small bridge that was hard
by; “for if we leave it,” added I, “the enemy may come and attack the
king on this side; and if our men be assaulted in two places, they must
be discomfited.”

There then we halted; and you may believe me when I say, that the good
king performed that day the most gallant deeds that ever I saw in any
battle. It was said, that had it not been for his personal exertions,
the whole army would have been destroyed; but I believe that the great
courage he naturally possessed was that day doubled by the power of God,
for he forced himself wherever he saw his men in any distress, and gave
such blows with battle-axe and sword, it was wonderful to behold. The
lord de Courtenai and Sir John de Salenai one day told me, that at this
engagement six Turks caught hold of the bridle of the king’s horse, and
were leading him away; but this virtuous prince exerted himself with such
bravery in fighting the six Turks, that he alone freed himself from them;
and that many, seeing how valiantly he defended himself, and the great
courage he displayed, took greater courage themselves, and abandoning
the passage they were guarding, hastened to support the king. After some
little time, the count Peter of Brittany came to us who were guarding the
small bridge from Mansura, having had a most furious skirmish. He was so
badly wounded in the face that the blood came out of his mouth, as if it
had been full of water, and he vomited it forth. The count was mounted
on a short, thick, but strong horse, and his reins and the pommel of his
saddle were cut and destroyed, so that he was forced to hold himself
by his two hands round the horse’s neck for fear the Turks, who were
close behind him, should make him fall off. He did not, however, seem
much afraid of them, for he frequently turned round, and gave them many
abusive words by way of mockery.

In our front were two of the king’s heralds; the name of one was
Guillaume de Bron, and that of the other John de Gaymaches; against whom
the Turks led a rabble of peasants of the country, who pelted them with
clods of earth and large stones. At last, they brought a villainous Turk,
who thrice flung Greek fires at them; and by one of them was the tabard
of Guillaume de Bron set on fire; but he soon threw it off, and good need
had he, for if it had set fire to his clothes, he must have been burned.
We were also covered with these showers of stones and arrows which the
Turks discharged at the two heralds. I luckily found near me a gaubison
of coarse cloth which had belonged to a Saracen, and turning the slit
part inward, I made a sort of shield, which was of much service to me;
for I was only wounded by their shots in five places, whereas my horse
was hurt in fifteen. Soon after, as God willed it, one of my vassals of
Joinville brought me a banner with my arms, and a long knife of war,
which I was in want of; and then, when these Turkish villains, who were
on foot, pressed on the heralds, we made a charge on them and put them
instantly to flight. Thus when the good count de Soissons and myself were
returned to our post on the bridge, after chasing away these peasants,
he rallied me, saying, “Seneschal, let us allow this rabble to bawl and
bray; and, by the _Cresse Dieu_,” his usual oath, “you and I will talk
over this day’s adventures in the chambers of our ladies.”

It happened that towards evening, about sunset, the constable, Sir
Humbert de Beaujeu, brought us the king’s cross-bows that were on foot;
and they drew up in one front, while we horsemen dismounted under shelter
of the cross-bows. The Saracens observing this immediately took to
flight, and left us in peace. The constable told me that we had behaved
well in thus guarding the bridge; and bade me go boldly to the king, and
not quit him until he should be dismounted in his pavilion. I went to the
king, and at the same moment Sir John de Valeri joined, and requested
of him, in the name of the lord de Chastillon, that the said lord might
command the rear guard, which the king very willingly granted. The king
then took the road to return to his pavilion, and raised the helmet from
his head, on which I gave him my iron skull-cap, which was much lighter,
that he might have more air. Thus as we were riding together, Father
Henry, prior of the hospital of Ronnay, who had crossed the river, came
to him and kissed his hand, fully armed, and asked if he had heard any
news of his brother the count d’Artois. “Yes,” replied the king, “I have
heard all”; that is to say, that he knew well he was now in paradise. The
prior, thinking to comfort him for the death of his brother, continued,
“Sire, no king of France has ever reaped such honour as you have done;
for with great intrepidity have you and your army crossed a dangerous
river to combat your enemies; and have been so very successful that you
have put them to flight and gained the field, together with their warlike
engines, with which they had wonderfully annoyed you, and concluded the
affair by taking possession this day of their camp and quarters.” The
good king replied that God should be adored for all the good he had
granted him; and then heavy tears began to fall down his cheeks, which
many great persons noticing, were oppressed with anguish and compassion
on seeing him thus weep, praising the name of God who had enabled him to
win the victory.[f]

RESULTS OF MANSURA

The count of Artois had rallied his forces in the town. The Egyptian
chief invested Mansura; and, with ability equal to his spirit, placed
a body of troops in such a station as to intercept the communication
between the count and the king. The soldiers in Mansura engaged the
French. The inhabitants partook of the perils of the day, and poured
upon their enemy, with deadly effect, burning coals, boiling water, and
stones. The count did not survive to witness all the dreadful issues of
his rashness. William Longespee and a numerous band of gallant men also
perished. The grand master of St. John fell into the enemy’s hands; and
the master of the Templars was happy in escaping with the loss of an
eye. On the side of the enemy Fakhr ad-Din was slain; but his station
was quickly filled by a chief of equal bravery and conduct. The king
and his army had crossed the ford, and prevented the total rout of the
Christians. The valiant master of the Templars was slain in this renewed
engagement. Egyptian and Christian annalists have claimed the honour and
rewards of victory for their respective sides; but in truth the result of
the battle appears to have been indecisive.

The Saracens, however, cut off all communications between St. Louis
and Damietta. Famine and disease appeared in the Christian camp, and
the French described the latter of those evils as having sprung from a
pestilential air emitted from the dead bodies of their friends and foes,
and from eating eel pouts which had fed on corpses in the river.[b]
“From this poisonous diet,” says De Joinville, “and from the bad air
of a country where it scarcely ever rains, the whole army was infected
by a shocking disorder, which dried up the flesh on one’s legs to the
bone, and our skins became tanned as black as the ground, or like an old
boot that has long lain behind a coffer. In addition to this miserable
disorder, those afflicted by it had another sore complaint in the mouth,
from eating eel pouts that rotted the gums. Very few escaped death that
were attacked, and the surest symptoms of its being fatal was a bleeding
at the nose. The barbers were obliged to cut away large pieces of flesh
from the gums to enable the patient to eat. It was pitiful to hear the
cries and groans of those on whom the operation was performed; they
seemed like to the cries of women in labour, and I cannot express the
great concern all felt who heard them.”[f]

ST. LOUIS A PRISONER

Negotiations for peace were opened between the contending powers, and the
exchange of the lordship of Jerusalem for that of Damietta formed the
basis of the treaty. The king offered either of his brothers as a hostage
for the delivery of Damietta to the Egyptians; but the sultan objected,
and all hopes of peace were abandoned, because the Christians would not
consent to the delivery of their king as the hostage. The miserable
condition of the French army forbade all thoughts of victory, and called
for a retreat to Damietta.

The retreat was ordered; but those who attempted it by the river were
taken by the enemy, and the fate of such as proceeded by land was equally
disastrous. While they were occupied in constructing a bridge over the
canal, the Mussulmans entered the camp, and murdered the sick. The
valiant Louis, though oppressed with the general calamity of disease,
sustained boldly, with Sir Godfrey de Sergines, the shock of the enemy,
and threw himself into the midst of them, resolved to perish in defending
his troops. The brave Sergines, who never left him, succeeded at last in
drawing him from the foe, and conducted him to a village, where he sank
into insensibility and helplessness.[75]

In that state the Mussulmans made him prisoner. Charles count of Anjou,
Alphonsus of Poitiers, and indeed all the nobility fell into the
enemy’s hands. The sultan clothed the king and the nobles with robes of
honour, and treated them with kindness and generosity. But many of the
unfortunate men who were ill, and therefore useless, were killed by their
new masters in defiance of the command of Saladin, and the general usage
of oriental nations not to put to death anyone to whom they had given
bread and salt. Other prisoners saved their lives by renouncing their
religion; the Saracenic commander indulged the fanaticism of his people
by allowing the converts to be received, though he well remembered the
sage remark of Saladin, that a Christian was never known to make a good
Moslem, nor a good Saracen a Christian.[76] So great were the calamities
of the French in this attempted retreat, that twenty thousand were made
captives, and seven thousand were slain or drowned.[b] The last battles
and disasters of St. Louis made, it may well be believed, a vivid
impression on the Saracens. We may quote the account of Makrisi, a Moslem
historian.[a]

MOSLEM ACCOUNT OF ST. LOUIS’ CAPTURE

The day of Bairam (January 6th, 1250) a great lord and relative to the
king of France was made prisoner. Not a day passed without skirmishes on
both sides, and with alternate success. The Mussulmans were particularly
anxious to make prisoners, to gain information as to the state of the
enemy’s army, and used all sorts of stratagems for this purpose. A
soldier from Cairo bethought himself of putting his head withinside of
a watermelon, the interior of which he had scooped out, and of thus
swimming towards the French camp; a Christian soldier, not suspecting
the trick, leaped into the Nile to seize the melon; but the Egyptian was
a stout swimmer, and catching hold of him, dragged him to his general.
On Wednesday, the 7th day of the moon Shawwal (January 13th, 1250), the
Mussulmans captured a large boat, in which were a hundred soldiers,
commanded by an officer of distinction. On Thursday, the 15th of the same
moon, the French marched out of their camp, and their cavalry began to
move. The troops were ordered to file off, when a slight skirmish took
place, and the French left on the field forty cavaliers with their horses.

Some traitors having shown the ford over the canal of Ashmun to the
French, fourteen hundred cavaliers crossed it and fell unexpectedly
on the camp of the Mussulmans, on a Tuesday, the 15th day of the moon
Dhul-Kadeh (February 15th), having at their head the brother of the
king of France. The emir Fakhr ad-Din was at the time in the bath; he
instantly quitted it with precipitation and mounted a horse without a
saddle or bridle, followed only by some slaves. The enemy attacked him
on all sides, and his slaves like cowards, abandoned him when in the
midst of the French; it was in vain he attempted to defend himself; he
fell pierced with wounds. The French, after the death of Fakhr ad-Din,
retreated to Jédilé; but their whole cavalry advanced to Mansura, and,
having forced one of the gates, entered the town; the Mussulmans fled
to the right and left. The king of France had already penetrated as far
as the sultan’s palace, and victory seemed ready to declare for him,
when the Baharite slaves, led by Bibars, advanced and snatched it from
his hands; their charge was so furious that the French were obliged to
retreat. The French infantry, during this time, had advanced to cross
the bridge; had they been able to join their cavalry, the defeat of the
Egyptian army, and the loss of the town of Mansura, would have been
inevitable.

Night separated the combatants, when the French retreated in disorder to
Jédilé, after leaving fifteen hundred of their men on the field. They
surrounded their camp with a ditch and wall, but their army was divided
into two corps; the least considerable body was encamped on the branch
of the Ashmun, and the larger on the great branch of the Nile that runs
to Damietta. A pigeon had been let loose to fly to Cairo the instant the
French had surprised the camp of Fakhr ad-Din, having a note under its
wing, to inform the inhabitants of this misfortune. The melancholy event
had created a general consternation in the town, which the runaways had
augmented, and the gates of Cairo were kept open all the night to receive
them. A second pigeon bearing the news of the victory over the French,
had restored tranquillity to the capital. Joy succeeded sorrow; and
each congratulated the other on this happy turn of affairs, and public
rejoicings were made.

[Illustration: A SARACEN]

Boats sent from Damietta brought all sorts of provisions to the French
camp, and kept it abundantly supplied. Turan Shah caused many boats to be
built which, when taken to pieces, he placed on the backs of camels, and
had them thus carried to the canal of Méhalé, when they were put together
again, launched on the canal, and filled with troops for an ambuscade.
As soon as the French fleet of boats appeared at the mouth of the canal
of Méhalé, the Mussulmans quitted their hiding-place and attacked them.
While the two fleets were engaged, other boats left Mansura filled with
soldiers, and fell on the rear of the French. It was in vain they sought
to escape by flight; a thousand Christians were killed or made prisoners.
In this defeat fifty-two of their boats laden with provisions were taken,
and their communication with Damietta by the navigation of the Nile was
cut off, so that within a short time the whole army suffered the most
terrible famine. The Mussulmans surrounded them on all sides, and they
could neither advance nor retreat.

On the first of the moon Dhul-hija (March 7th), the French surprised
seven boats; but the troops on board had the good fortune to escape. In
spite of the superiority of the Egyptians on the Nile, they attempted to
bring up another convoy from Damietta, but they lost it; thirty-two of
their boats were taken and carried to Mansura, on the ninth of the same
moon. This new loss filled the measure of their woes, and caused them
to propose a truce and send ambassadors to treat of it with the sultan.
The emir Zain ad-Din and the kadi Bedr ad-Din were ordered to meet and
confer with them, when the French offered to surrender Damietta, on
condition that Jerusalem, and some other places in Syria, should be given
in exchange for it. This proposal was rejected, and the conference broken
up.

On Friday, the 27th of the moon Dhul-hija (April 2nd), the French set
fire to all their machines of war and timber for building, and rendered
almost all their boats unfit for use. During the night of Tuesday,
the third day of the moon Muharrem (April 7th), in the year of the
Hegira 648, the whole of the French army decamped, and took the road
to Damietta. Some boats which they had reserved fell down the Nile at
the same time. The Mussulmans having, at break of day of the Wednesday,
perceived the retreat of the French, pursued and attacked them.

The heat of the combat was at Fariskur. The French were defeated and put
to flight; ten thousand of their men fell on the field of battle, some
say thirty thousand. Upwards of one hundred thousand horsemen, infantry,
tradespeople, and others were made slaves. The booty was immense in
horses, mules, tents, and other riches. There were but one hundred slain
on the side of the Mussulmans. The Baharite slaves, under the command of
Bibars al-Bundukdari, performed in this battle signal acts of valour. The
king of France had retired, with a few of his lords, to a small hillock,
and surrendered himself, under promise of his life being spared, to the
eunuch Jemal ad-Din Mahsun as-Salih; he was bound with a chain, and in
this state conducted to Mansura, where he was confined in the house of
Ibrahim ben Lokman, secretary to the sultan, and under the guard of the
eunuch Salih. The king’s brother was made prisoner at the same time, and
carried to the same house. The sultan provided for their subsistence.

The number of slaves was so great, it was embarrassing, and the sultan
gave orders to Saif ad-Din Jusuf ben Tardi to put them to death. Every
night this cruel minister of the vengeance of his master had from
three to four hundred of the prisoners brought from their places of
confinement, and after he had caused them to be beheaded, their bodies
were thrown into the Nile; in this manner perished one hundred thousand
of the French.

The sultan departed from Mansura, and went to Fariskur, where he had
pitched a most magnificent tent. He had also built a tower of wood
over the Nile; and, being freed from a disagreeable war, he there gave
himself up to all sorts of debauchery. The victory he had just gained
was so brilliant that he was eager to make all who were subjected to him
acquainted with it. He wrote with his own hand a letter, in the following
terms, to the emir Jemal ad-Din ben Jagmur, governor of Damascus:
“Thanks be given to the All-powerful, who has changed our grief to joy;
it is to Him alone we owe the victory. The favours He has condescended
to shower upon us are innumerable, but this last is most precious. You
will announce to the people of Damascus, or, rather, to all Mussulmans,
that God has enabled us to gain a complete victory over the Christians
at the moment they had conspired our ruin. On Monday, the first day of
this year, we opened our treasury and distributed riches and arms to our
faithful soldiers. We had called to our succour the Arabian tribes, and a
numberless multitude of soldiers ranged themselves under our standards.
On the night between Tuesday and Wednesday our enemies abandoned their
camp, with all their baggage, and marched towards Damietta; in spite
of the obscurity of the night, we pursued them, and thirty thousand of
them were left dead on the field, not including those who precipitated
themselves into the Nile. We have, besides, slain our very numerous
prisoners, and thrown their bodies into the same river. Their king had
retreated to Minieh; he has implored our clemency, and we have granted
him his life, and paid him all the honours due to his rank. We have
regained Damietta.”

The sultan, with this letter, sent the king’s cap, which had fallen in
the combat; it was of scarlet, lined with a fine fur. The governor of
Damascus put the king’s cap on his own head when he read to the public
the sultan’s letter. A poet made these verses on the occasion: “The cap
of the French was whiter than paper; our sabres have dyed it with the
blood of the enemy, and have changed its colour.”[g]

As ransom for the noble prisoners the sultan offered to accept some
of the baronial castles in Palestine, or those which belonged to the
Templars and Hospitallers. But the king and his peers replied that the
liege lord, the emperor of Germany, would never consent that a pagan or
Tatar should hold any fief of him; and that no cession of the property
of the knights could be made, for the governors of their castles swore
on their investiture that they would never surrender their charge for
the deliverance of any man. The king was even threatened with torture,
but as the Mussulmans saw in him no symptoms of fear on which they could
work, they proposed to make a pecuniary ransom. Louis offered to pay
ten thousand golden besants, which were equal to five hundred thousand
livres, for the deliverance of his army, and that as the royal dignity
could not be estimated by a vulgar scale, he would for his own freedom
surrender the city of Damietta. The sultan was liberal in the fulness of
his joy at such a completion of his victories, and remitted a fifth part
of the pecuniary ransom.[77] Peace was to continue for ten years between
the Mussulmans and the Christians, and the Franks were to be restored to
those privileges in the kingdom of Jerusalem which they enjoyed before
the landing of Louis at Damietta. The repose which succeeded the treaty
was interrupted by the murder of the sultan; but after a few acts of
hostility the successful emirs, and their mamelukes, renewed with a
few changes the condition of amity. One moiety of the ransom was to be
discharged before the king left the river, and the other on his arrival
at Acre. The sick at Damietta, with the stores and baggage, were to be
retained by the sultan till the last portion of the ransom should be paid.

Damietta was accordingly surrendered. But the mamelukes were more
savage and unprincipled than any preceding enemies of the Latin name.
They burned all the military engines, murdered the sick, and some of
the most ferocious thirsted for the blood of the Christian potentates.
The counsels of justice prevailed, and the Christians were relieved
from their fears that the treaty would not be acted upon. The counts of
Flanders and Brittany, the count of Soissons, and others embarked for
France. The royal treasure at Damietta could not furnish the stipulated
portion of the ransom. The new grand master of the Templars opposed the
institutes of his order to the king’s request for a loan of the funds
of the society, and contended that he could not divert them from their
regular and appointed purposes. But state necessity trampled over mere
statutable forms, and the chest of the Templars was seized by the royal
officers. The king’s person was redeemed, and the French went to Acre.

The expedition of St. Louis into Egypt resembles in many respects the war
in Egypt thirty years before. In both cases the Christian armies were
encamped near the entrance of the Ashmun canal; they could not advance,
and the surrender of Damietta was the price of safety.

[Sidenote: [1250-1254 A.D.]]

Many of Louis’ council were astonished at his resolution to remain in
Palestine while political affairs were calling him to his duty to France.
They were divided in their patriotism and their allegiance. The sultan
of Damascus, a relative of the murdered Egyptian lord, solicited the aid
of Louis to revenge the murder, and stimulated his virtue by the promise
that in the event of victory he would deliver to the Christians the
city of Jerusalem. The king replied that he would send to the mamelukes
at Damietta, to know whether they would repair their violations of the
treaty, and that, in case of their refusal, he would assist the sultan
of Damascus. On intelligence of this negotiation, the people of Damietta
restored to the king all the knights and common soldiers whom they had
detained in prison. Louis wisely profited by circumstances, and declared
that he would not enter upon a truce with the Egyptians, until they had
absolved him from the payment of the remaining moiety of the ransom, and
restored to him the heads of those Christians on the walls of Cairo, who
had fallen in the battle near Mansura, and such Christian children as
they had forced to become Mussulmans. The emirs and mamelukes complied
with these terms, and, on condition of the alliance of the French king,
they engaged to deliver up to him Jerusalem itself. The military force
of Louis did not much exceed four thousand men. The king’s two brothers
returned to Europe; and, in order to retain a respectable army, Louis was
obliged to be liberal of his treasure. Louis remained a year at Cæsarea,
and rebuilt its houses and repaired its fortifications. Joppa was the
next object of his care. The war between the Egyptians and Syrians raged
with dreadful violence. By the mediation of the caliph, the Mussulmans
made peace; Egypt and Jerusalem were to belong to the mamelukes; and
the countries beyond the Jordan to the sultan of Syria. But the united
infidels did not pursue their schemes of destruction with that vigour
and ability which had distinguished the fierce and dreadful movements of
Nur ad-Din and Saladin. They might have swept the feeble and exhausted
Christians from the shores of Palestine; but they merely ravaged the
country round Acre, and then proceeded to Sajecte, in whose strong castle
were Louis and most of the army. The blood and property of the citizens
satisfied the Moslems, who departed without trying the valour of the
French in garrison.

Perpetual disappointment gradually desiccated the spring of hope, and the
king turned his mind to France. His friends marked his change of purpose,
and news from Europe of the death of his royal mother, the regent of his
kingdom, made him openly proclaim his resolution to return. The patriarch
and barons of Palestine offered him their humble thanks and praise
for the great good and honour he had conferred on the Holy Land; and,
shortly after Easter, he embarked for the West. Louis IX gathered no new
laurels in his transmarine expedition. All that was great and chivalric
in France had been spread out in martial array, and had met with little
else than discomfiture and defeat. In the course of Louis’ stay at
Joppa, the sultan of Damascus sent him permission to visit Jerusalem.
The king ardently desired to behold the sacred places, and was slow in
allowing considerations of policy to conquer selfish feelings. The reason
which dissuaded him from the journey, was, that if he should perform a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem without delivering it from the enemies of God,
every subsequent crusading monarch would think a similar proceeding
sufficient, and would not consider himself obliged to perform more than
what the king of France had done. St. Louis was also reminded that
Richard Cœur de Lion refused to behold Jerusalem as a pilgrim.

THE CHRISTIANS QUARREL AMONG THEMSELVES

[Sidenote: [1255-1259 A.D.]]

All the blood which had been shed, and all the treasure which France
had lavished for the crusade of St. Louis, did not long preserve the
Christians in Palestine from the hostilities of the Mussulmans, and,
as no new succours arrived from Europe, the barons and knights were
compelled, in some cases, to keep within the shelter of their fortresses,
and at other times to make disadvantageous treaties with their foe.
Although it was evident that nothing but unanimity in the holy warriors
could preserve the remnants of the kingdom of Godfrey de Bouillon
from annihilation, yet the Christians wasted their strength in party
collisions, instead of watching the politics of the Saracenian courts,
and gathering those branches of power which their enemies, in their
ambitious feuds, continually broke from the tree of Islamism. The haughty
republicans of Italy would never enter into any common bond of union,
and the Venetians, the Pisans, and the Genoese had frequent hostile
encounters, respecting the possession of churches to which each nation
asserted her claims. The two great military orders only forgot their
mutual jealousies when in the field they were opposed to the Moslems,
but in every interval of peace, the knights, incapable of any exertions
or thoughts but those which war inspired, gratified their arrogance and
restlessness in disputes touching military prowess and precedency. As
reason did not give birth to these altercations, she did not control the
decision.

[Illustration: A GERMAN CRUSADER, THIRTEENTH CENTURY]

The jealousy and rancour of the Hospitallers and Red Cross knights were
frequently aggravated by irregular skirmishes, and at length the kindred
squadrons met in a general engagement. Victory sat on the helms of the
cavaliers of St. John; few prisoners were taken, and scarcely a Templar
escaped alive. But new companions from Europe gradually filled the places
of the deceased brethren. New occasions demanded all their valour and
skill, and civil discord was lost amidst the more honourable war with the
real enemies of the state.

A blood-stained revolution in Egypt had placed the mameluke chief Bibars,
or Bundukdari, on the throne of that country; he was well disposed to
lead his savage mamelukes against the Christians, and his ferocity did
not want the excitement which the military orders gave it, of refusing,
contrary to treaty, to deliver to him some Mohammedan prisoners. His
soldiers, as savage as the Khwarizmians, demolished the churches of
Nazareth, and the fortress and church on Mount Tabor. They made their
way to the gates of Acre with fire and sword, and such of the Christians
as were immediately slain were not so much objects of compassion as the
prisoners on whom the Turks inflicted every description of torture, in
order to force a change of religion. Though Acre itself was saved for
a few years, yet Cæsarea did not escape the wide-spreading calamities.
Through these dreadful scenes the military orders fought with their
usual heroism, and in the sieges of the strong fortresses of Azotus and
Saffuria, the spirit of devotion which they manifested to their cause
had never been equalled. The small force of ninety Hospitallers held
possession of the former of these places. The number gradually diminished
on each renewed assault, and when the Turks mounted the breach, they
trampled on the bodies of the last of the knights.

After ravaging the neighbourhood of Acre, Tyre, and Tripolis, the
Egyptians laid siege to the fortress of Saffuria. The fall of that
place was inevitable, and the prior of the Templars therefore agreed to
capitulate, and, on the surrender being made, the knights and garrison,
altogether amounting to six hundred men, were to be conducted to the next
Christian town. The sultan was invested with lordship over the fortress,
but he violated the conditions of the surrender, and left the knights
only a few hours to determine on the alternative of death or conversion
to Islam. The prior and two Franciscan monks were earnest in fixing the
faith of the religious cavaliers, and, at the appointed time for the
declaration of their choice, they unanimously avowed their determination
to die rather than incur the dishonour of apostacy. The decree for the
slaughter of the Templars was pronounced and executed; and the three
preachers of martyrdom were flayed alive.

HISTORY OF ANTIOCH (1206-1268 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1206-1268 A.D.]]

Before we continue our review of the calamities of Palestine, a
retrospect must be taken of a principality whose fate was closely
connected with that of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Bohemond IV
continued to be the reputed lord of Antioch, from the year 1206 till the
time of his death in 1233. But for many years during this interval he
did not exercise any royal authority, for he was a tyrant, and was both
hated by the people and excommunicated by the clergy. His nephew Rupin,
the right heir, was aided by the papal legate, who was present at the
great siege of Damietta, in the year 1218, and made several attempts
to recover his thrones of Antioch and Tripolis; but he died some years
before Bohemond, in a prison at Tarsus, into which he had been cast
by Constantius, nominal regent of Antioch, and guardian of Isabella,
daughter and successor of Livon, king of Armenia. From Bohemond IV and
his first wife Plaisance, daughter of the lord of Gabala, Bohemond V
descended. To him succeeded Bohemond VI. It does not appear that the
family of the Bohemonds were entire masters of the principality and
county from the year 1233 till their absorption in the Egyptian power.
It is certain that Bohemond V was reigning over Antioch and Tripolis
in 1244, when he became tributary to the Khwarizmians; and that in
1253 Bohemond VI was made a knight by St. Louis, and was considered
lawful prince of Antioch, though he was a minor, and under his mother’s
tutelage. But it is equally certain that at times, from 1233 to 1288,
Frederick and Conrad, a son and grandson of the emperor Frederick II, had
possession of all or part of the states of Antioch and Tripolis.

RAVAGES OF BIBARS

[Sidenote: [1268-1269 A.D.]]

We may now resume the thread of the general history. Joppa and the castle
of Beaufort were the mameluke conquests which succeeded in point of time
to those of Azotus and Saffuria.

The tempest at length burst upon the state of Antioch; and the city of
that principality yielded without even the formality of a siege (1268).
The reproach of treachery is alternately cast upon the patriarch and
the inhabitants; and heavy is the disgrace of causing an event which
occasioned the destruction of forty thousand, and the captivity of one
hundred thousand Christians. Bibars ravaged the country round Tyre;
but being equally religious and cruel, he gave the Franks a respite by
pilgrimising to the holy places in Arabia. He soon, however, resumed his
fell purpose of exterminating the Christians; Laodicea and many other
places submitted to him; and the knights of St. John gained immortal
honour by their brave, though fruitless, defence of the fortress of
Karak, between Arca and Tortosa. The prince of Tripolis preserved
his title by the sacrifice of half of his territory. Acre was saved
in consequence of the reported succour of the king of Cyprus. Bibars
returned to Cairo, hastily fitted out a fleet for the conquest of the
island, which was without the presence of its monarch. But his ships were
lost in a tempest; Cairo was overwhelmed with sorrow, and none of his
efforts could re-establish affairs.

SECOND CRUSADE AND DEATH OF LOUIS IX

[Sidenote: [1269-1270 A.D.]]

Before the news of the capture of Antioch reached Europe, the people
of the West had contemplated a new crusade. St. Louis thought that his
first expedition to the Holy Land brought more shame on France than
good on the Christian cause; and he feared that his own personal fame
had withered. The pope encouraged his inclinations for a new attempt.
England was at that time in a state of repose, and her martial youth
were impatient of indolence. Prince Edward, with the earls of Warwick
and Pembroke, received the holy ensign. The assumption of the cross by
the heir of the English throne spread great joy throughout France. He
was invited to Paris; the co-operation of the English and French was
determined upon; and Louis lent his youthful ally thirty thousand marks
on the security of the customs of Bordeaux. The prelates and clergy of
England agreed to contribute a tenth of their revenue for three years;
and by a parliamentary ordinance, a twentieth part was taken from the
corn and movables which the laity possessed at Michaelmas. A crusade had
for many years been popular in England. During the first expedition of
St. Louis, and soon after the departure of William Longsword, Henry III
engaged to fight under the sacred banners. But he was slow in preparing
to go to the Holy Land; and the public murmured the suspicion that he had
only assumed the cross as a pretence for collecting money. It was found
that five hundred knights had been crossed; and the number of inferior
people could not be counted. The holy warriors resolved to commence their
voyage at midsummer; but the king had anticipated all their proceedings;
and he declared that if they dared to march without him the thunders
of the Vatican should be hurled against them. Some people submitted
to, and others clamoured at this menace of papal interference; and the
religious ardour of the most enthusiastic was cooled by the king’s
delays, and the news of the disastrous events in Egypt. The pope and
king were deaf to the reproaches of the French nation that indifference
to Christianity could be the only motive for obstructing the pious wishes
of the English people.[78] The king’s poverty was ever the alleged cause
of his remissness; and two years after his dissolution of the association
of English knights, he endeavoured to extort money from the clergy on
the pretence of a journey to Syria. But they resisted his demands; and
reproached him with his avarice and violation of oaths.

[Illustration: DEATH OF ST. LOUIS]

Anticipating the laurel of victory, or the crown of martyrdom, St. Louis
spread his sails for the Holy Land in 1270. Sixty thousand soldiers were
animated by their monarch’s feelings of religious and military ardour;
and we may remark among the leaders the lords of Flanders, Champagne,
and Brittany. The fleet was driven into Sardinia; and at that place a
great change was made in the plan of operations. The king of Tunis had
formerly sent ambassadors to Louis, and expressed a wish to embrace the
only true religion. Northern Africa had formerly paid a pecuniary tribute
to the sovereign of the Two Sicilies; and Charles of Anjou, the reigning
monarch, concealing his selfishness under the garb of piety and justice,
strongly urged his brother to restore the rights of Christendom. The
soldiers too, now more greedy of plunder and revenge than zealous in
bigotry, entreated to be led to Tunis. The subjugation of the Mussulmans
in Africa was declared to be a necessary preliminary to successes in
Palestine; the French soon reached the first object of their hopes; and
the camp and town of Carthage were the earliest rewards of victory. But
every sanguine expectation was damped when a pestilential disease spread
its ravages through the Christian ranks.

The great stay of the Crusades fell August, 1270. During his illness
Louis ceased not to praise God, and supplicate for the people whom he
had brought with him. He became speechless; he then gesticulated what
he could not utter; he perpetually made signs of the cross, stretched
himself on the floor, which was covered with ashes; and in the final
struggle of nature he turned his eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, “I will
enter thy house, I will worship in thy sanctuary.”

PRINCE EDWARD LEAVES ENGLAND

Before this calamitous event Prince Edward, Edmund Crouchback, earl of
Lancaster, four earls, four barons, and the English division, had not
only arrived in Africa, but had left it for Sicily, in despair that
their French compeers would ever march to Palestine. The winter season
was passed by Prince Edward in military exercises, and in the various
occupations of chivalry, and in the following spring he turned his prow
up the Mediterranean and arrived at Acre.

The whole of the forces of Edward did not exceed one thousand men. But
the prowess of the Plantagenets was dreaded by the Mussulmans; and they
feared that another Cœur de Lion was come to scourge them. The sultan of
Egypt departed from the vicinity of Acre, which he had devastated with
fire and sword. All the Latins in Palestine crowded round the banner of
the English prince; and he took the field at the head of seven thousand
men. The city of Nazareth was redeemed; and he surprised and defeated a
large Turkish force. Edward was brave and provident, and owed his success
as much to his skill as to his courage. But he was not less cruel than
any preceding hero of the holy wars; and he gave a dreadful earnest of
that savage implacability which Scotland afterwards so often rued. The
barbarities which stained the entry of the Christians into Jerusalem,
two centuries before, were repeated in a smaller theatre of cruelty in
Nazareth.

[Sidenote: [1271-1272 A.D.]]

But the march of victory was closed, for the English soldiers were
parched by the rays of a Syrian sun, and their leader was extended on the
bed of sickness. The governor of Joppa was the apparent friend of Edward,
but the sultan’s threat of degradation, if further commerce were held
with an infidel, changed courtesy into malignity. He hired an assassin
who, as the bearer of letters, was admitted into the chamber of his
intended victim. After receiving two or three wounds, the vigorous prince
threw the villain on the floor and stabbed him to the heart. The dagger
had been steeped in poison, and for some hours Edward’s fate was involved
in danger. The fairy hand of fiction has ascribed his convalescence to
his queen.[79]

After the English prince had been fourteen months in Acre, the sultan
of Egypt offered peace, for wars with the Moslem powers engrossed his
military strength. Edward gladly seized this occasion of leaving the Holy
Land, for his force was too small for the achievement of great actions,
and his father had implored his return to England. The hostile commanders
signed accordingly a treaty for a ten years’ suspension of arms; the
lords of Syria disarrayed their warlike front, and the English soldiers
quitted Palestine for their native country (July, 1272).

VAIN EFFORTS OF GREGORY X

[Sidenote: [1274-1291 A.D.]]

At the time when Palestine began to breathe from the horrors of war,
hope once more raised her head in consequence of the election to the
chair of St. Peter falling upon Theobald, archdeacon of Liège. The choice
of the cardinals was made known to him while he was in Palestine. He
impatiently transported himself to Italy, and so ardent was his zeal
that his endeavours for a crusade even preceded his introduction to the
pontificate. The trumpet of war again was heard among the nations. The
blast was however only faintly echoed. The republics of Pisa, Genoa,
and Venice, and the city of Marseilles, agreed to furnish a few galleys
and twenty-five thousand marks of silver were obtained from Philip the
Hardy on mortgage of the Templars’ estates in France. The masters of the
military friars and Red Cross knights went to Rome, and convinced their
papal friend that these succours would be too inconsiderable to enable
the Christians to drive infidels out of Palestine.

Again was the Christian world assembled, and the council of Lyons (May
1274) decreed the obligation of a new crusade. But Pope Gregory died
within two years after the sitting of the Lyonese council, and all
thoughts of a crusade were dropped when the life of its great promoter
closed.

Palestine however was at peace. Hugh III, king of Cyprus, a lineal
descendant of the princess Alice, had been crowned king of Jerusalem
at Tyre, a short time before the death of Conradin, the last unhappy
descendant of that house of Germany, of which three emperors had
supported and adorned holy wars. The Templars befriended Charles of
Anjou, but the Hospitallers, with more virtue than was generally shown,
declared that they could not fight against any Christian prince, and
contended that the claims for succession to the kingdom ought to be
deferred till the kingdom itself should be recovered. In the fourth year
of the peace which the valiant prince Edward had gained for Palestine,
the mameluke chief and king Bundukdari, died.

In the reign of Kalaun, the third sultan in succession to him who had
torn so many cities from the Christians, the war was renewed (1280), and
after a few years of dreadful preparation the living cloud of war burst
upon the Christians. Margat was captured; but so brave had been the
resistance of the knights that it procured them a safe and honourable
retreat to the neighbouring town of Tortosa (1287), and the sultan,
dreading even the possibility of future opposition, razed the fortress.

PROGRESS OF THE MAMELUKES

With rapid and certain steps the power of the Latins approached its fatal
termination. The city of Tripolis, that last remaining satellite of the
kingdom of Jerusalem, was taken in 1289; its houses were burned, its
works dismantled, and its people murdered or retained in slavery. Acre
once more became the principal possession of the Christians. The sultan
concluded a treaty of peace with Henry II of Cyprus, who had driven away
the lieutenants and soldiers of Charles, and had been acknowledged king
of Jerusalem.

The grand-master crossed the Mediterranean in order to infuse his martial
spirit into the people of the West. Pope Nicholas IV heard with coldness
the dismal tale. He declined to open the treasury of St. Peter for the
advancement of the Christian cause, and he gave his noble friend only
fifteen hundred men--the offscourings of Italy. Circular letters were
sent to the different European potentates, but the light which once
shone upon the holy cause had waned; cavaliers no longer thronged round
the cross, and the grand-master was compelled to return to Palestine,
accompanied only by his Italian banditti. When they arrived at Acre,
the city was in the greatest state of turbulence. Within its walls were
crowded the wretched remains of those kingdoms and principalities which
had been won by the blood of the West. Every distinct people occupied
a particular division, and, in the assertion of individual privileges,
general interests were forgotten.

[Sidenote: [1291-1300 A.D.]]

The sultan died before his preparations of vengeance were completed; but
his son Khalil was not less anxious than his father to exterminate the
infidel miscreants. In April, 1291, nearly two hundred thousand mameluke
Tatars of Egypt marched into Palestine, and encamped before Acre, exactly
on the same ground upon which a century before assembled Europe had
stood. To avoid the dreadful consequences of war, a large part of the
population embarked in the numerous vessels which at that time rode at
anchor in the harbour, and the defence of the place was left to the care
of about twelve thousand soldiers. The garrison was speedily reinforced
by a few hundred men, headed by Henry II of Cyprus, who boasted the
ideal title of king of Jerusalem. But the Christians beheld their towers
yielding to the mines and battering-rams. The pusillanimous monarch,
seizing a few ships, sailed to Cyprus. With the morn, the mamelukes
renewed the attack. Most of the German cavaliers died upon the breach;
the others slowly left the walls, and the firmness of their little
phalanx checked the foe. The Hospitallers chased back the mamelukes, and
even forced them headlong into the ditch. But the sultan was prodigal of
blood. His battalions marched to the breach, and in a few hours the entry
into the city was repeatedly lost and won by the Christians and infidels.

Under the cover of a few cross-bowmen, the knights of St. John, seven
only were the remnant, embarked, and left forever the scene of their
virtue and their valour. Their brethren in arms, the Templars, were
equally brave, and their fate was equally disastrous. Their resistance
was so firm, that the sultan was compelled to promise them a free and
honourable departure. But the insults of some low Saracenian people
irritated the cavaliers; the sword again was drawn, and such of the
Templars as survived the conflict, fled into the interior country.
The unarmed population of Acre hurried to the coast; but the elements
co-operated with the devastating spirit of the Turks, and the tempestuous
waves refused shelter to the fugitives. While gnashing with despair, the
people beheld their town in flames. The ruthless hand of death fell upon
them, and the sea shore of Palestine again drank torrents of Christian
blood.

TOTAL LOSS OF THE HOLY LAND

Tyre, Berytus, and other towns, were awed into submission. The Turks
swept all Palestine, and murdered or imprisoned all the Christians who
could not fly to Cyprus. The memory of the Templars is embalmed, for the
last struggle for the Holy Land was made by the Red Cross knights. Such
as escaped from Acre went to Sis, in Armenia. A Mussulman general drove
them to the island of Tortosa, whence they escaped to Cyprus, and the cry
of religious war no longer rung through Palestine.

The loss of the Holy Land did not fill Europe with those feelings of
grief and indignation which the fall of Jerusalem, an hundred years
before, had occasioned. The flame of fanaticism had slowly burned
out. During the thirteenth century, the territorial possessions of
the Christians in Palestine gradually diminished; the expeditions and
reinforcements were in consequence less vigorous, for, both politically
and personally, the people of the West declined in their interest
in respect of the affairs of the East. Pope Nicholas IV endeavoured
to revive holy undertakings; but the kings of Europe were deaf or
disobedient. As Genoa was allied to the Grecian emperor, Venice sought
the friendship of the Mussulmans. The mamelukes gave their Christian
brothers a church, an exchange, and a magazine in Alexandria; and the
Venetians carried on the lucrative but disgraceful trade of furnishing
the Egyptian market with male and female slaves from Georgia and
Circassia.

[Sidenote: [1299-1413 A.D.]]

[Illustration: HERALDS OF THE CRUSADERS]

There was some pretence for the preaching of a crusade by Pope Boniface
VIII in the year 1300. Kazan, the Mongol sultan of Persia, resolved to
exterminate the mamelukes of Egypt. He allied himself with the kings of
Georgia, Armenia, and Cyprus. In 1299 the fortunes of war smiled on the
allies; but still the success not being so great as what he had expected,
Kazan sent to the pope, soliciting the more powerful alliance of the
princes of the West, and agreeing that when Palestine was recovered,
it should be retained by the Christians. The project, though warmly
patronised by the pope, proved abortive. In the interim, the tide of
victory flowed in favour of the Egyptians. Kazan died about the year 1303.

From the commencement, till past the middle of the fourteenth century,
the popes repeatedly sounded the charge; but the West in most cases
disregarded the summons of its ghostly instructor; and it was evident
that, although the papal rulers could fan, they could not create the
sacred flame. At the time when the loss of the Holy Land became known in
Europe, the people had not recovered from the astonishment and terror
with which the victories of Jenghiz Khan and his successors had filled
the West. Part of Russia, the whole of Poland, Silesia, Moravia, Hungary
and all the countries to the eastward of the Adriatic Sea, fell a prey
to barbaric desolation. Several of the popes attempted in vain to soften
the ferocity of these new foes; but the papal legates were dismissed with
the tremendous command, for Rome herself to submit her neck to the Mongol
yoke.

Though Europe in general felt that in the fall of Acre all was lost, yet
despair did not immediately complete his triumph, for chivalry and policy
sometimes endeavoured to revive the religious spark. If Pope John XXII
had not been too open in the display of his avarice, and too prodigal in
the commutation of vows for money, the knights of Germany would once more
have fought under the glorious ensign of the cross. A threatened invasion
from England (1328 A.D.) deterred Philip de Valois from leaving his
country for Palestine, and a large body of crusaders was dispersed when
(1364 A.D.) John Le Bon of France died, on whom the pope intended to have
conferred the title of commander of the new crusaders. The politic Henry
IV[80] of England wished to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” in
order to divert his people from looking too nearly into his state, and
to retain their newly sworn allegiance. Both his maritime and military
preparations were considerable; but the hand of nature stopped him and it
was his fate to succumb to death, before he could attempt to commence his
new religious career.

FATE OF THE MILITARY ORDERS

[Sidenote: [1291-1600 A.D.]]

Such were the last appearances of that martial frenzy which so long
agitated Europe; and here the history of the holy wars would naturally
close, if curiosity did not suggest an inquiry into some of those
military and religious orders which arose from the spirit of pilgrimages
and crusades, and whose existence forms one of the most prominent
characteristics of the Middle Ages. The knights of the Teutonic order
were fixed in their conquest of Prussia, some years before the loss of
the Holy Land. Their love of war was not extinguished; they carried both
the sword and the Gospel into Pomerania; and the eastern part of that
country was definitively ceded to the order by a treaty of peace in the
year 1343. The town of Dantzic, the capital of the new conquest, was
considerably aggrandised under the dominion of the knights, and became
one of the principal places of commerce on the Baltic. Pressed forward
again by religion and ambition, they made war on the infidel Lithuanians,
but it was not till the beginning of the fifteenth century, and after
rivers of blood had flowed, that the pagans lost their independence, and
relinquished their national superstition. But the oppressive government
of the knights; their intestine divisions; their heavy imposts, the
unhappy result of wars continually reviving, encouraged the nobility
of Prussia and Pomerania to confederate, and to seek the protection of
the kings of Poland. The torch of war was rekindled, the knights were
defeated, and by the peace of Thorn in 1466 all Pomerania, and indeed
all the country which is generally called Polish Prussia, was ceded to
Poland. The order was allowed to preserve the west of Prussia by the
tenure of feudal service to the kings of Poland.

The Teutonic knights thus lost Prussia; their name appears on few
occasions in the history of Europe, and the order became only a “cheap
defence of nations.” Pope Innocent VIII in the year 1490 endeavoured to
suppress the order of the Knights of St. Lazarus. In Italy, perhaps he
succeeded, but not in any other country. The bull was resisted by the
knights of France and till the reign of Henry IV they were independent
and elected their own grand-masters.

KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN

[Sidenote: [1291-1310 A.D.]]

After the loss of Acre, the knights of St. John and the Temple, from
every preceptory and commandery in Europe, flocked to Cyprus, impatient
for glory and revenge. The military friars soon quitted their settlements
in Cyprus. The grand-master of the Hospitallers gained the friendship and
the purse of Pope Clement V, and drew a flattering picture of Christian
prosperity, if the cavaliers of St. John could set up their banners in
some island in the Mediterranean. Rhodes was fixed upon. Fifteen years
subsequently to the loss of Acre, a new crusade was published, and the
volunteers were invited to repair to Brundusium. The king of Sicily and
the republic of Genoa furnished transports. The grand-master headed the
army, but it was not until after they had sailed, that the crusaders knew
the object of the armament. Rhodes was at that time in the power, partly
of the Greeks and partly of the Saracens. The soldiers landed; many
battles were fought, and the army of the invaders was at last reduced
to the military friars. Their chief hired new soldiers, recommenced his
attacks, and the whole island submitted to his authority (1310). The
subsequent history of the knights of St. John is interwoven with the
general history of Europe.

THE TEMPLARS IN FRANCE

[Sidenote: [1307-1311 A.D.]]

While the military friars were planning the acquisition of an equivalent
to their loss in Palestine, most of the Red Cross knights gradually left
Cyprus, returned to their different commanderies, and lived in security
and indolence. But circumstances soon made the Templars repent that they
had not, like the Hospitallers, attempted a renewal of hostilities with
the infidels. Philip the Fair, king of France, acquainted Pope Clement
V, that the order of the knights Templar had been accused of heresy
and various other crimes against religion and morals. Some members had
charged their fraternity with the different abominations of treachery,
murder, idolatry, and Islamism. Philip the Fair took the bold step of
imprisoning all the knights Templar whom his officers could discover
in France, and of sequestering their property. Clement then circulated
a bull throughout Christendom, by which instrument of papal authority,
nuncios and the resident clergy were commanded to inquire into the
conduct of the knights. His holiness says that, pressed by public clamour
and by the declarations of the king, the barons, the clergy, and laity
of France, he had examined seventy-two members of the order, and had
found them all guilty, though in various degrees, of irreligion and
immorality. Such of the knights as yielded to blandishments and threats
were pardoned, but the torture was applied to those who denied the
charges, and thirty-six knights in Paris heroically braved the horrors of
the rack, and maintained the innocence of the order, till death closed
their sufferings and their virtue. Others confessed in the midst of
corporeal agony, and afterwards recanted their confessions. The knights
Templar were accused of renouncing, at the time of their matriculation,
God, Jesus Christ, the Virgin, and all the saints. It was said that the
brethren used often to spit and trample on the cross, in proof of their
contempt of Christ, who was crucified for his own crimes and not for the
sins of the world. Out of their disdain of God and his Son, they adored
a cat, and certain wooden and golden idols. The master could absolve
brethren from sins. On the assurance that the king would destroy the
order, whether the result of the examinations were favourable or hostile
to its continuance, many knights had yielded to pain and hopelessness,
stayed the hand of the executioner, confessed every crime, upon their
confessing of which, royal pardon and protection were proffered. The
court condemned to perpetual imprisonment those from whom no confession
of guilt had been extorted. But such as had retracted their forced
avowals were declared to be relapsed heretics; they were delivered over
to the secular power, and condemned to the fire (May 11th, 1310). The
number in the last-mentioned class of the proscribed was fifty-four.
All the historians who have spoken of the event, whatever opinion they
might have entertained on the general question, friends or enemies,
natives or strangers, have unanimously attested the virtuous courage, the
noble intrepidity, and the religious resignation, which these martyrs
of heroism displayed. Arrived at the place of punishment, they beheld
with firmness and placidity the piles of wood, and the torches already
lighted in the hands of the executioners. In vain a messenger of the
king promised pardon and liberty to those who did not persist in their
retractations; in vain their surrounding friends endeavoured to touch
their hearts by prayers and tears. Invoking God, the Virgin, and all
the saints, they sung the hymn of death; triumphing over the most cruel
tortures, they believed themselves already in the heavens, and died in
the midst of their songs.

IN OTHER COUNTRIES

[Sidenote: [1311-1314 A.D.]]

By royal command, the sheriffs of the different counties of England and
Wales seized the estates, and imprisoned the persons of the Templars.
The cavaliers were more than a year and a half in prison. At the end of
that time a papal bull was received in England; and the archbishop of
Canterbury appointed courts at London, York, and Lincoln, for the trial
of the Templars, July, 1311. The charges were the same in substance as
those which had been preferred against the order in France. Forty-seven
of the knights who had been incarcerated in the Tower were examined
upon oath before the bishop of London, some inferior clergy, and the
representatives of the pope. William de la Moore, the grand prior of
England, was as earnest as de Molay had been in defence of the French
Templars.

Four knights made a general confession of crimes, when they were told
that the pope had authorised a full pardon to those who acknowledged
their iniquities; but that if they persisted in heresy, they should be
considered and punished as heretics. Thirteen newly admitted knights
swore that they were not acquainted with the secrets of the order, but
that they were prepared to renounce all the erroneous opinions in which
it was possible the minds of men could be stained. William de la Moore,
the grand prior, was the only man whom no fear of imprisonment or dread
of ecclesiastical punishment could induce to deny his first avowal of the
innocence of the order. He was requested to make a general confession;
but he replied that he was not guilty of heresy, and would never abjure
crimes which he had not committed.

In Ireland about thirty Templars, in Scotland only two, were confined
and examined. In Lincoln the number somewhat exceeded twenty. There
were twenty-three in York. The general charges of apostasy and idolatry
were not proved in any case. However, all the knights made a general
confession of the offence of heresy, and avowed they could not cleanse
themselves from the crimes mentioned in the bull. The clergy pardoned
them, and received them again into the bosom of the church. They were
then sent into confinement in various monasteries until the decision of a
general council should be declared.

The fate of the Templars in other parts of the world remains to be told.
In Germany the innocence of the order was proved before the archbishops
of Mainz and Trèves, at councils held in their respective dioceses. In
Italy the pope had a little more success. Several Templars at Florence
confessed every species of abomination. Much blood was shed in Lombardy,
Tuscany, Sicily, Naples, and Provence, whenever the knights would not be
guilty of self-condemnation. In those parts of Spain where the conduct
of the Templars was inquired into, the result was an acquittal. Their
military front was powerful, and the ministers of papal vengeance did not
dare to apply the torture.

COUNCIL AT VIENNE

Four years after the first seizure of the Templars in France a council
was held at Vienne in Dauphiné, for the purpose of making some general
decision on the case of the order, October, 1311. The pope headed three
hundred bishops, and an untold number of inferior clergy. All men who
desired to defend the order were promised security and freedom. Nine
cavaliers presented themselves before the assembly in the character of
representatives of fifteen hundred of their brethren, who were living at
Lyons, and in the secret fastnesses of Savoy and Switzerland. Clement
immediately violated his promise of protection, and threw the nine
knights into prison. He then called upon the council for its opinion,
whether in consequence of the confessions of the Templars the society
ought not to be dissolved? With the disgraceful exception of one Italian
prelate, and three French archbishops, the whole body of churchmen
declared that so illustrious an order as that of the Red Cross knights
ought not to be suppressed, until the grand-master and the nine knights
had been heard in its defence. The pope disregarded the opinion of the
majority; and tried in vain for six months to make a change.

THE ORDER SUPPRESSED

The king of France arrived at Vienne, and sanctioned by his presence, the
pope declared that he should exercise the plenitude of papal authority.
He accordingly dissolved the order provisionally and not absolutely, and
reserved to himself the disposition of the persons and estates of the
Templars. When the subject of the distribution of the knights’ Templar
estates was debated in the council, the pope declared that they ought to
be bestowed upon the Hospitallers, because the original purpose of the
order was the subjugation of infidels, a purpose which the knights of
Rhodes were earnestly pursuing.

The decree of confiscation was executed throughout Christendom. The
Templars were robbed, but the Hospitallers did not enjoy the whole of
the plunder. Philip the Fair, and his successor Louis le Hutin, retained
nearly three hundred thousand livres [£12,000 or $60,000] for what they
chose to term the expenses of the prosecution. The landed estates were
slowly and unwillingly resigned, for the monarchs enjoyed the rents till
the commissioners of the knights of Rhodes established their rights. In
Germany the Teutonic knights assisted the Hospitallers in plundering
those who had formerly been their brethren in arms in Palestine. Dinis,
king of Portugal, preserved the order of the Red Cross knights, by
changing their title from the soldiers of the Temple to that of the
soldiers of Christ. Edward of England gave to different laymen much of
the forfeited property. Numbers of the nobility too as heirs of the
original donors seized many of the Templars’ estates. Indeed, so great
was the injustice done to the Hospitallers, that Pope John XXII censured
both the clergy and laity, for their disobedience to the decree of the
council at Vienne.

The last circumstance which attended the fate of the Templars was the
condemnation of the grand-master, Jacques de Molay.[81] With his dying
lips he bore testimony to the virtue of the order; and his mental
sufferings on account of his former want of firmness appeared to be
greater than his mere corporeal pain. The brother of the prince of
Dauphiné met with the same unhappy but honourable end as that of his
friend Jacques de Molay. The two priors seem to have died in prison.[b]

THE CRUSADES IN THE WEST

[Sidenote: [1230-1309 A.D.]]

Having completed the survey of the vain efforts for the Holy Land, it
will be well to glance at the contests springing up elsewhere on the same
fanatic belief that orthodoxy was a matter of life and death.[a]

Though the Crusades met with failure in the East, in the West they
achieved their purpose; that is, certain expeditions were highly
successful; for example that of the Teutonic knights and sword-bearers
into Prussia and the neighbouring regions, where they founded a new
state; also Simon de Montfort’s war against the Albigenses which
destroyed an ancient civilisation; and the struggle between the Spaniards
and the Moors, as a result of which the latter were forced to surrender
the peninsula over to Christianity and the civilisation of Europe.

It will be observed that the scene of action of the European Crusades was
the two extremities of the continent; around the mouths of the Niemen the
pagans of the Baltic were to be converted, and in the country washed by
the Tagus, the Moslems of Spain.

THE TEUTONIC CRUSADE

In the interval between the First and Second Crusades some citizens
of Bremen and Lübeck had journeyed to the Holy Land and there founded
a hospital for their compatriots, which was exclusively under the
management of Germans. In Palestine all benevolent institutions
were obliged to assume the form of military organisations; thus the
Hospitallers, or officials in charge of the hospitals, became the
knights of St. John, and the inmates of the temple of Solomon, the
knights Templar. The German hospitallers also became transformed into an
armed religious body that was called the Teutonic order. Like both the
others, this order soon acquired vast properties in Europe, especially
in Germany, and the emperor Frederick II raised its grand-master to the
rank of prince of the realm. In 1230 a Polish prince made use of their
zeal and arms, which could no longer be employed in the Holy Land, by
despatching them on a mission to subjugate and convert the Prussians,
a people who have since become so closely identified with the Germans
settled in the country as to be no longer distinguishable from them.
It was this idolatrous people, established between the Niemen and the
Vistula, whose language, history, and religion have now completely
disappeared, that gave its name to one of the largest and most prosperous
states of modern Europe.

The Teutonic order took up its station first at Kulm, whence it proceeded
to conquer the Prussians by the use of the means employed by Charlemagne
against the Saxons; that is, by destroying one portion of the population
and then building fortresses to contain the rest. It was this purpose
that Königsberg and Marienburg were intended to serve.

Several years earlier a prelate of Livonia had founded the order of the
Brothers of the Sword, known still as the knights of Christ, and the body
of the sword-bearers, which subdued Livonia and Esthonia. Disputes with
the bishops of Riga caused these organisations to unite in 1237 with
the Teutonic order, whose forces were thus doubled. Marienburg became
the capital of the order in 1309, and its grand-masters, who reigned
over Prussia, Esthonia, Livonia, and Courland, caused these countries to
hold communion with the rest of Europe, and planted in them the germs of
civilisation. They remain to-day the richest and most progressive of the
Russian provinces. As late as the fifteenth century the Teutonic knights
retained the preponderance of power in northern Europe, all the countries
between the lower Vistula and Lake Peipus being subject to them except
Samogitia, a Lithuanian province which separated the original possessions
of the two orders.

THE ATTACK ON THE ALBIGENSES

[Sidenote: [1167-1208 A.D.]]

The crusade directed by Simon de Montfort against the populations of the
south of France was at first most disastrous in its effects. During all
the time that Christian warriors were being sent out to do battle with
miscreants at the opposite end of the Mediterranean Sea, many infidels
were awaiting conversion in the very heart of Europe. Not the Jews, who
had furnished the first cause for the Crusades in the fury with which
they inspired their early persecutors, but the mixed populations in the
south of France, composed of Iberians, Gauls, Romans, Goths, and Moors,
whose religious beliefs were far removed from orthodoxy. Just what name
to give to their heresy it is hard to decide; even contemporaries were at
a loss in this respect since they called the people simply Albigenses,
from the town Albi, which was their common centre. One thing only is
certain--that in 1167 a council was held near Toulouse, presided over
by Nicetas, a Greek from Constantinople, at which many oriental ideas
were adopted; it has also been asserted that ecclesiastics were treated
with scorn in every part of the land, and even St. Bernard himself was
received there with derision. From this centre of heresy missionaries
were sent out in every direction, and already unseemly doctrines were
making themselves known in Flanders, Germany, England, and even in Italy,
while recently bands of marauders had spread out in the direction of
Auvergne, pillaging churches and profaning sacred objects.

Among the rich and brilliant cities of the south the most important was
Toulouse, where resided Count Raymond VI, one of the greatest nobles
of the south. Another prominent house was that of Barcelona, which had
lately obtained rule over Aragon and possessed Roussillon and Provence;
there were further the proud and adventurous nobles of the Pyrenees, who
lived free and independent lives, and owed not the least allegiance to
either church or king.

The south of France had long been separated from the north. Having other
customs and speaking a different tongue, it had made serious efforts
under Dagobert, Charles Martel, Pepin, Charlemagne, Charles the Bald,
and Hugh Capet, to constitute itself an independent state. Increase
in commerce had brought ease to its citizens and affluence to its
nobles, and the two classes united in peace and harmony to discharge
municipal duties, thus assuring the peace of the whole community. But
in those wealthy cities and brilliant courts, made gay by the songs of
troubadours, religious doctrines were accorded scant attention, and
heresy leaked in from every side.

The all-powerful Innocent III resolved to stamp out this hotbed of
impiety that threatened to spread contagion far and wide. He began by
organising the Inquisition, which was to seek out and judge heretics,
and countless victims were immolated without in any way lessening the
number of unbelievers, the rack and the stake being but indifferent
demonstrators of the truth. The pope next sent to Raymond VI his
legate, the monk Peter of Castelnau, with the demand that the heretics
be immediately expulsed. But the heretics formed the main body of
the population, and Castelnau accomplished nothing. Raymond was
excommunicated and threatened with eternal fires, and the legate was
murdered during his passage back over the Rhone (1208).

[Sidenote: [1208-1228 A.D.]]

“Anathema on the count of Toulouse,” cried the pope, “and remission of
sins to all who will take up arms against these pestilent inhabitants of
Provence! Forward, soldiers of Christ! let the heretics be wiped out, and
colonies of Catholics spring up where their cities now stand!”

The doctrine of extermination was preached by all the organs of the pope:
and the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Nevers, Auxerre, Geneva, the
bishops of Rheims, Sens, Rouen, Autun, with many Germans and inhabitants
of Lorraine, massed forces, and set out on the crusade. Three armies made
irruption into the south of France, headed by Simon de Montfort, a feudal
lord of the environs of Paris, ambitious, fanatical, and cruel. The count
of Toulouse was not immediately attacked, the pope hoping to weaken his
resistance by appearing ready to extend a pardon, and hostilities were
all directed against the viscount of Béziers. When the latter’s town was
taken, the victors, not being able to distinguish the heretics, hesitated
whom to strike. “Kill all,” said the legate, “God will easily recognise
his own.” Thirty thousand are said to have perished. Carcassonne also
succumbed, and the knights of the Ile de France divided up the country
under Simon de Montfort, who was made suzerain over all.

Raymond hoped to be spared, now that so sanguinary a sacrifice had been
offered up on the altar of orthodoxy, and Innocent himself was inclined
to clemency, but the legates were without pity; they would extend mercy
to the count only on condition that he should cause all his subjects to
don the garb of penitents, degrade his nobles to the state of villeins,
discharge his hired troops, raze his castles to the ground, and himself
start on a crusade.

The count laughed at these proposals, and again the legates gave the
signal for attack. There flocked to the banner of Simon de Montfort a
multitude from the north, rejoicing that the highly profitable campaign
in the south was not yet at an end. Raymond VI was vanquished at
Castelnaudry, and the victors divided up his domains among themselves:
to the prelates fell the bishoprics, and to the soldiers the fiefs. The
defeated noble had no resource but to seek the protection of Pedro II,
king of Aragon, who at once advanced to the rescue, and was joined by
all the petty nobles of the Pyrenees, being looked upon by them as their
chief.

The battle of Muret, in which the king perished, decided the fate of
the south of France (1213). Two years afterward the Council of Lateran
ratified the dispossession of Raymond and of most of the other nobles;
the legates of the holy see offered their fiefs to the powerful barons
who had participated in the crusade; but all save Simon de Montfort
refused to accept gifts bought at the price of so much bloodshed. A
harsh measure was passed, forbidding widows of heretics who possessed
noble fiefs to marry any but Frenchmen during the next ten years. In the
grasp of hands so ruthless the civilisation of southern France perished,
and all gaiety and poesy disappeared. Innocent III, meanwhile, began
to be troubled, fearing to have committed a great iniquity. “Give me
back my lands,” the count de Foix said to him, “or I shall claim all
of you--property, rights, and heritage, on the Day of Judgment.” “I
acknowledge,” answered the pope, “that great wrong has been done you;
but it was not done by my order, and I owe no thanks to those who are
responsible.”

In their extremity the people of Languedoc bethought themselves of the
king of France. Montpellier gave itself up to him, and Philip Augustus
sent his son Louis to plant the national standard in the south of France.
Louis returned thither at the death of Simon de Montfort, who was killed
before Toulouse--whither Raymond VII, son of the old count, had also
returned; and Montfort’s successor, Amaury, offered to cede to the king
his father’s conquered possessions, which he could no longer defend
against the reprobation of the people. Philip, at that time on the brink
of the grave, refused the offer, but five years later it was accepted.

WESTERN ASSAULTS ON THE ARABS

[Sidenote: [732-1096 A.D.]]

Before, during, and after the great Crusades which had the Orient for
their scene of action and all the peoples of Europe for their personages,
there was being carried on in the West another and smaller undertaking
of a similar nature, which won nothing like the renown attending the
greater expeditions, but which displayed a tenacity of purpose that kept
it in operation during at least eight centuries. When Charles Martel and
Pepin le Bref expelled the Arabs from France they simply drove them to
the other side of the Pyrenees, seeming to look upon that strong mountain
barrier as the confine of Europe and Christianity. Spain was a country to
be sacrificed, to be delivered over with Africa to the Moslem races by
which it had been invaded. Spain had been Christian, however, before the
invasion, and the mass of the people remained so after, by no means all
having been subjected. Outside the conquered districts there remained a
point where the sacred thought of independence could find safe harbour,
and this point was gradually to expand until it formed the nucleus of a
new Christian domination.

The weakening of the power of the Cordovan caliphate in its northern
provinces, as a result of the revolt of the Beni Hassan in 864, was
singularly favourable to the development of the small Christian states.
The tenth century, however, did not continue to bring uninterrupted good
fortune to the Christian states. While discords were beginning to creep
in among their own number, the caliphate was restored by Abd ar-Rahman
III, and the adroit Al-Mansur under Hisham II. The terrible defeat
suffered by the Christians at Simancas in 940, the overthrow of Sancho
the Great by the count of Castile who declared himself independent, and
the subsequent reinstatement of Sancho by Abd ar-Rahman, reveal the
kingdom of Leon as having fallen into a state of demoralisation so deep
that even its enemies had power to dispose of the throne. Al-Mansur
also weighed upon the Christians with a ruthless hand. In 997 he found
himself master of all the lands the Christians had conquered south of
the Douro and the Ebro. When he came to be defeated himself, however, at
Calatanazar, near the source of the Douro, his chagrin was so great that
he allowed himself to die by starvation, and in him perished the mainstay
of the caliphate (998).

We have seen at another point in this history that during the eleventh
century the Spanish Arabs fell into complete dissolution; the Christian
states, on the other hand, grew into closer and closer union by means of
frequent intermarriages and increased trade relations. This process of
unification and internal adjustment, as well as the necessity of closing
all the gaps left open by the sword of Al-Mansur, held in check the holy
war for a period of nearly a century. At the end of that time it was
resumed with greater brilliancy and success than before.

Not alone by reason of the fortunate alliances he was able to make did
Sancho II merit the title of Great; greatness was to be achieved in Spain
mainly by warring upon infidels, and many were the engagements during
which the Moors were made to feel the might of his sword. Not content to
rest here, he carried his victorious arms, in the intervals of preparing
the substitution of the Christian dynasty of Aznar for that of Pelayo,
into the heart of the Moslem country to the very walls of Cordova.

[Sidenote: [1072-1146 A.D.]]

At Sancho’s death Spain was divided into four kingdoms. But Alfonso VI
reunited Castile and Leon in 1072, and resumed in Spain the holy war
which had been made extremely popular in Europe by the preparations for
the First Crusade. The news of the Christian reverses in Jerusalem, and
also the growing influence of the holy see, had a powerful effect on
Spain. It was the desire of Gregory VII to bring under his domination the
Spanish Christian states which had hitherto enjoyed complete religious
independence, and in case of their failure to yield it was feared that
some day he would arm all Christianity against them.

Always characterised by boundless presumption, Gregory VII demanded of
Alfonso VI that he pay him tribute, on the pretext that all lands taken
from the infidels were by right the property of the church. Alfonso
refused. Then Gregory fell back on another point, the adoption by the
Spanish Christians of the Roman instead of the Gothic or Muzarabic ritual
to which they had been used. Eventually Alfonso adopted the Roman ritual.
Henceforth complete communion was held with Rome by the Spanish people
which eventually became the most pronouncedly Catholic, if not always the
most submissive to the holy see, of all the races of the earth.

Ferdinand I had profited by the divisions existing among the petty Arab
sovereigns to wrest from them many of their possessions. He took Viseu,
Lamego, Coimbra, and made the king of Toledo pay him tribute. In 1085
Alfonso VI was even more successful, gaining possession of the entire
kingdom. Toledo, formerly the capital and metropolis of the Goths, became
once more an important centre; and its restoration marks the fourth stage
of the progress of the Christians from the Asturias, where they began
their onward march, to the heart of the peninsula, where they were to
take up a firm position behind the barrier of the Tagus.

Five years later the Capetian, Henri de Bourgogne, great-grandson of
Robert king of France, who had distinguished himself at the conquest of
Toledo, took at the mouth of the Douro, Porto Cale, which Alfonso raised
to importance by making it the countship of Portugal. Simultaneously
with this the famous Cid, Rodrigo de Bivar, the hero of Spanish chivalry
and romance, achieved victory after victory along the coast of the
Mediterranean, the most important of which was the conquest of Valencia
(1094). Finally in 1118 Alfonso I, king of Aragon, won for himself a
capital after the manner of the king of Castile, by taking possession
of Saragossa, where a Moslem dynasty had long been in power. Thus the
Christian invasion, divided like an army into three columns, was steadily
advancing across the peninsula, one column in the centre, one in the east
and one in the west.

In the centre progress was suddenly arrested, and was later checked along
all the lines by unforeseen obstacles which the Christians were unable to
surmount until after the lapse of nearly a century. Two new Moslem hordes
poured in upon the land, surprising the Spanish conquerors in the midst
of their belief that the sources of these invading tides had long since
been exhausted. The Almoravids, and after them the Almohads, swarmed out
of Africa and revived in the Moslem provinces of Spain the ancient faith
of Islam. The names of these two sects signify, respectively, “close
alliance with the faith,” and “Unitarians.” The Almoravids steadily
increased their power and the extent of their dominion. At the death of
the Cid (1099) they retook Valencia, gained possession of the Balearic
Isles, and in 1108 won, in a battle as sanguinary and hard-fought as
that of Zallaka, a signal victory over Alfonso VI. The Christians asked
themselves in alarm if Spain, but half reconquered, was about to be
wrested from them again.

As the result showed, their fears were groundless. Toledo, repeatedly
besieged, defended itself with victorious energy; and the little earldom
of Portugal not only successfully resisted attack, but itself took
several towns and drove the invaders back whence they had come.

[Sidenote: [1146-1270 A.D.]]

The invasion of the Almohads was similar in its effects to that of the
Almoravids, which it immediately succeeded. The leader, Abdul-Mumin,
began hostilities by laying siege to Fez, which he took in 1146; the
same year he led his followers into Spain. As before, it was Castile
that had to bear the heaviest shock of the invasion, and at the battle
of Alarcon (1195) Alfonso VIII was badly defeated. Portugal, on the
other hand, maintained its superiority and placed a decided check upon
the invaders at Santerem (1184). The advancement made by Aragon and
Portugal caused the thirteenth century to open gloriously for Spain in
its struggles against the Moslems. It had, moreover, been given a second
powerful instrument with which to achieve victory in the four military
bodies organised in the twelfth century expressly for the Spanish
Crusade, without prejudice to the great Holy Land crusaders who also took
part--the orders of Alcantara, of Calatrava, and of St. James in Castile,
and of Evora in Portugal.

In the year 1210 the news was spread throughout all Christendom that
four hundred thousand Almohads had crossed the Strait of Gibraltar.
Though deeply engaged in the war against the Albigenses, Pope Innocent
III could not contemplate the danger thus announced without calling upon
all Europe to succour Spain. Public prayers were ordered and indulgence
promised to all who would volunteer to fight in the peninsula. The five
Christian kings of Leon and Castile, temporarily separated at the time,
joined their forces and marched against Muhammed, the fanatical leader
of the Almohads. The encounter took place at Alacab, on the plateau
of the Sierra Morena, according to the Arabs; at Las Navas de Tolosa,
according to the Christians. After an obstinately contested battle the
flight of the Andalusians decided the day in favour of the Christians.
Muhammed, who had stationed himself on a height amid the serried ranks of
his African guard, holding the _Koran_ in one hand and his sword in the
other, looked on in undisturbed passivity while his followers suffered
the most terrible defeat. “God alone,” he said, “is just and powerful,
the demon is without truth or greatness.” Muhammed was at last compelled
to take flight on a swift courser of the desert, which carried him far
from his enemies. This battle was decisive in the struggles between the
Christians and the infidels. The Almoravids and Almohads once definitely
repulsed, there rose up in Africa no more defenders of the Moslem faith
sufficiently powerful to restore its dominion in Spain.

During the whole of the thirteenth century the Christians reaped the
fruits of their victory, which was rendered the more complete by the
anarchy that prevailed among all ranks of the Almohads. Cordova (1236),
Seville (1266), and many other places fell into the hands of the king
of Castile, while James I, king of Aragon, brought the Balearic Isles
under subjection, and at the head of eighty thousand French and Spanish
troops retook Valencia (1238). Portugal reached its limit of expansion
when in 1270 it united the provinces of Algarve, and the outlines it
then assumed have never since been changed. The Moors now possessed only
the little kingdom of Granada, that was hemmed in on all sides by the
sea and the domains of the king of Castile. Yet even in this confined
space, their numbers swelled by the refugees that fled to them from the
cities captured by the Christians, they contrived to maintain a power
that staved off their ultimate downfall for a period of two hundred
years. Save to repel certain incursions on the part of the Merinids of
Maghreb which never seriously endangered their conquered possessions, the
Christians had now no military operations to carry on; hence the crusade
in Spain was practically suspended until a later date, 1492.

COMPARISON OF THE TWO CRUSADES

The crusade to Jerusalem had undoubtedly brought forth general results
to civilisation, but its particular aim had not been accomplished. It
founded no important institutions in the Orient; it did not even succeed
in delivering the Holy Sepulchre, and millions of men had left their
bones along its route. The crusade in Spain, on the other hand, while it
bore no consequences to the social conditions of Europe in the Middle
Ages, changed the whole face of Spain and reacted powerfully upon the
Europe of modern times. It took the peninsula away from the Moors and
gave it to the Christians; it brought into being the little kingdom of
Portugal which, carrying on a crusade of its own beyond seas, discovered
the Cape of Good Hope; and it made great states of Aragon and Castile,
whose kings were inspired with European ambitions by their victories in
Spain, and whose inhabitants gained, in the eight centuries of warfare,
military customs and knowledge which made of them the _condottieri_ of
Charles V and Philip II, not the peaceful and industrious heirs of the
commerce and brilliant civilisation of the Moors.

There was still another point. What was the cause of this difference
between the two crusades? Jerusalem, situated far from the centre of
Catholic denomination, remained in the hands of the Moslems, by whom
it was surrounded, for precisely the same reason that Toledo, situated
at the limit of their zone of occupation, escaped them to become the
possession of the nearby Christians. The whole matter was simply a
question of distance. Palestine bordered on the territory of Mecca,
as Spain lay in full view of Rome. Geographical relationship is a
powerful factor, even in matters that seem to come the least under its
influence--the theories and doctrines of religion.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[73] It was very seldom that the Christians thought of converting the
Mussulmans. When the sword failed, then they resorted to arguments. The
occasion will excuse us from departing from chronological order, and
saying, that in the year 1285, Pope Honorius IV in his design to convert
the Saracens to Christianity, wished to establish schools at Paris
for the tuition of people in the Arabic and other oriental languages,
agreeably to the intentions of his predecessors. In every subsequent
project for a crusade, it was always proposed to instruct the Saracens
sword in hand. The Council of Vienne in 1312 recommended the conversion
of the infidels, and the re-establishment of schools, as the way to
recover the Holy Land. It was accordingly ordered that there should be
professors of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic tongues in Rome, Paris,
Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca; and that the learned should translate
into Latin the best Arabic books. It was not till the time of Francis I
that this decree was acted upon. He founded the royal college, and sent
even into the East for books.

[74] The oriental chronicle says that the French lost in this defeat,
besides the brother of the king, fourteen hundred knights.

[75] De Joinville[f] quotes the Saracens as saying that “if Mohammed had
allowed them to suffer the manifold evils that God had caused the king to
undergo, they would never have had any confidence in him, nor paid him
their adorations.”

[76] “Pure paganism and native infidelity, like white cloth, will take
the tincture of Christianity; whereas the Turks are soiled and stained
with the irreligious religion of Mohammedanism, which first must with
great pains be scoured out of them.”--FULLER.[d]

[77] Le Blanc makes the ransom of St. Louis equivalent to seven millions
of livres modern French money [£280,000 or $1,400,000].

[78] See Matthew of Paris[c] and also Fuller.[d] “About this time (1250)
many thousands of the English were resolved for the holy war, and would
needs have been gone, had not the king strictly guarded his ports, and
kept his kingdom from running away out of doors. The king promised he
would go with them; and hereupon got a mass of money from them for this
journey. Some say that he never intended it, and that this only was a
trick to stroke the skittish cow to get down her milk. His stubborn
subjects said that they would tarry for his company till midsummer, and
no longer. Thus they weighed out their obedience with their own scales;
and the king stood to their allowance. But hearing of the ill success
of the French, both prince and people altered their resolution, who had
come too late to help the French in their distress, and too soon to bring
themselves into the same misery.”

[79] “It is storied,” says Fuller,[d] “how Eleanor, his lady, sucked
all the poison out of his wounds without doing any harm to herself. So
sovereign a remedy is a woman’s tongue, anointed with the virtue of
loving affection. Pity it is that so pretty a story should not be true
(with all the miracles in love’s legends), and sure he shall get himself
no credit, who undertaketh to confute a passage so sounding to the honour
of the sex. Yet can it not stand with what others have written.”

[80] Henry when young had endeavoured to implant Christianity in
Lithuania _vi et armis_. When king he gained the friendship of the clergy
by aiding them to put down the followers of Wycliffe.

[81] [See also the History of the Papacy for a full account of this
tragedy.]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES

[Sidenote: [1096-1291 A.D.]]

No religious wars have ever been so long, so sanguinary, and so
destructive as the Crusades. Countless hosts of holy warriors fell
the victims of their own vindictive enthusiasm and military ardour.
Fierceness and intolerance were the strongest features in the character
of the dark ages, and it is, perhaps, not so much in the conduct, as in
the object, of the Crusades, that anything distinct and peculiar can be
marked. It was not for the conversion of people, nor the propagation
of opinions, but for the redemption of the sepulchre of Christ, and
the destruction of the enemies of God, that the crimson standard was
unfurled. The western world did not cast itself into Asia from any view
of expediency, or in consequence of any abstract theoretical principle
of a right of hostility; men did not arm themselves from any conviction
that the co-existence of Christendom and Islamism was compatible with
the doctrines of the _Koran_, or that the countries of the West would be
precipitated into the gulf of destruction, if Asia Minor were not torn
from the Seljuk Turks, and restored to the emperor of Constantinople.
But the flame of war spread from one end of Europe to the other, for the
deliverance of the Holy Land from a state which was called pollution; and
the floodgates of fanaticism were unlocked for the savage and iniquitous
purpose of extermination. But popular madness would not listen to the
calls of generous policy and lofty ambition. The wish for the redemption
of the Holy Land was the feeling which influenced both Godfrey de
Bouillon and St. Louis, the first and last great champions of the cross;
it was that wild desire which moved Europe for two centuries, and without
it the Crusades would never have been undertaken.

The question of the justice of the holy wars is one of easy solution. The
crusaders were not called upon by heaven to carry on hostilities against
the Mussulmans. Palestine did not, of right, belong to the Christians
in consequence of any gift of God; and it was evident, from the fact
of the destruction of the second temple, that there was no longer any
peculiar sanctity in the ground of Jerusalem. There is no command in the
Scriptures for Christians to build the walls of the Holy City, and no
promise of an earthly Canaan as the reward of virtue. If the Christians
had been animated by the conviction that war with all the world was
the vital principle of the Mohammedan religion, then also a right of
hostility would have been raised.

As Lord Bacon said in his _War with Spain_: “Forasmuch as it is a
fundamental law in the Turkish empire, that they may, without any other
provocation, make war upon Christendom for the propagation of their law;
so that there lieth upon Christians a perpetual fear of war, hanging
over their heads, from them; and therefore, they may at all times, as
they think good, be upon the preventive.” But before they could have
been justified on this last-mentioned argument, proof was necessary that
the danger was imminent, and that time and circumstances had not reduced
the principle to a mere dry, inoperative letter of the law. In the first
hundred and fifty years of Mohammedan history, the Mussulmans made
continued and successful attacks on the Christians; and the invasion of
France by the Spanish and African Moors, seemed to endanger Christendom
as a world independent of and not tributary to the Saracens. In all that
long period the people of the West might have instituted crusades on
principles of self-defence. But as they had acquiesced for ages in the
existence of Islam, they could not afterwards draw the sword, except for
the purpose of preventing or repelling new aggressions. No dangers hung
over Christendom at the time when the Crusades commenced.

MORAL EFFECTS

On principles of morals and politics the holy wars cannot be justified.
Yet war became a sacred duty, and obligatory on every class of mankind.
The fair face of religion was besmeared with blood, and heavenly
attraction was changed for demoniacal repulsiveness. The Crusades
encouraged the most horrible violences of fanaticism. They were the
precedent for the military contentions of the church with the Prussians
and Albigenses; and as the execrable Inquisition arose out of the spirit
of clerical dragooning, the wars in Palestine brought a frightful
calamity on the world. Universal dominion was the ambition of the Roman
pontiffs; and the iniquity of the means was in dreadful accordance with
the audacity of the project. The pastors of the church used anathemas,
excommunications, interdicts, and every weapon in the storehouse of
spiritual artillery; and when the world was in arms for the purpose of
destroying infidels, it was natural that the soldiers of God should
turn aside and chastise other foes to the true religion. Crusades with
idolaters and erring Christians were considered as virtuous and as
necessary as crusades with Saracens; the south of France was saturated
with heretical blood; and those booted apostles, the Teutonic knights,
converted, sword in hand, the Prussians and Lithuanians from idolatry to
Christianity.

The sword of religious persecution was not directed against Turks and
heretics only. The reader remembers the sanguinary enormities that
disgraced the opening of the First Crusade. Not only was this instance of
persecution of the Jews the earliest one upon record in the annals of the
West since the fall of the Roman Empire, but it is also true that that
wretched people met with most of their dreadful calamities during the
time of the holy wars. It is highly probable that the hatred which the
Christians felt against them was embittered by that fierce and mistaken
zeal for religion which gave birth to the Crusades; and as the chief
object of those Crusades was the recovery of the sepulchre at Jerusalem,
it was natural that the Christian belligerents should behold with equal
detestation the nation which had crucified the Saviour and the nation
which continued to profane his tomb. This conjecture is much confirmed
by the circumstance, that the prevailing prejudice in the Middle Ages
against the Jews was that they often crucified Christian children in
mockery of the great sacrifice. If it be objected to this reasoning
that the crusading Cœur de Lion befriended the Jews, we reply that the
crusading king Edward I expelled them from England.

The penalties which the church inflicted on its members, as the temporal
punishments of sin, might have been unwarranted by Scripture, and
were doubtless often awarded by cruelty and caprice. But the practice
of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving, was in itself salubrious to the
individual, and beneficial to society. It softened pride; it subdued
the sensual passions; it diffused charity. Instead of these blessings,
the slaughter of human beings was made the propitiation of offence; and
the Christian virtues of self-denial and benevolence were considered an
absurd and antiquated fashion. As the discipline of the church had been
broken in upon for one purpose, it could be violated for another. The
repentant sinner who could not take the cross himself, might contribute
to the charge of the holy expedition. When offences were once commuted
for money, the religious application of the price of pardon soon ceased
to be necessary. Absolutions from penance became a matter of traffic,
and holy virtues were discountenanced. For this reason, and for many
others, the Crusades conferred no benefits on morals. The evils of a
life free from domestic restraints, formed a strong argument against
pilgrimages in very early ages of the church, and it does not appear
that when the wanderers became soldiers their morals improved. The
vices of the military colonists in Palestine are the burden of many a
page of the crusading annalists. Something must be detracted from those
representations in consequence of their authors’ prejudice that the vices
of the Christians in the Holy Land effected the ruin of the kingdom.
Yet enough remains to show that the tone of morals was not at a higher
pitch in Palestine than in Europe. The decrees of the council at Nablus
(Shechem or Neapolis) prove that a difference of religion, although
a barrier against the dearest charities of life, was no impediment
to a vicious sensual intercourse between the Franks and the Moslems.
The Latins lived in a constant course of plunder on their Mussulman
neighbours, and therefore on their return to Europe could not spread
around them any rays of virtue.[82]

POLITICAL EFFECTS

As the Crusades were carried on for holy objects, not for civil or
national ends, their connection with politics could only have been
collateral and indirect. The spirit of crusading, composed as it was
of superstition and military ardour, was hostile to the advancement of
knowledge and liberty; and consequently no improvement in the civil
condition of the kingdoms of the West could have been the legitimate
issue of the principles of the holy wars. The pope was the only monarch
who mixed politics with his piety. The other princes seem to have been
influenced by the spirit of religion or of chivalry; and it was only in
the attempts again to disorder the intellect of Europe, that we find one
monarch, Henry IV of England, acting the part of a crafty politician.

Great changes in the political aspect of Europe were coeval with but were
not occasioned by the holy wars. The power of the French crown was much
higher at the end of the thirteenth, than it had been at the same period
of the eleventh century; but the influence of the imperial throne was
materially depressed. These opposite effects could never have been the
simple results of the same cause; namely, the loss of the flower of the
western aristocracy in Palestine.

The causes of the depression of imperial authority were the
aggrandisement of the nobles (a natural effect of the feudal system); the
improvident grants of lands which the Swabian family made to the clergy;
the contests between the popes and emperors respecting their different
jurisdictions, and, above all the rest, the destructive wars which the
emperors waged in the north of Italy for the reannexation of that country
to the throne of the descendants of the imperial house of Charlemagne.

[Illustration: GERMAN CRUSADER OF THE EARLY CRUSADES]

The political changes in England cannot with justice be attributed to the
Crusades. Until the days of Richard I holy wars had not become a general
or a national concern. The monarchy stood the same at the close of his
reign as at its commencement; and the only favourable issue of Cœur de
Lion’s armament was an increase of military reputation. His renunciation
of feudal sovereignty over Scotland had no influence on politics. Edward
I pressed his claim, although Richard had deprived him of his strongest
support. The pusillanimous John assumed the cross; but that circumstance
did not occur until after he had surrendered his crown to the papal see,
and until the barons had formed a confederacy against him. His assumption
of the cross neither retarded nor accelerated the progress of English
liberty. The pope was not linked to him by stronger ties than those
which had formerly bound them; and the barons were not deceived by the
religious hypocrisy of the king. The transmarine expeditions of the earls
of Cornwall and Salisbury, and of Prince Edward in the reign of Henry
III, were the ebullitions of religious and military ardour, but did not
affect the general course of events.

The great political circumstance of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
which was important above all others to civil liberty, was the appearance
of free and corporate towns. But the Crusades neither produced their
establishment nor affected their history. After various vicissitudes of
fortune, the battle of Legnano, and the Peace of Constance, established
the independence of the towns in the north of Italy. The Crusades did
not contribute to these events; for the two sacred expeditions which
had taken place were as disastrous to peasants as to princes, and
drained Europe of all ranks of society. Consequently it was not from the
holy wars that the people gained their liberties. We find that so ill
regulated was the liberty of the towns alluded to, that anarchy soon
succeeded. Men of personal importance and wealth aspired to sovereign
honours; an overwhelming aristocracy extinguished freedom, and at the
end of the thirteenth century there were as many princes in Tuscany and
Lombardy as there had been free towns at the end of the twelfth.

It is only in the maritime cities of Italy that any indisputable
influence of the Crusades can be marked. Trade with the Christian states
in Palestine, and the furnishing of transports to the pilgrims, increased
the wealth of the commercial cities. The capture of Constantinople by
the French and Venetians was important in its issues. Venice regained
maritime ascendency; but it was soon taken from her by the Genoese, who
aided the Greeks to recover their capital. Genoa then became a leading
power in the Mediterranean, and she subdued Pisa. The rapid increase of
the wealth and power of Venice and Genoa, and the eventual destruction
of Pisa seem, then, to form the principal circumstances in commercial
history which the Crusades were instrumental in producing. But how
insignificant were these events, both locally and generally, both in
their relation to Italy and to the general history of Europe, when
compared with the discovery of a maritime passage to India!

A view of the heroic ages of Christianity, in regard to their grand
and general results, is a useful and important, though a melancholy
employment. The Crusades retarded the march of civilisation, thickened
the clouds of ignorance and superstition; and encouraged intolerance,
cruelty, and fierceness. Religion lost its mildness and charity; and war
its mitigating qualities of honour and courtesy. Such were the bitter
fruits of the holy wars![c]

INFLUENCE UPON COMMERCE

Trade with the East, at that time, embraced many more articles of
commerce than at the present day. Sugar and several other commodities
sought for as luxuries or used as medicine, which now come entirely from
the new world, were brought from Egypt or the Indies. Europeans looked
to Asia for precious gems, especially emeralds, whose worth equalled
that of diamonds, until the discovery of the rich mines in the mountains
of America. Pearls were then to be found only on the shores of oriental
seas. The Crusades gave the peoples of Europe a taste for delicacies
and Asiatic ornaments, which several of them had never before known.
Vanity and enervation made precious stones, silks, perfumes, and all the
products less useful than pleasant which nature has sown in profusion
throughout the Orient, necessary to them.

Accustomed by their intercourse with the Orientals to the burning savour
of spices, soon they were not able to get along without them. They could
not prepare famous dishes without plentiful use of spice; wines even
were perfumed with them. Romancers of the era of the Crusades sang the
praises, on nearly every page, of cinnamon, musk, clove, and ginger.
Did these writers praise some exquisite odour, it was with spices they
compared it. Did their fertile imagination build some superb palace,
the magic home of the most powerful genii, they surrounded it with an
odoriferous forest, planted with spice-bearing trees. Several Italian
towns, especially the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, got from
this, almost entirely, not only the benefits of a commerce which embraced
so many sought-for commodities, but the other advantages of a sea-trade
abandoned to the Franks, by the Greeks and Arabs.

ENRICHMENT OF CITIES

Venice, who nourished amid her waters an enormous population, seems
through her natural environment to have been peopled only with merchants
and followers of the sea. The Crusades helped the proud city to the
accomplishment of her brilliant destiny, to make the Orient tremble
at her fleets, to enrich the Occident by her industry, and to command
respect through many ages for her military power. Genoa, less happily
situated, and less rich than Venice, was, however, powerful enough to
have aroused the Sea-Republic’s jealousy. Pisa had pushed herself too
late into rivalry with Genoa, and the destruction of her harbour was the
work of implacable Genoese hatred. Florence, never free from the throes
of civil discord, obtained nevertheless great wealth from her commerce,
which she generously consecrated to the culture of the fine arts.

The Crusades, therefore, enriched the great cities in giving the
opportunity to extend their trade, and also to raise to exorbitant prices
charges for their ships. The hardships and dangers which were inseparable
from the overland route made it less and less frequented after the first
expeditions. Crowds of pilgrims made their way to the ports, and several
Italian republics amassed, in the transportation of human freight, a
degree of wealth comparable for that time to that which the merchandise
of the new world had since brought to the most flourishing cities of
modern days.

COLONISATION

The establishment of colonies in the East gave more substantial
foundation to Italy’s prosperity. Several cities, whose own interest
was a constant stimulus, and whose industry grew with success, founded
trading colonies in Egypt, Africa, throughout the kingdom of Jerusalem;
at Tyre, where the Pisans had formed a celebrated commercial group; at
Antioch, at Acre, stronghold of the Christians; at several other places
which the Crusades had opened to them; and as a result the principal
cause of the decline of Venice and other powerful Italian cities was not
alone the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, but to some extent the
conquests which made Selim I master of Egypt.

Before the days of the holy wars, some of the Italian towns already
possessed trading stations in the Greek Empire, but Constantinople having
fallen into the hands of the Latins, the active spirit of the Italians
was no longer disturbed by the defiant policy of the Eastern emperors.
The Genoese founded the colony of Kaffa, which became very prosperous;
the Venetians and Pisans multiplied their warehouses in many places. The
subjects of the doge, always mindful of their commerce, demanded the
islands of the archipelago, in dividing with the French the territory
wrested from the Eastern Empire; but at the moment of taking possession
of their share they feared to weaken themselves by occupying territory so
remote and widely separated. In the end, however, they could not bring
themselves to let go a maritime country so well adapted to trade, and
the senate invited by proclamation the rich citizens to take possession
of these isles, promising to give in fief those they succeeded in making
subject to themselves. Thus it happened that the descendants of the
Greeks once so jealous of their political independence saw, so to speak,
their freedom at the auction block in the public squares of Venice.

And thus it was that the Crusades ruined the Greeks and the Arabs, and
that traffic between the East and the West had to pass almost exclusively
through the hands of the Italians, then called Lombards, active, sharp
merchants and pitiless usurers, who have left their names as a monument
to their thrift, upon the commercial streets of many a great town; those
localities where the money lender, furnishing more often a passing aid
to extravagance than real assistance to misery, exhibits his insatiable
greed. They tried, in the twelfth century, to create merchant tribunals
in several towns, to decide commercial disputes and make treaties with
strangers--the first separation of commercial jurisprudence from common
law. We shall be forgiven doubtless for not entering into any minute
description of the Italian commercial establishments in Greece and Asia;
it has been sufficient to note the turn given by the Crusades to trade in
general.

The flourishing condition to which Venice, Genoa, and Pisa in the south
of Europe were raised by trade with the East was almost equalled in the
north by that of the Hanseatic towns. Necessary commodities for use at
sea, all the products of colder climes, offered to the Teutonic Hansa
large and assured profits. As the Lombards brought into parts of Germany
where money was scarce the products of the south and east, there sprang
up an exchange of merchandise for merchandise. The Hanseatic League
apparently came into existence about the beginning of the thirteenth
century, and it is not hard to believe that the commercial activity
stimulated by the Crusades favoured the formation of the powerful
federation which breathed nothing but the love of gain, and which
bartered for all the wealth of the south with all the product of the
north.

In infusing into trade a new activity, the Crusades necessarily perfected
the art of navigation. We may well admit that the sea held less of terror
for one who confronted it to perform a religious duty, and insensibly
this fear-inspiring element became less regarded as the inevitable tomb
of all who confided to it their life or fortune. Moreover vessels ceased
to be guided by blind instinct or the insufficient experience of pilots.
The compass, whose origin it is so difficult to establish (and indeed
the instrument may not have been invented before the time of the First
Crusade), was in general use on the ships that plied the Mediterranean.
We must admire the fortunate but rash industry of the Italians who
overcame the caprices and fury of the waves. These navigators gained
experience more and more in constantly transporting pilgrims, and proved
that it was not impossible to sail the seas in winter. Venice surpassed
the whole world in the brilliance of her maritime glory. She well
deserved that a pope of this period, zealous to show his gratitude to his
defenders, presented the doge, with solemn ceremony, the wedding ring
which was for long ages the unique emblem of the republic’s naval power.

[Illustration: CRUSADER OF THE LAST CRUSADE]

Other fleets than those of Italy found their way to the Holy Land.
One might see on the Southern Sea vessels carrying those pirates
and adventurers which set out every year in great numbers from the
countries in the north, the Flemings, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Danes
often rendered considerable assistance to the Christians in the East.
Norwegians fought under King Baldwin at the taking of Sidon; the Flemings
rescued Lisbon from the Saracens. These northern people came in
high-decked massive ships, while the vessels in use on the Mediterranean
were very light and shallow affairs; a difference in structure which
could not be noticed without a comparison of advantages and disadvantages.

From the Crusades may be dated the establishment of the French navy.
Philip Augustus, on his return from the Holy Land, organised a national
fleet; before this the French fleets were composed of foreign vessels
hired for a certain time. The title of “admiral,” of which the name and
idea was borrowed from the Greeks or the Arabs, came into constant use
about the time of the Second Crusade, whereas the rank was never bestowed
in former days except at the commencement of a war, and went out of use
at its close.

Very soon the ocean and the Mediterranean were covered with vessels
manned by prudent and intrepid sailors. The great overland route
from Antwerp to Genoa, which was expensive, slow, and difficult, was
thenceforth given up.

Naval architecture learned a lesson from several abuses which the
Crusades momentarily had introduced into the art. Ships of excessive
capacity, too weak, and of faulty proportions had been hastily built
in order to accommodate the crowd of pilgrims. Seamen who wished their
voyages to be more lucrative and passengers desirous of travelling in
companies began to adopt these ungainly vessels. However, this departure
from the principles of shipbuilding caused the loss of many fleets and
brought about a fortunate innovation in naval architecture. Experience
taught that a single mast was not sufficient in a vessel of great size,
and we may trace to this period the custom of furnishing several masts to
a single ship--a custom whose antiquity is well proven, but whose origin
is somewhat shadowed in doubt.

An increase in the number of sails must of necessity follow the adoption
of more than one mast; ships were no longer stopped in their course
for lack of a directly favourable wind,--by trimming the sails with
skill the seaman progressed nearly always towards his destination. The
art of sailing for a certain point with the wind nearly dead ahead
must certainly be counted as one of the most ingenious and important
discoveries ever made.

INFLUENCE ON INDUSTRY

The same causes which gave a new activity to commerce served to develop
powerfully every resource of industry. At the time of the first Crusades
there were no manufactories of silken stuffs but those of the Greeks,
a species of industry they had taken from the Persians, but which they
themselves were soon forced to give over to Sicily. Then artisans leaving
the island taught the Italians the art of making silk. The industry
occupied principally the members of the religious order of the Humilies,
who invented, it is said, cloth of gold and of silver.

In the cities of the Orient the Saracens, also, had manufactures of
goods, and from them the crusaders bought textile fabrics of camels’
hair. These industries and those of the Greeks, whether the latter was
transported to Palermo or remained in the Eastern Empire, were able to
serve as models or as incentive, in Europe, to many establishments where
wool was worked. There were some famous glass manufactories at Tyre. The
sand which covers the environs of that town has the property of giving a
high degree of transparence to the vitrified matter from which beautiful
shapes were fashioned. These productions excited probably the emulation
of Venice who drew great profit from her glassware, particularly in the
fifteenth century when the use of metal vessels was abandoned for that of
glass. Here are some particulars about inventions, the only ones we have
been able to gather. Mills, whose motive power is wind, were invented
in Asia Minor where running water is very scarce. It has been supposed
that the crusaders introduced them into Europe in the twelfth century--a
conjecture which would seem to be confirmed by the application of parts
of windmills on a great number of old armorial bearings, but which
certain other evidence does not permit us to adopt. Several writers have
also presumed that the crusaders spread a knowledge of the invention of
paper, which they had derived from the Greeks, throughout Europe.

The Arabs excelled at metal working and they knew how to chase and
encrust it. They invented the art of “damascening,” which gave to steel
the brilliance and splendour of gold and silver. Antiquaries have
observed that since the Crusades the stamping of coins and the imprint
of seals seem less incorrect and some attribute this improvement to
lessons learned from the Arabs. The crusaders, however indignant at
the profanation of the Temple of Jerusalem, could not but admire the
ornamentation of precious metals by which the columns and walls had been
artistically treated in honour of Mohammed. They brought away with them
more than five hundred silver vessels consecrated to the service of the
false prophet. The process of enamelling metals and the use in painting
of solid, bright colours may have been brought to perfection by the sight
of these Arabian works of art. They also brought back from the Orient a
quantity of rubies, hyacinths, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds, and
they found out how to set them in gold and silver, so as to give an
undying charm through the taste of their mounting and their setting.

THE MASONS ORGANISE

The Crusades contributed indirectly to the progress of art in that they
caused religious orders and devout establishments to be multiplied. The
number of sacred edifices which rose up at that time throughout Europe
is truly prodigious. Nobles and even those who had little piety were
ambitious for the title of “founder of a church.” While they may have
wrecked temples in one place, it was often their pleasure to build them
in others.

One extraordinary circumstance greatly favoured this eagerness to erect
edifices devoted to the religious cult. In France, in Italy especially,
it had been common rumour that the world was nearing its end and it was
thought unnecessary, in this event, to repair churches, and even more
useless to build new ones. But when the predicted period arrived and
there were no signs of the final catastrophe, alarm diminished, and
ashamed to have been misled by pusillanimous fear, people were anxious to
make amends for the neglect of altars and sacred places of which they
had been guilty. They were not satisfied to pay their debt to religion
by rebuilding unsafe churches, but those of whose stability there was
no question were torn down on the specious pretext that they were not
sufficiently magnificent. To accomplish their aims a society was formed
composed of men of every degree, noble and humble, who made themselves in
their devotion into carpenters and masons; they offered their services
in every direction, hauling carts like beasts of burden or binding
themselves to certain religious devotions. The cathedral of Chartres is a
monument of the labour of these pious workmen. These strange ideas having
been developed towards the end of the eleventh century, the Crusades
found in men’s minds a passion for this sort of construction, and they
added to the general enthusiasm.

GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

Several monuments of architecture which still excite our admiration are
the fruit of the artistic impulse received from contact with people more
devoted to its culture and from the growing fervour of devotion. The
sight of Greek and Arab monuments introduced into the West a new taste
by which that Syrian, Arab, or Saracen type of architecture, improperly
called Gothic, was brought to its highest degree of perfection.
Delicately pointed ogive arches replaced the low and ugly openings which
timid builders were afraid to raise higher and which presented but narrow
outlooks to view. Architects were judged skilful as they were able to
astonish by the boldness and daring of their own work. As in the mosques,
they loaded upon light and graceful columns enormous masses which
seemed upheld by the support of an invisible arm. They cut stones into
a thousand different and often most fanciful forms, and set into them
painted glass whose brilliant colours were admirably brought out by the
rays of the sun. And as if they foresaw the indifference of posterity to
their work, they gave it a solidity which has enabled it to go for great
lengths of time without care and restoration.

At that time appeared the most magnificent offsprings of Gothic
architecture. Then was built the leaning tower of Pisa, which has become
a marvel through the injury of time. A Greek architect built at Venice
the church of St. Mark, strongly impressed with the degenerate taste of
the Greeks. A German conceived the plan of the tower of Strasburg, whose
delicate structure seems unable to hold it so high in the air. Suger did
not disdain to study architecture; he restored his own abbey church and
left an account of his labours. The foundations of Amiens, masterpiece
of bold and delicate construction, were laid. La Sainte Chapelle at
Paris, less vast but equally delicate in style, was the finest work of
the favourite architect whom St. Louis took with him to Asia. We should
go on at too great a length were we to enumerate all the superb edifices
built in the glorious age of Gothic architecture. Barbaric, perhaps,
in ornamentation, these artists have never been equalled in principle,
in general design, stone-cutting, in knowledge of arching, and in the
majesty of their edifices as a whole.

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING

Sculpture made these temples alive with a host of statues. It has
preserved for us the images of many famous men, whose portraits, drawn
from nature, we often regret not to know.

Painting was cultivated with greater zeal. Cimabue developed his happy
faculties at Florence according to the teaching of some artists from
Constantinople. He was the first to show what wonders one could expect
from an almost forgotten art, and it is right that he should be placed at
the head of all the painters that have appeared since his time.

From what has been said it is certain that the Crusades helped to infuse
into the West a taste for painting, sculpture, and architecture. The
spirit of conquest has always awakened that of the fine arts. Though
artists may flee from the clash of arms, their souls, inspired by the
commotion of great warlike movements and the general emulation of courage
and valour, exhibit at such time a noble ambition for glory. The aspect
of the theatre of desolation and carnage, swept by the conqueror’s tread,
kindles often the sacred fire, which is extinguished in times of peace
and tranquillity, and marvellous productions, conceived and matured in
deep thought, quickly follow the imperfect and hastily finished sketch.
Nations also wish to celebrate, by public monuments, triumphs watered
with their blood and tears. For this reason painters display on heroes’
heads the wings of victory, are lavish with palm and crown, and place
on every side the emblems of fame. Cities become filled with superb
buildings, and public squares peopled with folk of bronze and marble who
seem to live and breathe.[e]

HERDER’S OPINION OF THE CRUSADES

It has been customary to ascribe so many beneficial effects to the
Crusades, that, conformably to this opinion, our quarter of the globe
must require a similar fever, to agitate and excite its forces, once in
every five or six centuries; but a closer inspection will show that most
of these effects proceeded not from the Crusades, at least not from them
alone; and that among the various impulses Europe then received, they
were at most accelerating shocks, acting upon the whole in collateral or
oblique directions, with which the minds of Europeans might well have
dispensed. Indeed it is a mere phantom of the brain to frame one prime
source of events out of seven distinct expeditions, undertaken in a
period of two centuries, by different nations, and from various motives,
solely because they bore one common name.

Trade the Europeans had already opened with the Arabian states, before
the Crusades: and they were at liberty to have profited by it, and
extended it, in a far more honourable way than by predatory campaigns.
By these, indeed, carriers, bankers, and purveyors were gainers: but
all their gain accrued from the Christians, against whose property they
were in fact the crusaders. What was torn from the Greek Empire was a
disgraceful traders’ booty, serving, by extremely enfeebling this empire,
to render Constantinople an easier prey at a future period to the Turkish
hordes, who were continually pressing more closely upon it. The Venetian
Lion of St. Mark prepared the way, by the Fourth Crusade, for the Turks
to enter Europe and spread themselves so widely in it. The Genoese, it is
true, assisted one branch of the Greek emperors to re-ascend the throne:
but it was the throne of a weakened, broken empire, which fell an easy
prey to the Turks; then both the Venetians and Genoese lost their best
possessions, and finally almost all their trade, in the Mediterranean and
Euxine seas.

Chivalry arose not from the Crusades, but the Crusades from chivalry:
the flower of French and Norman knighthood appeared in Palestine in
the first campaign. The Crusades, indeed, contributed rather to rob
chivalry of its proper honours, and to convert real armed knights into
mere armorial ones. For in Palestine many assumed the crested helmet,
which in Europe they durst not have borne: they brought home with them
armorial devices and nobility, which they transmitted to their families,
and thus introduced a new class, the nobility of the herald’s office, and
in time also nobility by letters patent. As the number of the ancient
dynasties, the true equestrian nobility, lessened, these new men sought
to obtain possessions and hereditary prerogatives, like them: they
carefully enumerated their ancestors, acquired dignities and privileges,
and in a few generations assumed the title of ancient nobility; though
they had not the slightest pretensions to rank with those dynasties which
were princes to them. Every man that bore arms in Palestine might become
a knight: the first Crusades were years of general jubilee for Europe.
These new nobles in right of military service were soon of great use
to growing monarchy, which cunningly knew how to avail itself of them
against such of the superior vassals as still remained. Thus passion
balances passion, and one appearance counteracts another: and at length
the nobility of the camp and the court totally obliterated the ancient
chivalry.

The arts and sciences, too, were nowise promoted by the proper crusaders.
The disorderly troops that first flocked to Palestine had not the least
notion of them; and were not likely to acquire them in the suburbs
of Constantinople, or from the Turks and mamelukes in Asia. In the
succeeding campaigns we need not reflect on the short time the armies
passed there, and the wretched circumstances under which this time was
often spent merely on the confines of the country, to dissipate the
splendid dream of great discoveries imported thence. The pendulum clock,
which the emperor Frederick II received as a present from Kamil, did not
introduce gnomonics into Europe; the Grecian palaces, which the crusaders
admired in Constantinople, did not improve the style of European
architecture. Some crusaders, particularly Frederick I and II, laboured
to promote the progress of knowledge: but Frederick I did this ere he
beheld Asia; and the short visit paid that country by Frederick II served
only as a fresh stimulus to urge him forward in that course of government
which he had long before chosen. Not one of the spiritual orders of
knighthood introduced any new knowledge into Europe, or contributed to
its cultivation.

All that can be said in favour of the Crusades, therefore, is confined to
a few occasions, on which they co-operated with causes already existing,
and involuntarily promoted them.

(1) As multitudes of wealthy vassals and knights repaired to the Holy
Land in the first campaigns, and many of them never returned, their
estates were of course sold or swallowed up by others. By this they
profited who could, the liege lord, the church, the cities already
established, each after his own manner: this promoted and accelerated the
course of things, tending to confirm the regal power by the erection of a
middle class, but was by no means its commencement.

(2) Men became acquainted with countries, people, religions, and
constitutions of which they were before ignorant; their narrow sphere of
vision was enlarged; they acquired new ideas, new impulses. Attention
was drawn to things which would otherwise have been neglected; what had
long existed in Europe was employed to better purpose; and as the world
was found to be wider than had been supposed, curiosity was excited
after a knowledge of its remotest parts. The mighty conquests made by
Jenghiz Khan in the north and east of Asia attracted men’s eyes chiefly
towards Tatary; whither Marco Polo the Venetian, Rubruquis (Guillaume
de Rubrouck), the Frenchman, and John de Plano Carpino (Giovanni Piano
Carpini), an Italian, travelled with very different views: the first,
for the purpose of trade; the second, to satisfy royal curiosity; the
third, sent by the pope, to make converts of the people. These travels,
of course, have no connection with the Crusades, before and after which
they were undertaken. The Levant itself is less known to us from these
expeditions, than might have been expected: the accounts the Orientals
give of it, even in the period when Syria swarmed with Christians, are
still indispensable to us.

(3) Finally, in this holy theatre Europeans became better acquainted
with one another, though not in a manner much to be prized. With this
more intimate acquaintance kings and princes for the most part brought
home an implacable enmity: in particular the wars between England
and France derived from them fresh fuel. The unfortunate experiment,
that a Christian republic could and might contend in unison against
infidels, formed a precedent for similar wars in Europe, which have since
extended to other quarters of the globe. At the same time it cannot
be denied that, while the neighbouring powers of Europe obtained a
closer inspection of their mutual weaknesses and strength, some obscure
hints were given for a more comprehensive policy, and a new system of
relationship in peace and war. Everyone was desirous of wealth, trade,
conveniences, and luxuries; as an uncultivated mind is prone to admire
these in strangers, and envy them in the hands of another. Few, who
returned from the East, could be satisfied with European manners; even
their heroism left much behind, awkwardly imitated Asia in the West, or
longed for fresh travels and adventures. For the actual and permanent
good produced by any event is always proportionate to its consonancy with
reason.

Unfortunate would it have been for Europe if, at the time its military
swarms were contending for the Holy Sepulchre in a corner of Syria, the
arms of Jenghiz Khan had been sooner and more powerfully turned toward
the West. Then probably our quarter of the globe would have been the
prey of the Mongols, like Poland and Russia; and its nations might have
dislodged, with the pilgrim’s staff in their hands, to tell their beads
round the object of their contention.[b]

GIBBON ON THE RESULTS OF THE CRUSADES

As soon as the arms of the Franks were withdrawn, the impression, though
not the memory, was erased in the Mohammedan realms of Egypt and Syria.
The faithful disciples of the prophet were never tempted by a profane
desire to study the laws or language of the idolaters; nor did the
simplicity of their primitive manners receive the slightest alteration
from their intercourse in peace and war with the unknown strangers of
the West. The Greeks, who thought themselves proud, but who were only
vain, showed a disposition somewhat less inflexible. In the efforts for
the recovery of their empire, they emulated the valour, discipline,
and tactics of their antagonists. The modern literature of the West
they might justly despise; but its free spirit would instruct them in
the rights of man; and some institutions of public and private life
were adopted from the French. The correspondence of Constantinople and
Italy diffused the knowledge of the Latin tongue; and several of the
fathers and classics were at length honoured with a Greek version. But
the national and religious prejudices of the Orientals were inflamed by
persecution; and the reign of the Latins confirmed the separation of the
two churches.

If we compare, at the era of the Crusades, the Latins of Europe with the
Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry,
and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the
scale of nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority
may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and
imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time
were in a stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the
Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a
series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world,
and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more
cultivated regions of the East. Yet in a reign of sixty years the Latins
of Constantinople disdained the speech and learning of their subjects;
and the manuscripts were the only treasures which the natives might enjoy
without rapine or envy. Aristotle was indeed the oracle of the Western
universities, but it was a barbarous Aristotle; and, instead of ascending
to the fountain head, his Latin votaries humbly accepted a corrupt and
remote version from the Jews and Moors of Andalusia.

The principle of the Crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most
important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious
to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and
each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions.
The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice
by new superstitions; and the establishment of the Inquisition, the
mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and
the final progress of idolatry flowed from the baleful fountain of the
holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their
reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times
of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and
fable.

The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East,
would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their
native country; the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have
overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been
enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the
climates of the East.

In one respect we can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the
Crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil.
The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the
soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of
ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone
deserved the name of citizens and men. Among the cause that undermined
that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the Crusades.
The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often
extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty
extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the
fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of
the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most
numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration, which
destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest, gave air and scope to
the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[82] In the entertaining romance of _Le Renard_, written in the
thirteenth century, it is said, that foreign pilgrimages had done no
good to anybody, and that many good people had been made bad by them.
In tracing the history of morals, it is curious to observe, that Piers
Ploughman speaks of pilgrims and palmers, who on their return have leave
to tell lies all the rest of their lives.

[Illustration]

APPENDIX. FEUDALISM

[Sidenote: [800-1450 A.D.]]

To the average mind the term Middle Ages is a synonym for chaos. And,
compared with the periods before and after, it is indeed chaos. But, in
a sense, all human history is “without form,” even if not “void,” and
the comparative simplicity which we see in certain periods is arrived at
chiefly by a process of the cancellation of numberless confusing details
and the concentration of the attention on certain large and picturesque
personages or movements which were actually far from holding such stark
and eminent importance in the eyes of contemporaries.

Thus in the case of Alexander’s conquest of that little segment of space
which he called “the world,” to the contemporary Athenian, Alexander
was almost a myth lost in the wilderness of the East as in a fog. The
Athenian found his immediate troubles and triumphs in his own family, in
his shop, in his deme. To myriads of other peoples, however, Alexander’s
very existence was unknown; and splendid intrigues, superb politics,
lofty feats of statecraft and of warfare were taking place far from the
orbit of Alexander. These deeds were never chronicled, or the chronicles
are lost, or perhaps only waiting discovery. Consequently we are ignorant
of these confusing histories, and sum up in the exclusive phrase
“Alexandrian epoch” a vast web of what were chaos, did we but know more
of it.

But still, taking history as we have it, the Middle Ages torment and
bewilder us with the variety and seeming unimportance of their events.
They are called the Dark Ages, though, upon a closer look, they deserve
the name no more than the Night herself with all her revelation of the
stars which the Day absorbs in the one central splendour of the sun.

Let the name of Dark Ages stand, however, though it must not be forgotten
that human history at least dreamed and walked in this apparent sleep.
There is no lack of chronicle and no lack of action. Nor, in spite of the
common idea, was there lack of progress. The barbarians had come down in
avalanches of stolid clay upon the gardens of civilisation. During the
seeming idleness the seeds were at work and ideals were busily thrusting
upward till of a sudden they burst forth in that springtime known as the
Renaissance.

The history of each major country is given, in this work, its own
chronicle, but for the better comprehension of the forces that were
making possible the Renaissance and driving mankind to cry aloud for
a betterment of conditions, it will be useful to set apart for brief
consideration certain special phases and forces of Middle Age life. It
will make it the easier to comprehend that life was by no means without
the ferment of progress during that period which we so arbitrarily cleave
out of history and put aside as the Middle Age.

Throughout the various histories of modern nations will be found a
discussion of the multiform phases of feudalism. It is desirable,
however, to give it some isolated discussion, though necessarily brief. A
guide might be found in the words of Bryce, whose definition of feudalism
also makes a good beginning; and in the words of the philosopher Hegel:[a]

BRYCE AND HEGEL ON FEUDALISM

“This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman soil,
nor for showing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into Germany,
how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet under Pepin
and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the impress which
determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his successors allowed
it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be possible here to examine
its social and moral influence. Politically it might be defined as the
system which made the owner of a piece of land, whether large or small,
the sovereign of those who dwelt thereon; an annexation of personal to
territorial authority more familiar to eastern despotism than to the free
races of primitive Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are
explained, feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation,
each tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants
held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so uniform,
the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly bound to its
support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society that grasp
which the struggles of more than twenty generations have scarcely shaken
off.”[b]

The three steps by which feudalism was reached are thus broadly summed up
by Hegel:

“While the first period of the German world ends brilliantly with a
mighty empire, the second is commenced by the reaction resulting from
the antithesis occasioned by that infinite falsehood which rules the
destinies of the Middle Ages and constitutes their life and spirit.
This reaction is, first, that of the particular nationalities against
the universal sovereignty of the Frankish Empire, manifesting itself in
the splitting up of that great empire. The second reaction is that of
individuals against legal authority and the executive power--against
subordination, and the military and judicial arrangements of the
constitution. This produced the isolation and therefore defencelessness
of individuals. The universality of the power of the state disappeared
through this reaction; individuals sought protection with the powerful,
and the latter became oppressors. Thus was gradually introduced a
condition of universal independence, and this protecting relation was
then systematised into the feudal system.”[c]

COMMENCEMENT OF THE FEUDAL RÉGIME

The true heirs of Charlemagne were not the kings of France, nor those
of Germany and Italy, at first, but rather the feudal lords. Not only
had the empire been dismembered after the deposition of Charles the Fat,
but its composing kingdoms and even its great fiefs as well. Dukes and
counts had been quite as powerless as kings against the Northmen, Saxons,
and Hungarians, and quite as unable to maintain the vast domains under
their control. Populations whose leaders did not know how to bring them
together for concerted action had acquired, little by little, the habit
of depending upon themselves alone.

After having fled for a long time at the approach of the heathen to the
woods among the wild beasts, some stout-hearted people had turned their
heads and refused to abandon all their possessions without an attempt
at defence. Here and there in mountain gorges, at river fords, on the
hill overlooking the plain, entrenchments and walls were raised where
the brave and the strong held out. An edict of 853 directed the counts
and vassals of the king to repair their old castles and to build new
ones. The country was soon covered with fortresses against which invaders
flung themselves in vain. A few reverses quickly taught these bold
adventurers prudence. They no longer dared to venture so far, to where
these strongholds had sprung up from the ground on all sides, and the new
invasion meeting with fresh obstacles and difficulties came to an end in
the following century. It was not until afterwards that the masters of
these castles became the terror of the countryside they had once helped
to save.

[Illustration: A FEUDAL CASTLE]

Feudalism, so oppressive in its age of decline, had therefore its time
of lawful and just existence. All power is raised up by its virtues and
falls by its abuse.

But what was the new régime? We have seen the matter of acquiring and
holding property become more uniform among barbarian nations, by the
settlement of heredity upon lands ceded by the king, and the law’s
sanction given to another kind of usurpation--the heredity of the royal
offices. It was generally the owners of freehold property or of royal
lands who became the holders of these offices, which brought about the
union of sovereignty and proprietorship in the same hands. This is
essentially what constitutes feudalism.

In the absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire public offices in all
degrees of the hierarchy were bestowed directly by the ruler, and their
disposition remained always in his power, so that he could take them
back when and under what condition he pleased. Furthermore the public
official held neither the land of the province he governed nor the
control of any particular piece of property that he might happen to own
as a private citizen. He was bound therefore, as landlord, by the civil
law applicable to the whole empire, and as governor, to the voluntary
will of his sovereign. In the feudal régime it was exactly the opposite.
The lord who _enfeoffed_, that is, conceded by title of sub-fief some
portion of his own fief, gave up entirely to the grantee or _vassal_
the property and its control, and it could not be taken back unless the
vassal failed to perform some part of the agreement made at the time of
receiving the investiture.

One lord might obtain land from another and thus become his vassal. The
former had to go to the latter, and between the two there took place the
ceremony known as homage. Kneeling before his future lord, with their
hands together, the future vassal proclaimed loudly that he would be
the other’s _homme_, or man, that is to say, that he would be attached
and devoted to him, defend him with his own life, somewhat as the
ancient _leudes_ of Germany did towards their warrior chiefs. After this
profession, which is homage in the original sense of the word, he took an
oath of fidelity or faith to the lord, promising to fulfil the new duties
required of him under the new title of _homme_ of the lord. When he had
contracted this double tie, the lord no longer feared to confide his land
to a man so strongly bound to him, and gave it to him by investiture
or seizin, accompanied with symbolic emblems--a sod of grass, a stone,
or some other object according to the custom of the fief. “It is the
custom,” says Otto von Freising,[e] “to deliver up kingdoms by the sword,
and provinces by the standard.” This three-part ceremony of homage once
completed, the reciprocal obligations began.

RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS OF VASSAL AND LORD

There were in the first place the moral obligations of the vassal towards
his lord, such as keeping his secrets, revealing the machinations of
his enemies, to give one’s horse to him in battle if he be unseated,
to take his place in captivity, to respect and to cause his honour
to be respected, to assist him with good counsel, etc. The material
obligations, the services due from the vassal, were of several kinds.

(1) Military service. This was the very basis of the feudal relation and
the principle of that state of society which does not contain permanent
and organised armies. The vassal on the requisition of his lord was bound
to follow him, either alone, or to bring such and such a number of men
according to the importance of his fief. The duration of this service
also was dependent on the same thing--it might be sixty, forty, or only
twenty days--a system which did not permit of distant expeditions and
could be employed only in neighbourhood or private wars. There were some
fiefs where military service held only within the feudal domain, or could
be called on only for purposes of defence.

(2) The “fiance,” or obligation to serve the lord in his court of
justice. As under the feudal régime the lord replaced the states general,
and was invested with the functions of public power, it was necessary in
order to exercise these to hold at his command the forces disseminated
through the hands of his vassals. War was one of these functions; justice
was another.

[Illustration: KNIGHTS AND PEASANTS]

The lord summonsed his men to court, and they had to attend, either to
serve him with their advice or to take part in the judging of disputes
brought before him, and they thus bound themselves to assistance in
carrying out the judgments their own mouths had proclaimed.

(3) The “aids,” some legal and compulsory, others courteous and
voluntary. Legal aids were usually demanded under three conditions--when
the lord was a prisoner and required to pay a ransom, when he knighted
his eldest son, and when he gave his eldest daughter in marriage.
This aid took the place of the public imposts of ancient and modern
legislatures, but as may be seen was of a totally different character.
It was not, in fact, periodic or exacted in a regular manner for public
needs; it had the appearance of a voluntary gift under certain peculiar
circumstances. An annual tax would have seemed an affront to the vassals.

To these services must be added certain feudal rights by which the lord,
in virtue of his sovereignty, intervened in any important change the
ceded fief might undergo. Some of these were for him a new source of
revenue. These rights were the relief, a sum of money due from every
major individual who entered into possession of a fief by right of
succession, and more particularly if that succession did not take place
in line of direct descent; the right to the alienation tax, which he
who sold or alienated his fief in any fashion must pay; the right of
disinheritance and confiscation by which the fief reverted to the lord
when the vassal died without heirs or when he had forfeited his fief or
deserved for any reason to be deprived of it; the right of guardianship,
by virtue of which the lord, during the minority of his vassal, undertook
his tutelage and the administration of his fief, and enjoyed its revenue;
the marriage right, that is to say, the right of the overlord to provide
a husband for the heiress of a fief, and oblige her to choose from the
suitors he presents.

The vassal who fulfilled his obligations fully and conscientiously was
as nearly as possible master of his own fief. He could in turn enfeoff
the whole or part of his domain, and become in turn the sovereign lord of
vassals of a lower rank, or _vavasseurs_, holding towards him the same
obligations as he to his own lord. Such was the fabric of the hierarchy.

If the vassal had his obligations, the lord also had his. He could not
take back a fief arbitrarily or without a legitimate reason from his
vassal. He must protect him if he were attacked, see that he received
justice, etc.

Let us note that the feudal system in developing itself made a fief of
everything. Every concession--for hunting in the forests, for ferrying
across rivers, for acting as guides on the roads, for escorting
merchants, for running communal ovens in the towns--every useful
employment, in fact, conceded in return for fidelity and homage, became a
fief.

Lords multiplied concessions of this kind in order to multiply the number
of men owing them military service. But the fief itself, to which the
rights of justice were attached, remained in general undivided and was
handed down according to the laws of primogeniture.

FEUDAL JUSTICE

The obligation of the vassals to attend the courts of their lord has made
it clear that the principle of feudal justice was trial by one’s peers,
a principle which was entirely in the customs and even the institutions
of the Germanic peoples, where freedmen were tried by an assembly of
freedmen.

They called peers (_pares_, equals), vassals of the same lord settled
around him on his domain, and holding fiefs of the same rank. The king
himself had his peers who were those holding their estates directly from
him, not only as feudal lord but as king. Each had the right to be judged
by his peers before his lord. If the peers refused him justice or the
vassal believed that it had been unfairly rendered, he made a complaint
“in default of right,” and brought the matter to the attention of his
lord’s suzerain. It was to this higher tribunal that it was necessary
always to bring disputes which arose between a lord and his vassal.

But this right of appeal did not entirely satisfy the spirit of
independence which animated this warlike society. The lords preserved
with jealous care another right of appeal--that which is addressed to the
power of arms; they preferred to obtain justice for themselves rather
than receive it from the hands of others. So thoroughly was the custom
enrooted in their manners that the king regulated the formalities which
preceded this species of warfare and had for their object the warning
of the party to be attacked and the giving of an opportunity to place
himself in a state of defence. After all, our international wars proceed
from the same principle and are no better. The lords waged their wars
with their little armies as we with our greater ones. Only hostilities
had a more individual character since the states were much smaller.[i]

Besides the _Fehde_ or right of private warfare--an old Germanic
custom--there was the “trial by combat,” which must not be confused with
it. The true “judicial combat,” in which champions fight for a cause,
or for the settlement of a quarrel, is a product of the Middle Ages,
when faith in God was as strong as faith in the strength of the human
arm. This custom became so universal a method of settlement of difficult
questions that it was even used by Alfonso, the great Spanish lawgiver,
to decide upon the introduction of new laws concerning inheritance. This
much at least may be said in favour of it, that it was less of an evil
than the torture which tended to supplant it in judicial proceedings in
the later Middle Ages.[a]

Justice was not the prerogative of all the lords to the same extent.
It was distinguished in France by three degrees, high, low, and middle
justice. The first alone gave the right of life and death. In general it
may be said it was the largest and most important fiefs that had powers
of justice to the greatest extent. Still it was possible for a simple
_vavasseur_ to possess the functions of “high justice,” and in some
places the lord who could dispense but “low justice” could punish with
death the robber caught at his crime. Within these variable limits the
lord alone dispensed justice on his fief, and when, later on, royalty
usurped the right, there was a revolution.

To complete the enumeration of rights inherent in the sovereignty of
the lords it is necessary to mention two: first, that of recognising
throughout the whole extent of the fief no higher legislative power. We
find in the last collection of laws made in the ninth century by Charles
the Simple the final manifestation of law-bearing public power. After
that, there were no laws, civil or political, to be applied generally,
but only local customs, isolated, independent, and differing one from the
other, in fact possessing a territorial character in distinction from
those of the barbaric nations, which were entirely personal.

Second, the right to coin money, which was always a sign of lordship.
Before Charlemagne it seems that some private individuals, who doubtless
possessed the privilege, coined money. After him this was one of the
prerogatives of the lords, and at the advent of Hugh Capet there were no
less than 150 who exercised this right.

Every political régime may be characterised by the place where the
exercise of power is bestowed. Ancient republics had their agora and
fora. The great monarchy of Louis XIV had its palace of Versailles. The
feudal lords had their castles. They were, as a usual thing, enormous
edifices, situated on high places, massive, round, or square, without
architecture or ornamentation, the walls pierced by a few loopholes for
the discharge of arrows. There was a single entrance giving on a great
moat which could only be passed by a drawbridge. The castle was crowned
with parapets and battlements, from which rocks, molten pitch, and lead
could be thrown down on the heads of too venturesome assailants at the
foot of the walls. To-day the gaping gray masses are but nests for crows,
crumbled and eaten away by time. Seen from afar they quite eclipse the
small and light habitation of modern days--these monuments at once of
legitimate defence and oppression. But they could have been nothing less
than they were to provide shelter from the northern incursions and the
feudal wars. Everyone sought refuge in them. Those who had not the right
to live within the castle, who were neither lords nor warriors, settled
around its great walls, under their powerful protection. This was the
nucleus of many towns.

ECCLESIASTICAL FEUDALISM

Even the clergy had their place in this system. The bishop, formerly
“defender of the city,” had often become its count, by traditional
usurpation or by express royal concession when the king had united the
county and the bishopric, the temporal and the spiritual authority. This
made the bishop sovereign of all the lords of his diocese.

Besides her tithes the church possessed, through the donation of
the faithful, immense wealth, and in order to protect this from the
brigandage of the times she had recourse to secular arms. She chose
laymen, men of courage and wisdom, to whom she confided her property
that they might defend it, if necessary at the point of the sword. But
these attorneys of the monasteries and churches did as the counts of the
king--made their functions hereditary, and took for themselves the wealth
entrusted to their care. They condescended, however, to regard themselves
as the vassals of those whom they had despoiled, and to swear faith and
homage under ordinary conditions of natural right and personal service.

Abbés and bishops in consequence became suzerains, temporal lords having
numerous vassals ready to take up arms for their cause, courts of
justice--in fact all the prerogatives exercised by the great landlords.
There were bishops, dukes, and bishop-counts, vassals themselves of
greater lords and especially of the king, from whom they received the
investiture of the property attached to their churches, or, as it was
called, their temporal domain.

This ecclesiastical feudalism was so extensive, so powerful, that in
France and England it possessed during the Middle Ages more than a fifth
of all the land; in Germany nearly a third. For there was this difference
between the church and king, that the latter, a conquest once made,
received nothing more, but on the contrary constantly gave away until it
came to pass that he possessed nothing but the town of Laon; while the
church, if she did lose some of her land (a difficult thing since she had
excommunication to defend it with), was acquiring more every day, since
few of the faithful died without leaving her something. And so it was
that she constantly got more and never or very rarely gave anything up,
and then only when it was wrested from her by force.[i]

The manner in which the church often lost her property in feudal times is
described by Carl Spannagel:

THE CHURCH AND THE FEUDAL ARMY

The bishops and abbots as land proprietors went into the battle-field
at the head of their contingents. They often wore armour under their
priestly garments, and they did not shrink from actual fighting in
action. The care for souls (if such an expression can be used with
regard to a priestly dignitary of the Middle Ages) which even in peace
made but a slight demand upon them, must have nearly vanished under
such circumstances in the field. The account of Bishop Daniel of Prague
attending to the wounded and administering them spiritual comfort has a
modern foreign tone about it. Only special royal permission could exempt
the bishops and their respective abbots from appearing at the head of
their men.

But the king did not make such frequent demands upon the participation
of the spiritual dignitaries in campaigns as we are inclined to think.
This idea arose from the command of Otto II in 981, which demanded the
personal command of their contingents of seven bishops and the seven
abbots, whilst twelve bishops and three abbots are told only to send
their _loricati_ to the emperor. Substitutes for the bishops and abbots
in this case would be priests or vassals of rank of their diocese, or
abbotship.

It is worthy of note that the immunity, the purport of which had so
increased in extent since the Carlovingian time, exercised no influence
on the military obligations of the churches to which it was addressed.
In most of the immunity documents military duty is not touched upon, so
it was considered something quite independent. In some it is expressly
mentioned that no _index publicus_ should exercise the arrière-ban over
the particular cloister, but this made no change in the obligation of
the abbots themselves. On the contrary, in a privilege of Otto I for the
bishopric of Worms, the sentence from a document of Louis the Pious is
retained which commands that the military followers of the men of the
church are only to be called upon in the interest of the kingdom. The
transfer of their service to the princes was of greater import to the
military obligations of the church than the immunity.

Such transfers, however, only refer to monasteries and not also to
bishoprics. There were two different kinds of exemption--either the king
gives the cloister in question to a lord of his kingdom as a favour or
as his property, so that (forever or for a time) it ceases to be a royal
cloister, or he takes away a part of its landed property and makes it
over to lay princes who thenceforward undertake the military duties
hitherto pertaining to the cloister. By this means the cloister remains
royal, only it is exempt from military obligations. A third possibility
was added to these two. Very often the great lords did not wait for the
king’s initiative to enrich themselves with church property, but they
seized it on their own account and obtained possession of the longed-for
cloister by any means.

With such measures by force there was certainly no legal adoption of the
obligation which the cloister owed the kingdom. But there is no doubt
that the property thus gained was taken into account in the valuation
of the service due to the kingdom by the new owner. The documental
protection of the king generally proved most inefficient against
such seizures. In more ancient times, particularly under the later
Carlovingians, we find taxations of abbotships. The cases became rarer
later on without quite disappearing. The kingdom evidently did not
depend upon increasing the power of the princes which was continually
developing by such means, so that the seizures of the princes increased
with the feudal system.[d]

SERFS AND VILLEINS

In the eleventh century, Carlovingian Europe was divided into a multitude
of fiefs which formed each its own state, having its own life, laws,
customs, and its almost perfectly independent lay or ecclesiastical chief.

We have described the community of the lords, but they were not the only
feudal community. That was the fighting and war-making community, the
community that ruled, judged, punished, and oppressed. Below this was
the community that worked, by which the other lived, got its clothes,
its arms, its castles, and its bread--the community of serfs, or rather
craftsmen (_gens potestatis_). We must not now look for free men, for
they have disappeared. Some have raised themselves and become the
fortunate lords; others have been pushed back into the lower regions of
society and have become serfs and villeins. That class of simple freemen
which had been nearly swept away in the invasion of the Roman Empire had
been engulfed a second time. There were no longer any freehold owners, or
so few that their mention is not worth while.

But the villeins were a numerous lot. The chief, the noble, had not only
vassals but subjects residing on that portion of his estate that he never
enfeoffed. And these were the serfs, properly called, men of the soil who
were entirely at their lord’s disposal. “The lord,” says Beaumanoir,[f]
“can take from them all that they have, put them in prison, rightly or
wrongly, and as often as he pleases, and has no account to give of them
except to God.”

In spite of this the condition of the serf was better than that of the
slave of ancient times. The progress which slavery had made at the fall
of the Roman Empire was not entirely lost in the wreckage of invasion,
but appeared again in feudal society. The freeman of antiquity had been
harder towards his slave than was the barbarian in whom the leaven of
Christianity had produced some effect. The serf was recognised as a man
having a family, sharing the common ancestry of his lord, and made in the
image of God. Serfs finally entered the church, and sometimes mounted
higher than the most powerful lords.

Above the serfs were the inalienables (_mainmortables_), “more kindly
treated,” continues the old jurist of Beauvais,[f] “since the lord, if
they did no wrong, could ask nothing of them except their dues and rents
and the debts which they were accustomed to pay for their servitude.” But
the inalienable could not marry without the consent of his lord, and if
he took a free wife, or one outside the seigneury, there was a fine at
the pleasure of the lord. This was the right of “formarriage” (a tax for
marriage out of rank or condition), and the issue of such a marriage was
divided between the lords of the husband and of the wife. If there was
but one child, it went to the lord of the mother. At an inalienable’s
death all his property went to his lord. For these people there was no
way of escape from the hand that bent them to the furrow. Wherever they
went the right of succession was attached to their persons and their
purse. The lord inherited on every hand from his serfs.

In a higher degree still were to be found the free tenants known as
villeins, peasants, or commoners. Their condition was less precarious.
They had preserved the freedom the serf did not possess, and had hung
on to it at the sacrifice of an annual tax, a statute duty, and the
rent of the land which the landlord had ceded them and which they could
transmit with all their other property to their children. But while the
beneficiary holdings or fiefs were under the protection of a public
and well-defined law, the land of the villeins was under the absolute
jurisdiction of the landlord and protected only by private agreements.
This is why the villeins, and especially those in the country, where
it was not necessary to oversee them as strictly as those in the large
towns, were often under the heel of absolute dominion.

One reads in ancient documents about the lords: “They are masters
of heaven and earth; they have jurisdiction above and beneath the
ground, over necks and heads, over the water, winds, and fields.” The
villeins could not escape their jurisdiction, for the feudal law said,
“Between thee, lord, and thee, villein, there is no judge but God.” “We
recognise from our gracious lords,” runs another formula, “both ban
and convocation; the high forest, the bird in the air, the fish in the
stream, the beast in the bush, as far as our sovereign lord, or the
servants of his grace, can hold his own. For this our gracious lord will
take under his shelter and protection the widow and orphan as well as the
peasant.” Thus were all rights given over to the lord, but in exchange
he protected the weak. Such is the principle of feudal society towards
its subjects. Royalty no longer filled the office for which it was
instituted; bishops, counts, barons, and other powers were called upon
for the protection which could no longer be expected from the nominal
head of the state.

Everything belonged to the lord; but since there was no industry or
commerce, no luxury by which one alone could consume in a few moments the
fruit of the labour of many, the exactions of this lord were not at first
oppressive, and for the villeins these exactions were as systematically
determined as are to-day the rights of the landlord over his
farmer-tenants. Only in the Middle Ages was there always the element of
arbitrariness and violence which modern law does not allow. The villeins’
tax was paid either in natural produce, as provisions, corn, cattle, and
fowl, products of the soil and the farm; or in work, or manual labour, as
statute labour in the fields and vineyards of the lord, in the building
of his castle, or digging ditches, in the repair of roads; or the making
of furniture, utensils, horseshoes, ploughshares, carts, etc. In towns
and wherever money was scarce, the lord did not make the mistake, it must
be understood, of demanding his dues in coin, or of imposing arbitrary
taxes. But let us go back to the times themselves and listen to the words
of a scribe: “The lord who demands unjust rights of his villein, does so
at the peril of his soul.” If the fear of heaven did not suffice, here
were the commoners coming to the rescue, and the king’s officials were
not far behind.

There were some strange compensations to enliven the sad life of the
feudal lord, shut up the whole year within the sombre walls of his
castle. At Bologna, in Italy, the tenantry of the Benedictines of St.
Procule paid as a tax the steam from a boiled capon. Every year each man
brought his capon between two plates to the abbot, uncovered it, and,
the steam having all been given off, was quits, and took his capon back
with him. Elsewhere the peasants brought solemnly before their lord, in
a carriage drawn by four horses, a little bird, or perhaps a may-bush
decorated with ribbons. The man who owned a monkey was quits, according
to an ordinance of St. Louis, when he had caused the monkey to perform
before the lord’s tax-gatherer; the jongleur had to pay with one song.
The lords themselves did not refuse, sometimes, to play a rôle in these
folk comedies. The markgraf of Jülich, whenever he made a solemn entry,
was mounted on a one-eyed horse, with wooden saddle, and bridle of bark
from the linden, and wearing two spires of hawthorn, and carrying a
white stick. When the abbé of Figeac came into town the lord of Monbrun
received him in a most grotesque costume with one leg bare.

Feudalism, bored with itself, laughed sometimes with the poor people, as
did also the church when she authorised the celebration in the basilicas
of the feast of the Asses. The powerful and the fortunate, in this age
so sad and so stern, where misery was everywhere and security nowhere,
owed much to their villeins and peasants for giving them some moments of
forgetfulness and pleasure.

ANARCHY AND VIOLENCE; FRIGHTFUL CONDITION OF THE PEASANTS AND SOME HAPPY
RESULTS THEREFROM

They were in truth hard times for the poor people, these Middle Ages,
when in spite of all the formulæ and other conventions, the noble did not
believe in anything but the right of the sword. In theory the principles
of the feudal relation were very beautiful; in practise they nearly
brought matters to a state of anarchy, for its judicial institutions
were too defective to prevent the tie of vassalage from being constantly
broken. Here lay the cause of the interminable wars which broke out in
all parts of feudal Europe, and which were the great affliction of that
epoch. Everyone could have recourse to his sword in a proven wrong or
a sentence he deemed unjust, and a state of war was chronic in that
society. Every hill became a fortress; every plain a field of battle.

Shut up in strong castles, covered with mail, and surrounded by armed
men, the feudal lords, “the tyrants,” as a monk of the eleventh century
calls them, lived but to fight, and knew no other mode of enrichment
than pillage. There was no more commerce--the roads were no longer safe;
no more industry, for the lords, masters of the towns, levied upon the
burghers as soon as some little sign of wealth would appear. The most
different customs were established everywhere, since there was no longer
any general legislation, each noble having sole law-making power on his
own fief.[83] Everywhere, likewise, there was the deepest ignorance
except perhaps in the heart of some of the monasteries; and the clergy,
guardians of moral law, were compelled not to forbid violence, but to
regulate it by the “Truce of God” [_Treuga Dei_], which forbade killing
and robbing from Wednesday evening to Monday morning.

On whom fell all the burden of these feudal wars? They were not very
murderous for the nobles wrapped in steel, but they were so for the
peasant with scarcely any defensive armour. At Brenneville, where the
kings of France and England fought, nine hundred knights took part, and
only three were left on the battle-field. At Bouvines, Philip Augustus
was thrown from his horse and remained some time helpless amidst the
foot-soldiers of the enemy. They vainly sought some opening in his armour
through which to pass a dagger blade, and they dealt heavy blows which
could not break his cuirass. His knights took their time about rescuing
and replacing him in the saddle. After which he threw himself with them
into the midst of that rabble where their long lances and heavy axes
did not deliver a single blow in vain. The sovereign captured, another
calamity; his ransom must be paid. But who paid for the cottage and the
burned fields of the poor peasant--who stanched his wounds, who provided
for his widow and orphans?

Two contemporary writers, historians of the Crusades, paint thus these
direful times: “Before the Christians left for the countries beyond the
sea,” says Guibert de Nogent, “the kingdom of France was in the throes of
constant trouble and hostilities. One heard nothing but of brigandage on
the public roads. Fires were innumerable, and war was inflicted on every
hand for no other reason than insatiable cupidity. In short, grasping men
respected no right of property and gave themselves up to pillage with
unrestrained boldness.”

And William, archbishop of Tyre,[h] says: “There was no security for
property. Were a man regarded as rich, this was sufficient excuse for
throwing him into prison, keeping him in irons, and putting him to cruel
torture. Sword-girded brigands infested the roads, lay in ambush, and
spared neither strangers nor men devoted to the service of God. Cities
and fortified towns were not safe from such crimes. Cut-throats made the
streets and squares dangerous for the wealthy man.” In the seventy years
between 970 and 1040 there were forty of famine and pestilence.

However, the onward march of civilisation can never be so completely
suspended that these centuries were absolutely sterile for the progress
of humanity. In the church thought awakened, and in lay society poetry
made its appearance. There was even some progress in morals, at least
among the ruling classes. In the isolation in which each one lived,
exposed to all sorts of perils, the soul fortified itself to meet them.
The feeling of the dignity of man, which despotism managed to smother,
was revived; and the society which spilled blood with such deplorable
facility showed often a moral elevation which is to be found only in
this age. The low vices and cowardice of the decadent Romans or enslaved
peoples were unknown to them, and the Middle Ages have bequeathed to
modern times the sentiment of honour. The feudal nobility knew how to
die, which is the first condition of knowing how to get the most out of
life.

Another beneficial consequence was the reorganisation of the family. In
ancient cities the head of the family lived outside his house, in the
fields or in the forum. He scarcely knew his wife and children, yet had
over them the right of life and death. In primitive times the custom
of polygamy and the facility for divorce prevented the family from
establishing itself on any better basis. In feudal society men lived in
isolation, and the head of the family was brought into close touch with
it. When wars gave him leisure in his castle, perched like an eagle’s
nest on the mountain top, he had nothing to occupy his life and his heart
but his wife and children. The church, which brought rough soldiers to
the feet of a virgin and made them for the sake of the mother of Christ
respect female virtue, softened the temper of the warrior and prepared
him to come under the spell of the finer feelings and more delicate
sentiments with which nature had endowed the other sex.

Woman assumed, then, her place in the family and in society which the
Mosaic law had once given her. Things went even further--she became
the object of a cult which created new sentiments, which the poetry of
troubadours and minstrels seized upon and which chivalry expressed in
action. As in the beautiful legend of St. Christopher, the strong was
conquered by the weak, the giant by the little child.

[Illustration: TOWER OF A GERMAN FEUDAL CASTLE]

This is seen in an institution of the times. Robert d’Arbrissel founded
near Saumur at Fontevrault, about the year 1100, an abbey which soon
became famous, and which opened its gates to recluses of both sexes. The
women were cloistered, and spent their time in prayer. The men worked
in the fields, drained the marshes, cleared the land, and remained the
perpetual servants of the women. The abbey was governed by an abbess,
“because,” says the bull of confirmation, “Jesus Christ in dying gave his
best beloved disciple to his mother for a son.”

Outside the family, the state was doubtless badly organised. It is
necessary to call attention, in spite of all contradictory facts, to
the political theory which this society represents. If the serf had no
rights, the vassals had them, and well-defined ones too. The feudal tie
was formed on conditions well known and accepted by him in advance; new
conditions could not be placed upon him except by his own agreement. From
these come those grand and strong maxims of common law which, in spite
of a thousand violations, have come down to us--no tax can be imposed
without the consent of the contributants; no law is valid unless accepted
by those who must obey it; no sentence is legal unless declared by the
peers of the accused. These are the laws of feudalism which the states
general of 1789 buried under the débris of absolute monarchy; and in
guarantee of these rights the vassal had the power of breaking the tie
of vassalage by giving up his fief or of responding by war to a denial
of justice from his lord. This right of armed resistance, which St.
Louis himself recognised, led, it is true, to anarchy; it weakened the
social structure, but it strengthened the individual. But it is with the
individual that we must commence. Before intelligently building up the
state, it is necessary to elevate the individual and the family; this
double work was the task of the Middle Ages.

The church worked with energy to establish the sanctity of marriage, even
for the serf; in preaching the equality of all men before God, which was
a threat to the great inequalities of this world; by proclaiming by the
principle of election that she reserved for herself at the very pinnacle
of hierarchy the rights of the intellect, in contradistinction to the
feudal world which recognised but the right of blood; and in crowning
with the triple crown and seating in the chair of St. Peter, where they
had one foot on the neck of kings, a serf like Adrian II and the son of a
poor carpenter, like Gregory VII.

GEOGRAPHIC OUTLINES OF THE KINGDOM OF GERMANY

Such were the principles that ruled in all the countries comprised within
the limits of Charlemagne’s empire, that is to say, almost the whole of
the Germanic peoples, France, Germany, Italy, and the north of Spain. The
political geography of the countries formed itself after the fashion of
its feudal organisations. As the fundamental axiom of feudalism expressed
itself, “No territory without its lord,” there did not exist throughout
the land a domain so small that it was not incorporated in some degree
in the hierarchy. Of all these superimposed suzerainties, the royal was
the only one whose limits served to determine the extent of the realms
already formed but still very vaguely outlined.[i]

The difference between feudalism and the politics both of antiquity
and of modern times lies, according to Paul von Roth,[j] chiefly in
the absence of a state power. There was no proper monarchy; public
offices are hereditary or belong to an estate. The impossibility of the
permanence of feudalism is shown, he says, most clearly in the feudal
army by which even feudal justice suffered. Von Roth draws a vivid
comparison between France and Germany at the end of the tenth century:
France is much the more feudal and anarchic under the powerless Hugh
Capet; Germany is more centralised under monarchic power. He compares
them again three centuries later: France is a consolidated monarchy;
Germany weak with a lasting weakness. The cause he finds above all is
this--that the French kings had vigorously and in every way worked for
the uprooting of the feudal system.[a]

THE TRANSITION FROM FEUDALISM TO MONARCHY

The moral phenomena above mentioned, tending in the direction of a
general principle, were partly of a subjective, partly of a speculative
order. But we must now give particular attention to the practical
political movements of the period. The advance which that period
witnessed presents a negative aspect, in so far as it involves the
termination of the sway of individual caprice and of the isolation of
power. Its affirmative aspect is the rise of a supreme authority whose
dominion embraces all--a political power properly so called, whose
subjects enjoy an equality of rights, and in which the will of the
individual is subordinated to that common interest which underlies the
whole.

This is the advance from feudalism to monarchy. The principle of feudal
sovereignty is the outward force of individuals--princes, liege lords;
it is a force destitute of intrinsic right. The subjects of such a
constitution are vassals of a superior prince or seigneur, towards whom
they have stipulated duties to perform; but whether they perform these
duties or not depends upon the seigneur’s being able to induce them so
to do, by force of character or by grant of favours. Conversely, the
recognition of those feudal claims themselves was extorted by violence
in the first instance; and the fulfilment of the corresponding duties
could be secured only by the constant exercise of the power which was
the sole basis of the claims in question. The monarchical principle
also implies a supreme authority, but it is an authority over persons
possessing no independent power to support their individual caprice,
where we have no longer caprice opposed to caprice; for the supremacy
implied in monarchy is essentially a power emanating from a political
body, and is pledged to the furtherance of that equitable purpose on
which the constitution of a state is based.

Feudal sovereignty is a polyarchy--we see nothing but lords and serfs; in
monarchy, on the contrary, there is one lord and no serf, for servitude
is abrogated by it, and in it right and law are recognised; it is the
source of real freedom. Thus in monarchy the caprice of individuals is
kept under, and a common gubernatorial interest established. But since
this monarchy is developed from feudalism, it bears in the first instance
the stamp of the system from which it sprang. Individuals quit their
isolated capacity and become members of estates (or orders of the realm)
and corporations; the vassals are powerful only by combination as an
order; in contraposition to them the cities constitute powers in virtue
of their communal existence. Thus the authority of the sovereign ceases
to be mere arbitrary sway. The consent of the estates and corporations
is essential to its maintenance; and if the prince wishes to have it, he
must will what is reasonable.

We now see a constitution embracing various orders, while feudal rule
knows no such orders. We observe the transition from feudalism to
monarchy taking place in three ways: (1) Sometimes the lord paramount
gains a mastery over his independent vassals, by subjugating their
individual power, thus making himself sole ruler. (2) Sometimes the
princes free themselves from the feudal relation altogether, and become
the territorial lords of certain states; or lastly (3) the lord paramount
unites the particular lordships that own him as their superior with his
own particular suzerainty in a more peaceful way, and thus becomes master
of the whole.

These processes do not indeed present themselves in history in that
pure and abstract form in which they are exhibited here; often we find
more modes than one appearing contemporaneously, but one or the other
always predominates. The cardinal consideration is that the basis and
essential condition of such a political formation is to be looked for in
the particular nationalities in which it had its birth. Europe presents
particular nations, constituting a unity in their very nature, and having
the absolute tendency to form a state. All did not succeed in attaining
this political unity; we have now to consider them severally in relation
to the change thus introduced. First, as regards the Roman Empire, the
connection between Germany and Italy naturally results from the idea
of that empire: the secular dominion united with the spiritual was to
constitute one whole; but this state of things was rather the object of
constant struggle than one actually attained. In Germany and Italy the
transition from the feudal condition to monarchy involved the entire
abrogation of the former; the vassals became independent monarchs.

PROGRESS IN GERMANY

Germany had always embraced a great variety of stocks--Swabians,
Bavarians, Franks, Thuringians, Saxons, Burgundians; to these must
be added the Slavs of Bohemia, Germanised Slavs in Mecklenburg, in
Brandenburg, and in a part of Saxony and Austria; so that no such
combination as took place in France was possible. Italy presented a
similar state of things. The Lombards had established themselves there,
while the Greeks still possessed the exarchate and lower Italy; the
Normans too established a kingdom of their own in lower Italy, and the
Saracens maintained their ground for a time in Sicily. When the rule
of the house of Hohenstaufen was terminated, barbarism got the upper
hand throughout Germany; the country being broken up into several
sovereignties, in which a forceful despotism prevailed. It was the maxim
of the electoral princes to raise only weak princes to the imperial
throne; they even sold the imperial dignity to foreigners. Thus the unity
of the state was virtually annulled.

A number of centres of power were formed, each of which was a predatory
state; the legal constitution recognised by feudalism was dissolved, and
gave place to undisguised violence and plunder; and powerful princes
made themselves lords of the country. After the interregnum the count of
Habsburg was elected emperor, and the house of Habsburg continued to fill
the imperial throne with but little interruption. These emperors were
obliged to create a force of their own, as the princes would not grant
them an adequate power attached to the empire. But that state of absolute
anarchy was at last put an end to by associations having general aims in
view. In the cities themselves we see associations of a minor order; but
now confederations of cities were formed with a common interest in the
suppression of predatory violence. Of this kind was the Hanseatic League
in the north, the Rhenish League consisting of cities lying along the
Rhine, and the Swabian League. The aim of all these confederations was
resistance to the feudal lords; and even princes united with the cities,
with a view to the subversion of the feudal condition and the restoration
of a peaceful state of things throughout the country.

[Illustration: EARLY CANNON WITH PROTECTED MOUNTING]

What the state of society was under feudal sovereignty is evident from
the notorious association formed for executing criminal justice; it was a
private tribunal, which, under the name of the _Vehmgericht_, held secret
sittings; its chief seat was the northwest of Germany. A peculiar peasant
association was also formed. In Germany the peasants were bondmen;
many of them took refuge in the towns, or settled down as freemen in
the neighbourhood of the towns (_Pfahlbürger_); but in Switzerland a
peasant fraternity was established. The peasants of Uri, Schwyz, and
Unterwalden were under imperial governors; for the Swiss governments were
not the property of private possessors, but were official appointments
of the empire. These the sovereigns of the Habsburg line wished to
secure to their own house. The peasants, with club and iron-studded mace
(_Morgenstern_), returned victorious from a contest with the haughty
steel-clad nobles, armed with spear and sword, and practised in the
chivalric encounters of the tournament.

INFLUENCE OF GUNPOWDER

Another invention also tended to deprive the nobility of the ascendency
which they owed to their accoutrements--that of gunpowder. Humanity
needed it, and it made its appearance forthwith. It was one of the chief
instruments in freeing the world from the dominion of physical force and
placing the various orders of society on a level. With the distinction
between the weapons they used, vanished also that between lords and
serfs. And before gunpowder, fortified places were no longer impregnable,
so that strongholds and castles now lost their importance. We may indeed
be led to lament the decay or the depreciation of the practical value of
personal valour--the bravest, the noblest may be shot down by a cowardly
wretch at safe distance in an obscure lurking-place; but, on the other
hand, gunpowder has made a rational, considerate bravery, spiritual
valour, the essential to martial success.

[Illustration: EARLY TYPE OF MORTAR]

Only through this instrumentality could that superior order of valour
be called forth--that valour in which the heat of personal feeling has
no share; for the discharge of firearms is directed against a body of
men--an abstract enemy, not individual combatants. The warrior goes to
meet deadly peril calmly, sacrificing himself for the commonweal; and
the valour of civilised nations is characterised by the very fact that
it does not rely on the strong arm alone, but places its confidence
essentially in the intelligence, the generalship, the character of
its commanders, and, as was the case among the ancients, in a firm
combination and unity of spirit on the part of the forces they command.

MONARCHISM IN ITALY

In Italy, as already noticed, we behold the same spectacle as in
Germany--the attainment of an independent position by isolated centres of
power. In that country, warfare in the hands of the condottieri became
a regular business. The towns were obliged to attend to their trading
concerns, and therefore employed mercenary troops, whose leaders often
became feudal lords; Francis Sforza even made himself duke of Milan. In
Florence, the Medici, a family of merchants, rose to power. On the other
hand, the larger cities of Italy reduced under their sway several smaller
ones and many feudal chiefs. A papal territory was likewise formed.
There, also, a very large number of feudal lords had made themselves
independent; by degrees they all became subject to the one sovereignty of
the pope.

How thoroughly equitable in the view of social morality such a
subjugation was, is evident from Machiavelli’s celebrated work _The
Prince_. This book has often been thrown aside in disgust, as replete
with the maxims of the most revolting tyranny; but nothing worse can be
urged against it than that the writer, having the profound consciousness
of the necessity for the formation of a state, has here exhibited the
principles on which alone states could be founded in the circumstances
of the times. The chiefs who asserted an isolated independence, and the
power they arrogated, must be entirely subdued; and though we cannot
reconcile with our idea of freedom the means which he proposes as the
only efficient ones, and regards as perfectly justifiable--inasmuch
as they involve the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception,
assassination, and so forth--we must nevertheless confess that the feudal
nobility, whose power was to be subdued, were assailable in no other way,
since an indomitable contempt for principle and an utter depravity of
morals were thoroughly engrained in them.

IN FRANCE

In France we find the converse of that which occurred in Germany and
Italy. For many centuries the kings of France possessed only a very
small domain, so that many of their vassals were more powerful than
themselves; but it was a great advantage to the royal dignity in France
that the principle of hereditary monarchy was firmly established there.
The consideration it enjoyed was increased by the circumstance that the
corporations and cities had their rights and privileges confirmed by the
king, and that the appeals to the supreme feudal tribunal--the court
of peers, consisting of twelve members enjoying that dignity--became
increasingly frequent. The king’s influence was extended by his
affording that protection which only the throne could give. But that
which essentially secured respect for royalty, even among the powerful
vassals, was the increasing personal power of the sovereign. In various
ways, by inheritance, by marriage, by force of arms, etc., the kings
had come into possession of many earldoms (_Grafschaften_) and several
duchies. The dukes of Normandy had, however, become kings of England;
and thus a formidable power confronted France, whose interior lay open
to it by way of Normandy. Besides this there were powerful duchies
still remaining; nevertheless, the king was not a mere feudal suzerain
(_Lehnsherr_) like the German emperors, but had become a territorial
possessor (_Landesherr_); he had a number of barons and cities under him,
that were subject to his immediate jurisdiction; and Louis IX succeeded
in rendering appeals to the royal tribunal common throughout his kingdom.

The towns attained a position of greater importance in the state.
For when the king needed money, and all his usual resources, such as
taxes and forced contributions of all kinds, were exhausted, he made
application to the towns and entered into separate negotiations with
them. It was Philip the Fair who, in the year 1302, first convoked the
deputies of the towns as a third estate, in conjunction with the clergy
and the barons. All indeed that they were in the first instance concerned
with was the authority of the sovereign as the power that had convoked
them, and the raising of taxes as the object of their convocation; the
states nevertheless secured an importance and weight in the kingdom, and
as a natural result, an influence on legislation also.

A fact which is particularly remarkable is the proclamation issued by the
kings of France, giving permission to the bondsmen on the crown lands to
purchase their freedom at a moderate price. In the way we have indicated
the kings of France very soon attained great power; while the flourishing
state of the poetic art in the hands of the troubadours, and the growth
of the scholastic theology, whose especial centre was Paris, gave France
a culture superior to that of the other European states, and which
secured the respect of foreign nations.

IN ENGLAND

William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, introduced the feudal system
into England, and divided the kingdom into fiefs, which he granted almost
exclusively to his Norman followers. He himself retained considerable
crown possessions; the vassals were under obligation to perform service
in the field, and to aid in administering justice; the king was the
guardian of all vassals under age; they could not marry without his
consent. Only by degrees did the barons and the towns attain a position
of importance. It was especially in the disputes and struggles for the
throne that they acquired considerable weight.

When the oppressive rule and fiscal exactions of the kings became
intolerable, contentions and even war ensued; the barons compelled King
John to swear to Magna Charta, the basis of English liberty, _i.e._, more
particularly of the privileges of the nobility. Among the liberties thus
secured, that which concerns the administration of justice was the chief;
no Englishman was to be deprived of personal freedom, property, or life
without the judicial verdict of his peers. Everyone, moreover, was to
be entitled to the free disposition of his property. Further, the king
was to impose no taxes without the consent of the archbishops, bishops,
earls, and barons. The towns, also, favoured by the kings in opposition
to the barons, soon elevated themselves into a third estate and to
representation in the commons’ house of parliament. Yet the king was
always very powerful, if he possessed strength of character: his crown
estates procured for him due consideration; in later times, however,
these were gradually alienated, given away, so that the king was reduced
to apply for subsidies to the parliament.

We shall not pursue the minute and specifically historic details
that concern the incorporation of principalities with states, or the
dissensions and contests that accompanied such incorporations. We have
only to add that the kings, when by weakening the feudal constitution
they had attained a higher degree of power, began to use that power
against each other in the undisguised interest of their own dominion.
Thus France and England carried on wars with each other for a century.
The kings were always endeavouring to make foreign conquests; the towns,
which had the largest share of the burdens and expenses of such wars,
were opposed to them, and in order to placate them the kings granted them
important privileges.

THE PAPACY AND FEUDALISM

The popes endeavoured to make the disturbed state of society, to which
each of these changes gave rise, an occasion for the intervention of
their authority; but the interest of the growth of states was too
firmly established to allow them to make their own interest of absolute
authority valid against it. Princes and peoples were indifferent to
papal clamour urging them to new crusades. The emperor Louis set to work
to deduce from Aristotle, the Bible, and the Roman law a refutation
of the assumptions of the papal see; and the electors declared at the
diet held at Rense in 1338, and afterwards still more decidedly at the
imperial diet held at Frankfort, that they would defend the liberties
and hereditary rights of the empire, and that to make the choice of a
Roman emperor or king valid, no papal confirmation was needed. So, at an
earlier date, 1302, on occasion of a contest between Pope Boniface and
Philip the Fair, the assembly of the states convoked by the latter had
offered opposition to the pope. For states and communities had arrived at
the consciousness of independent moral worth.

Various causes had united to weaken the papal authority; the great
schism of the church, which led men to doubt the pope’s infallibility,
gave occasion to the decisions of the councils of Constance and Bâle,
which assumed an authority superior to that of the pope, and therefore
deposed and appointed popes. The numerous attempts directed against the
ecclesiastical system confirmed the necessity of a reformation. Arnold
of Brescia, Wycliffe, and Huss met with sympathy in contending against
the dogma of the papal vicegerency of Christ, and the gross abuses that
disgraced the hierarchy. These attempts were, however, only partial
in their scope. On the one hand the time was not yet ripe for a more
comprehensive onslaught; on the other hand the assailants in question
did not strike at the heart of the matter, but (especially the two
latter) attacked the teaching of the church chiefly with the weapons of
erudition, and consequently failed to excite a deep interest among the
people at large.

HEGEL ON THE RISE OF MANKIND THROUGH FEUDALISM

But the ecclesiastical principle had a more dangerous foe in the
incipient formation of political organisations than in the antagonists
above referred to. A common object, an aim intrinsically possessed of
perfect moral validity, presented itself to secularity in the formation
of states; and to this aim of community the will, the desire, the
caprice of the individual submitted itself. The hardness characteristic
of the self-seeking quality of “heart,” maintaining its position of
isolation--the knotty heart of oak underlying the national temperament of
the Germans--was broken down and mellowed by the terrible discipline of
the Middle Ages.

The two iron rods which were the instruments of this discipline were
the church and serfdom. The church drove the “heart” (_Gemüth_) to
desperation--made spirit pass through the severest bondage, so that the
soul was no longer its own; but it did not degrade it to Hindu torpor,
for Christianity is an intrinsically spiritual principle and, as such,
has a boundless elasticity. In the same way serfdom, which made a man’s
body not his own but the property of another, dragged humanity through
all the barbarism of slavery and unbridled desire, and the latter was
destroyed by its own violence.

It was not so much from slavery as through slavery that humanity was
emancipated. For barbarism, lust, injustice constitute evil: man, bound
fast in its fetters, is unfit for morality and religiousness; and it
is from this intemperate and ungovernable state of volition that the
discipline in question emancipated him. The church fought the battle with
the violence of rude sensuality in a temper equally wild and terroristic
with that of its antagonist; it prostrated the latter by dint of the
terrors of hell, and held it in perpetual subjection, in order to break
down the spirit of barbarism and to tame it into repose.

Theology declares that every man has this struggle to pass through, since
he is by nature evil, and only by passing through a state of mental
laceration arrives at the certainty of reconciliation. But granting this,
it must on the other hand be maintained that the form of the contest is
very much altered when the conditions of its commencement are different,
and when that reconciliation has had an actual realisation. The path
of torturous discipline is in that case dispensed with (it does indeed
make its appearance at a later date, but in quite a different form), for
the waking up of consciousness finds man surrounded by the elements of
a moral state of society. The phase of negation is, indeed, a necessary
element in human development, but it has now assumed the tranquil form
of education, so that all the terrible characteristics of that inward
struggle vanish.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[83] [In the words of Bryce,[b] “Nascent feudalism was but one remove
from anarchy.”]

[Illustration]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE CRUSADES

[b] J. F. MICHAUD, _History of the Crusades_.

[c] CHARLES MILLS, _History of the Crusades_.

CHAPTER II. THE FIRST CRUSADE

[b] E. GIBBON, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

[c] FR. WILKEN, _Geschichte der Kreuzzüge_.

[d] J. F. MICHAUD, _Bibliothèque des Croisades_ (including many Arab
accounts).

[e] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Age_.

CHAPTER III. THE SECOND CRUSADE

[b] E. GIBBON, _op. cit._

[c] CHARLES MILLS, _History of the Crusades_.

[d] L. VON RANKE, _Weltgeschichte_.

[e] “Imad ad-Din” and others in MICHAUD’S _Bibliothèque des Croisades_.

CHAPTER IV. THE THIRD CRUSADE

[b] CHARLES MILLS, _op. cit._

[c] J. F. MICHAUD, _op. cit._

[d] “Imad ad-Din” quoted in MICHAUD’S _Bibliothèque des Croisades_.

[e] RICHARD DEVIZES, _Chronicle Concerning the Deeds of King Richard the
First, King of England_.

[f] BOHA AD-DIN, _Life of Saladin_.

[g] GEOFFREY DE VINSAUF, _Itinerary of Richard I and others to the Holy
Land_.

[h] ROGER OF HOVEDEN, _Historia post Bedam_.

[i] THOMAS FULLER, _Holy War_.

[j] ABULFEDA, _History of the Human Race_.

[k] J. F. MICHAUD, _Bibliothèque des Croisades_.

CHAPTER V. THE FOURTH TO THE SIXTH CRUSADES

[b] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[c] CHARLES MILLS, _op. cit._

[d] J. F. MICHAUD, _op. cit._

[e] A. JOURDAIN, _A Letter to Michaud on the Children’s Crusade_.

[f] FULLER, _op. cit._

[g] GEOFFREY DE VILLEHARDOUIN, _Conquête de Constantinople_.

CHAPTER VI. THE LAST CRUSADES

[b] C. MILLS, _op. cit._

[c] MATTHEW OF PARIS, _Historia Major_.

[d] FULLER, _op. cit._

[e] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[f] JOHN DE JOINVILLE, _Memoirs of Louis IX_.

[g] MAKRIZI, _The Book of Paths for the Knowledge of Kings._

CHAPTER VII. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CRUSADES

[b] J. G. VON HERDER, _Philosophy of the History of Man_.

[c] C. MILLS, _op. cit._

[d] E. GIBBON, _op. cit._

[e] CHOISEUL D’AILLECOURT, _De l’influence des Croisades_.

APPENDIX. FEUDALISM

[b] JAMES BRYCE, _The Holy Roman Empire_.

[c] G. W. F. HEGEL, _Philosophy of History_.

[d] CARL SPANNAGEL, _Zur Geschichte des Deutschen Heerwesens vom X bis
zum XII Jahrhundert_.

[e] OTTO VON FREISING, _Chronik_.

[f] PHILIPPE DE BEAUMANOIR, _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_.

[g] GUIBERT DE NOGENT, _Gesta Dei per Francos_.

[h] WILLIAM OF TYRE, _Historia belli sacri_.

[i] V. DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Age_.

[j] PAUL VON ROTH, _Feudalität und Unterthanenverband_.

[Illustration]

BOOK II. THE PAPACY

_INTRODUCTION_

HISTORY IN OUTLINE OF THE PAPACY

THE BISHOPS OF ROME [42-590 A.D.]

The early history of the Papacy is involved in much obscurity.
For the early centuries we shall attempt little more than
to repeat the names of the successive bishops, as accepted
by the traditions of the church of Rome. According to these
traditions, the Apostle =Peter= founded the Church in the
year 42 (modern criticism does not accept this date, which is
almost surely too early by about a score of years); he was
martyred in 67, and succeeded by =Linus=, who was followed in
79 by =Cletus= or =Anacletus=. 91, =Clement I= or =Clemens
Romanus=. Some writers make him the third bishop in 68 A.D.
100, =Evarestus=.

109 =Alexander I.= The political life of Rome extinguished
by the empire, begins to revive in the organisation of the
Christian church. 119, =Sixtus I=. 129, =Telesphorus=. 139,
=Hyginus=. 143, =Pius I=. 157, =Anicetus=. 168, =Soter=. 177,
=Eleutherius=. 193, =Victor I=. The bishop of Rome is beginning
to assume supremacy over other bishops. This is resented in
some quarters.

202 =Zephyrinus.= 219, =Calixtus I=. 223, =Urban I=.
230, =Pontianus=. 235, =Anterius=. 236, =Fabianus=. 251,
=Cornelius=. 252, =Lucius I=. 253, =Stephen I=. 257, =Sixtus
II=. 259, =Dionysius=. 269, =Felix I=. 275, =Eutychianus=. 283,
=Caius=. 296, =Marcellinus=.

308 =Marcellus I.= 310, =Eusebius=. 311, =Melchiades=. 314,
=Silvester I=. 325, The authority of the metropolitan is
distinctly recognised. The idea has been developing since the
primacy of Fabianus and Cornelius. 330, Removal of the capital
from Rome to Constantinople. This increases greatly the power
of the Roman bishop, who henceforth announces his supremacy in
more decided tones. 336, =Marcus I=. 337, =Julius I=. He is the
recognised protector of the orthodox faith against Arianism and
other heresies. The church begins to organise landed properties
by bequests from emperors and nobles.

352 =Liberius.= 356, First instance of schism in the church of
Rome. _Felix_ maintains a rival claim to the primacy.

366 =Damasus I= elected to the see, after a bitter and
violent contest, over his rival, Ursinus. Damasus represents
the cause of orthodoxy. 384, =Siricius=. In his primacy the
decretals--pastoral letters--are begun.

398 =Anastasius I.= The papacy has emerged from obscurity.
Paganism is in its death throes.

402 =Innocent I.= He does much to free the church from
political interference. 417, =Zosimus=. He attempts to
temporise with paganism.

418 =Boniface I.= His election is contested. _Eulalius_
maintains a rival claim. The emperor Honorius intervenes, and
the provisions for election are revised. This is the first
instance of imperial interference.

422 =Celestine I.= 432, =Sixtus III=. 440, =Leo (I) the
Great=, sometimes called the real founder of the papacy. The
precedence of the bishops of Rome is now fully recognised. 461,
=Hilarius=. 468, =Simplicius=. 476, The fall of the Western
Empire increases the bishops’ authority. 483, =Felix II= (or
=III=, if the rival bishop in 356 is reckoned as Felix II).
He feels himself powerful enough to summon the patriarch of
Constantinople to Rome, and excommunicates him on his refusal
to obey. 492, =Gelasius I=. He enunciates the principle
that his acts are not to be controlled by synods. 496,
=Anastasius II=. 498, =Symmachus=. The election is contested by
_Laurentius_, who maintains a rival claim. The Palmary synod
disavows its own right to sit in judgment on the acts of the
Roman bishop.

514 =Hormisdas.= 523, =John I=. Theodoric sends John to
Constantinople to obtain indulgence for the Arians. Not
entirely successful, Theodoric imprisons the bishop on his
return (525), and he dies the following year. 526, =Felix III=
or =IV=. Dionysius Exiguus collects and publishes the canons
of the councils and the papal decretals. 530, =Boniface II=.
His election contested by _Dioscorus_ until the latter’s death,
the same year. Boniface obtains the power of appointing his own
successor, but a second synod annuls it.

532 =John II.= 535, =Agapetus I=. Theodotus sends him to
Constantinople in his behalf. 536, Belisarius enters Rome;
the pope becomes the vassal of the emperor. =Silverius.= 537,
Through the intrigues of the empress Theodora and the deacon
Vigilius, Silverius is deposed and banished to the island of
Pandataria. =Vigilius= becomes bishop of Rome. The bishops now
become mere puppets of the Eastern court.

552 Vigilius, resisting the will of Justinian, is imprisoned.

553 Vigilius again seized, and sent to exile.

554 =Pelagius I.= 560, =John III=. 574, =Benedict I=. 578,
=Pelagius II=.

FROM GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PAPACY AS A
LEGISLATIVE POWER [590-867 A.D.]

590 =Gregory (I) the Great= elected pope. He raises the papacy
to eminence and determines its future policy. Gregory’s work is
of threefold character. (1) He perfects the church ritual and
introduces a new mode of chanting, and organises the revenues
of the church. (2) He exercises supreme authority over the
churches of western Europe. The Lombards are converted from
Arianism, 599, and Britain is converted by St. Augustine.
(3) He makes the pope a temporal sovereign. By this time the
bishop of Rome has become the largest landholder in Italy. The
Lombard invasion has given the bishops opportunity for temporal
control, and in Rome and its vicinity the people recognise
Gregory at the head of affairs.

604 =Sabinianus.=

607 =Boniface III.= The emperor Phocas bestows title
of universal bishop on Boniface, but the patriarch of
Constantinople resumes it on Phocas’ death.

608 =Boniface IV.= He converts the Roman Pantheon into a
Christian church.

615 =Deusdedit.=

618 =Boniface V.=

625 =Honorius I.= The monothelitic controversy begins.

638 =Severinus.= He is not confirmed until 640.

640 =John IV.= The monothelite doctrine condemned.

642 =Theodore I.=

649 =Martin I.= The whole West repudiates monothelitism. Martin
condemns the Type of Constans II.

653 Martin seized by the exarch and carried to Constantinople,
by order of Constans.

654 =Eugenius I= elected in place of the absent Martin.

655 Martin banished to Cherson, where he soon dies.

657 =Vitalianus.=

672 =Adeodatus.=

676 =Domnus= or =Donus I=.

678 =Agatho.= Time of Wilfrid’s preaching in Britain and Gaul.

680 The Sixth Œcumenic Council at Constantinople settles the
monothelitic question.

682 =Leo II.= 683, =Benedict II=. 685, =John V=. 686, =Conon=.

687 =Sergius I.= _Paschal_ and _Theodore_ are supported as
anti-popes by different factions. The exarch finally recognises
Sergius.

701 =John VI.= He saves the life of the exarch in a rising of
the army. He drives the invading duke of Benevento back to his
own territory.

705 =John VII.= The emperor Justinian II tries to force certain
decrees objectionable in the West upon the church of Rome.

708 =Sisinnius= lives but twenty days after election.
=Constantine.= Justinian perseveres in his aim to reduce the
West to obedience.

710 Constantine goes to Constantinople at order of Justinian,
who remains content with this act of submission.

715 =Gregory II.= Time of Bede’s teaching.

725 Boniface establishes the German church.

726 The emperor Leo issues edict against image-worship. Italy
rebels.

728 Rebellion of Ravenna over the iconoclastic edict.
Liutprand, the Lombard king, captures the city. The papacy
begins to free itself from the Eastern Empire. The popes are
unwilling to submit themselves to the Lombards. Gregory appeals
to Charles Martel for aid against the Lombards.

731 =Gregory III.= He defies Leo in the matter of image-worship.

739 War with the Lombards. Appeal of Gregory to the Franks for
help against them.

741 =Zacharias.= He is the first pope to be elected without
obtaining the customary consent of the exarch. The papacy is
now free of the empire. It has become practically a political
dukedom.

742 Zacharias visits Liutprand and obtains treaty of peace.
Many possessions of the church restored by the Lombards.

749 The Lombards renew attacks on the pope.

751 Zacharias sanctions the transfer of the French crown to the
Carlovingian line.

752 =Stephen II= dies before his consecration. Usually not
reckoned in list of popes. =Stephen II= or =III=.

755 Pepin of France forces Aistulf, the Lombard king, to
relinquish all territory taken from the exarch and the pope.
Ravenna, Pentapolis, and other territory turned over to the
pope. “The Donation of Pepin.” The foundations of the papal
states are laid. Pepin bestows title of Patrician of Rome on
the king of the Franks.

757 =Paul I.= The Lombards do not encroach upon the papacy.

767 On death of Paul, Toto, duke of Nepi, compels a bishop
to ordain one of his brothers, _Constantine_, a layman. He
discharges all the offices of pontiff for a year, when

768 Desiderius, the Lombard king, sends a band to rescue Rome.
Constantine is seized. Election of =Stephen III= or =IV=.
All of Constantine’s acts are declared null and void. Cruel
treatment of Constantine.

772 =Adrian I.= Troubles with the Lombards are renewed. Adrian
appeals to Charlemagne.

774 Charlemagne captures Desiderius in Pavia, and assumes
title of king of the Lombards. End of the Lombard kingdom.
Charlemagne gives a large amount of territory to the pope.
“Donation of Charlemagne.” Adrian takes possession of the
exarchate, with all power and privileges of a temporal prince.

780 The pope summons Charlemagne to protect him against a
coalition of his Byzantine enemies. Peace is purchased.

786 Charlemagne reduces Arichis of Benevento to subjection. The
pope’s dominions extend to Calabria.

795 =Leo III.= He recognises the supremacy of Charlemagne.

799 Assault, attempted mutilation, and imprisonment of Leo
by an armed band headed by his nephews. Leo escapes to
Charlemagne, but returns to Rome.

800 Charlemagne goes to Rome to inquire into charges against
Leo. Leo crowns him emperor. Foundation of the empire of
Charlemagne. The pope and emperor begin the upbuilding of the
fabric of the Middle Ages. The pope is subordinate to the
emperor.

816 =Stephen IV.= He is unpopular, and makes the Romans swear
fealty to the emperor. Is compelled to take refuge with Louis
le Débonnaire. Returns to Rome, and dies.

817 =Paschal I.= Assumes pontificate without imperial sanction.
The Romans, admonished by the emperor, agree not to allow this
again.

824 =Eugenius II.=

827 =Valentinus= dies in five weeks. =Gregory IV.= He mediates
between Louis le Débonnaire and his sons. His pontificate
is uneventful, but materially advances pretensions of the
hierarchy.

844 =Sergius II= consecrated without consent of the emperor
Lothair. Lothair sends his son, Louis, with an army to Rome,
but his meeting with the pope is amicable. Louis II made king
of Lombardy.

847 =Leo IV.= The Saracens invade Italy as far as the gates of
Rome. Driven off by Louis. Leo fortifies a portion of Rome,
henceforth known as the Leonine city, including the Vatican and
church of St. Peter.

850 The “False Decretals” come to light.

855 =Benedict III.= His election contested by _Anastasius_,
who, at head of armed faction, seizes the Lateran. The imperial
legates decide in favour of Benedict, and Anastasius is
expelled. Beginning of the strife between Photius and Ignatius
for the see of Constantinople, which ends in the permanent
schism between the eastern and western churches.

858 =Nicholas I.= Under him the papacy makes a signal advance
in power. He interferes in the quarrel over the patriarchate
of Constantinople, espousing the cause of Ignatius, and
pronouncing sentence of deposition upon Photius. He adopts and
declares authentic the “False Decretals,” thus establishing the
principle of the sole legislative power of the pope.

861-864 Humiliation of the archbishops of Cologne, Trèves, and
Ravenna. The act of archbishop Hincmar of Rheims in deposing
Rothrad, bishop of Soissons, is reversed by Nicholas, on
authority of the “False Decretals.”

863 Nicholas forbids Lothair II to divorce his wife.

FROM THE DEATH OF NICHOLAS I TO THE BEGINNING OF THE ERA OF PRACTICAL
REFORM [867-1046 A.D.]

867 =Adrian II.=

868 On death of Lothair II of Lorraine, Adrian attempts to
bestow that crown on the emperor Louis II. This extension of
the papal prerogatives is not welcome to the German bishops,
and they rebuke Adrian.

870 Hincmar renews his struggle with the pope, and the whole
Frankish church arrays itself against the power of the pope in
dealing directly with bishops.

872 =John VIII.= During his pontificate, Rome is constantly in
danger from the Saracens.

875 John bestows the imperial crown on Charles the Bald, not as
his right, but as a gift. Victory over Hincmar and the Frankish
church by the appointment of Ansegis as primate of France.

876 Beginning of quarrel with Formosus, bishop of Porto.

877 In league with Athanasius, duke-bishop of Naples, the
Saracens reach the walls of Rome. Charles the Bald ignores
John’s appeals for help. The pope compelled to pay the Saracens
tribute.

878 Lambert, duke of Spoleto, in the interest of the imperial
claimant, Carloman, enters Rome, seizes John, and imprisons
him. John escapes, and flees to Provence. He returns to Rome.

881 John crowns Charles the Fat emperor.

882 Death of John, possibly murdered. =Martin II.=

884 =Adrian III.=

885 =Stephen V.=

887 On deposition of Charles the Fat the Carlovingian empire
comes to an end.

891 =Formosus= elected by influence of Guido of Spoleto. The
papacy enters a period of anarchy. The popes are elevated
by whichever rival party is in the ascendant, “obtaining,”
says Reichel, “their pontificate by crime, and vacating it by
murder.”

896 =Boniface VII= dies in a few days. The Italian party elects
=Stephen VI=. He mutilates the dead body of Formosus.

897 Stephen imprisoned and strangled. =Romanus= occupies the
see a few months. =Theodore II=, who belongs to the faction of
Formosus.

898 =John IX=, though of Formosus’ party, submits to the
emperor Lambert. The right of plundering the pope’s palace, on
his decease, is prohibited.

900 =Benedict IV.=

901 He crowns Louis of Provence, the rival of Berengar.

903 =Leo V.= In a few months he is imprisoned by =Christopher=,
one of his chaplains, who secures his own election.

904 Christopher driven from Rome by the soldiers of Berengar.
Election of =Sergius III=. The infamous Theodora and her
daughters, Marozia and Theodora, have complete influence over
Sergius. They further the aims of Berengar’s party. Complete
degradation of the papacy.

911 =Anastasius III.=

913 =Lando.=

914 =John X=, archbishop of Ravenna, is elected through
influence of Theodora, whose paramour he is. He proves an able
pontiff, and forms a league among the Italian dukes to resist
the Saracens, and, in furtherance of this project,

916 crowns Berengar emperor; then, for the first time in the
history of the papacy, the pope goes forth to battle, defeats
the Saracens, and destroys the fortress of Garigliano.

925 John expels the marquis Alberic, lover or husband of
Marozia. Marozia’s power increases. She seizes the castle of
St. Angelo. On death of Alberic she marries Duke Guido of
Tuscany.

926 Treaty between Hugo of Provence and John.

928 John imprisoned by Marozia’s party, and dies, probably by
violence. =Leo VI.=

929 =Stephen VII.=

931 =John XI=, son of Marozia and Sergius III or Alberic,
elected through his mother’s influence. Guido is dead, and
Marozia marries Hugo of Provence.

932 Rome rebels at this. Alberic, brother of the pope, casts
him and Marozia into prison, and makes himself master of Rome.
Alberic marries the daughter of Hugo.

936 Death of John in prison. He has exercised his spiritual
functions, but the government of Rome has been conducted by
Alberic. =Leo VII.=

939 =Stephen VIII.=

941 =Martin III.=

946 =Agapetus II.= These four are appointed by the sole will of
Alberic--they have no power.

953 Death of Alberic, leaving his authority to his son,
Octavian.

955 On death of Agapetus, Octavian is elected pope. He takes
the name of =John XII=, the first to take an ecclesiastical
name.

961 John, threatened by Berengar II, appeals to King Otto I of
Germany, who comes at once to Germany and is crowned king at
Pavia.

962 John crowns Otto emperor at Rome. Pope and Roman people
take oath of allegiance to Otto. Otto returns to Pavia, and
learns that John, fearing his mastery, has entered into
correspondence with the deposed Italian king, Adalbert. He
sends officers to investigate this, and they return with a long
list of crimes charged against John by the Roman people.

963 Adalbert returns to Rome. Otto marches thither. The pope
and Adalbert flee. Trial and deposition of the pope by Otto.
=Leo VIII=, the chief secretary of the Roman see, is elected.

964 Otto leaves Rome. A rebellion forces Leo to flee, and
the gates are opened to John, who reassumes his office. The
people embrace his cause. Death of John, probably at the hands
of an injured husband. Disregarding the emperor and Leo, the
people elect a new pope, _Benedict V_. Otto proceeds against
the anti-pope, who submits and is degraded. Leo, in council,
recognises right of Otto and his successors in the kingdom of
Italy to elect his own successors to the empire.

965 =John XIII= (bishop of Narni). On account of his
haughtiness the Romans expel him. The prefect Rotfred assumes
government of Rome.

966 Otto comes to Rome on appeal of John. Rotfred killed; John
restored. Otto treats the Romans barbarously. Overawed by Otto,
the Romans let John reign in peace.

972 The see vacant for three months, on death of John, while
Otto is consulted. =Benedict VI= elected.

974 Bonifazio Francone, at the instigation of the Tuscan party,
imprisons Benedict, strangles him, and assumes the papacy as
_Boniface VII_. This anti-pope compelled to flee in a month
to Constantinople. He carries off all the treasure from St.
Peter’s. Election of =Benedict VII=, who excommunicates
Boniface and, under protection of Otto II, rules in peace.

983 =John XIV.= Death of Otto in Rome.

984 Boniface suddenly reappears, imprisons John (who dies
by starvation or poison), and seats himself in the papal
chair. Re-establishment of the Roman Republic with the consul
Crescentius at its head.

985 Sudden death of Boniface. =John XV.= Crescentius compels
him to leave Rome, and he appeals to Otto III.

987 John is permitted to return. He now rules, but in
subjection to the consul and senate.

996 On death of John, Otto brings about election of his
kinsman, =Gregory V= (Bruno, duke of Carinthia). He crowns
Otto emperor. Crescentius condemned to exile, but pardoned at
intercession of Gregory, to whom he takes oath of fidelity.
Crescentius compels Gregory to flee, and puts _John XVI_
(Philagathus) in the papal chair.

998 Otto, as soon as possible, comes to Italy. John escapes,
but is brought back and horribly punished. Crescentius
surrenders, and is put to death. Gregory restored.

999 Death of Gregory, perhaps by poison. =Silvester II=
(Gerbert). Otto and Gregory plan together to restore the empire
to its grandeur in the Augustan Age--the emperor to have
boundless temporal, and the pope boundless spiritual, power.

1001 The Roman nobles revolt at this idea, but are quickly
brought to terms.

1002 Death of Otto, probably by poison administered by
Stephania, widow of Crescentius.

1003 Death of Gregory, perhaps due also to poisoning by
Stephania. The plans to rescue the papacy from the patricians
and populace of Rome have thus failed. =John XVII= (Sicco)
occupies the see six months. =John XVIII= (Fanasus).

1009 =Sergius IV.= Rome is again a republic, with the patrician
John, son of Crescentius, at its head. The Tuscan party is in
the ascendency.

1012 =Benedict VIII= elected by the Tusculan party, to which
the house of Crescentius has yielded the power. An anti-pope,
_Gregory_, is set up by the party of Crescentius. Benedict has
to flee, but soon returns to Rome, protected by the emperor
Henry II.

1014 Benedict administers a defeat to the Saracens near Pisa.

1021 Benedict assists Henry II in his war against the
Byzantines in southern Italy.

1024 On Benedict’s death the Tusculan party elevates his
brother, =John XIX=, a layman, to the papal chair.

1033 On John’s death the power of the Tusculan house secures
the pontificate for his young nephew, =Benedict IX=.

1042 The “Truce of God” sanctioned.

1044 Benedict, after leading a vicious and depraved life, is
driven from Rome by the people. They then elect _Silvester
III_, but Benedict returns in triumph, and the anti-pope flees.

1045 Benedict sells the pontificate to _Gregory VI_ (Johannes
Gratianus) of the house of Tusculum, a man of learning and
unimpeachable chastity, who endeavours to institute reforms.

1046 The scandal of Benedict’s act leads to Henry III
assembling the Council of Sutri, which deposes the three
popes and elects Suidgar bishop of Bamberg, =Clement II=, to
the papal chair. The council gives the emperor the right of
nominating future popes, which displeases the Roman clergy and
people.

THE AGE OF GREATNESS [1046-1305 A.D.]

A new era is inaugurated for the papacy. The power of the popes
begins to overshadow that of the emperors.

1047 Clement summons a council to condemn the all-pervading
vice of simony. Death of Clement. Benedict IX seizes the throne
and holds it for nine months.

1048 Poppo, bishop of Brixen, =Damasus II=, appointed pope by
the emperor. Benedict flees on his appearance. Damasus dies
in less than a month. Hildebrand voices the objections of the
Roman clergy as to the power of the emperor to appoint the
popes. Bruno, bishop of Toul, =Leo IX=, is the imperial choice
for the next pope.

1049 With the assistance of Hildebrand, Leo plans many reforms,
including prohibition of marriage to the clergy, simony, etc.
The synods of Rome, Rheims, and Mainz enact reformatory canons.
Leo forms the college of cardinals.

1049-1051 Leo visits France and Germany.

1052 Third visit of Leo to Germany to mediate between Henry III
and Andrew of Hungary.

1053 Campaign of Leo against the Normans. Capture of Leo at
Civitella. Treaty of Hildebrand with Berengar of Tours.

1054 Leo returns to Rome and dies. Hildebrand goes to the
emperor as plenipotentiary of the Roman clergy and people.

1055 Gebhard of Eichstadt, =Victor II=, Hildebrand’s candidate,
made pope. He carries on Leo’s work of reform.

1056 Death of Henry III, leaving infant son, furthers plan of
Hildebrand.

1057 The Romans reassert their right to create popes on death
of Victor. Cardinal Frederick of Lorraine, =Stephen IX=, made
pope.

1058 Stephen dies. Ignoring the empress Agnes, the Roman party
makes Giovanni di Velletri, =Benedict X=, pope, getting the
most lavish grants from him. The empress empowers Hildebrand to
proceed with new election.

1059 Gerard, archbishop of Florence, =Nicholas II=, is elected
and Benedict declared deposed. Hildebrand determines to deal a
blow at the imperial prerogative. Second Lateran Council. The
election of pope is vested solely with the cardinal-bishops.
Simony and clerical marriage forbidden.

1061 Election of Anselmo Baggio, =Alexander II=, without
consent of emperor, inaugurates the great struggle between pope
and emperor. The imperial party calls a council at Bâle and
elects Pietro Cadolaus _Honorius II_. He advances to Rome.

1063 The anti-pope driven by the Normans into the castle of St.
Angelo, where he holds his position until

1064 when the fall of Adalbert crushes his last hopes.
The schism is healed by Hanno, and Alexander universally
acknowledged pope. Resistance to the decrees of celibacy is
strong.

1073 Hildebrand, =Gregory VII=. His election is confirmed by
the emperor. His main objects are the enforcement of celibacy
among the clergy and the prohibition of investiture by the
laity which is the great cause of simony. He demands that Henry
IV shall acquiesce in all the newly assumed prerogatives of the
papacy.

1075 Lay investiture prohibited. Breach between pope and Henry
IV.

1076 Henry calls diet at Worms and declares pope deposed.
Gregory excommunicates Henry, who is suspended from his royal
office by Diet of Tribur.

1077 Henry humbles himself before the pope at Canossa. Gregory
establishes the principle of the papal power to judge kings.

1080 Second excommunication of Henry. His adherents call a
council and declare Gregory deposed. Election of Guibert,
archbishop of Ravenna, _Clement III_, as anti-pope.

1084 Henry finally takes Rome. Gregory shuts himself in the
castle of St. Angelo. Clement crowns Henry emperor. The Normans
take Rome. Robert Guiscard releases Gregory, who goes to
Salerno and dies the following year. Clement III rules at Rome.

1086 The cardinals elect Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino,
=Victor III=, pope. He lives mostly at Monte Cassino.

1087 Death of Victor.

1088 Five months after Victor’s death Eudes, bishop of Ostia,
=Urban II=, is elected pope. He resides at Monte Cassino.

1094 Urban in Rome. Clement holds only the Vatican, St. Angelo,
and the Lateran.

1095 Urban preaches the First Crusade in France. Council of
Clermont.

1099 =Paschal II.= He expels Clement III from Rome, who dies
the following year.

1100 On Clement’s death, _Theodore_, anti-pope, is elected by
the imperial party. He falls into Paschal’s hands and condemned
to be a hermit.

1102 _Albert_ anti-pope--he is thrust into a monastery.

1105 _Silvester IV_, anti-pope. He is eventually deposed by the
emperor himself.

1106 On death of Henry IV, the question of investiture is
renewed with Henry V.

1110 Henry V makes a warlike descent on Italy. Treaty of Sutri,
compromising rights of the church.

1111 Paschal refuses to crown Henry, who imprisons both pope
and cardinals. Paschal compelled to bestow the crown on Henry.

1115 Death of the countess Matilda, leaving her possessions to
the pope. Henry threatens another visit to Rome.

1116 Excommunication of Henry in the Lateran Council. Henry
advances on Rome. The pope retreats to Benevento.

1118 Paschal returns to Rome. He dies. The cardinals elect
Giovanni da Gaeta, =Gelasius II=. He is at once seized by
Cencius Frangipani. The Transteverines compel his surrender.
Henry V arrives in Rome. The pope flees to Gaeta, where he
is consecrated. Henry, with the assent of the people, makes
Maurice Bourdin, _Gregory VIII_, anti-pope. On Henry’s
departure, Gelasius returns to Rome, but, again attacked,
leaves Rome for France.

1119 Death of Gelasius at Lyons. Election of Guido, archbishop
of Vienne, =Calixtus II=. He excommunicates Henry and the
anti-pope, and sets out for Rome.

1120 Calixtus captures Gregory and submits him to great
degradation.

1121 Death of Gregory in prison. _Celestine II_ anti-pope.

1122 The Concordat of Worms settles the question of
investiture. The emperor cedes the right of investiture by
ring and staff. The pope allows the election of bishops and
abbots according to canonical procedure in the presence of the
emperor, but without bribery or compulsion.

1124 Lambert di Fagnano, =Honorius II=, elected through the
Frangipani influence. He rules in peace with Germany, but heads
the papal forces in the south of Italy.

1130 At death of Honorius, a portion of the cardinals elect
Gregorio de’ Papi, =Innocent II=. The remainder choose Peter
Leonis, _Anacletus II_, who gains the support of Roger of
Sicily. Innocent wins over Bernard of Clairvaux, and, through
him, Lothair II.

1132 Lothair goes to Italy against Anacletus and Roger.

1133 Coronation of Lothair by Innocent, who gives him the
allodial possessions of the countess Matilda as a fief.

1138 Death of Anacletus settles the disputed election. Gregorio
Conti, _Victor IV_, the new anti-pope, holds out for two
months. All Rome acknowledges Innocent.

1139 Great Lateran Council. It condemns Arnold of Brescia.
The pope asserts his unlimited power over the episcopal
order. Innocent goes to war with Roger of Sicily and is taken
prisoner. He is released on recognising Roger’s title and
kingdom.

1143 Guido di Castello, =Celestine II=.

1144 =Lucius II.= The Roman people carry out the plans of
Arnold of Brescia, institute a republic, and accept only the
spiritual authority of the pope. Lucius appeals to the emperor,
Conrad, in vain.

1145 Death of Lucius while storming the Capitol. The abbot,
Bernard, of Pisa, =Eugenius III=, succeeds. He recovers Rome
from Arnold of Brescia. The republic capitulates.

1146 Arnold regains Rome. Eugenius flees to France. He becomes
the satellite of Bernard of Clairvaux. Council of Vézelay
promotes Second Crusade.

1153 Conrad, bishop of Sabina, =Anastasius IV=.

1154 Nicholas Breakspear, =Adrian IV=.

1155 Rome put under religious interdiction. The clergy and
people compel the senate to yield. Banishment and execution of
Arnold of Brescia. Coronation of Frederick Barbarossa.

1156 Frederick retires to Germany. Alliance of Adrian with
Sicily.

1157 Quarrel of Frederick and Adrian.

1158 Frederick goes to Italy to settle quarrel.

1159 Frederick threatened with excommunication. Adrian dies.
The election divided: Rolando Ranuci, =Alexander III=, and
Octavian, cardinal of St. Cecilia, _Victor IV_.

1160 Frederick summons Council of Pavia to decide claim of the
two popes. On account of Alexander’s haughty attitude Frederick
recognises Victor.

1162 After many struggles with Victor, Alexander takes refuge
in France.

1164 Death of Victor. Guido of Crema, _Paschal III_, chosen by
a small faction to succeed as anti-pope. He does not dare enter
Rome.

1165 Alexander returns to Rome where the senate receives him.

1167 Frederick takes Rome and installs Paschal. His second
coronation by Paschal.

1168 The cause of Paschal much weakened by departure of
Frederick. Death of Paschal. John, bishop of Tusculum,
_Calixtus III_ succeeds as anti-pope. His power grows weaker.

1176 Frederick makes armistice with pope and Lombards after
defeat at Legnano.

1177 Reconciliation of Frederick and Alexander at Venice.

1178 Calixtus abdicates his title. End of the schism.

1181 Ubaldo Allucingoli, =Lucius III=.

1182 Rebellion in Rome drives Lucius out.

1185 Humbert Crivelli, =Urban III=. He lives chiefly at Verona.
He quarrels with Frederick over several matters.

1187 Death of Urban as he is about to excommunicate Frederick.
Albert, cardinal of San Lorenzo, =Gregory VIII=. He preaches a
crusade. He goes to Pisa to settle quarrel between Genoa and
Pisa and dies. Paolo Scolari, =Clement III=.

1188 Clement makes peace with the Roman people.

1191 Giacinto Orsini, =Celestine III=. Surrender of Tusculum to
the Romans.

1194 The pope excommunicates Henry VI for his cruelty to the
Sicilians.

1198 Lothario Conti, =Innocent III=. His pontificate marks
the culmination of the papal power. Innocent preaches the
Fifth Crusade. He compels the prefect of Rome to swear
allegiance to him, thus practically establishing the temporal
sovereignty of the pope over Rome. He orders the seneschal
Markwald of Anweiler to surrender the march of Ancona. Death of
Constanza. Markwald lays claim to the administration of Sicily.
Association of Guelfs with papal party.

1199 Conrad of Lutzenberg, count of Spoleto, is forced to
return to Germany. The Italian cities welcome Innocent as a
deliverer.

1201 Decision in favour of Otto IV, of Germany. Defeat of
Markwald by Walter de Brienne and the papal army. Innocent
compels Philip Augustus to take back his divorced wife.

1202 Alfonso IX refuses to annul his marriage to his cousin.
Papal interdict in the kingdom of Leon. Innocent protests
against the crusaders’ expedition against Zara.

1204 Innocent sends legate to crown Joannice king of Bulgaria.
Dominic begins to preach in Languedoc.

1208 Resistance of King John of England to the consecration
of Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury. Interdiction
placed on England.

1209 Otto abandons the lands of the countess Matilda and
other territories in Italy to the pope. Innocent crowns him.
Excommunication of King John. Crusade against the Albigenses is
begun.

1210 Excommunication of Otto who has not given up all the
territories he promised. Foundation of the Franciscan order.

1212 Innocent makes Frederick II king of Germany. He deposes
King John and offers crown of England to Philip Augustus.

1213 John submits to the pope.

1215 Innocent attempts to annul Magna Charta. Fourth Lateran
Council. Transubstantiation a doctrine. Auricular confession
enforced. Coronation of Frederick II as king of Germany, who
promises to undertake a crusade.

1216 Confirmation of the Dominican order. Death of Innocent.
Cencio Savelli, =Honorius III=, elected.

1217 Honorius obliges Andrew of Hungary to undertake a crusade.

1220 Coronation of Frederick as emperor. He renews promises to
go to the Holy Land.

1223 Congress at Ferentino. Frederick pledges himself to start
within two years.

1225 Frederick obtains another delay. On account of trouble
with the senate Honorius goes to Tivoli.

1227 Ugolino Conti, =Gregory IX=. He excommunicates Frederick,
who makes an unsuccessful attempt to start for the Holy Land.
Ezzelino da Romano drives the Guelfs out of Verona and Vicenza.

1228 Second excommunication of Frederick for starting without
absolution. The pope sends his army into Apulia.

1229 The papal army ravages Apulia but Frederick hastens back
from Syria to recover his territory. He is excommunicated
a third time. Close of the Albigensian Crusade. Council of
Toulouse forbids reading of Scripture by laymen and adopts
severe measures for the suppression of heresy.

1230 The pope and Frederick are reconciled. Great flood in Rome.

1231 Negotiations are opened for the union of the Greek and
Latin churches.

1232 Tribunals of the Inquisition established in southern
France.

1233 The Germans put to death the first inquisitor.

1234 Rising in Rome drives Gregory from the city.

1238 League of Venice, Genoa, and the pope against Frederick,
on account of his growing power and successes in Lombardy.

1239 Excommunication of Frederick and charges preferred against
him.

1240 Gregory proclaims a crusade against Frederick, who invades
the papal territory.

1241 Frederick’s fleets capture twenty-two Genoese galleys,
containing many ecclesiastics on their way to a council
at Rome. They are imprisoned. Death of Gregory. Goffredo
Castiglione, =Celestine IV=, elected. He dies in eighteen days.
The see is vacant.

1243 Frederick releases some of the imprisoned ecclesiastics
that an election may take place. Senibaldi di Fieschi,
=Innocent IV=, is chosen. Peace negotiations fail.

1244 Innocent escapes to Lyons.

1245 Innocent calls the Thirteenth General Council at Lyons.
Frederick is excommunicated and deposed.

1246 Louis IX fails in an attempt to reconcile Innocent and
Frederick. Innocent demands large sums from England, France,
and Italy, to prosecute his struggle with Frederick, and this
causes great discontent in those countries.

1247 Frederick besieges the papal forces in Parma.

1248 Frederick raises the siege.

1250 Death of Frederick.

1251 Return of Innocent to Italy. He goes to Perugia to reside.
Excommunication of Conrad. The pope incites Sicily and Apulia
to rebellion. Manfred puts the rebels down.

1252 Conrad IV and Manfred attack Naples, and capture Capua.

1253 Surrender of Naples to Conrad.

1254 The pope bestows the crown of Sicily on Prince Edmund
of England. Death of Innocent, at Naples, on an expedition
against Manfred. Rinaldo di Segni, =Alexander IV=. Rise of the
Flagellants.

1255 The people of Messina expel the papal governor. The papal
legate makes treaty with Manfred, but Alexander will not
ratify it, claiming that Edmund is king of Sicily. The English
parliament will not grant Edmund the money to take the throne.

1256 Manfred makes himself supreme in Sicily in the name of
Conradin. Imprisonment of the senator Brancaleone, who is
released by the people (1258). Establishment of the Augustine
order of mendicant friars.

1257 Interdiction of Portugal on account of divorce of Alfonso
III.

1258 Battle of Corticella. Ezzelino da Romano defeats the
pope’s army, and captures Brescia.

1259 Excommunication of Manfred, who has been crowned the
previous year. The pope decides the question of emperorship in
favour of Richard of Cornwall. Fall of the Ghibelline champion,
Ezzelino da Romano.

1260 The Ghibellines regain Florence. Execution of Alberic da
Romano.

1261 Death of Alexander in exile. Jacques Pantaléon, patriarch
of Jerusalem, =Urban IV=.

1262 Urban, to resist Conradin, offers crown of Sicily to
Charles of Anjou. The Ghibellines in Tuscany acknowledge
Manfred.

1263 Milan refuses to accept Otto Visconti as archbishop of the
city.

1264 Charles of Anjou appointed senator of Rome. Death of Urban.

1265 Guy Foulques, =Clement IV=. Coronation of Charles of Anjou
as king of Sicily.

1269 Death of Clement. The see is vacant for over two years,
owing to discord among the cardinals.

1271 Teobaldo di Visconti, =Gregory X=. Rudolf of Habsburg
acknowledges papal supremacy.

1273 Gregory excommunicates the inhabitants of many north
Italian cities for banding against Charles of Anjou.

1274 Fourteenth General Council at Lyons. A new crusade is
preached, and a union of the Greek and Latin churches is
effected. The union is never fully accepted in the Eastern
Empire, and soon falls to pieces.

1276 Death of Gregory. Pietro di Tarantasia, =Innocent V=, dies
in five months. Ottoboni Fiesco, =Adrian V=, dies in six weeks.
Pedro Juliani, =John XX= or =XXI=.

1277 Giovani Gaetano, =Nicholas III=, “=Il Comperto=.” He
belongs to the Orsini family.

1278 Cession of Romagna, the exarchate of Ravenna, and other
territory, by Rudolf of Habsburg, to the pope, who acts as
ruling sovereign over all his dominions. Nicholas is hostile to
Charles. Nepotism practised by Nicholas.

1280 Death of Nicholas in the midst of plans to establish his
family in kingdoms in Italy. Discord caused by Charles in the
College of Cardinals.

1281 Simon de Brion, =Martin IV=, elected after six months,
through influence of Charles. The pope retires to Orvieto.

1282 Martin excommunicates Pedro of Aragon, who has been
declared king of Sicily after the “Sicilian Vespers.”

1283 The pope offers crown of Aragon to Charles of Valois.

1285 Death of Charles quiets the affairs of Sicily. Giacomo
Savelli, =Honorius IV=.

1287 Honorius prevents ratification of treaty between Aragon
and France. Death of Honorius, and owing to disputes, the
cardinals fail for ten months to elect a new pope.

1288 Girolamo d’Ascoli, =Nicholas IV=.

1289 After liberation of Charles the Lame of Naples, the pope
absolves him from all conditions, by which he obtains his
freedom. The Guelf and Ghibelline contest continues fiercely in
the north. Nicholas becomes enslaved to the Colonnas.

1292 Death of Nicholas. The see vacant for over two years.

1294 Election of Pietro di Murrhone, =Celestine V=, a lowly
hermit. The cardinals repent, and compel him to abdicate.
Benedict Cajetan, =Boniface VIII=, elected. He carries the
papal pretensions further than any other pope, and prepares the
way for the Reformation.

1296 Boniface begins his great struggle with Philip the Fair by
issuing a bull excommunicating all princes who tax the clergy.
Edward I of England outlaws all the clergy who obey this bull,
and Philip retaliates by prohibiting the exportation of gold
and silver out of France. Interdiction of Sicily. The Sicilians
invade Calabria.

1297 Excommunication of the entire Colonna family because a
member of it plundered a papal convoy.

1298 The pope proclaims a crusade against the Colonnas.

1299 Surrender of Palestrina to the papal army. It is razed to
the ground.

1300 Plenary indulgence of Boniface.

1301 Boniface is prevented by the English parliament from
interfering in the affairs of Scotland. Renewed quarrel with
Philip over his imprisonment of the bishop of Pamiers. Charles
of Valois is invited into Italy.

1302 Publication of the bull declaring that the church can have
only one head.

1303 Philip burns a bull of excommunication issued by Boniface
and refuses to acknowledge him as pope. Capture of Boniface by
Guillaume de Nogaret. Death of Boniface. Niccolo Boccasini,
=Benedict XI=. He attempts to conciliate France and the Colonna
family.

1304 Benedict excommunicates those who take part in the capture
of Boniface. Death of Benedict, probably by poison, at the
hands of the French party.

THE “BABYLONISH CAPTIVITY” [1305-1378 A.D.]

1305 The influence of Philip the Fair in the College of
Cardinals brings about the election of Bertrand d’Agoust,
=Clement V=. The pope does not interfere in Philip’s
persecution of the Templars.

1309 The pope removes his residence to Avignon, principally
because of the strife between the Orsini and Colonnas, in Rome.
He pronounces a fearful ban of excommunication against the
Venetians, in a quarrel over the possession of Ferrara. The
Venetians driven from Ferrara, which is annexed to the papal
states.

1310 Revolt of Ferrara and its severe punishment by the papal
government.

1311 Suppression of the Templars at the Council of Vienne.

1314 The pope makes the king of Naples viceroy of Italy. The
Guelf party is now in the ascendant. Death of Clement. The see
is vacant for over two years.

1316 Jacques d’Euse, =John XXI= or =XXII=, of the French party,
elected.

1317 The people of Ferrara restore the city to the Este family.

1322 The Visconti capture Cremona, and the whole family is
excommunicated. John offers to recognise Frederick of Austria
king of Germany, in return for his help. Frederick sends an
army to Italy, but withdraws it.

1323 Excommunication of Ludwig IV of Bavaria. The papal
forces take Alessandria and Tortona, and lay siege to Milan.
Excommunication of Ludwig IV of Bavaria for helping the
Visconti.

1324 The papal and Sicilian forces defeated by Galeazzo
Visconti at Vaprio.

1326 John incites the duke of Lithuania to attack the Teutonic
knights. The papal forces capture Parma and Reggio.

1328 Ludwig IV, crowned in Rome by Sciarra Colonna, obtains a
decree from the Roman people that the pope must reside in Rome.
John is declared deposed, and Pietro di Corvara, _Nicholas V_,
made pope.

1329 The Ghibellines turn against Ludwig; the Visconti and
Este families treat with the pope. Nicholas abdicates, and is
imprisoned at Avignon.

1332 John of Bohemia, who has settled the troubles of the
Ghibellines, plots with the pope to obtain Italy.

1333 The papal forces defeated at Ferrara. John abandons his
designs on Italy, and returns to Bohemia.

1334 The papal party loses most of its captured cities. Death
of John, as he is about to be tried for heresy. Jacques
Fournier, =Benedict XII=. He begins to build the palace of
the popes at Avignon, and attempts to curb the luxury of the
monastic orders.

1338 The German electors declare that the pope has no
jurisdiction over Germany.

1342 Pierre Roger, =Clement VI=. The Romans send an embassy to
urge him to return to Rome. He appoints the Fifty Year Jubilee.

1343 Clement renews excommunication of Ludwig.

1347 Revolution of Rienzi in Rome. He is elected tribune, and
carries out many reforms. After a defeat of the nobles he
commits many extravagant acts, and is compelled to abdicate.

1348 Joanna of Naples sells Avignon to the pope.

1349 The Flagellants declared to be heretics.

1351 Rienzi delivered to the custody of the pope by Charles IV
of Germany.

1352 Etienne d’Albert, =Innocent VI=.

1354 Cardinal Albornoz restores papal power in Rome. Rienzi
made senator. He rules badly, and is killed.

1356 The Golden Bull terminates the long strife between papacy
and empire.

1362 Guillaume de Grimoard, =Urban V=. Most of the pope’s
enemies have been quieted, but the Visconti still remain in
open hostility. The pope desires to return to Rome, since the
papal states are reduced to obedience.

1367 Urban removes to Rome. Death of Albornoz.

1370 Urban returns to Avignon and dies. Pierre Roger de
Beaufort, =Gregory XI=. England and France reject his offers of
mediation with contempt. Italy, after the death of Albornoz,
attempts to free herself from the pope. The Visconti are
all-powerful in the north. The whole south revolts. The Free
Companies ravage the country. Sir John Hawkwood serves now the
Guelfs and now the Ghibellines.

1376 Mission of St. Catherine of Siena to urge the pope to
return to Rome.

1377 Arrival of Gregory at Rome.

1378 Death of Gregory.

THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST [1378-1417 A.D.]

1378 The Romans urge the election of a Roman pope; under this
pressure the cardinals choose Bartolommeo Prignani, =Urban
VI=. The French cardinals immediately band against him, and,
withdrawing to Fondi, pronounce the election invalid and elect
Robert of Geneva, _Clement VII_. Germany, England, Denmark,
Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and Italy (except Naples) support
Urban. France, Naples, Scotland, Savoy, Lorraine, and the
Spanish kingdoms support Clement. Urban resides at Rome;
Clement, at Avignon. Urban excommunicates Clement. Wycliffe
attacks the papal primacy.

1379 War between the two popes. Bloodshed and strife in Italy.
Defeat of Clement’s forces in Urban’s crusade against Naples.
St. Angelo surrenders. Clement retreats to Avignon.

1380 Joanna I of Naples attempts to poison Urban, who allies
himself with Hungary. Charles of Durazzo reaches Rome on his
way to Naples.

1381 Conquest of Naples by Charles of Durazzo and the
Hungarians. He takes the throne.

1383 Urban VI goes to Naples, which Louis of Anjou, adopted by
Joanna, has invaded. Urban obtains many advantages there for
himself and family.

1384 Hostilities arise between Urban and Charles, owing to the
former’s arrogance. Louis dies, and his forces are dispersed.

1385 Charles induces several cardinals to plot against Urban.
They are seized and tortured. Urban excommunicates Charles, who
ignores the bull. Siege and capture of Nocera by Charles’ army.
Urban flees to Genoa. Charles goes to Hungary, leaving Naples
to his son, Ladislaus.

1386 Urban orders the imprisoned cardinals (except one) put to
death. The doge of Venice compels Urban to leave Genoa; he goes
to Lucca.

1387 Urban moves to Perugia.

1388 Urban leaves Perugia for Naples, to which he has laid
claim. His army breaks up, and he retires to Rome.

1389 Death of Urban. Pietro Tomacelli, =Boniface IX=. Clement
crowns Louis II of Anjou king of Naples. Boniface adopts a
conciliatory spirit and recognises Ladislaus.

1390 The Jubilee brings a great revenue into Boniface’s
treasury. He recognises the many dynasties within the papal
states.

1392 Through influence of Boniface, who goes to Perugia, the
warfare among the states of northern Italy is terminated.

1394 Death of Clement VII. Pedro de Luna, _Benedict XIII_,
anti-pope.

1395 The University of Paris tries without success to heal the
schism.

1398 France withdraws its allegiance from Benedict, who resists
all efforts to make him abdicate. Scotland and Aragon alone
remain faithful to him. Boniface makes himself master of Rome.

1399 Surrender of Benedict, who has been besieged by the French
in Avignon. He promises to abdicate if Boniface will do the
same.

1400 A reaction in favour of Benedict sets in. Rising of the
Colonnas in Rome interferes with the Jubilee. The plague
destroys many pilgrims. Edicts against the Bianchi.

1402 Boniface declares Ladislaus king of Hungary.

1403 The Visconti begin to lose their power. Boniface recovers
Perugia, Bologna, and other towns by treaty. Benedict escapes
from Avignon and recovers the allegiance of France.

1404 Death of Boniface, followed by a rising in Rome. The
Orsini defeat the Colonnas. Cosimo de’ Migliorati, =Innocent
VII=. He possesses nothing in Rome but the Vatican and St.
Angelo. Ladislaus of Naples comes to Rome to settle differences
between pope and Romans.

1405 Innocent takes refuge at Viterbo. Sack of the Vatican by
the Roman populace. Ladislaus attempts to seize Rome, and the
people return to the pope. Futile negotiations between Innocent
and Benedict, who leave France for Genoa.

1406 Benedict at Savona. The University of Paris proceeds
against him. Innocent returns to Rome and dies. Angelo di
Corraro, =Gregory XII=.

1408 France, having tried in vain to end the schism, renounces
obedience to either pope. Benedict at Perpignan. Ladislaus
seizes Rome. Gregory finally settles in Rimini. The cardinals
of both parties arrange for a council at Pisa.

1409 Council of Pisa. The two popes refuse to appear, and are
deposed. Pietro Philarghi, =Alexander V=, elected. The greater
part of Christendom gives him allegiance, but Gregory is obeyed
in Bavaria, Naples, and Friuli, and Benedict in Aragon. The
three popes issue bulls of excommunication against each other.
Alexander issues bull against heresy in Bohemia.

1410 Rome is captured from Ladislaus by Alexander’s party.
Death of Alexander. Baltasare Cossa, =John XXII= or =XXIII=. He
allies himself with the cause of Louis of Anjou.

1411 On the election of the emperor Sigismund, Germany gives
allegiance to John. The pope, Louis, and the Orsini defeat
Ladislaus at Roccasecca.

1412 Peace between the pope and Ladislaus, who abandons
Gregory. The latter flees from Gaeta to Rimini. John Huss
protests against the sale of indulgences, and is excommunicated.

1413 Ladislaus makes treaty, and seizes Rome and other papal
possessions. John retreats to Florence, and turns to Sigismund
for help. The Council of Constance is agreed on.

1414 Ladislaus enters Rome, but dies shortly after. The people
restore Rome to John. John goes to Constance, and opens
council. Gregory and Benedict send representatives.

1415 Deposition of John by the council. He is imprisoned.
Voluntary abdication of Gregory. Benedict refuses to give up.
Perfidious treatment and execution of John Huss.

1416 Execution of Jerome of Prague at Constance.

1417 The council considers measures of reform. Election of Otto
di Colonna, =Martin V=, as pope. Benedict still opposes him.
Death of Gregory. Andrea Braccio takes Rome. Sforza and the
Neapolitans drive him out, and restore the papal governor.

FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION [1417-1513
A.D.]

1418 Close of the Council of Constance. Martin goes to Italy,
accompanied by Sigismund.

1419 Martin fixes his residence at Florence. John is pardoned,
and dies.

1420 Martin Sforza assists Louis III of Anjou in his attempts
on Naples. Reconciliation of Martin and Braccio. The latter
recovers Bologna for the pope. Martin goes to Rome.

1424 Death of Benedict XIII. Some of the cardinals elect Gil de
Munion (Ægidius Nuños), _Clement VIII_, and a single French one
elects _Benedict XIV_. Reform constitution of Martin. Death of
Braccio. Martin soon recovers all the papal possessions.

1429 Clement VIII submits to Martin. Cardinal Beaufort’s
crusade against the Hussites.

1431 Gabriel Condolmieri, =Eugenius IV=. He quarrels with
the Colonnas, and deprives them of their offices. They take
up arms against him, but peace is made. Eugenius favours the
Orsini. Opening of the Council of Bâle. It declares itself, in
spiritual matters, superior to the pope. Eugenius orders the
council dissolved.

1432 The council refuses to dissolve, and accuses the pope of
contumacy.

1433 Eugenius revokes his dissolution. Negotiations for a union
with the Greek church are begun.

1434 The limits of papal authority fixed by the council.
Eugenius gives Francesco Sforza the march of Ancona. Rising in
Rome against Eugenius, Niccolo Fortebraccio captures the city.
Eugenius escapes to Florence.

1435 Defeat and death of Fortebraccio. Eugenius quarrels with
the council.

1436 Eugenius removes to Bologna.

1437 The Council of Bâle summons Eugenius to answer charges; he
replies with a bull dissolving council and summoning another
at Ferrara, to which the emperor of Constantinople, Joannes
VIII, is invited, that a union between the two churches may
be effected. The council ignores the bull, and continues its
sittings.

1438 The Council of Bâle passes a decree suspending the pope.
Opening of the Council of Ferrara attended by the emperor and
patriarch of Constantinople. The pope’s fiscal rights annulled
in France. The Council of Bâle is henceforth recognised only in
Germany.

1439 The council removed to Florence. Union of the Greek and
Latin churches effected. It comes to nothing, through hostile
influences at Constantinople and the failure of Eugenius to
keep his promises. Deposition of Eugenius at Bâle. Amadeus VIII
of Savoy, _Felix V_, elected anti-pope. Eugenius excommunicates
the Council of Bâle.

1440 Coronation of Felix.

1441 Felix quarrels with the council over questions of money.
General peace in northern Italy concluded at Cremona.

1443 Felix deserts the council, but retains allegiance of
Germany. Henceforth it exists only in name. Eugenius leaves
Florence for Rome.

1445 Eugenius’ deposition of the archbishop of Cologne and
Trèves brings his dispute with the electors of Germany to a
climax. The emperor Frederick III comes to his aid.

1446 Treaty between Frederick and Eugenius. Two electors are
deposed, and the electors league against the pope.

1447 Through efforts of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini the
obedience of Germany is restored. Death of Eugenius. Tommaso
Parentucelli, =Nicholas V=. Under him the revival of learning
properly begins. The Vatican library is founded. Frederick III
forbids any allegiance to Felix in Germany.

1448 Nicholas recognised by the German electors. Dissolution of
the Council of Bâle.

1449 Abdication of Felix.

1450 Francesco Sforza becomes lord of Milan. Peace restored in
Italy.

1451 Nicholas begins great building operations.

1452 Nicholas crowns Frederick III emperor. Cardinal Isidore
and a small force are sent to the relief of Constantinople.

1453 Plot of Stefano Porcaro to re-establish the Roman
Republic. It fails, and Porcaro is exiled. The Ottoman conquest
of Constantinople brings many learned men to Rome, who assist
in the Renaissance. Nicholas proclaims a crusade against the
Turks.

1454 League of Lodi.

1455 Alfonso Borgia, =Calixtus III=. His election is unpopular.

1456 Calixtus proclaims war against the Turks. The papal fleet
is sent, but only wins a few unimportant victories.

1458 At death of Alfonso of Naples, Calixtus claims Naples,
which he wants for a fief for his nephew, Pedro. These plans
are terminated by Calixtus’ death. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini,
=Pius II=. He recognises Ferdinand as king of Naples.

1459 Congress of Mantua. Pius dreams of converting Muhammed to
Christianity.

1460 Publication of the bull “Execrabilis” in which appeals to
future councils are condemned. Revolt of Tiburzio in Rome. Pius
returns from Mantua and subdues it.

1463 Excommunication of George of Bohemia. Pius issues bull
retracting opinions he held at the Council of Bâle.

1464 In league with Venice and Hungary, Pius starts a crusade
against the Turks. He dies at Ancona and the crusade is
abandoned. Pietro Barbo, =Paul II=. He is apathetic about the
crusade. The moral corruption of the court begins to alienate
the respect of Germany.

1465 Paul recovers the patrimony from the sons of Everso di
Anguillara.

1469 Departure of Frederick III from Rome--the last appearance
of an emperor in Rome.

1470 Paul resigns his claim to Rimini. Publication of statutes
for the government of Rome.

1471 Francesco della Rovere, =Sixtus IV=. He pursues a policy
of family aggrandisement. He attempts a new crusade.

1472 The papal fleet plunders the Turkish coast, but makes
little effect.

1478 Sixtus tacitly abets the conspiracy against the Medici.
Interdiction of Florence for the execution of Archbishop
Salviati. War declared on the Florentines who are in alliance
with the king of Naples. Louis XI of France fails in offers of
mediation.

1480 Peace arranged. The conquest of Otranto by the Turks
unites all Italy (except Venice) against the invaders.
Absolution of Florence.

1481 The Turks surrender Otranto after death of Muhammed II.
Girolamo Riario seizes Forlì.

1482 Sixtus goes to war with Ferrara. Feuds in Rome. Victory at
Campo Morto of Roberto Malatesta, the papal general. Peace with
Ferrara.

1483 Excommunication of Venice for not making peace with
Ferrara. Savonarola begins to preach.

1484 Sixtus attacks the Colonnas in his designs to increase
power of Girolamo Riario. Death of Sixtus. The Romans attack
Riario and other members of the pope’s family. Giovanni
Battista Cibo, =Innocent VIII=.

1485 Siege of Rome by Virginio Orsini in a quarrel at the
instigation of Naples. Innocent intimidated. Relief of Rome by
Roberto Sanseverino.

1486 Rumours of French intervention lead the cardinals to urge
the pope to make peace with Ferdinand, which he does in a
manner favourable to Naples.

1487 Alliance of Innocent with Lorenzo de’ Medici.

1489 Djem, brother of Bajazet II, arrives a prisoner in Rome.
Innocent claims the kingdom of Naples because Ferdinand will
not pay tribute.

1492 Peace made between the pope and Naples after three years
of bickering. Death of Innocent. Rodrigo Borgia, =Alexander
VI=. He suppresses the disorder in Rome occasioned by
Innocent’s death. Naples offers obedience.

1493 Lodovico Il Moro arrays the pope, Milan, and Venice
against Florence and Naples and invites Charles VIII of France
to revive the Anjou claim to Naples. Alexander divides the
lands of the new world between the Spanish and Portuguese.
Peace made with Naples.

1494 Close alliance of the pope and Naples. Charles VIII
arrives in Italy.

1495 Charles in Rome. The pope comes to terms with him and
receives the obedience of France. Djem is delivered to Charles.
Death of Djem, probably due to natural causes and not to
poison administered by the pope, as usually believed. The pope
joins a league to expel Charles from Naples. Charles’ retreat.
Inundation of Rome.

1496 Alexander makes war upon the Orsini.

1497 Excommunication of Savonarola. Peace with the Orsini.
Divorce of Lucrezia Borgia from Giovanni Sforza. Murder of
Alexander’s son, the duke of Gandia, who has been made duke of
Benevento. Alexander’s mock plans for reform.

1498 The Orsini and Colonnas make peace in order to unite
against the pope. Alexander allies himself with France. His
object is the consolidation of Italy. Execution of Savonarola.

1499 Venice joins the pope and France against Milan. Louis XII
captures Milan.

1500 Cesare Borgia captures Imola and Forlì. Murder of
Lucrezia’s third husband, Alfonso of Este, at instigation of
Cesare. Year of Jubilee. Indulgences sold in foreign countries.

1501 Conquest of the Romagna by Cesare Borgia completed.
Conquest of Naples by the French. The Colonnas submit to the
pope.

1502 Cesare seizes Urbino and Sinigaglia.

1503 The pope takes violent measures against the Orsini family.
Death of Alexander. Francesco Piccolomini, =Pius III=. His
great desire is for peace. Cesare’s dominions begin to fall to
pieces. Death of Pius after a rule of less than four weeks.
Giuliano della Rovere, =Julius II=. He imprisons Cesare.

1504 Liberation of Cesare, who is again imprisoned and sent
to Spain. His domains are restored to the papacy. Inquisition
introduced into Naples. Julius begins to practise nepotism.

1505 Treaty between the pope and Venice.

1506 Foundation of the present St. Peter’s cathedral laid.
Capture of Perugia and Bologna by Julius.

1507 The emperor Maximilian plans to unite the empire and
papacy.

1508 League of Cambray against Venice.

1509 Julius joins the league and excommunicates the Venetians.
Defeat of Venice at Agnadello.

1510 Venice makes humiliating terms with Julius and is
absolved. France placed under the ban. At synod of Tours the
French bishops withdraw obedience and seek to depose Julius.
Julius makes an alliance with the Swiss. The Swiss guard of the
pope still exists. Julius makes war on the duchy of Ferrara.

1511 Julius besieges and captures Mirandola. Failure of the
expedition against Ferrara. The “Holy League” of the papacy.
Ferdinand and Venice to recover Bologna, captured by the
French. Gaston de Foix continues hostilities against Ferrara
and Venice.

1512 Successes of Gaston de Foix. His death at the battle of
Ravenna. Many cities surrender to the Holy League. Opening of
the Lateran Council to consider the schismatic French bishops.
Julius recovers Bologna.

1513 Death of Julius.

THE POPES FROM THE DEATH OF JULIUS II. [1513-1903 A.D.]

(The main political events of the papacy during this period are treated
in the History of Italy; the list of popes is continued here for the sake
of completeness.)

1513 =Leo X=, Giovanni de’ Medici. Concordat with Francis I
concerning appointment of French bishops (1515). Authorisation
of sale of indulgences (1517) brings about the Reformation.
Annexes Urbino and Perugia to the papal states. Alliance with
Charles V against Francis I. A great patron of literature and
art.

1522 =Adrian VI=, tutor of Charles V. Attempts reforms, but is
unable to stay the progress of the Reformation.

1523 =Clement VII=, Giulio de’ Medici. Enters the league
against Charles V. Imprisoned at the sack of Rome (1527).
Forbids the divorce of Henry VIII (1534).

1534 =Paul III=, Alessandro Farnese. Approves the establishment
of the Jesuits (1540) and calls Council of Trent (1545). Makes
his son duke of Parma and Piacenza.

1550 =Julius III= (Gianmaria de’ Medici).

1555 =Marcellus II=, Marcellus Cervius, dies in three weeks.
=Paul IV=, Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, intolerant and tyrannical.
Quarrels with Philip II of Spain who besieges Rome and makes
Paul sue for peace.

1559 =Pius IV=, Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici.

1566 =Pius V=, Michele Ghislieri. A violent persecutor of
dissenters.

1572 =Gregory XIII=, Ugo Buoncompagni. Introduces the Gregorian
calendar.

1585 =Sixtus V=, Felice Peretti. Builds Vatican library and
other great works.

1590 =Urban VII=, Giovanni Battista Castagna, lives thirteen
days. =Gregory XIV=, Niccolo Sfondrati.

1591 =Innocent IX=, Giovanni Antonio Facchinetti. Lives two
months.

1592 =Clement VIII=, Ippolito Aldobrandini. The Molinist and
Jansenist controversy begins. Ferrara annexed to the papal
states.

1604 =Leo XI=, Alessandro de’ Medici. Dies in four weeks.
=Paul V=, Camillo Borghese. Contest with Venice in regard to
ecclesiastical authority.

1621 =Gregory XV=, Alessandro Ludovisi. Founds the congregation
of the Propaganda.

1623 =Urban VIII=, Maffeo Barberini. Supports France in Thirty
Years’ War; annexes Urbino to his states.

1644 =Innocent X=, Giovanni Battista Pamfili. Condemns Treaty
of Westphalia and the Jansenists.

1655 =Alexander VII=, Fabio Chigi. Louis XIV takes Avignon from
him (1662).

1667 =Clement IX=, Giulio Rospigliosi. Temporary peace between
the French Jansenists and Jesuits.

1670 =Clement X=, Emilio Altieri.

1676 =Innocent XI=, Benedetto Odescalchi. Controversy with
Louis XIV over the ambassador’s privileges at Rome.

1689 =Alexander VIII=, Pietro Ottoboni. Aids Venice against the
Turks.

1691 =Innocent XII=, Antonio Pignatelli.

1700 =Clement XI=, Giovanni Francesco Albani. Jansenist
controversy renewed in France. Clement aids pretender to the
English throne.

1721 =Innocent XIII=, Michelangelo Conti.

1724 =Benedict XIII=, Vincenzo Marco Orsini. Makes an
ineffectual attempt to reconcile all divisions of Christianity.

1730 =Clement XII=, Lorenzo Corsini.

1740 =Benedict XIV=, Prospero Lambertini.

1758 =Clement XIII=, Carlo della Torre di Rezzonico. The papacy
loses Avignon for the second time (1768). The Neapolitans seize
Benevento.

1769 =Clement XIV=, Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli. He
suppresses the Jesuits.

1775 =Pius VI=, Giovanni Angelo Braschi. The French seize his
states and carry him to France a prisoner.

1800 =Pius VII=, Gregorio Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti. Ratifies
concordat with France; crowns Napoleon emperor (1804). The
French take his states and imprison him (1809). Is restored
1814.

1823 =Leo XII=, Annibale della Genga.

1829 =Pius VIII=, Francesco Castiglione.

1831 =Gregory XVI=, Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari.

1846 =Pius IX=, Mastai Ferretti. Begins as a reformer but
afterwards changes his policy. In 1870 the last of his
dominions are added to the kingdom of Italy.

1878 =Leo XIII=, Giacchino Pecci.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [42-842 A.D.]]

Like almost all the great works of nature and of human power in the
material world and in the world of man, the papacy grew up in silence
and obscurity. The names of the earlier bishops of Rome are known
only by barren lists, by spurious decrees and epistles inscribed,
centuries later, with their names; by their collision with the teachers
of heretical opinions, almost all of whom found their way to Rome;
by martyrdoms ascribed with the same lavish reverence to those who
lived under the mildest of the Roman emperors, as well as those under
the most merciless persecutors. Yet the mythic or imaginative spirit
of early Christianity has either respected, or was not tempted to
indulge its creative fertility by the primitive annals of Rome. After
the embellishment, if not the invention, of St. Peter’s pontificate,
his conflict with Simon Magus in the presence of the emperor, and the
circumstance of his martyrdom, it was content with raising the successive
bishops to the rank of martyrs without any peculiar richness or fullness
of legend.

The dimness and obscurity which veiled the growing church, no doubt threw
its modest concealment over the person of the bishop. He was but one
man, with no recognised function, in the vast and tumultuous population.
He had his unmarked dwelling, perhaps in the distant Transteverine
region, or in the then lowly and unfrequented Vatican. By the vulgar, he
was beheld as a Jew, or as belonging to one of those countless eastern
religions, which, from the commencement of the empire, had been flowing,
each with its strange rites and mysteries, into Rome. The emperor, the
imperial family, the court favourites, the military commanders, the
consulars, the senators, the patricians by birth, wealth, or favour, the
pontiffs, the great lawyers, even those who ministered to the public
pleasures, the distinguished mimes or gladiators, when they appeared
in the streets, commanded more public attention than the Christian
bishop, except when sought out for persecution by some politic or fanatic
emperor. Slowly, and at long intervals, did the bishop of Rome emerge to
dangerous eminence.

Christianity itself might seem, even from the first, to have disdained
obscurity--to have sprung up or to have been forced into terrible
notoriety in the Neronian persecution and the subsequent martyrdom of one
at least, according to the vulgar tradition, of its two great apostles.
What caprice of cruelty directed the attention of Nero to the Christians,
and made him suppose them victims important enough to glut the popular
indignation at the burning of Rome, it is impossible to determine. The
cause and extent of the Domitian persecution is equally obscure. The son
of Vespasian was not likely to be merciful to any connected with the
fanatic Jews. Its known victims were of the imperial family, against whom
some crime was necessary, and an accusation of Christianity served the
end.

At the commencement of the second century, under Trajan, persecution
against the Christians is raging in the East. That, however, was a
local or rather Asiatic persecution, arising out of the vigilant and
not groundless apprehension of the sullen and brooding preparation for
insurrection among the whole Jewish race (with whom Roman terror and
hatred still confounded the Christians), which broke out in the bloody
massacres of Cyrene and Cyprus, and in the final rebellion during the
reign of Hadrian, under Barchochebas (Bar Koziba). But while Ignatius,
bishop of Antioch, is carried to Rome to suffer martyrdom, the Roman
community is in peace, and not without influence. Ignatius entreats his
Roman brethren not to interfere with injurious kindness between himself
and his glorious death.

The wealth of the Roman community, and their lavish Christian use of
their wealth, by contributing to the wants of foreign churches, at all
periods, especially in times of danger and disaster (an ancient usage
which lasted till the time of Eusebius), testifies at once to their
flourishing condition, to their constant communication with more distant
parts of the empire, and thus incidentally, perhaps, to the class,
the middle or mercantile class, which formed the greater part of the
believers.

But the history of Latin Christianity has not begun. For some
considerable (it cannot but be an undefinable) part of the first three
centuries, the church of Rome, and most, if not all the churches of
the West, were, if we may so speak, Greek religious colonies. Their
language was Greek, their organisation Greek, their writers Greek, their
Scriptures Greek; and many vestiges and traditions show that their
ritual, their liturgy, was Greek. Through Greek the communication of the
churches of Rome and of the West was constantly kept up with the East;
and through Greek every heresiarch, or his disciples, having found his
way to Rome, propagated with more or less success his peculiar doctrines.
Pope Leo I (440-461) was the first celebrated Latin preacher, and his
brief and emphatic sermons read like the first essays of a rude and
untried eloquence, rather than the finished compositions which would
imply a long study and cultivation of pulpit oratory. Compare them with
Chrysostom.

[Sidenote: [42-312 A.D.]]

Africa, not Rome, gave birth to Latin Christianity. Tertullian was the
first Latin writer, at least the first who commanded the public ear; and
there is strong ground for supposing that, since Tertullian quotes the
sacred writings perpetually and copiously, the earliest of those many
Latin versions, noticed by Augustine, and on which Jerome grounded his
Vulgate, were African. Cyprian kept up the tradition of ecclesiastical
Latin. Arnobius, too, was an African.

Thus the Roman church was but one of the confederation of Greek religious
republics, founded by Christianity. As of apostolic origin, still more as
the church of the capital of the world, it was, of course, of paramount
dignity and importance. It is difficult to exaggerate the height at which
Rome, before the foundation of Constantinople, stood above the other
cities of the earth; the centre of commerce, the centre of affairs,
the centre of empire. The Christians, like the rest of mankind, were
constantly ebbing and flowing out of Rome and into Rome. The church of
the capital could not but assume something of the dignity of the capital;
it was constantly receiving, as it were, the homage of all the foreign
Christians, who, from interest, business, ambition, curiosity, either
visited or took up their residence in the Eternal City.

But if Rome, or the church of Rome, was thus the centre of the more
peaceful influences of Christianity, and of the hopes and fears of the
Christian world, it was no less inevitably the chosen battle-field of
her civil wars; and Christianity has ever more faithfully recorded her
dissensions than her conquests. In Rome every feud which distracted
the infant community reached its height; nowhere do the judaising
tenets seem to have been more obstinate, or to have held so long and
stubborn a conflict with more full and genuine Christianity. In Rome
every heresy, almost every heresiarch, found welcome reception. All new
opinions, all attempts to harmonise Christianity with the tenets of the
Greek philosophers, with the oriental religions, the cosmogonies, the
theophanies, and mysteries of the East, were boldly agitated, either by
the authors of the gnostic systems or by their disciples. Valentinus
the Alexandrian was himself in Rome, so also was Marcion of Sinope. The
Phrygian Montanus, with his prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, if not
present, had their sect, a powerful sect, in Rome and in Africa. In Rome
their convert, for a time at least, was the pope; in Africa, Tertullian.
Somewhat later, the precursors of the great Trinitarian controversy
came from all quarters. Praxeas, an Asiatic; Theodotus, a Byzantine;
Artemon, an Asiatic; Noetus, a Smyrniote, at least his disciples the
deacon Epigenes and Cleomenes, taught at Rome. Sabellius, from Ptolemais
in Cyrene, appeared in person; his opinions took their full development
in Rome. Not only do all these controversies betray the inexhaustible
fertility of the Greek or eastern imagination, not only were they all
drawn from Greek or oriental doctrines, but they must have been still
agitated, discussed, ramified into their parts and divisions, through
the versatile and subtile Greek. They were all strangers and foreigners;
not one of all these systems originated in Rome, in Italy, or in Africa.
On all these opinions the bishop of Rome was almost compelled to sit
in judgment; he must receive or reject, authorise or condemn; he was a
proselyte, whom it would be the ambition of all to gain.

Thus, down to the conversion of Constantine, the biography of the Roman
bishops, and the history of the Roman episcopate, are one; the acts and
peculiar character of the pontiffs, the influence and fortunes of the
see, excepting in the doubtful and occasional gleams of light which
have brought out Victor, Zephyrinus, Calixtus, Cornelius, Stephen, into
more distinct personality, are involved in a dim and vague twilight.
On the establishment of Christianity, as the religion if not of the
empire, of the emperor, the bishop of Rome rises at once to the rank
of a great accredited functionary; the bishops gradually, though still
slowly, assume the life of individual character. The bishop is the first
Christian in the first city of the world, and that city is legally
Christian. The supreme pontificate of heathenism might still linger
from ancient usage among the numerous titles of the emperor; but so
long as Constantine was in Rome, the bishop of Rome, the head of the
emperor’s religion, became in public estimation the equal, in authority
and influence immeasurably the superior, to all of sacerdotal rank. The
schisms and factions of Christianity now become affairs of state. As long
as Rome is the imperial residence, an appeal to the emperor is an appeal
to the bishop of Rome. It was the slow and imperceptible accumulation of
wealth, the unmarked ascent to power and sovereignty, which enabled the
papacy to endure for centuries.

[Sidenote: [312-395 A.D.]]

The obscurity of the bishops of Rome was not in this alone their
strength. The earlier pontiffs (Clement is hardly an exception) were men
who of themselves commanded no great authority, and awoke no jealousy.
Rome had no Origen, no Athanasius, no Ambrose, no Augustine, no Jerome.
The power of the hierarchy was established by other master-minds; by the
Carthaginian Cyprian, by the Italian Ambrose, the prelate of political
weight as well as of austere piety, by the eloquent Chrysostom. The
names of none of the popes, down to Leo and Gregory the Great, appear
among the distinguished writers of Christendom. This more cautious and
retired dignity was no less favourable to their earlier power, than to
their later claim of infallibility. If more stirring and ambitious men,
they might have betrayed to the civil power the secret of their aspiring
hopes; if they had been voluminous writers, in the more speculative
times, before the Christian creed had assumed its definite and coherent
form, it might have been more difficult to assert their unimpeachable
orthodoxy.

The removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople consummated the
separation of Greek and Latin Christianity; one took the dominion of the
East, the other of the West. Greek Christianity has now another centre
in the new capital; and the new capital has entered into those close
relations with the great cities of the East, which had before belonged
exclusively to Rome. Alexandria has become the granary of Constantinople;
her Christianity and her commerce, instead of floating along the
Mediterranean to Italy, pour up the Ægean to the city on the Bosporus.
The Syrian capitals, Antioch, Jerusalem, the cities of Asia Minor and
Bithynia, Ephesus, Nicæa, Nicomedia, own another mistress. The tide
of Greek trade has ebbed away from the West, and found a nearer mart;
political and religious ambition and adventure crowd to the new eastern
court. That court becomes the chosen scene of Christian controversy; the
emperor is the proselyte to gain whom contending parties employ argument,
influence, intrigue.

That which was begun by the foundation of Constantinople, was completed
by the partition of the empire between the sons of Constantine. There are
now two Roman worlds, a Greek, and a Latin. In one respect, Rome lost in
dignity, she was no longer the sole metropolis of the empire; the East no
longer treated her with the deference of a subject. On the other hand,
she was the uncontested, unrivalled head of her own hemisphere; she had
no rival in those provinces, which yet held her allegiance, either as to
civil or religious supremacy. The separation of the empire was not more
complete between the sons of Constantine or Theodosius, than between
Greek and Latin Christianity.[b]

[Sidenote: [42-395 A.D.]]

The advance of Christianity involved an emancipation of religion from all
political elements, and this was inevitably followed by the establishment
of a distinct ecclesiastical body, with a constitution peculiar to
itself. In this separation of the church from the state consists,
perhaps, the most important and most effectually influential peculiarity
of Christian times. The spiritual and temporal powers may come into
close contact--they may remain in the most intimate communion; but a
perfect coalition can only take place occasionally, and for short periods
of time. In their reciprocal relations and position with regard to each
other, has since then been involved one of the most important questions
presented by all history.

[Illustration: ST. RADEGONDE, WIFE OF KING CLOTAIRE, RECEIVING RELIGIOUS
ROBES FROM ST. MEDARD

(From an old woodcut)]

It was nevertheless imperative on the ecclesiastical body to form
their constitution on the model of that of the empire; and accordingly
the hierarchy of the bishops, metropolitan patriarchs, was formed in
close correspondence with the degradations of the civil power. No long
time had elapsed before the bishops of Rome acquired the supremacy.
It is, indeed, a vain pretence to assert that this supremacy was
universally acknowledged by East and West, even in the first century,
or, indeed, at any time; but it is equally certain that they quickly
gained a pre-eminence, raising them far above all other ecclesiastical
dignitaries. Many causes concurred to secure them this position; for if
the relative importance of each provincial capital secured to its bishop
a corresponding weight and dignity, how much more certainly would this
result take place as regarded the ancient capital of the empire--that
city whence the whole had derived its name? Rome was, besides, one of
the most illustrious seats of the apostles; here had the greater number
of the martyrs shed their blood. The bishops of Rome had displayed the
most undaunted firmness throughout the different persecutions, and had
sometimes been scarcely installed in their sacred office before they
followed their predecessor in the path of that martyrdom by which his
seat had been vacated. In addition to all this, the emperors now found
it advisable to favour the advancement of a great patriarchal authority.
In a law that became decisive for the predominance of Rome as well as of
Christianity, Theodosius the Great commands that all nations claiming
the protection of his grace should receive the faith as propounded by
St. Peter to the Romans. Valentinian also forbade the bishops, whether
of Gaul or of other provinces, to depart from the received customs of
the church without the sanction of that venerable man, the pope of the
Holy City. Thenceforth the power of the Roman bishops advanced beneath
the protection of the emperor himself. But in this political connection
lay also a restrictive force; had there been but one emperor, a universal
primacy might also have established itself; but this was prevented by
the partition of the empire. The emperors of the East were too eagerly
tenacious of their ecclesiastical rights to make it possible that they
should promote the extension of power desired by the western patriarchs
in their dominions. In this respect also the constitution of the church
presents the closest resemblance to that of the empire.

THE PAPACY IN CONNECTION WITH THE FRANKISH EMPIRE

[Sidenote: [312-754 A.D.]]

Scarcely was this great change completed, the Christian religion
established, and the church founded, when new events of great importance
took place; the Roman Empire, so long conquering and paramount, was now
to see itself assailed by its neighbours; in its turn it was invaded and
overcome.

Amidst the general convulsion that ensued, Christianity itself received
a violent shock. In their terror, the Romans bethought themselves once
more of the Etruscan mysteries, the Athenians hoped to be saved by
Achilles and Minerva, the Carthaginians offered prayers to the genius
Cœlestis; but these were only temporary waverings, for even whilst the
empire was shattered in the western provinces, the church remained firm
and undisturbed throughout all. But she fell, as was inevitable, into
many embarrassments, and found herself in an entirely altered condition.
A pagan people took possession of Britain; Arian kings seized the
greater part of the remaining West; while the Lombards, long attached to
Arianism, and as neighbours most dangerous and hostile, established a
powerful sovereignty before the very gates of Rome.

The Roman bishops meanwhile, beset on all sides, exerted themselves with
all the prudence and pertinacity which have remained their peculiar
attributes to regain the mastery--at least in their ancient patriarchal
diocese; but a new and still heavier calamity now assailed them. The
Arabs--not conquerors merely, as were the Germans, but men inspired even
to fanaticism by an arrogant and dogmatising creed, in direct opposition
to the Christian faith--now poured themselves over the West as they
had previously done over the East. After repeated attacks, they gained
possession of Africa; one battle made them masters of Spain, their
general Musa boasting that he would march into Italy by the passes of
the Pyrenees and across the Alps, and cause the name of Mohammed to be
proclaimed from the Vatican.

This position was all the more perilous for the western portion of Roman
Christendom, from the fact that the iconoclastic dissensions were at that
time raging with the most deadly animosity on both sides. The emperor of
Constantinople had adopted the opposite party to that favoured by the
pope of Rome; nay, the life of the latter was more than once in danger
from the emperor’s machinations. The Lombards did not fail to perceive
the advantages derivable to themselves from these dissensions; their
king Aistulf took possession of provinces that till then had always
acknowledged the dominion of the emperor, and again advancing towards
Rome, he summoned that city also to surrender, demanding payment of
tribute with vehement threats.

The Roman see was at this moment in no condition to help itself, even
against the Lombards, still less could it hope to contend with the Arabs,
who were beginning to extend their sovereignty over the Mediterranean,
and were threatening all Christendom with a war of extermination.

But now the faith was no longer confined within the limits of the Roman
Empire. Christianity, in accordance with its original destiny, had long
overpassed these limits; more especially had it taken deep root among
the German tribes of the West; nay, a Christian power had already arisen
among these tribes, and towards this the pope had but to stretch forth
his hands, when he was sure to find the most effectual succour and
earnest allies against all his enemies.

[Sidenote: [496-715 A.D.]]

Among all the Germanic nations, the Franks alone had become Catholic
from their first rise in the provinces of the Roman Empire. This
acknowledgment of the Roman see had secured important advantages to the
Frankish nation. In the Catholic subjects of their Arian enemies, the
western Goths and Burgundians, the Franks found natural allies. We read
so much of the miracles by which Clovis was favoured--how St. Martin
showed him the ford over the Vienne by means of a hind, how St. Hilary
preceded his armies in a column of fire--that we shall not greatly err if
we conclude these legends to shadow forth the material succours afforded
by the natives to those who shared their creed, and for whom, according
to Gregory of Tours,[i] they desired victory “with eager inclination.”
But this attachment to Catholicism, thus confirmed from the beginning
by consequences so important, was afterwards renewed and powerfully
strengthened by a very peculiar influence arising from a totally
different quarter.

It chanced that certain Anglo-Saxons, being exposed for sale in the slave
market of Rome, attracted the attention of Pope Gregory the Great; he at
once resolved that Christianity should be preached to the nation whence
these beautiful captives had been taken. Never, perhaps, was resolution
adopted by any pope whence results more important ensued; together with
the doctrines of Christianity, a veneration for Rome and for the holy
see, such as had never before existed in any nation, found place among
the Germanic Britons. The Anglo-Saxons began to make pilgrimages to Rome;
they sent their youth thither to be educated, and King Offa established
the tax called “St. Peter’s penny” for the relief of pilgrims and the
education of the clergy. The higher orders proceeded to Rome, in the hope
that, dying there, a more ready acceptance would be accorded to them by
the saints in heaven. The Anglo-Saxons appear to have transferred to Rome
and the Christian saints the old Teutonic superstition, by which the gods
were described as nearer to some spots of earth than to others, and more
readily to be propitiated in places thus favoured.

But besides all this, results of higher importance still ensued when the
Anglo-Saxons transplanted their modes of thought to the mainland, and
imbued the whole empire of the Franks with their own opinion. Boniface
(originally Winfrid or Winfrith), the apostle of the Germans, was an
Anglo-Saxon; this missionary, largely sharing in the veneration professed
by his nation for St. Peter and his successors, had from the beginning
voluntarily pledged himself to abide faithfully by all the regulations of
the Roman see; to this promise he most religiously adhered. On all the
German churches founded by him was imposed an extraordinary obligation
to obedience. Every bishop was required expressly to promise that his
whole life should be passed in unlimited obedience to the Romish church,
to St. Peter and his representative. Nor did he confine this rule to the
Germans only. The Gallican bishops had hitherto maintained a certain
independence of Rome; Boniface, who had more than once presided in their
synods, availed himself of these occasions to impress his own views on
this western portion of the Frankish church; thenceforward the Gallic
archbishops received their pallium from Rome, and thus did the devoted
submission of the Anglo-Saxons extend itself over the whole realm of the
Franks.

The empire had now become the central point for all the German tribes of
the West. The fact that the reigning family, the Merovingian race, had
brought about its own destruction by its murderous atrocities had not
affected the strength of the empire. Another family, that of Pepin of
Heristal, had risen to supreme power--men of great energy, exalted force
of character, and indomitable vigour. While other realms were sinking
together into one common ruin, and the world seemed about to become the
prey of the Moslem, it was this race, the house of Pepin of Heristal,
afterwards called the Carlovingian, by which the first and effectual
resistance was offered to the Mohammedan conquerors.

[Sidenote: [395-715 A.D.]]

The religious development then in progress was also equally favoured by
the house of Pepin; we find it early maintaining the best understanding
with Rome, and it was under the special protection of Charles Martel and
Pepin le Bref that Boniface proceeded in his apostolic labours. Let us
consider the temporal condition of the papal power. On the one side the
East Roman Empire, weakened, fallen into ruin, incapable of supporting
Christendom against Islamism, or of defending its own domains in Italy
against the Lombards, yet continuing to claim supremacy even in spiritual
affairs. On the other hand, we have the German nations full of the most
vigorous life; victorious over the Moslem, attached with all the fresh
ardour and trusting enthusiasm of youth to that authority of whose
protecting and restricting influences they still felt the need, and
filled with an unlimited and most freely rendered devotion.

Already Gregory II perceived the advantages he had gained; full of a
proud self-consciousness, he writes thus to that iconoclast emperor,
Leo the Isaurian: “All the lands of the West have their eyes directed
towards our humility; by them are we considered as a God upon earth.” His
successors became ever more and more impressed with the conviction that
it was needful to separate themselves from a power (that of the Roman
Empire) by which many duties were imposed on them, but which could offer
them no protection in return. They could not safely permit a succession
to the mere name and empire to fetter them, but turned themselves rather
towards those from whom help and aid might also be expected. Thus they
entered into strict alliance with those great captains of the West, the
Frankish monarchs; this became closer and closer from year to year,
procured important advantages to both parties, and eventually exercised
the most active influence on the destinies of the world.[c]

With the division of the empire in the year 395, the question of the
Roman precedence of Constantinople was left for a time in abeyance; but
in the West the authority of the bishop of Rome became more and more
firmly established. In the following century the general conditions under
which he was called upon to act became so materially modified as to
constitute a new period in the history of our subject.

The characters of the men who filled the papal chair during this century,
most of them of exemplary life, some of commanding genius, would alone
suffice to constitute it a memorable era. “Upon the mind of Innocent
I,” says Milman,[b] “seems first distinctly to have dawned the vast
conception of Rome’s universal ecclesiastical supremacy.” Innocent I
(402-417) seems indeed to have been the first of the popes who ventured
to repudiate those political conceptions which threatened to circumscribe
the extending influence of his office. Innocent was succeeded by Zosimus
(417-418) and Boniface (418-422). The former, whose pontificate lasted
only twenty-one months, exhibits a noteworthy exception to the traditions
of his see, in the disposition he at one time showed to temporise with
Pelagianism, and even to set aside in its favour the decrees of his
predecessor. The pontificate of Boniface is notable as having been
preceded by a contested election which afforded the emperor Honorius an
opportunity for the exercise of his intervention, thereby establishing a
precedent for imperial interference on like occasions. At the instance
of Boniface himself, Honorius enacted an ordinance designed to avert the
scandals incident to such contests. By the new provisions, all canvassing
for the vacant chair was strictly prohibited; in the event of a disputed
election both candidates were to be deemed ineligible. The successor
of Boniface was Celestine I (422-432). The evidence afforded by the
events of his pontificate is somewhat conflicting in character. On the
one hand, we find the churches of Africa putting forward their latest
recorded protest against the Roman pretensions, adducing the sixth canon
of the Council of Nicæa in support of their protest; on the other hand,
the success with which Celestine intervened in Illyricum, and again in
connection with the sees of Narbonne and Vienne, proves that the papal
jurisdiction was being accepted with increasing deference in other parts
of the empire.

[Sidenote: [418-461 A.D.]]

Barbaric invasion, although resulting in the overthrow of many of the
institutions of civilisation, and in widespread suffering and social
deterioration, served but to enhance the influence and importance of
the Roman see. The apparent fulfilment of prophecy, pagan as well as
Christian, when the city was taken and sacked by Alaric (410), seemed
to complete the effacement of the temporal power in Rome. Neither the
western emperors nor the Gothic conquerors held their court in the
ancient capital, where the pope was now at once the most important and
conspicuous authority. In the African provinces, the demoralisation
occasioned by the fierce controversies and dissensions concerning
Pelagianism and Donatism compelled the Catholic communities to exchange
their former attitude of haughty independence for one of suppliant
appeal, and to solicit the intervention and counsel which they had before
rejected. Such was the aspect of affairs in the West when Leo the Great
(440-461), by some regarded as the true founder of the mediæval popedom,
succeeded to the primacy. A citizen of Rome by birth, he exemplified
in his own character many of the ancient Roman virtues--a tenacious
adherence to tradition in matters of religious belief, an indomitable
resolution in the assertion of the prerogatives of his office, and the
austere practice of the recognised duties of social life. This rigid
maintenance of orthodoxy had been instilled into him (or at least
confirmed) by the exhortations of Augustine, with whom he had become
personally acquainted when on a mission to the African province; and
before his election to the papal office the celebrated Cassian had
conceived so high an opinion of his virtues and abilities as to dedicate
to him his treatise on the Incarnation. Regarded, indeed, simply as the
able antagonist of the Manichæan and Eutychian heresies, and as the
first author of the collect, Leo would fill no unimportant place in the
annals of Latin Christendom; but his influence on church history in other
respects is of a far deeper and more potent kind. In none was it followed
by more important results than by the success with which he established
the theory that all bishops who, in questions of importance, demurred to
the decision of their metropolitan should be entitled to appeal to Rome.
He obtained the recognition of this principle not only in Illyricum,
as his predecessor Innocent had done, but also in Gaul; and the
circumstances under which he did so in the latter province constitute the
whole proceedings a memorable episode in church history.

[Sidenote: [461-532 A.D.]]

The chief obstacle to the recognition of the supremacy of the Roman
pontiff was now to be found in the revival of Arianism, which, professed
alike by the Goth and the Vandal, represented the dominant faith in the
chief cities of northern Italy, as well as in Africa, Spain, and southern
Gaul. But the rivalry thus generated only increased the disposition of
the Catholic party to exalt the prerogatives of their head, and the
attitude of Rome towards other churches continued to be more and more one
of unquestionable superiority. In the year 483 Pope Felix II (or III)[84]
ventured upon an unprecedented measure in citing Acacius, the patriarch
of Constantinople, to Rome, to answer certain allegations preferred
against him by John, patriarch of Alexandria, whom he designated as
“_frater et coepiscopus noster_” (Thiel,[j] _Epistolæ_, p. 239). On
Acacius’ refusing to recognise the legality of the letter of citation,
he was excommunicated by Felix. The successor of Felix, Gelasius I
(492-496), refused to notify, as was customary, his election to the
patriarch of Constantinople, and by his refusal implicitly put forward a
fresh assumption, viz., that communion with Rome implied subjection to
Rome. Throughout the pontificate of Gelasius the primacy of the Roman see
was the burden of his numerous letters to other churches, and he appears
also to have been the first of the pontiffs to enunciate the view that
the authority which he represented was not controllable by the canons
of synods, whether past or present. In Italy these assumptions were
unhesitatingly accepted. The Palmary synod, as it was termed, convened in
Rome during the pontificate of Symmachus (498-514), formally disavowed
its own right to sit in judgment on his administrative acts. Ennodius,
bishop of Pavia, (_circa_ 510), declared that the Roman pontiff was to
be judged by God alone, and was not amenable to any earthly potentate or
tribunal. It is thus evident that the doctrine of papal infallibility,
though not yet formulated, was already virtually recognised.

During the Gothic rule in Italy (493-553), its representatives manifested
the utmost tolerance in relation to religious questions, and showed
little disposition to impose any restraints on the policy of the popes,
although each monarch, by virtue of his title of “king of the Romans,”
claimed the right to veto any election to the papal chair. In the year
483, when Odoacer sent his first lieutenant, Basilius, from Ravenna
to Rome, the latter was invested with the titles _eminentissimus_ and
_sublimis_. The pope accordingly appeared as politically the subject
of his Arian overlord. The advantage thus gained by the temporal power
appears to have been the result of its intervention, which Simplicius
(468-483) had himself solicited, in the elections to the papal office,
and one of the principal acts of the Palmary synod (above referred
to) was to repudiate the chief measures of Basilius, which had been
especially directed against the abuses that prevailed on such occasions,
and more particularly against bribery by alienation of the church
lands. The assertion of this authority on the part of the civil power
was declared by the synod to be irregular and uncanonical, and was
accordingly set aside as not binding on the church. The fierce contests
and shameless bribery which now accompanied almost every election were
felt, however, to be so grave a scandal that the synod itself deemed
it expedient to adopt the ordinance issued by Basilius, and to issue
it as one of its own enactments. In order more effectually to guard
against such abuses, Boniface II, in the year 530, obtained from a
synod specially convened for the purpose the power of appointing his
own successor, and nominated one Vigilius--the same who ten years later
actually succeeded to the office. But a second synod, having decided that
such a concession was contrary to the traditions of episcopal succession,
annulled the grant, and Boniface himself committed the former decree to
the flames. At his death, however, the recurrence of the old abuses in
a yet more flagrant form induced the senate to obtain from the court
of Ravenna a measure of reform of a more comprehensive character, and
designed to check not only the simoniacal practices within the church
itself, but also the extortion of the court officials.

[Illustration: AN ANCIENT CONCEPTION OF ST. PETER

(From a woodcut in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)]

[Sidenote: [526-590 A.D.]]

In the year 526 Dionysius Exiguus, a monk in Rome, undertook the labour
of preparing a new collection of the canons of the councils, and, finding
his production favourably received, proceeded also to compile a like
collection of the papal letters or decretals, from the earliest extant
down to those of Anastasius II in his own day. The letters of the popes
were thus placed on a level with the rescripts of the emperors, and in
conjunction with the canons formed the basis of the canon law, which
afterwards assumed such importance in connection with the history of the
church. The negative value of the collection formed by Dionysius may be
said, however, almost to equal that of its actual contents; for, from
the simple fact that it does not contain those yet earlier decretals
subsequently put forth by the pseudo-Isidorus, it affords the most
convincing disproof of their genuineness.

The substitution of the rule of the Greek emperors for that of the Gothic
monarchs was inimical in almost every respect to the independence and
reputation of the popedom. For a short interval before Justinian landed
in Italy, Agapetus (535-536), appearing as the emissary of Theodotus to
the Eastern court, assumed a bearing which inspired the emperor himself
with respect, and his influence was sufficiently potent to procure the
deposition of one patriarch of the Eastern capital and to decide the
election of another. But, after Belisarius entered Rome and the city
had been reduced to subjection, the pontiff was seen to be the mere
vassal of the emperor, and not only of the emperor but of the courtesan
on the imperial throne. The deposition of Silverius (536-540), and his
mysterious fate at Pandataria, together with the elevation of Vigilius
(540-555), the nominee of the abandoned Theodora and her pliant slave,
completed the degradation of the Roman see. Each successive pope was now
little more than a puppet which moved at the pleasure of the Eastern
court, and the _apocrisiarius_ or deputy whom he maintained at that
court was generally (as in the case of Pelagius I, Gregory I, Sabinian,
Boniface III, Martin) his own successor--an honour purchased, it can
hardly be doubted, by systematic compliance with the imperial wishes. In
the career and fate of Vigilius the papal office was dishonoured as it
had never been before, at once by the signal unworthiness of its bearer
and by the indignities heaped upon him by the savage malice of his foes.
So sinister, indeed, had become the relations between the Roman bishop
and the eastern court that Pelagius I (555-560) is said to have besought
Narses to send him to prison rather than to Constantinople.

In the year 568 the Lombards invaded Italy. Like the Goths they became
converts to Arianism; but they were also far less civilised, and looked
with little respect on Roman institutions and Roman habits of thought,
while their arrogance, faithlessness, and cruelty gained for them the
special detestation of the Roman see. Their conquests did not extend over
all Italy. Ravenna and the Pentapolis, Venice, Rome, and its duchy (as
the surrounding district was then termed), Naples, Calabria, and Sicily,
remained subject to the empire. In the peninsula the pope was, after the
exarch of Ravenna, the most powerful potentate, and the presence of a
common foe caused the relations between himself and the empire to assume
a more amicable character. The emperor, indeed, continued to control
the elections and to enforce the payment of tribute for the territory
protected by the imperial arms; but on the other hand the pontiff
exercised a definite authority with the Roman duchy and claimed to have
a voice in the appointment of the civil officers who administered the
local government. From the time of Constantine the Great the church had
possessed the right of acquiring landed property by bequests, and the
Roman see had thus become greatly enriched. Some of its possessions lay
far beyond the confines of Italy.[f]

GREGORY THE GREAT (590-604 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [42-590 A.D.]]

The papal monarchy thus rose insensibly upon the episcopal aristocracy.
From the first, the word of the successor of St. Peter as bishop of
the Eternal City had a high degree of authority. The title of “pope,”
attributed in theory to every bishop, was finally reserved for him of
Rome alone, a change already manifest under Leo the Great, but not
completely brought about until the time of Gregory VII. The bishop of
Rome had possessed since the days of the Roman Empire valuable property
in the capital and throughout Italy. He had even acquired some across the
Alps, for example, in the province of Arles, where he charged the bishop
of that city with administering it. Besides this he occupied in Rome
itself, that is to say in the most famous city in the world, that great
estate which had been assigned to the bishops by the municipal régime in
the last days of the empire.

St. Leo (440-461) gave much prestige to his office by the great rôle he
played in public affairs and his successful intercession with Attila. He
obtained from Valentinian III a decree in which the emperor invited “the
entire church to recognise its head in order that peace might forever
be preserved”; and at the same period we see him restoring a Gallican
bishop to the see from which he had been driven, and transferring the
metropolitan seat from Arles to Vienne.

Under the Ostrogoths the church of Rome, treated elsewhere with leniency,
could make no progress. But when their power had fallen (553) and Rome
came once more under the authority of the emperor of Constantinople,
the great distance of her new master opened up a brighter future. The
Lombard invasion brought into the church’s territory a large number of
refugees, and the Roman population recovered some of its old energy in
the double hatred for barbarians and Arians. As for the exarch whom the
eastern emperor had charged with the government of his Italian provinces
and invested with direct authority over the dukes and military counts
of Naples, Rome, Genoa, etc., this official could scarcely make his
authority felt in the western half of Italy, relegated as he was to
Ravenna, and separated from Rome by the Lombard dominion which included
Spoleto.

[Sidenote: [590-604 A.D.]]

It was at this juncture favourable, though dangerous in some respects,
that Gregory I appeared (590-604). Descended from the noble Anicia
family, Gregory added to distinction of birth every advantage of body
and mind. While under thirty he was prefect of Rome, but at the end of
several months he abandoned honours and thoughts of worldly things,
and sought the retirement of the cloister. But his reputation did not
permit him the obscurity he desired. Sent to Constantinople about 570
as secretary and later as apocrisiary (a sort of grand almoner) by
Pope Pelagius II, he rendered valuable service to the holy see in its
relations with the empire and in its struggles with the Lombards. In
590 the clergy, the senate, and the people raised him with one voice
to the supreme pontificate, as successor to Pelagius; but as all
elections had to be confirmed by the emperor at Constantinople, Gregory
wrote in supplication that his might not be sanctioned. The letter was
intercepted, and Maurice’s orders of ratification soon arrived. Gregory
hid; he was discovered and brought back to Rome.

Pope in spite of himself, he used all his talent and power to fortify
the papacy,[85] propagate Christianity, and improve the discipline and
organisation of the church. Although he pleaded that the episcopacy, and
especially his own, “was the office of a shepherd of souls and not of
a temporal prince,” he did not neglect the temporal power of the holy
see. It happened, since the emperor was so little in touch with Italian
affairs, that the soldiers charged with defending Rome against the
Lombards had received no pay. Gregory paid them, took upon himself the
work of defence, and armed the clerics. When Agilulf, whose aggression
had provoked these preparations, was compelled to withdraw, Gregory
treated with him in the name of Rome, in spite of protests from the
exarch.

Feeling thus strengthened in his position, he undertook to propagate
Christianity and orthodoxy both within and without the limits of the
ancient Roman Empire. Within its boundaries there were still some pagans
in Sicily, Sardinia, even at Terracina (Tarracina) at the very gates of
Rome, and doubtless also in some parts of Gaul, since there exists a
decree of Childebert’s dated 554, with the title _For the Abolition of
the Remainder of Idolatry_. There were Arians very close to Rome, the
Lombards. By the intervention of Queen Theudelinda, Gregory succeeded in
having the heir to the Lombard throne, Adalwald, raised in Catholicism.
Since 587 the Visigoths in Spain under Recared had been converted.

As for Great Britain, it was still entirely pagan, and Gregory sent
thither the monk Augustine and forty Roman missionaries (596). They
landed on the island of Thanet, and going from there sought Ethelbert,
king of Kent, who permitted them to preach their doctrines at Canterbury.
From this point Christianity spread rapidly towards the north and west,
until by 627 it was firmly established in Northumberland. St. Augustine,
archbishop of Canterbury, had been named primate of England by Gregory
the Great, with whom he kept up a constant correspondence that is still
in existence.

Ireland, “the isle of saints,” had already been converted, and now monks
were leaving it to win over the barbarians. At this period St. Columban,
the monk who denounced Brunehild’s crimes with such boldness, set out to
preach the Gospel to the mountaineers of Helvetia, and founded in their
midst abbeys surrounded by fertile fields. After him St. Rupert travelled
far into Bavaria and established the diocese of Salzburg.

Thus Christianity spread its spirit of proselytism, and St. Gregory
fostered it greatly by the mild precepts he inculcated in his
missionaries, and the skill with which he facilitated the transition
from pagan to Catholic. He wrote to St. Augustine: “You must take care
not to destroy the pagans’ temples, but only their idols; use holy water
in washing out the edifice, build altars and deposit relics in them. If
their temples are well built, so much the better; for it is important
that these same ones pass from the cult of demons to that of the true
God. When the nation sees its ancient places of worship remain, it will
be more disposed to visit them through habit and to worship the true God.”

At home Gregory laboured with success to co-ordinate the powers of the
church, in making recognised above everything that of the holy see. We
find him bestowing the title of vicar of the Gauls upon the bishop of
Arles, to correspond with Augustine archbishop of Canterbury, with the
archbishop of Seville for Spain, and him of Thessalonica for Greece; and
finally sending secret legates to Constantinople. In his pastoral which
he wrote on the occasion of his election, and which became a general
regulation throughout the West, he prescribed the bishops their duties
according to the decision of several councils. To bind the hierarchy
together he sought to prevent the encroachments of one bishop upon
another. “I have given you Britain to direct spiritually,” he wrote to
the ambitious Augustine, “and not Gaul.” He favoured the monasteries,
looked with vigilance after their discipline, and reformed church
singing, substituting for the Ambrosian chant, “which,” according to a
contemporary, “was like the distant sound of a chariot rolling over the
stones,” that Gregorian chant which bears his own name.[d]

The darkest stain on the name of Gregory is his cruel and unchristian
triumph in the fall of the emperor Maurice--his base and adulatory praise
of Phocas, the most odious and sanguinary tyrant who had ever seized the
throne of Constantinople. It is the worst homage to religion to vindicate
or even to excuse the crimes of religious men; and the apologetic
palliation, or even the extenuation of their misdeeds rarely succeeds in
removing, often strengthens, the unfavourable impression.

Gregory was spared the pain and shame of witnessing the utter falsehood
of his pious vaticinations as to the glorious and holy reign of Phocas.
In the second year of the tyrant’s reign he closed the thirteen important
years of his pontificate. The ungrateful Romans paid but tardy honours
to his memory. His death (March 10th, 604) was followed by a famine,
which the starving multitude attributed to his wasteful dilapidation of
the patrimony of the church--that patrimony which had been so carefully
administered and so religiously devoted to their use. Nothing can give a
baser notion of their degradation than their actions. They proceeded to
wreak their vengeance on the library of Gregory, and were only deterred
from their barbarous ravages by the interposition of Peter the faithful
archdeacon. Peter had been interlocutor of Gregory in the wild legends
contained in the _Dialogues_.[k] The archdeacon now assured the populace
of Rome that he had often seen the Holy Ghost in the visible shape of a
dove hovering over the head of Gregory as he wrote. Gregory’s successor
therefore hesitated, and demanded that Peter should confirm his pious
fiction or fancy by an oath. He ascended the pulpit, but before he had
concluded his solemn oath he fell dead. That which to a hostile audience
might have been a manifest judgment against perjury, was received as a
divine testimony to his truth. The Roman church has constantly permitted
Gregory to be represented with the Holy Ghost, as a dove, floating over
his head.

The historian of Christianity is arrested by certain characters and
certain epochs, which stand as landmarks between the close of one age of
religion and the commencement of another. Such a character is Gregory
the Great; such an epoch his pontificate, the termination of the sixth
century. Gregory, not from his station alone, but by the acknowledgment
of the admiring world, was intellectually, as well as spiritually, the
great model of his age. He was proficient in all the arts and sciences
cultivated at that time; the vast volumes of his writings show his
indefatigable powers; their popularity and their authority, his ability
to clothe those thoughts and those reasonings in language which would
awaken and command the general mind.

His epoch was that of the final Christianisation of the world, not in
outward worship alone, not in its establishment as the imperial religion,
the rise of the church upon the ruin of the temple, and the recognition
of the hierarchy as an indispensable rank in the social system, but in
its full possession of the whole mind of man, in letters, arts as far as
arts were cultivated, habits, usages, modes of thought, and in popular
superstition.

Not only was heathenism, but, excepting in the laws and municipal
institutions, Romanity itself absolutely extinct. The reign of Theodoric
had been an attempt to fuse together Roman, Teutonic, and Christian
usages. Cassiodorus, though half a monk, aspired to be a Roman statesman,
Boethius to be a heathen philosopher. The influence of the Roman schools
of rhetoric is betrayed even in the writers of Gaul, such as Sidonius
Apollinaris; there is an attempt to preserve some lingering cadence of
Roman poetry in the Christian versifiers of that age. At the close of
the sixth century all this has expired; ecclesiastical Latin is the only
language of letters, or rather letters themselves are become purely
ecclesiastical. The fable of Gregory’s destruction of the Palatine
library is now rejected as injurious to his fame; but probably the
Palatine library, if it existed, would have been so utterly neglected
that Gregory would hardly have condescended to fear its influence. His
aversion to such studies is not that of dread or hatred, but of religious
contempt; profane letters are a disgrace to a Christian bishop; the truly
religious spirit would loathe them of itself.

What, then, was this Christianity by which Gregory ruled the world? Not
merely the speculative and dogmatic theology, but the popular, vital,
active Christianity, which was working in the heart of man; the dominant
motive of his actions, as far as they were affected by religion; the
principal element of his hopes and fears as regards the invisible world
and that future life which had now become part of his conscious belief.

CHRISTIAN MYTHOLOGY

The history of Christianity cannot be understood without pausing at
stated periods to survey the progress and development of this Christian
mythology, which, gradually growing up and springing as it did from
natural and universal instincts, took a more perfect and systematic form,
and at length, at the height of the Middle Ages, was as much a part of
Latin Christianity as the primal truths of the Gospel. This growth, which
had long before begun, had reached a kind of adolescence in the age of
Gregory, to expand into full maturity during succeeding ages. Already
the creeds of the church formed but a small portion of Christian belief.
The highest and most speculative questions of theology, especially in
Alexandria and Constantinople, had become watchwords of strife and
faction, had stirred the passions of the lowest orders; the two natures,
or the single or double will in Christ, had agitated the workshop of
the artisan and the seats in the circus. Christ assumed gradually more
and more of the awfulness, the immateriality, the incomprehensibleness,
of the Deity, and men sought out beings more akin to themselves, more
open, it might seem, to human sympathies. Believers delighted in those
ceremonials to which they might have recourse with less timidity; the
shrines and the relics of martyrs might deign to receive the homage
of those who were too profane to tread the holier ground. Already the
worship of these lower objects of homage begins to intercept that to the
higher; the popular mind is filling with images either not suggested
at all, or suggested but very dimly by the sacred writings; legends of
saints are supplanting, or rivalling at least, in their general respect
and attention, the narratives of the Bible.

Of all these forms of worship, the most captivating, and captivating to
the most amiable weaknesses of the human mind, was the devotion to the
Virgin Mary. The worship of the Virgin had first arisen in the East; and
this worship, already more than initiate, contributed, no doubt, to the
passionate violence with which the Nestorian controversy was agitated,
while that controversy, with its favourable issue to those who might
seem most zealous for the Virgin’s glory, gave a strong impulse to the
worship. The denial of the title “the mother of God,” by Nestorius,
was that which sounded most offensive to the general ear; it was the
intelligible odious point in his heresy. The worship of the Virgin
now appears in the East as an integral part of Christianity. Among
Justinian’s splendid edifices arose many churches dedicated to the mother
of God. The feast of the Annunciation is already celebrated under Justin
and Justinian. Heraclius has images of the Virgin on his masts when
he sails to Constantinople to overthrow Phocas. Before the end of the
century the Virgin is become the tutelar deity of Constantinople, which
is saved by her intercession from the Saracens.

WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN

In the time of Gregory the worship of the Virgin had not assumed that
rank in Latin Christianity to which it rose in later centuries, though
that second great impulse towards this worship, the unbounded admiration
of virginity, had full possession of his monastic mind. With Gregory
celibacy was the perfection of human nature; he looked with abhorrence on
the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest
degree, by any sexual connection. No subdeacon, after a certain period,
was to be admitted without a vow of chastity; no married subdeacon to be
promoted to a higher rank. In one of his expositions he sadly relates the
fall of one of his aunts, a consecrated virgin; she had been guilty of
the sin of marriage. Of all his grievances against the exarch of Ravenna,
none seems more worthy of complaint than that he had encouraged certain
nuns to throw off their religious habits and to marry. Gregory does
not seem to have waged this war against nature, however his sentiments
were congenial with those of his age, with his wonted success.[86] His
letters are full of appeals to sovereigns and to bishops to repress the
incontinence of the clergy; even monasteries were not absolutely safe.

ANGELS AND DEVILS

It was not around the monastery alone, the centre of this preternatural
agency, that the ordinary providence of God gave place to a perpetual
interposition of miraculous power. Every Christian was environed with
a world of invisible beings, who were constantly putting off their
spiritual nature and assuming forms, uttering tones, distilling odours,
apprehensible by the soul of man, or taking absolute and conscious
possession of his inward being. A distinction was drawn between the pure,
spiritual, illimitable, incomprehensible nature of the Godhead, and
the thin and subtile but bodily forms of angels and archangels. These
were perceptible to the human senses, wore the human form, spoke with
human language; their substance was the thin air, the impalpable fire;
it resembled the souls of men, but yet, whenever they pleased, it was
visible, performed the functions of life, communicated not with the mind
and soul only but with the eye and ear of man.

The hearing and the sight of religious terror were far more quick and
sensitive. The angelic visitations were but rare and occasional; the
more active demons were ever on the watch, seizing and making every
opportunity of beguiling their easy victims. They were everywhere
present, and everywhere betraying their presence. They ventured into
the holiest places; they were hardly awed by the most devout saints;
but, at the same time there was no being too humble, to whose seduction
they would not condescend--nothing in ordinary life so trivial and
insignificant but that they would stoop to employ it for their evil
purposes. They were without the man, terrifying him with mysterious
sounds and unaccountable sights. They were within him, compelling all his
faculties to do their bidding, another indwelling will besides his own,
compelling his reluctant soul to perform their service. Every passion,
every vice, had its especial demon; lust, impiety, blasphemy, vainglory,
pride were not the man himself, but a foreign power working within him.
The slightest act, sometimes no act at all, surrendered the soul to the
irresistible indwelling agent. In Gregory’s _Dialogues_[k] a woman eats
a lettuce without making the sign of the cross; she is possessed by a
devil, who had been swallowed in the unexorcised lettuce. Another woman
is possessed for admitting her husband’s embraces the night before the
dedication of an oratory.

MARTYRS AND RELICS

Happily there existed, and existed almost at the command of the clergy, a
counterworking power to this fatal diabolic influence, in the perpetual
presence of the saints, more especially in hallowed places, and about
their own relics. These relics were the treasure with which the clergy,
above all the bishops of Rome, who possessed those of St. Peter and St.
Paul with countless others, ruled the mind; for by these they controlled
and kept in awe, they repaired the evils wrought by this whole world of
evil spirits. Happy were the churches, monasteries, whose foundations
were hallowed and secured by these sacred talismans. To doubt their
presence in these dedicated shrines, in the scenes of their martyrdom,
obstinately to require the satisfaction of the senses as to their
presence, was an impious want of faith; belief, in proportion to the
doubtfulness of the miracle, was the more meritorious. Kings and queens
bowed in awe before the possessors and dispensers of these wonder-working
treasures.

Relics had now attained a self-defensive power; profane hands which
touched them withered; and men who endeavoured to remove them were
struck dead. Such was the declaration of Gregory himself, to one who had
petitioned for the head or some part of the body of St. Paul. It was an
awful thing even to approach to worship them. Men who had merely touched
the bones of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lawrence, though with the
pious design of changing their position or placing the scattered bones
together, had fallen dead, in one case to the number of ten. The utmost
that the church of Rome could bestow would be a cloth which had been
permitted to touch them; and even such cloths had been known to bleed.
If, indeed, the chains of St. Paul would yield any of their precious iron
to the file, which they often refused to do, this, he writes, he would
transmit to the empress; and he consoles her for the smallness of the
gift by the miraculous power which it will inherently possess.

Gregory doled out such gifts with pious parsimony. A nail which contained
the minutest filings from the chains of St. Peter was an inestimable
present to a patrician, or an ex-consul, or a barbaric king. Sometimes
they were inserted in a small cross; in one instance with fragments of
the gridiron on which St. Lawrence was roasted. One of the golden nails
of the chains of St. Peter had tempted the avarice of a profane, no
doubt a heathen or Arian, Lombard; he took out his knife to sever it
off; the awe-struck knife sprang up and cut his sacrilegious throat. The
Lombard king Authari and his attendants were witnesses of the miracle,
and stood in terror, not daring to lift the fearful nail from the ground.
A Catholic was fortunately found, by whom the nail permitted itself to
be touched; and this peerless gift, so avouched, Gregory sends to a
distinguished civil officer.

SANCTITY OF THE CLERGY

That sanctity which thus dwelt in the relics of the saints, was naturally
gathered, as far as possible, around their own persons by the clergy,
hallowed as they were and set apart by their ordination from the common
race of man; and if the hierarchy had only wielded this power for
self-protection, if they had but arrayed themselves in this defensive awe
against the insults and cruelties of barbarians, such as the Lombards are
described, it would be stern censure which would condemn even manifest
imposture. We might excuse the embellishment, even the invention of the
noble story of the bishop Sanctulus, who offered his life for that of a
captive deacon, before whom the Lombard executioner, when he lifted up
his sword to behead him, felt his arm stiffen, and could not move it till
he had solemnly sworn never to raise that sword against the life of a
Christian. But this conservative respect for the sanctity of their order
darkens too frequently into pride and inhumanity; the awful inviolability
of their persons becomes a jealous resentment against even unintentional
irreverence. A demoniac accused the holy bishop Fortunatus of refusing
him the rights of hospitality; a poor peasant receives the possessed into
his house, and is punished for this inferential disrespect to the bishop
by seeing his child cast into the fire and burned before his eyes. A
poor fellow with a monkey and cymbals is struck dead for unintentionally
interrupting a bishop Boniface in prayer.

The sacred edifices, the churches, especially, approachable to all, were
yet approachable not without profound awe; in them met everything which
could deepen that awe; within were the relics of the tutelar saint, the
mysteries, and the presence of the Redeemer, of God himself; beneath were
the remains of the faithful dead.

Burial in churches had now begun; it was a special privilege. Gregory
dwells on the advantage of being thus constantly suggested to the prayers
of friends and relatives for the repose of the soul. But that which was
a blessing to the holy was but more perilous to the unabsolved and the
wicked. The sacred soil refused to receive them; the martyrs appeared
and commanded the fetid corpses to be cast out of their precincts. They
were seized by devils, who did not fear to carry off their own even from
those holy places. But oblations were still effective after death. The
consecrated host has begun to possess in itself wonder-working powers.
A child is cast forth from his grave, and is only persuaded to rest in
quiet by a piece of the consecrated bread being placed upon his breast.
Two noble women, who had been excommunicated for talking scandal, were
nevertheless buried in the church; but every time the mass was offered,
their spirits were seen to rise from their tombs and glide out of the
church. It was only after an oblation had been “immolated” for them that
they slept in peace.

STATE AFTER DEATH

The mystery of the state after death began to cease to be a mystery.
The subtile and invisible soul gradually materialised itself to the
keen sight of the devout. A hermit declared that he had seen Theodoric,
the Ostrogothic king, at the instant of death, with loose garments and
sandals, led between Symmachus the patrician and John the pope, and
plunged into the burning crater of Lipari. Benedict, while waking, beheld
a bright and dazzling light, in which he distinctly saw the soul of
Germanus, bishop of Capua, ascend to heaven in an orb of fire, borne by
angels.

Hell was by no means the inexorable dwelling which restored not its
inhabitants. Men were transported thither for a short time, and returned
to reveal its secrets to the shuddering world. Gregory’s fourth book
is entirely filled with legends of departing and of departed spirits,
several of which revisit the light of day. On the locality of hell
Gregory is modest, and declines to make any peremptory decision. On
purgatory, too, he is dubious, though his final conclusion appears to
be that there is a purgatorial fire which may purify the soul from very
slight sins. Some centuries must elapse before those awful realms have
formed themselves into that dreary and regular topography which Dante
partly created out of his own sublime imagination, partly combined from
all the accumulated legends.

The most singular of these earlier journeys into the future world are
the adventures of a certain Stephen, the first part of which Gregory
declares he had heard more than once from his own mouth, and which he
relates, apparently intending to be implicitly believed. Stephen had
to all appearance died in Constantinople, but, as the embalmer could
not be found, he was left unburied the whole night. During that time he
went down into hell, where he saw many things which he had not before
believed. But when he came before the Judge, the Judge said, “I did not
send for this man, but for Stephen the smith.” Gregory’s friend Stephen
was too happy to get back, and on his return found his neighbour Stephen
the smith dead. But Stephen learned not wisdom from his escape. He died
of the plague in Rome, and with him appeared to die a soldier, who
returned to reveal more of these fearful secrets of the other world, and
the fate of Stephen. The soldier passed a bridge, beneath it flowed a
river, from which rose vapours, dark, dismal, and noisome. Beyond the
bridge (the imagination could but go back to the old Elysian fields)
spread beautiful, flowery, and fragrant meadows, peopled by spirits
clothed in white. In these were many mansions, vast and full of light.
Above all rose a palace of golden bricks; to whom it belonged he could
not read. On the bridge he recognised Stephen, whose foot slipped as he
endeavoured to pass. His lower limbs were immediately seized by frightful
forms, who strove to drag him to the fetid dwellings below. But white
and beautiful beings caught his arms, and there was a long struggle. The
soldier did not see the issue of the conflict.

Such were among the stories avouched by the highest ecclesiastical
authority, and commended it might seem by the uninquiring faith of
the ruling intellect of his age--such among the first elements of
that universal popular religion which was the Christianity of ages.
This religion gradually moulded together all which arose out of the
natural instincts of man, the undying reminiscences of all the older
religions, the Jewish, the pagan, and the Teutonic, with the few and
indistinct glimpses of the invisible world and the future state of being
in the New Testament, into a vast system, more sublime perhaps for its
indefiniteness, which, being necessary in that condition of mankind,
could not but grow up out of the kindled imagination and religious faith
of Christendom. And such religion the historian who should presume to
condemn as a vast plan of fraud, or a philosopher who should venture to
disdain as a fabric of folly only deserving to be forgotten, would be
equally unjust, equally blind to its real uses, assuredly ignorant of its
importance and its significance in the history of man. For on this, the
popular Christianity, turns the whole history of man for centuries.

It is at once the cause and the consequence of the sacerdotal dominion
over mankind; the groundwork of authority at which the world trembled;
which founded and overthrew kingdoms, bound together or set in
antagonistic array nations, classes, ranks, orders of society. Of this,
the parent, when the time arrived, of poetry, of art, the Christian
historian must watch the growth and mark the gradations by which it
gathered into itself the whole activity of the human mind, and quickened
that activity till at length the mind outgrew that which had been so long
almost its sole occupation. It endured till faith, with the schoolmen,
led into the fathomless depths of metaphysics, began to aspire after
higher truths; with the reformers, attempting to refine religion to its
primary spiritual simplicity, gradually dropped, or left but to the
humblest and most ignorant, at least to the more imaginative and less
practical part of mankind, this even yet prolific legendary Christianity,
which had been the accessory and supplementary Bible, the authoritative
and accepted, though often unwritten, Gospel of centuries.[b]

GREGORY’S SUCCESSORS

[Sidenote: [604-649 A.D.]]

Gregory left the papal chair far more securely settled on the lofty
eminence where it had been placed than it was when he ascended it. But
Sabinian, who succeeded him, expressed little gratitude for the service
he had thus performed; indignant at finding the treasury exhausted of
its gold, he accused him of having ruined the see by his liberality;
and would have proceeded, but for the menaces of both the clergy and
the people, publicly to burn his writings. He did not live long after
this attempt; and his sudden death was ascribed to a blow on the head
inflicted by the angry shade of the departed saint. A truer cause,
however, may be found, perhaps, in the fact that he had made himself
hated by the populace, by withdrawing the accustomed alms, that he
might heal, as he pretended, the injuries inflicted by the liberality
of Gregory; a mode of proceeding so little relished by his flock, that,
whatever share they might have in his death, they conveyed his breathless
body with contempt out of the city.

It was during the pontificate of Boniface III, who resided as Gregory’s
legate at the court of Constantinople, and owed his elevation to
the emperor, that the Roman pontiff was first dignified with the
much-disputed title of universal bishop. For this honour Boniface was
indebted to the enmity existing between Phocas and the patriarch of his
imperial city. He lived to enjoy his triumph only a few months; and
several of his successors seem to have contented themselves with the
duties of their station, without entering into direct collision with any
rival in authority. It is, however, a singular circumstance, that to
the attempts of Boniface IV, who obtained the papal dignity immediately
after the pontiff just named, to bring back the separatists from Rome
to her communion, a resistance was made by the celebrated Irish apostle
Columbanus, breathing much of the freedom and intelligence of later days.

Honorius, who succeeded to the papacy after the two unimportant
pontificates of Deusdedit (Deodatus or Adeodatus I) and Boniface V,
made a vain attempt to influence the Lombards to restore their king,
Adalwald (Adalvaldus), whom they had deposed as a madman, and elected in
his place an Arian named Ariwald (Ariovaldus). But the most conspicuous
circumstance in his career was his agreement with Sergius, the patriarch
of Constantinople, in establishing the celebrated edict by which it was
intended to put an end to the monothelite controversy,[87] and render the
renewal of it a crime against the laws of the empire. Yet Honorius, in
the Sixth General Council, was solemnly anathematised, and classed with
the known and most violent supporters of the monothelite heresy.

The death of this pontiff was followed by the pillage of the palace
of the Lateran--an outrage which had its origin with the emperor, and
was committed by his own officers. Severinus was then placed in the
papal chair, but his pontificate was not marked by any important event.
The same observation applies to those of his successors, John IV and
Theodore. Theodore was succeeded by Martin I, the earliest act of whose
pontificate was the calling of a council to condemn the principles of the
monothelites, and the late acts of the emperors. The assembly held its
first session October 5th, 649; in the fifth and last, which was held on
the 31st of October, twenty articles were drawn up against the heresy in
question, and its authors, Theodorus, Cyrus, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul,
together with all such as should embrace their opinions, were formally
anathematised.

The Roman pontiff was by this proceeding brought into immediate
collision with the emperor; and the power of the greatest potentate of
the church was thus measured with that of the highest in the state. In
this respect the issue of the controversy deserves particular note.
Martin was a zealous and active churchman, learned and conscientious,
strongly impressed with a sense of the importance of unity, and disposed
to exercise the authority he possessed to the utmost in its favour. No
sooner had the council given its decision, than he despatched letters
to all orders of the clergy, acquainting them with the event and
with the acts it had passed. But the information which the emperor
Constans received of these proceedings filled him with the most violent
indignation; and he at once resolved to punish the contempt with which
his edict, and that of his predecessor, had been treated. He communicated
his wishes to Calliopas, exarch of Italy, who soon after made the pontiff
a prisoner and conveyed him to the island of Naxos. For three months he
was kept nearly continually on board a ship, and carried from one place
to the other, without being allowed even the commonest necessaries of
life. At Naxos he remained twelve months in captivity; and was then
taken to Constantinople, being exposed, during his passage thither,
to a treatment which would have been cruel to a condemned malefactor.
On his arrival, fresh indignities and barbarities awaited him. He was
cast into a miserable prison, in which he lay apparently forgotten for
more than three months, and when carried before the tribunal of justice
was examined like a common criminal. The part he had taken in the late
events, so far as they strictly pertained to religion, was not considered
even by his fiercest opponents as involving a guilt sufficient to justify
their severities. He was, therefore, arraigned as an enemy of the state.
Twenty witnesses, of whom the greater part were soldiers, and who are
said to have been bribed for the occasion, appeared as his accusers.

[Sidenote: [649-682 A.D.]]

This mockery of a trial being concluded, the pontiff was carried to an
open terrace, where, exposed at once to the gaze of the emperor and
the populace, the base servants of the court insulted him in so gross
a manner that even the multitude pitied his fate. His outward mantle
having been torn off, the officers took him, and stripping off the best
of his habits, left only his tunic remaining, which they next rent down
on each side, from top to bottom. An iron collar was then fastened
round his neck, and he was led from the palace through the midst of
the city, chained to one of the keepers of the prison, and preceded by
another bearing the sword with which he was to be executed. As they
dragged him along, his lacerated feet stained the pavement with blood;
and he presented an appearance of humiliation and misery which might
well humble the spirits of the haughtiest churchmen of either Rome or
Constantinople. But his sufferings did not terminate here. Instead of
being executed he was sent into the Chersonesus where he lingered through
four months of the severest hardship, then expired. He was succeeded
as pope by Eugenius, indebted for his elevation to the influence of
the imperial court and his too ready tolerance of its reigning errors.
He was consequently regarded at Rome with equal suspicion and dislike.
Vitalian, the successor of Eugenius, had the merit of being a strict
disciplinarian, and of sending Theodore to England as archbishop of
Canterbury. At his death, Adeodatus (Deodatus II) was elected. It was in
the pontificate of his successor Domnus that the church of Ravenna became
permanently incorporated with that of Rome.

Agatho, the next pope, was not less conspicuous for the devoutness of
his character; and the story which is told of his curing by a kiss some
leprous person whom he accidentally met, indicates not merely the growing
superstition of the age, but the influence which the pontiff’s piety had
made upon the minds of the people. At his request it was that the emperor
Constantine Pogonatus assembled the Sixth General Council; and it is
somewhat singular to find that one of the main objects which his legates
laboured at obtaining was a reduction of the sum usually paid by the
newly elected pontiff into the imperial treasury. For this indulgence,
Agatho willingly confirmed the ancient law, that no pope should be
ordained till his election had been formally recognised and confirmed at
Constantinople. The harmony which thus existed between the emperor and
Agatho was happily continued through the pontificate of Leo II, in whose
favour the monarch decreed that the new archbishop of Ravenna should
receive his ordination at the hands of the pope. He possessed sufficient
interest at the court of the emperor to obtain the important privilege
for the Roman pontiffs, of being confirmed in their authority by the
exarch of Ravenna, instead of having to make the long and difficult
journey to Constantinople.

[Sidenote: [682-701 A.D.]]

The pontificate of John V was as unimportant as it was short; he was
succeeded by Conon. Next, Sergius occupied the papal chair to the
beginning of the eighth century; but, at the commencement of his
pontificate, he saw himself opposed by two powerful rivals, and the
palace of the Lateran was for some time besieged with open force by the
partisans of these pretenders to the papacy. The contest was continued
for a considerable period. Sergius, though supported by imperial
influence, had to endure a seven years’ exile before he could possess
himself of the dignity; and on his refusal to recognise the canons of
the council _in trullo_,[88] was assailed by Justinian II with all the
weapons of imperial authority. The conflict was thus renewed, which had
so long disturbed the peace of Christendom; and another starting-point
given, from which the two great candidates for universal and unlimited
power were to begin the race. It is evident that the pontiff had not
yet acquired strength sufficient to oppose his rival with certainty of
success. At the council of Toledo, held in the year 688, the archbishop
of that city obtained a resolution in favour of his opinions, which
not simply established his creed in opposition to that of the pontiff,
but was couched in terms of haughty defiance and rebuke. The contest,
therefore, was as yet unattended by palpable prognostics of the final
triumph of the papacy.

[Illustration: ST. WULFRAN, BISHOP OF SENS, WHO DIED IN 720 A.D.

(From a miniature in the Bibliothèque du Havre)]

The troubles which the church had suffered from the continual motions
of half-barbarian hordes were many and severe, but they produced an
equivalent advantage. Amid all the struggles to which churchmen were
urged by ambition, they displayed, as a body, some of the noblest
instances of charity, of care for the poor and distressed, which the
world had seen. Pressed by the frequent prospect of immediate ruin,
they simultaneously acquired the virtues of resignation and the skill
of politicians. It was to them the people owed their preservation when
threatened on the one side by foreign enemies, and on the other by the
tyranny of their rulers; and till they themselves became oppressors,
popular liberty found its best champions among the heads of the church.
But when the progress of Christianity itself is considered--that is,
the very interests for which the church, with all its attendant powers,
was called into existence--doubt and dissatisfaction are almost the
invariable result of the inquiry. In Rome, piety was shocked by the open
contests which repeatedly took place by candidates for the papal dignity,
and by the little less disgraceful plots with which the contending
parties prepared for the onset. The provinces, perpetually appealed to on
the subject of obedience to the supreme pontiff, saw their own pastors at
one time yielding with submissive complacence to his decrees, at another
resisting them both openly and in secret.

[Sidenote: [701-731 A.D.]]

Sergius was succeeded by John VI (701), in whose pontificate Campania was
invaded by the Lombards, under Gisulf, duke of Benevento. His successor,
John VII (705), is noted only for having been guilty of the weakness of
returning the canons of the council _in trullo_ to the emperor Justinian,
without a single alteration. In his pontificate, moreover, the king of
the Lombards restored the lands of which he had despoiled the church,
and the deed which contained the grant was written in letters of gold.
Sisinius was the next pontiff; but he died a few days after his election,
and left the see to Constantine, a native of Syria, who retained it
about seven years. He was summoned by Justinian to the capital of the
East; but the object which the emperor had in view is unknown, and the
only result of his journey seems to have been the restoration of Felix,
the archbishop of Ravenna, to his diocese and honours. That unfortunate
prelate had made an effort to recover the independence possessed by the
former bishops of his see; but, though aided by the warlike masters of
the district, his attempt failed; and the emperor sending a body of
troops from Sicily, the walls of Ravenna were beaten down, and Felix,
loaded with chains, was carried a prisoner to Constantinople. There he
had to endure the punishment inflicted on the basest criminals. His eyes
were put out, and he was banished to the inhospitable shores of Pontus--a
punishment, it is said, which was regarded at Rome as the infliction of
divine justice.

Notwithstanding the want of positive evidence as to the express object of
Constantine’s journey, it is usually believed to have been occasioned by
the emperor’s unceasing anxiety to secure the co-operation of the Roman
hierarchy in the establishment of the late decrees. It is also argued,
and with seeming reason, that his attendance on the imperial commands is
a proof of the still unavoidable subjection which the pontiffs had to
endure; while his failing to oppose the canons so objectionable to his
church affords a similar proof of his weakness and his fears.

[Sidenote: [715-741 A.D.]]

Gregory II, by whom he was succeeded (715), pursued a bolder line of
conduct.[89] The part which he took in opposition to Leo the Isaurian
has been already stated; and his determined attack on the Lombards, who
made themselves masters of one of the Neapolitan fortresses, indicated
the spirit which, in later times, placed Christian prelates at the head
of mail-clad armies. Gregory was in all respects the firm defender and
zealous advocate of papal authority. At one moment engaged in open
hostilities with the emperor, he was at another employed in directing
the labours of missionaries and founding monasteries. Germany, at his
direction, was traversed by the ardent and pious Boniface; and in Italy
the rule of St. Benedict became, under his patronage, the universal canon
of monastic institutions.

The pontificate of Gregory II lasted sixteen years, and he was succeeded
by a priest of the same name, whom the people elected by some sudden
impulse, while engaged in the obsequies of the former. Gregory III
(731-741) carried the principles which had actuated his predecessor to
a far greater extent. Unable to withdraw the emperor Leo, either by
persuasion or threats, from the vigorous persecution of iconoclasm,
he proceeded to the daring measure of excommunicating the sovereign,
and then made known to the celebrated Charles Martel his readiness to
proclaim him consul of Rome, on condition that he would enable him to
support his separation from the dominion of the empire. Leo resented the
conduct of the pontiff, by depriving him of part of his revenues and
rejecting his legates. But the step which Gregory had taken led directly
to the establishment of the papacy on the basis of temporal power and
grandeur. A new career, new motives to exertion, were opened to the
politicians of the church; and it was no longer with rival prelates the
bishops of Rome were to contend, but with states and princes. The prizes
for which they were henceforth to strive were to be tributary crowns and
sceptres--the triumphs they were to celebrate, not those of truth over
heresy, but of arbitrary superstition over the free-will, the natural
sentiments, and the evangelical knowledge of Christian nations.[g]

That reign of terror known as the struggle of the iconoclasts has been
alluded to already in the history of the Byzantine Empire. It may also be
summed up here with its consequences.

DRAPER ON THE ORIGIN OF ICONOCLASM

Three causes gave rise to iconoclasm, or the revolt against
image-worship; first, the remonstrances and derision of the Mohammedans;
second, the good sense of a great sovereign, Leo the Isaurian, who
had risen by his merit from obscurity, and had become the founder of
a new dynasty at Constantinople; third, the detected inability of
these miracle-working idols and fetiches to protect their worshippers
or themselves against an unbelieving enemy. Moreover, an impression
was gradually making its way among the more intelligent classes that
religion ought to free itself from such superstitions. So important
were the consequences of Leo’s actions, that some have been disposed
to assign to his reign the first attempt at making policy depend on
theology; and to this period they therefore refer the commencement of
the Byzantine Empire. Through one hundred and twenty years, six emperors
devoted themselves to this reformation. But it was premature. They were
overpowered by the populace and the monks, by the bishops of Rome, and by
a superstitious and wicked woman.

It had been a favourite argument against the pagans how little their gods
could do for them when the hour of calamity came, when their statues
and images were insulted and destroyed; and hence how vain was such
worship, how imbecile such gods. When Africa and Asia, full of relics
and crosses, pictures and images, fell before the Mohammedans, those
conquerors retaliated the same logic with no little effect. There was
hardly one of the fallen towns that had not some idol for its protector.
Remembering the stern objurgations of the prophet against this deadly
sin, prohibited at once by the commandment of God and repudiated by the
reason of man, the Saracen caliphs had ordered all the Syrian images to
be destroyed. Amid the derision of the Arab soldiery and the tears of the
terror-stricken worshippers, these orders were remorselessly carried into
effect, except in some cases where the temptation of an enormous ransom
induced the avengers of the unity of God to swerve from their duty. Thus
the piece of linen cloth on which it was feigned that our Saviour had
impressed his countenance, and which was the palladium of Edessa, was
carried off by the victors at the capture of that town, and subsequently
sold to Constantinople at the profitable price of twelve thousand pounds
of silver. This picture, and also some other celebrated ones, it was
said, possessed the property of multiplying themselves by contact with
other surfaces, as in modern times we multiply photographs. Such were the
celebrated images “made without hands.”

[Sidenote: [726 A.D.]]

It was currently asserted that the immediate origin of iconoclasm was
due to the caliph Yazid, who had completed the destruction of the Syrian
images, and to two Jews, who stimulated Leo the Isaurian to his task.
However that may be, Leo published an edict (726 A.D.), prohibiting
the worship of images. This was followed by another directing their
destruction, and the whitewashing of the walls of churches ornamented
with them. Hereupon the clergy and the monks rebelled; the emperor was
denounced as a Mohammedan and a Jew. He ordered that a statue of the
Saviour in that part of the city called Chalcopratia should be removed,
and a riot was the consequence. One of his officers mounted the ladder
and struck the idol with an axe upon its face; it was an incident like
that enacted centuries before in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria. The
sacred image, which had often arrested the course of nature and worked
many miracles, was now found to be unable to protect or to avenge its own
honour. A rabble of women interfered in its behalf; they threw down the
ladder and killed the officer; nor was the riot ended until the troops
were called in and a great massacre perpetrated. The monks spread the
sedition in all parts of the empire; they even attempted to proclaim a
new emperor. Leo was everywhere denounced as a Mohammedan infidel, an
enemy of the mother of God; but with inflexible resolution he persisted
in his determination as long as he lived.[h]

MILMAN ON ICONOCLASM

Iconoclasm was an attempt by the Eastern emperor to change by his own
arbitrary command the religion of his subjects. No religious revolution
has ever been successful which has commenced with the government. Such
revolutions have ever begun in the middle or lower orders of society,
struck on some responsive chord of sympathy in the general feeling,
supplied some religious want, stirred some religious energy, and shaken
the inert strength of the established faith by some stronger counter
emotion.

Whatever the motives of the emperor Leo the Isaurian (and on this
subject, as in all the religious controversies where the writings of the
unsuccessful party were carefully suppressed or perished through neglect,
authentic history is almost silent), whether he was actuated by a rude
aversion to what perhaps can hardly yet be called the fine arts with
which Christianity was associating itself, or by a spiritual disdain and
impatience of the degrading superstition into which the religion of the
Gospel had so long been degenerating, the attempt was as politically
unwise and unseasonable as the means employed were despotic and
altogether unequal to the end. The time was passed, if it had ever been,
when an imperial edict could change, or even much affect, the actual
prevailing religion of the empire. For this was no speculative article
of belief, no question of high metaphysical theology, but a total change
in the universal popular worship, in the spirit and in the essence, if
not of the daily ritual, of countless observances and habitual practices
of devotion. It swept away from almost all the churches of the empire
objects hallowed by devotion, and supposed to be endowed with miraculous
agency; objects of hope and fear, of gratitude and immemorial veneration.
It not merely invaded the public church, and left its naked walls without
any of the old remembrancers of faith and piety; it reached the private
sanctuary of prayer. No one could escape the proscription; learned or
unlearned, priest or peasant, monk or soldier, clergyman or layman, man,
woman, and even child were involved in the strife. Something to which
their religious attachments clung, to which their religious passions
were wedded, might at any time be forcibly rent away, insulted, trampled
under foot; that which had been their pride and delight could only now be
furtively visited, and under the fear of detection.

Nor was it possible for this controversy to vent itself in polemic
writings. Here actual, personal, furious collision of man and man,
of faction and faction, of armed troops against armed troops, was
inevitable. The contending parties did not assail each other with mutual
anathemas, which they might despise, or excommunication and counter
excommunication, the validity of which might be questioned by either
party. On one side it was a sacred obligation to destroy, to mutilate,
to dash to pieces, to deface the objects on which the other had so long
gazed with intense devotion, and which he might think it an equally
sacred obligation to defend at the sacrifice of life. It was not a
controversy, it was a feud; not a polemic strife, but actual war declared
by one part of Christendom against the other. It was well perhaps for
Christendom that the parties were not more equally balanced; that, right
or wrong, one party in that division of the Christian world, where total
change would have been almost extermination, obtained a slow but complete
triumph.[b]

Milman then goes on to plead eloquently for the encouragement of the fine
arts by the church which produced a Raphael and a Michelangelo, as the
Greek religion produced and employed its Phidias and Praxiteles. He then
proceeds to describe the ferocity of the dissension.[a]

THE WAR OF ICONOCLASM

[Sidenote: [726-731 A.D.]]

A formidable insurrection broke out in Greece and in the Ægean
islands. A fleet was armed, a new emperor, one Cosmas, proclaimed, and
Constantinople menaced by the rebels. The fleet, however, was scattered
and destroyed by ships which discharged the Greek fire; the insurrection
was suppressed, the leaders either fell or were executed, along with the
usurper. The monks here and throughout the empire, the champions of this
as of every other superstition, were the instigators to rebellion. Few
monasteries were without some wonder-working image; the edict struck at
once at their influence, their interest, their pride, their most profound
religious feelings.

But the more eminent clergy were likewise at first almost unanimous
in their condemnation of the emperor. Constantine, bishop of Nacolia,
indeed, is branded as his adviser. Another bishop, Theodosius, son of
Apsimarus, metropolitan of Ephesus, is named as entering into the war
against images. But almost for the first time the bishops of the two
Romes, Germanus of Constantinople and Pope Gregory II, were united in
one common cause. Leo attempted to win Germanus to his views, but the
aged patriarch (he was now ninety-five years old) calmly but resolutely
resisted the arguments, the promises, the menaces of the emperor.

But the conduct of Gregory II, as leading to more important results,
demands more rigid scrutiny. The Byzantine historians represent him as
proceeding, at the first intimation of the hostility of the emperor to
image-worship, to an act of direct revolt, as prohibiting the payment
of tribute by the Italian province. This was beyond the power, probably
beyond the courage, of Gregory. The great results of the final separation
of the West from the inefficient and inglorious sovereignty of the East
might excuse or palliate, if he had foreseen them, the disloyalty of Pope
Gregory to Leo. But it would be to estimate his political and religious
sagacity too highly to endow him with this gift of ambitious prophecy, to
suppose him anticipating the full development of Latin Christianity when
it should become independent of the East.

[Illustration: MOSAIC, REPRESENTING THE TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWER OF
JESUS CHRIST]

Like most ordinary minds, and if we are to judge by his letters Gregory’s
was a very ordinary mind, he was merely governed by the circumstances and
passions of his time without the least foreknowledge of the result of his
actions. The letter of Pope Gregory to the emperor (729 A.D.) is arrogant
without dignity, dogmatic without persuasiveness; in the stronger part of
the argument far inferior, both in skill and ingenuity, to that of the
aged Germanus, or the writer who guided his pen. The strange mistakes in
the history of the Old Testament, the still stranger interpretations of
the New, the loose legends which are advanced as history, give a very low
opinion of the knowledge of the times.

[Sidenote: [731-742 A.D.]]

When Gregory addressed this and a second letter to the emperor Leo, the
tumult in Constantinople, the first public act of rebellion against
iconoclasm, had taken place; but the aged bishop Germanus was not yet
degraded from his see. Germanus, with better temper and more skilful
argument, had defended the images of the East. Before his death (731), he
was deposed or compelled to retire from his see. He died most probably in
peace; his extreme age may well account for his death. His personal ill
treatment by the emperor is the legend of a later age to exalt him into a
martyr.

But these two powerful prelates were not the only champions of their
cause whose writings made a strong impression on their age. It is
singular that the most admired defender of images in the East was a
subject not of the emperor but of the Mohammedan sultan. John of Damascus
was famed as the most learned man in the East, and it may show either the
tolerance, the ignorance, or the contempt of the Mohammedans for these
Christian controversies, that writings which became celebrated all over
the East should issue from one of their capital cities, Damascus.

In the West, all power, almost all pretension to power, excepting over
Sicily and Calabria, expired with Leo;[90] and this independence partly
arose out of and was immeasurably strengthened by the faithful adherence
of the West to image-worship.

CONSTANTINE COPRONYMUS (741-775 A.D.)

Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine. The name by which this emperor
was known is a perpetual testimony to the hatred of a large part of his
subjects. Even in his infancy he was believed to have shown a natural
aversion to holy things, and in his baptism to have defiled the font.
Constantine Copronymus sounded to Greek ears as a constant taunt against
his filthy and sacrilegious character.

The accession of Constantine (741), although he had already been
acknowledged for twenty years with his father as joint emperor, met
formidable resistance. The contest for the throne was a strife between
the two religious parties which divided the empire. During the absence
of Constantine, on an expedition against the Saracens, a sudden and
dangerous insurrection placed his brother-in-law, Artavasdes, on the
throne. Constantinople was gained to the party of the usurper by
treachery. The city was induced to submit to Artavasdes only by a
rumour, industriously propagated and generally believed, of the death of
Constantine. The emperor on one occasion had been in danger of surprise,
and escaped by the swiftness of his horses.

[Sidenote: [742-746 A.D.]]

In the capital, as throughout Greece and the European part of the empire,
the triumph of Artavasdes was followed by the restoration of the images.
Anastasius, the dastard patriarch of Constantinople, as he had been the
slave of Leo, now became the slave of the usurper, and worshipped images
with the same zeal with which he had destroyed them. He had been the
principal actor in the deception of the people by the forged letters
which announced the death of Constantine. He plunged with more desperate
recklessness into the party of Artavasdes. The monks, and all over whom
they had influence, took up the cause of the usurper; but the mass of
the people, from royal respect for the memory of Leo, or from their
confidence in the vigorous character of Constantine and attachment to the
legitimate succession, from indifference or aversion to image-worship,
still wavered, and submitted rather than clamorously rejoiced in the
coronation of Artavasdes.

But Constantine Copronymus with the religious opinions inherited the
courage, the military abilities, and the popularity with the army which
had distinguished his father Leo. After some vicissitudes, a battle took
place near Ancyra, fought with all the ferocity of civil and religious
war. After an obstinate resistance, and after having suffered all the
horrors of famine, Constantinople was taken. Artavasdes was punished by
the loss of his eyes.

Constantine was a soldier, doubtless of a fierce temper; the blinding and
mutilation of many, the beheading a few of his enemies, the abandonment
of the houses of the citizens to the plunder of his troops, was the
natural course of Byzantine revolution; and these cruelties have no doubt
lost nothing in the dark representations of the emperor’s enemies, the
only historians of the times. But they suffered as rebels in arms against
their sovereign, not as image-worshippers. The fate of the patriarch
Anastasius was the most extraordinary. His eyes were put out, he was led
upon an ass, with his face to the tail, through the city; and after all
this mutilation and insult, for which, considering his tergiversation
and impudent mendacity, it is difficult to feel much compassion, he was
reinstated in the patriarchal dignity. The clergy in the East had never
been arrayed in the personal sanctity which, in ordinary occasions, they
possessed in the West; but could Constantine have any other object in
this act than the degradation of the whole order in public estimation?

THIRD COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (746 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [746-766 A.D.]]

For ten years Constantine refrained from any stronger measures against
image worship. In the tenth year of Constantine rumours spread abroad
of secret councils held for the total destruction of images. Either
the emperor must have prepared the public mind for this great change
with consummate address, or reverence for images must have been less
deeply rooted in the East than in the West, otherwise it can scarcely be
supposed that so large a number of the clergy as appeared at the Third
Council of Constantinople (746) would have slavishly assented to the
strong measures of the emperor. Three hundred and forty-eight bishops
formed this synod.

Part of the proceedings of this assembly have been preserved in the
records of the rival council, the second held in Nicæa. The passages
are cited in the original words, followed by a confutation, sanctioned
apparently by the Nicene bishops. The Council of Constantinople
proscribes the lawless and blasphemous art of painting. The fathers of
Constantinople assume, as boldly as the brethren of Nicæa their sanctity,
that all images are the invention of the devil; that they are idols in
the same sense as those of the heathen. Nor do they hesitate to impute
community of sentiment with the worst heretics to their opponents.
They thought that they held the image-worshippers in an inextricable
dilemma. If the painters represented only the humanity of Christ, they
were Nestorians; if they attempted to mingle it with the divinity, they
were Eutychians, circumscribing the infinite and confounding the two
substances. It was impiety to represent Christ without his divinity,
Arianism to undeify him, despoil him of his godhead.

The Council of Nicæa admits the perfect unanimity of the Council of
Constantinople. These 348 bishops concurred in pronouncing their anathema
against all who should represent the incarnate Word by material form
or colours, who should not restrict themselves to the pure spiritual
conception of the Christ, as he is seated, superior in brightness to the
sun, on the right hand of the Father; against all who should confound
the two natures of Christ in one human image, or who should separate
the manhood from the Godhead in the second person of the indivisible
Trinity; against all who should not implore the intercession of the
Virgin in pure faith, as above all visible and invisible things;
against all who should set up the deaf and lifeless images of saints,
and who do not rather paint the living likenesses of their virtues in
their own hearts. All images, whether statues or paintings, were to be
forcibly removed from the churches; everyone who henceforth should set
up an image, if a bishop or priest, was to be degraded; if a layman,
excommunicated. They proceed to curse by name the principal asserters
of image-worship. “Anathema against the double-minded Germanus, the
worshipper of wood! Anathema against George (of Cyprus), the falsifier of
the traditions of the fathers! Anathema against Mansar (they called by
this unchristian-sounding name the famous John of Damascus), the Saracen
in heart, the traitor to the empire--Mansar the teacher of impiety, the
false interpreter of Holy Scripture!”

Thus was image-worship proscribed by a council, in numbers at least
of weight, in the severest and most comprehensive terms. The work of
demolition was committed to the imperial officers; only with strict
injunctions, not perhaps always obeyed, to respect the vessels, the
priestly vestments, and other furniture of the churches, and the cross,
the naked cross without any image. The crucifix was of a later period.

THE WAR ON MONASTERIES

[Sidenote: [766-775 A.D.]]

But if the emperor had overawed, or bought, or compelled the seemingly
willing assent of so large a body of the eastern clergy, the formidable
monks were still in obstinate implacable opposition to his will. It was
now fanaticism encountering fanaticism. Everywhere the monks preached
resistance to the imperial decree, and enough has been seen of their
turbulent and intractable conduct to make us conclude that their language
at least would keep no bounds. Stephen, the great martyr of this
controversy, had lived as a hermit in a cave near Sinope for thirty years.

The emperor sent the patriarch to persuade him to subscribe the decrees
of the Council of Constantinople. The patriarch’s eloquence was vain. The
emperor either allowed or compelled the aged monk to retire to the wild
rock of Proconnesus, where, to consummate his sanctity, he took his stand
upon a pillar. His followers assembled in crowds about him, and built
their cells around the pillar of the saint. But the zeal of Stephen would
not be confined within that narrow sphere. He returned to the city, and
in bold defiance of the imperial orders denounced the iconoclasts. He was
seized, cast into prison, and there treated with unusual harshness. But
even there the zeal of his followers found access. Constantine exclaimed,
in a paroxysm of careless anger, “Am I or this monk the emperor of the
world?” The word of the emperor was enough for some of his obsequious
courtiers; they rushed, broke open the prison, dragged out the old man
along the streets with every wanton cruelty, and cast his body at last
into the common grave of the public malefactors.

The emperor took now a sterner and more desperate resolution. He
determined to root out monkery itself. The monks were driven from their
cloisters, which were given up to profane and secular uses. Consecrated
virgins were forced to marry; monks were compelled, each holding the
hand of a woman, doubtless not of the purest character, to walk round
the Hippodrome among the jeers and insults of the populace. Throughout
the whole empire they were exposed to the lawless persecutions of the
imperial officers. Their zeal or their obstinacy was chastised by
scourgings, imprisonments, mutilations, and even death. The monasteries
were plundered, and by no scrupulous or reverent hands; churches are
said to have been despoiled of all their sacred treasures, the holy books
burned, feasts and revels profaned the most hallowed sanctuaries.

Multitudes fled to the neighbouring kingdoms of the less merciless
barbarians; many found refuge in the West, especially in Rome. The
prefect of Thrace was the most obsequious agent of his master’s tyranny.
The patriarch himself was accused of having used disrespectful language
towards the emperor. Already he had been required to acquit himself of
imputing Nestorianism to his master; now his accusers swore on the cross
that they had heard him hold conference with one of the conspirators.
Constantine ordered the imperial seal to be affixed on the palace of the
patriarch, and sent him into banishment.

For some new offence, real or supposed, the exiled patriarch was brought
back to the capital, scourged so cruelly that he could not walk, and
then carried in a litter, and exposed in the great church before all the
people assembled to hear the public recital of the charges made against
him, and to behold his degradation. At each charge the secretary of
his successor smote him on the face. He was then set up in the pulpit,
and while Nicetas read the sentence of excommunication, another bishop
stripped him of his metropolitan pall, and calling him by the opprobrious
name Scotiopsis, “face of darkness,” led him backwards out of the church.
The next day his head, beard, eyebrows were shaved; and as we have
already said, he was put upon an ass, and paraded through the circus
(his own nephew, a hideous, deformed youth, leading the ass), while the
populace jeered, shouted, spat upon him. He was then thrown down, trodden
on, and in that state lay till the games were over. Some days after the
emperor sent to demand a formal declaration of the orthodoxy of his own
faith and of the authority of the council. The poor wretch acknowledged
both in the amplest manner; as a reward he was beheaded, while still
in a state of excommunication, and his remains treated with the utmost
ignominy.

This odious scene, blackened it may be by the sectarian hatred of the
later annalists, all of whom abhorred iconoclasm, has been related at
length, in order to contrast more fully the position of the bishop of
Rome. This was the second patriarch of Constantinople who had been thus
barbarously treated, and seemingly without the sympathy of the people;
and now, in violation of all canonical discipline, the imperial will
had raised a eunuch to the patriarchate. What wonder that pontiffs like
Gregory II and Gregory III should think themselves justified in throwing
off the yoke of such a government, and look with hope to the sovereignty
of the less barbarous barbarians of the north--barbarians who, at least,
had more reverence for the dignity of the sacerdotal character.

If the Byzantine historians, all image-worshippers, have not greatly
exaggerated the cruelties of their implacable enemy Constantine
Copronymus, they have assuredly not done justice to his nobler
qualities, his valour, incessant activity, military skill, and general
administration of the sinking empire, which he maintained unviolated by
any of its formidable enemies, and with imposing armies, during a reign
of thirty-five years, not including the twenty preceding during which
he ruled as the colleague of his father Leo. Constantine died, during
a campaign against the Bulgarians, of a fever which, in the charitable
judgment of his adversaries, gave him a foretaste of the pains of hell.
His dying lips ordered prayers and hymns offered to the Virgin, for
whom he had always professed the most profound veneration, utterly
inconsistent, his enemies supposed, with his hostility to her sacred
images.

HELENA AND IRENE

[Sidenote: [775-787 A.D.]]

A female had been the principal mover in the great change of Christianity
from a purely spiritual worship to that paganising form of religion which
grew up with such rapidity in the succeeding centuries; a female was
the restorer of images in the East, which have since, with but slight
interruption, maintained their sanctity. The first, Helena, the mother
of Constantine the Great, was a blameless and devout woman, who used the
legitimate influence of her station, munificence, and authority over her
imperial son, to give that splendour which to her piety appeared becoming
to the new religion; to communicate to the world all those excitements
of symbols, relics, and sacred memorials which she found so powerful
in kindling her own devotion. The second, the empress Irene, wife to
the son and heir of Constantine Copronymus, an ambitious, intriguing,
haughty princess, never lost sight of political power in the height of
her religious zeal, and was at length guilty of the most atrocious crime
against God and womanhood.

Irene, during the reign of her husband Leo, surnamed the Khazar, did not
openly betray her inclination to the image-worship which she had solemnly
forsworn under her father-in-law Constantine. On his death (780) she at
once seized the government in the name of her son Constantine, who was
but ten years old. Her creature, Patriarch Tarasius, summoned a council
on image-worship.

The council met in Constantinople (785), but with the army and a large
part of the populace of Constantinople image-worship had lost its
power. The soldiery, attached to the memory and tenets of Constantine
Copronymus, broke into the assembly, and dispersed the affrighted monks
and bishops.

SECOND COUNCIL OF NICÆA (787 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [787-842 A.D.]]

Nicæa was chosen for the session of the council, no doubt on account of
the reverence which attached to that city, hallowed by the sittings of
the first great council of Christendom. Decrees issued from Nicæa would
possess peculiar force and authority; this smaller city, too, could be
occupied by troops on whom the empress could depend, and in the meantime
Irene managed to disband the more unruly soldiery. Thus, while the
Bulgarians menaced one frontier and the Saracens another, she sacrificed
the safety of the empire, by the dissolution of her best army, to the
success of her religious designs.

The council met at Nicæa. The number of ecclesiastics is variously stated
from 330 to 387. Among these were at least 130 monks or abbots, besides
many bishops, who had been expelled as monks from their sees, and were
now restored. They repudiated the so-called Council of Constantinople,
as a synod of fools and madmen, who had dared to violate the established
discipline of the church and impiously reviled the holy images. They
showered their anathemas on all the acts, on all the words, on all the
persons engaged in that unhallowed assembly.

The fathers of Nicæa impaired a doubtful cause by the monstrous fables
which they adduced, the preposterous arguments which they used, their
unmeasured invectives against their antagonists. With one voice they
broke out into a long acclamation: “We all believe, we all assent, we all
subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the
church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of all the
world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the
like, anathema upon him! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema
on all who communicate with them who do not worship images!”

Among the acclamations and the anathemas which closed the Second
Council of Nicæa, echoed loud salutations and prayers for the peace and
blessedness of the new Constantine and the new Helena. A few years passed
and that Constantine was blinded, if not put to death, by his unnatural
mother, whom religious faction had raised into a model of Christian
virtue and devotion.

The controversy slept during the reign of Nicephorus, and that of
Michael, surnamed Rhangabé. The monks throughout this period seem to form
an independent power (a power no doubt arising out of and maintained by
their championship of image-worship), and to dictate to the emperor, and
even to the church. On the other hand, among the soldiery are heard some
deep but suppressed murmurs of attachment to the memory of Constantine
Copronymus. Leo the Armenian ascended the throne.

As Irene had promoted Tarasius, so Leo raised an officer of his
household, Theodotus Cassiteras, to the patriarchal throne. Image-worship
was again proscribed by an imperial edict. The worshippers are said to
have been ruthlessly persecuted; and Leo, according to the phraseology
of the day, is accused of showing all the blood-thirstiness without
the generosity of the lion. Yet no violent popular tumult took place;
nor does the conspiracy which afterwards cut short the days of Leo the
Armenian appear to have been connected with the strife of religious
factions. Whatever hopes the clergy, at least the image-worshippers, or
the monks, might have conceived at the murder of Leo, which they scrupled
not to allege as a sign of the divine disfavour towards the iconoclasts,
were disappointed on the accession of Michael the Stammerer. He favoured
the Jews in the exaction of tribute (perhaps he was guilty of the sin
of treating them with justice), he fasted on the Jewish Sabbath, he
doubted the resurrection of the dead, and the personality of the devil,
as unauthorised by the religion of Moses. Image-worship he treated with
contemptuous impartiality. In a great public assembly (assembled for
the purpose), he proclaimed the worship of images a matter altogether
indifferent.

Theophilus could not but perceive the failure, and disdained to imitate
his father’s temporising policy, who endeavoured to tolerate the monks,
while he discouraged image-worship. He avowed his determination to
extirpate both at once. Leo the Armenian and Michael the Stammerer had
attempted to restrict the honours paid to images; Theophilus prohibited
the making of new ones, and ordered that in every church they should be
effaced, and the walls covered with pictures of birds and beasts. The
sacred vessels, adorned with figures, were profaned by unhallowed hands,
sold in the public markets, and melted for their metal. The prisons were
full of painters, of monks and ecclesiastics of all orders. The monks,
driven from their convents, fled to desert places; some perished of cold
and hunger, some threw off the proscribed dress, yet retained the sacred
character and habits; others seized the opportunity of returning to the
pleasures as to the dress of the world.

The history of iconoclasm has a remarkable uniformity: another female
in power, another restoration of images. After the death of Theophilus
his widow Theodora administered the empire in the name of her youthful
son Michael, called afterwards the Drunkard. Theodora, like her own
mother Theoctista, had always worshipped images in private. No sooner
was Theophilus dead than the monks, no doubt in the secret of Theodora’s
concealed attachment to images, poured into Constantinople from all
quarters. She now ventured to send an officer of the palace to command
the patriarch, Joannes the Grammarian, either to recant his iconoclastic
opinions, or to withdraw from Constantinople. The patriarch is accused
of a paltry artifice. He opened a vein in the region of his stomach, and
showed himself wounded and bleeding to the people. The rumour spread that
the empress had attempted to assassinate the patriarch. But the fraud was
detected, exposed, acknowledged. The abashed patriarch withdrew, unpitied
and despised, into the suburbs (842). Methodius was raised to the dignity
of the patriarchate. The worshippers of images were in triumph.

But Theodora, still tenderly attached to the memory of her husband,
demanded, as the price of her inestimable services in the restoration of
images, absolution for the sin of his iconoclasm and his persecution of
the image-worshippers.

All was now easy; the fanaticism of iconoclasm was exhausted or rebuked.
A solemn festival was appointed for the restoration of images. The
whole clergy of Constantinople, and all who could flock in from the
neighbourhood, met in and before the palace of the archbishop, and
marched in procession with crosses, torches, and incense, to the church
of St. Sophia. There they were met by the empress and her infant son
Michael, Feb. 19th, 842. They made the circuit of the church, with their
burning torches, paying homage to every image and picture, which had been
carefully restored, never again to be effaced till the days of later,
more terrible iconoclasts, the Ottoman Turks.

The Greek church from that time has celebrated the anniversary of this
festival with loyal fidelity. The successors of Methodius, particularly
the learned Photius, were only zealous to consummate the work of his
predecessors, and images have formed part of the recognised religious
worship of the Eastern world.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[84] Felix III, if the anti-pope Felix (356 A.D.) is reckoned as Felix II.

[85] [The office to which Gregory I was suddenly elevated in the year
590, included under it the three following distinct dignities. First,
it included the actual episcopal charge of the city of Rome; the church
of St. John Lateran with its haughty inscription: _Omnium Urbis et
Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput_--being the cathedral church; and the
adjoining Lateran palace, which tradition says was given by Constantine
to Silvester I, being the place of residence. Secondly, it included the
metropolitan or archiepiscopal superintendence of the Roman territory,
with jurisdiction over the seven suffragan bishops, afterwards called
cardinal bishops; the bishops of Ostia, Portus, Silva Candida, Sabina,
Præneste, Tusculum, and Albanum. Thirdly, it included the patriarchal
oversight of the suburban provinces, which were under the political
jurisdiction of the _Vicarius Urbis_, viz., Campania, Tuscany with
Umbria, Picenum, Valeria, Samnium, Apulia with Calabria, Lucania with
Bruttium--in short, upper Italy, together with the three islands of
Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. As patriarch, the Roman bishop stood
on the same footing as the four great patriarchs of the East, those
of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; he enjoyed however
the primacy of honour, and standing alone in the West, whereas four
patriarchs divided the primacy of the East, his jurisdiction often seemed
to extend to districts where he had no jurisdiction by right. For the
vicariate of Rome was only one among four vicariates, into which the
great prefecture of Italy was politically divided; the other vicariates
being northern Italy, with its centre at Milan; western Illyricum, with
its capital at Sirmium; and western Africa, with its capital at Carthage.
So far were Gaul, Spain, and Britain from belonging to the vicariate of
Rome, that they constituted together a separate prefecture, known as the
prefecture of Gaul. Nevertheless, all these districts were in time drawn
into the patriarchate of Rome, and indeed the whole of western Europe as
it gradually came under the influence of Christianity.[e]]

[86] The absurd story about Gregory’s fish-ponds paved with the skulls of
the drowned infants of the Roman clergy, is only memorable as an instance
of what writers of history will believe, and persuade themselves they
believe, when it suits party interests. But by whom, or when, was it
invented? It is much older than the Reformation.

[87] [Monothelism or one-ness of will is the opposite of “dyothelism” or
duality of will, as distinguishing the divine and the human aspects of
Christ. Monothelism had its origin in Sergius.]

[88] [The council held in the _trullus_ or domed hall of the imperial
palace in Constantinople. The council here referred to is the Quinisext
Council of 692, called the Second Trullan Council, the first being that
which condemned monothelite views (681).]

[89] [Gibbon[l] calls him the “founder of the papal monarchy.”]

[90] Leo died June, 741. Gregory III in the same year.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II. “THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY”--CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE GREAT

[Sidenote: [740-985 A.D.]]

From the East, powerless to render help, from an empire crumbling away
beneath the weight of its own greatness, Gregory III therefore turned
away, and fixed his gaze on the youthful greatness of a transalpine
nation--the Franks--brave, adventurous, full of promise, successful in
warfare, and destined to rise to future power. With Charles Martel,
mayor of the palace, and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm, Gregory
II had already opened communications. To Charles Martel, his successor
Gregory III again appealed, when, after eight years of doubtful peace,
he suddenly found himself involved in an open war with the Lombards.
His appeal is truly touching: “His tears are falling night and day for
the destitute state of the church; the Lombard king and his son are
ravaging the last remains of the property of the church, which no longer
suffices for the sustenance of the poor, or to provide lights for the
daily service; they have invaded the territory of Rome and seized all
his farms; his only hope is in the timely succour of the Frankish king.”
The appeal was rendered still stronger by the presents that accompanied
it--the mystic keys of the sepulchre of St. Peter, and filings of his
chains, which no Christian could resist. The title of patrician and
consul of Rome was offered; and Gregory, as might be expected after such
presents, received a courteous answer and an embassy was despatched to
the imperial city.

[Sidenote: [741-754 A.D.]]

It is impossible to say what might have been the result of the
negotiations between the pope and the ambassadors had they been
continued. They were, however, interrupted by the death of both the
potentates; of Charles Martel in October, of Gregory III in November of
the very same year. Nevertheless these negotiations were the prelude to
subsequent negotiations which Pepin le Bref, the son of Charles Martel,
carried on with Pope Zacharias (Zachary), the successor of Gregory III;
and this time the negotiations led to most important results.

INDEPENDENCE OF THE ROMAN BISHOPS

At the election of Zacharias, the customary form of obtaining the consent
of the exarch was discarded, and discarded to be never afterwards
revived. Henceforth the popes may be considered as independent of the
Eastern Empire; henceforth begins their connection with the West;
henceforth they hold no longer an exclusive ecclesiastical position,
but the papacy has become a political dukedom. After the Sixth General
Council, they had claimed the title of “universal priest,” and vindicated
that claim by soon afterwards reducing to submission the last of the
great archbishops of the West. After the appeal to Charles Martel
and the independent election of Zacharias, they aspired to political
sovereignty.[b]

THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS

Zacharias, convinced of the advantage which Rome might derive from
intimate union with the rising power of the Franks, watched with careful
attention over the interests of the mayors of the palace; and it was at
his suggestion that the nation at length conferred on those powerful
functionaries the titles as well as the privileges of royalty. The
Lombard princes regarded him with corresponding reverence. Liutprand,
whose reign lasted above thirty years, was distinguished for his devout
observance of the maxims of the church. The charity of the pontiff was
equal to his talents, and the slaves which Venice offered to the Moors
were purchased by his agents and set free.

Stephen II,[91] who next occupied the pontifical chair, had to endure,
from the very commencement of his career, the troubles and dangers of
domestic wars. Aistulf, the new king of the Lombards, inherited the
spirit of his earliest predecessors, and it only required the appearance
of a leader like Aistulf to put an end forever to the rule of the Greeks
in Italy. But the Lombard monarch was not contented with the acquisition
of Ravenna. He assailed the duchy of Rome and the lands of the church,
nor could Stephen, either by the most solemn expostulations, or the
offers which he made of money, induce the conqueror to withdraw his
troops. In this situation, and when the Lombards had demanded as the
price of their safety a tribute which the citizens of Rome felt it would
be impossible to pay, the pontiff sent messengers to Constantinople
requesting aid of the emperor; but his entreaties were disregarded. He
turned his eyes towards France, where Pepin, the father of the heroic
Charlemagne, was now at the head of a nation as warlike as the Lombards,
and as disposed to ally itself with Rome as the invaders were to effect
its ruin.

[Sidenote: [754-755 A.D.]]

Ambassadors were sent to Rome to treat with the Lombards for Stephen’s
safe passage into France, a negotiation which could scarcely fail in the
hands of the powerful sovereign by whom it was undertaken. The pontiff
was speedily on his way to the new protector of the church. He appeared
with all his attendants before the monarch, clad in sackcloth and ashes,
and falling at his knees he implored him, by the mercy of God and the
merits of St. Peter and St. Paul, to deliver Rome from the devastation
of the Lombards. Pepin in reply promised to grant the pontiff’s request,
and speedily fulfilled his promise by compelling the enemy to retreat
and shut himself up in the single town of Pavia. Aistulf, thus pressed,
agreed to the terms proposed by his conqueror, and the French army was
withdrawn. But scarcely had they left the district when he returned to
the attack with renewed vigour, laid waste the country round Rome with
fire and sword, and at length encamped before the gates of the city
itself. The pontiff again sent a strong appeal to his protector. He
dictated his letter in the name of the apostle Peter, closely imitating
his epistles, and speaking in a language which implied that he was
possessed of an authority to anoint or dethrone kings, and to perform the
offices, not of a messenger, of a teacher sent from God, which is the
highest characteristic of an apostle, but of a delegated minister of his
power and justice.

The French monarch was moved to render the pontiff immediate succour, and
Aistulf was quickly deprived of the fruits of his numerous campaigns. It
now became a question to whom the district from which the Lombard was
driven ought of right to belong; and, before this point could be decided,
the envoy of the Greek emperor appeared, to claim for his master the
restoration of the territory which he had so completely abandoned to
its fate. But Pepin was both too politic and too conscious of his power
to listen to such demands; and sending his chief counsellor, the abbot
Fulrade (Folrad), to perform the investiture, he granted to Stephen, and
to his successors forever, the undivided sovereignty of the conquered
territory.

Thus commenced the temporal dominion of the bishops of Rome--an event
which marks a distinct period in the history of the papacy, but the
importance of which we cannot but think has been somewhat overrated. The
power by which the pontiffs acquired their vast empire in the minds of
men, owed little or none of its vigour to the influence they possessed
as princes; it went on increasing till it reached the very boundaries of
civilisation, while their little seigniory remained confined within the
narrowest limits; and it declined, and became almost nominal, while their
rights as sovereigns continued to be acknowledged by all the states of
Europe. In point of wealth it plainly admits of being questioned whether
they could gain any advantage from an acquisition which obliged them to
keep an army in their pay; to support a countless train of emissaries and
envoys; and to engage in all the expensive arts of diplomacy with the
monarchs of countries whose treasures were perpetually supplied by the
labours and the commerce of their people.

As little was their new dominion advantageous to their dignity. The
pontiff was the first among the spiritual rulers of mankind, the
lowest almost of temporal princes. As the head of the church, he was
rendered venerable by all the associations and by many of the highest
sanctions of religion; as the successor of the exarchs of Ravenna, he
was the dependent of every prince who had an army at his command, and
was but an item in the catalogue of petty rulers, who were counted as
make-weights in the balance of power. In whatever designs he undertook
as the supremely endowed minister of God, he could appeal to the hearts
and consciences of men; could shake the confidence of the mightiest,
and bring into alliance the most contrary elements of society to effect
his purpose; whatever attempts he had to make in his temporal capacity
required to be supported by the pettiest inventions of secret policy, by
contrivances and deceits which, in time, rendered the proceedings of the
court of Rome proverbial as examples of cunning and duplicity.

[Sidenote: [755-775 A.D.]]

Stephen died, after a short but eventful pontificate of five years,
and was succeeded by his brother Paul (756 A.D.). The Greeks still
continued to proclaim their pretensions to the sovereignty of Italy; nor
dared the Roman pontiff, vain as were their claims, at once throw off
the appearance of allegiance. The Lombards, on the other hand, showed
themselves little inclined to preserve the treaty which had been formed
with the church. A tumult, equally dangerous to the state and to the
respectability of the pontificate, followed the death of Paul. Totona,
a nobleman of wealth and influence, formed the design of elevating his
brother Constantine to the vacant chair, and Constantine kept possession
of his usurped authority nearly a year. A strong effort was then made
by the great body of the clergy and the people to recover their invaded
right of election. The pontiff was seized, and deprived of his eyes. A
new pope ascended the throne.

Stephen III enjoyed his honours about four years, and then left them
to be possessed by Adrian I. The Lombards still pressed close upon the
boundaries of Rome. It was at this period, moreover, that the controversy
with the iconoclasts approached its highest degree of virulence; and
Adrian had to employ all the prudence of which he was master to meet the
dangers in which it involved him. The measures pursued by the empress
Irene were as unfavourable to his views as they were in themselves
violent and unjust. The iconoclasts were as odious to him as to her; they
were as opposed to the system which it was his object to establish, as
they were to her usurpations and tyranny. While he expressed his doubts,
therefore, as to the propriety of the new patriarch’s consecration,
and showed considerable backwardness in recognising the Second Council
of Nicæa, he attempted no vigorous resistance to the invasion of those
rules which were violated in her proceedings. The establishment of
image-worship promised effects more favourable to his general interests
than the assumption of authority by Tiresias, and his patroness was
offensive to his immediate feelings. But the church was now to receive
the support of a prince whose character and circumstances were equally
calculated to mark him for her champion.[c]

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE POPE

[Sidenote: [775-776 A.D.]]

Einhard[l] (Eginhard), the biographer of Charlemagne, informs us that
the strictest friendship subsisted between that monarch and Pope
Adrian I. In the still extant correspondence between them, we find the
freest communication of opinion and feeling both upon political and
ecclesiastical affairs. In exact conformity with the policy of his
predecessors, Adrian regarded the Frankish monarch as the covenanted
protector of the holy see and its possessions, and in that capacity
bound to recover for her every debt the pope might see fit to claim as
her “righteous due.” Thus when Leo, archbishop of Ravenna, refused to
relinquish his metropolitan rights over certain districts alleged to form
part of the donation of Charlemagne, the pope expressed his anxiety for
the presence and support of his friend and protector. Adrian, moreover,
suspected the royal _missi_, or commissioners, of collusion with the
vassal dukes of Benevento and Spoleto, to the injury of the holy see;
and, whether from authentic information or with a view to alarm his
correspondent for the safety of his Italian conquests, he magnified the
transactions complained of into a criminal conspiracy against the crown.
He told the king that the outbreak was actually fixed to take place
in the month of March then next following (776 A.D.); that Adelchis
(Adalgis), the son of Desiderius, the captive king of the Lombards, was
to appear on the coast with a Greek fleet; that Rome was to be assailed
both by sea and land, the churches were to be plundered, the pope was to
be carried into captivity, and the Lombard dynasty to be reinstated.

Other motives were not wanting to induce Charlemagne to pay a second
military visit to his newly acquired dominions in Italy. It had become
necessary to take immediate steps for the dissolution of a long-suspected
plot between his disaffected subject, Duke Tassilo of Bavaria, and the
partisans of the late dynasty. In the winter, therefore, of the year
776, he crossed the Alps at the head of a numerous army; the duke of
Friuli, who appears to have taken a principal part in the conspiracy,
was expelled from his duchy; and in a short time the presence of the
conqueror appears to have dispelled all apprehensions of further danger
either to church or state. The pope professed himself satisfied with
the result, and returned thanks for the protection afforded with great
apparent warmth and cordiality.

THE DONATION FROM CONSTANTINE

[Sidenote: [776-780 A.D.]]

Yet all had not, it seems, been done for the satisfaction of the
papal claims. Another and a different title to an almost imperial
power is brought to light. Now, for the first time after the lapse of
four centuries and a half, it is discovered that all which Pepin or
Charlemagne had conferred on the church of Rome was an insignificant
instalment of that more extensive dominion originally granted to the
chair of Peter by “the pious emperor Constantine.”

The expressions used by the pope to denote the extent of this supposed
donation are not free from uncertainty and ambiguity. The endowment of
“supreme power over all the region of the West,” alleged to have been
granted by Constantine the Great, must have comprehended much more than
the territories conveyed by the deeds of Pepin and Charlemagne. It is
therefore insinuated that, though those princes had dealt liberally by
the church, they would, notwithstanding, not have done their whole duty
until they should have given possession of all that had been comprised in
the original deed of gift. Charlemagne, it seems, was to consider himself
as the mere executor of his predecessor Constantine the Great; and in
that character it is obvious he must stand in a position of far less
observance than as the spontaneous patron and benefactor.

The fictitious donation was presented to him as absolute in its terms;
therefore as at once discharging the estate conveyed in the execution
of its provisions from all dues, duties, and conditions whatsoever,
claimable by the hand through which it passed to the rightful owner. It
was significantly hinted that his past services were held by the pope
to merge in his obligations for the future; that he should think less
of the benefits he had conferred than of the duties he might rightfully
be called upon to perform; and that, as long as a single item of the
infinite debt entailed upon him by his great testator remained unpaid,
he must consider himself as debtor to God and St. Peter for the whole.

It would be hardly fair to presume that the impudent forgery, afterwards
known by the title of the _Donation of Constantine_, had as yet found its
appropriate niche in the archives of the Lateran, or that it was included
among the documents which the pope instructed his envoys to produce
to Charlemagne. But among the multitude of eager searchers, the thing
wanted is generally near enough at hand for the purposes of the less
scrupulous among the number. In the reign of Pope Adrian I the desire
for territorial acquisition had been stimulated by success to a degree
of intensity scarcely paralleled in the history of secular ambition. In
such a disposition, a feather-light tradition might stand as good ground
for the most extravagant claims; and the fabrication of the outward proof
of what was already registered in men’s minds as accredited fact, might
appear as a mere venial condescension to the natural adhesion of mankind
to the usual and customary modes of proof.

[Illustration: VERY EARLY GREEK MANUSCRIPT OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS, GIVEN
BY QUEEN ELIZABETH TO SIR JOHN FORTESCUE]

The transient visit of Charlemagne to Italy in the year 776 appears
for the moment to have dissipated the apprehensions of the pope. Four
years later an interval of peace on his Saxon frontier and the temporary
submission of his turbulent vassal Tassilo of Bavaria left Charlemagne
at leisure to disentangle by his presence the ravelled state of Italian
affairs. He was probably anxious to acquaint himself personally with the
causes of the existing disorders, as well as to obtain an explanation
of the interruption in the harmony of his correspondence with the
pope, whom he sincerely honoured and was well disposed to support. The
critical state, however, of the coasts and frontiers, as depicted to
him by Adrian, appears to have made no serious impression. No military
preparations were thought necessary; and in the winter of the year 780,
Charlemagne, accompanied by his consort Hildegard, his two infant sons
Carloman and Louis, and escorted by no other force than his ordinary
household troops and followers, crossed the Alps into Italy. The
annalists of the age describe the expedition as a visit of devotion.

CHARLEMAGNE’S THIRD AND FOURTH ENTRANCES INTO ITALY

[Sidenote: [780-786 A.D.]]

In the spring of the year 781 Charlemagne arrived for the third time in
Rome, where he celebrated the great festival of Easter. Pope Adrian upon
this occasion conferred the right of baptism on the two young princes,
changing the name of the elder from that of Carloman to Pepin, in honour
of his grandfather; and at the same moment he crowned the elder “king
of the Lombards,” and the younger (Louis) king of Aquitaine. The honour
was accepted, probably solicited, by the king without any misgiving
as to the inferences that might thereafter be drawn from this or past
condescendencies of the like character. Charlemagne never scrupled to
make use of church or pontiff for the accomplishment of his political
purposes; and he now called upon Adrian to support the remonstrances he
thought it necessary to address to his nephew Tassilo by the aid of his
spiritual authority.

Charlemagne could not but acknowledge that he had been greatly indebted
to the exertions of the churchmen for the pacification of his Saxon
acquisitions; and in requital of this co-operation he was not inclined
to deny to his spiritual allies an important share in the profits of
victory. But the consciousness of present power shut out any sinister
view to the future. The church was, after all, in his hands no more than
an instrument for the accomplishment of his purposes; that she should
ever become his mistress was remote from his contemplation; and it is not
to be wondered at that he should have identified her interests with those
of his government in that spirit of gratitude which might in the sequel
be made to wear an aspect of homage very conducive to the progress of
hierarchical pretension.

Both parties were in the main inclined to regard each other as the means
and instruments for the promotion of their separate interests. But the
absence of any real reciprocity in the terms of compact could not but
very soon become apparent. No temporal benefit could be conferred by
the pope commensurate with the sacrifices the monarch was incessantly
called upon to make to the insatiate craving of the holy see for
those substantial augmentations, that costly support, that burdensome
protection, to which he was held to have pledged himself. Such an
understanding could last no longer than while either or both parties
were actuated rather by religious than by merely selfish motives. The
views of Pope Adrian had nothing of a properly religious character in
them; his correspondence is but an echo of the one shrill cry for “more.”
“Give, grant, endow, restore, and the blessed Peter shall surely send
you victory and prosperity.” This is the burden of the papal addresses
from the birth to the consummation of the alliance. A certain coincidence
of interests, supported upon the religious and loyal character of
Charlemagne, had hitherto cemented the union; but, though the result
might be overlooked, it is clear that as soon as those interests should
diverge or cease to exist, there remained nothing behind to prevent them
from falling into irreconcilable opposition. Even within this period of
apparent concord and cordiality some symptoms of such a divergency may be
detected.

[Sidenote: [786-795 A.D.]]

In the year 786 Charlemagne paid a fourth visit to Rome; and after
performing the customary devotional exercises at the principal shrines
and churches, he applied himself to the task of reducing the refractory
duke of Benevento to obedience. An accommodation was easily accomplished;
Charlemagne accepted the renewed oaths of allegiance of the duke and his
vassals, and carried away with him Grimwald (Grimoald), the second son of
Arichis (Arighis), as a pledge for the future obedience of the duke and
his subjects. No notice was taken of the papal claim upon the territory
of Benevento; and Pope Adrian once more saw his royal patron depart
without obtaining the object nearest to his heart. During the remainder
of his pontificate we trace no further attempt on the part of the pope to
realise his favourite project of aggrandisement. The momentary coolness
which had followed the defeat of the Calabrian Greeks produced no real
estrangement between him and his great patron; and Adrian died (795) in
the full enjoyment of the confidence and esteem of Charlemagne.

THE REALM OF THE POPES

At the close of the reign of Charlemagne the possessions of the church
of Rome may thus be identified with existing geographical divisions: (1)
In virtue of right, or pretension of right, originating prior to the
donation of Pepin, the pontiffs exercised temporal jurisdiction over the
city and duchy of Rome as it had existed under the Byzantine supremacy,
comprehending, as nearly as may now be ascertained, the modern district
emphatically known by the name of the “Patrimony Proper,” together with
the greatest portion if not the whole of the Campagna di Roma as far
south as Terracina. (2) By the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne the
church of Rome had reduced into possession the city and exarchate of
Ravenna, comprising the modern legations of Bologna, Romagna, Urbino,
and Ferrara, with the duchies of Parma and Modena and a portion of the
Venetian terra-firma on the mouths of the Po.

But these extensive tracts of country were regarded by the popes as but a
portion of their claim under the treaties of Pontyon and Quierzy and the
donation of Charlemagne. That claim extended over the islands of Corsica
and Sardinia, the entire duchies of Benevento and Spoleto, and all the
remaining dependencies of the Byzantines in southern Italy, including
both Calabrias and the adjacent island of Sicily; thus constituting in
the aggregate nearly the whole of Italy south of the river Po, ranging
thence along the eastern declivity of the Apennines as far as the
southernmost confine of the modern grand duchy of Tuscany, and thence
expanding over the breadth of the peninsula to the extreme coasts,
embracing all the greater adjoining islands and the territory of Istria
on the northeastern shores of the Adriatic Sea. Pope Adrian I died on the
26th of December in the year 795, after the unusually long pontificate of
twenty-three years and upwards. When Charlemagne heard of his demise, we
are told that he wept for him as for a brother.

[Sidenote: [795-800 A.D.]]

On the occasion of Charlemagne’s first visit to Rome (774), Pope Adrian
conferred upon him the title and dignity of patrician, or official
advocate and protector of the holy see. When shortly after the death
of that pontiff in the year 795, Leo, archpriest of the church of St.
Susanna, was elected to the vacant chair by the title of Leo III, the new
pope hastened to renew the patent of the patriciate, as if it were an
office expiring with the life of the grantor. As matters stood at this
moment between him and the king, it is safest to conclude that the pope
desired that the royal patrician should regard himself as captain-general
of the church, and that he should in that capacity be entitled to the
military services of its subjects, when called on by the church to
interfere for the protection of her temporal rights. But the act of
Pope Leo III, which placed his subjects under military obligation to a
stranger, was calculated to engender grave misunderstandings. The feudal
principle, now rapidly unfolding itself in the European polity, drew no
distinction between civil and military subjection; and the oath of the
Romans to the protector might be easily confounded with that of subject
to sovereign.

The constitutional or political powers exercised at this period by the
pontiffs within the city and territory of the church are very obscurely
indicated in the documents of the age. From what we discern on the
surface of history, no very well-defined relation subsisted between
the so-called “republic of Rome” and the spiritual ruler. The bond
which connected them, as far as, at this distance of time and with such
defective information, we can discern, was the recognised participation
of the richer and more powerful families in all the offices of government
and the dignities and emoluments of ecclesiastical promotion. But by such
an arrangement it is obvious that every just limit between spiritual and
temporal interests must be speedily obliterated; the result was verified
in the unutterable corruptions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Even
at this point of time, and for a long series of years past, many symptoms
of a vicious and demoralising relation between the constituents of the
Roman state are apparent.

In the fifth year of the pontificate of Leo III two relatives of Pope
Adrian I, Paschal the primicerius and Campulus the sacellarius of the
holy see, conspired to depose the reigning pontiff. After suffering
some personal injuries at the hands of his rebellious subjects, Leo
was expelled from the city; and he resolved to solicit redress in
person at the court of Charlemagne, who was at that moment sojourning
at Paderborn, within the confines of the vanquished Saxons. The king
received the suppliant pontiff with the highest honours, and listened to
his complaints with the profoundest attention. Of the special subjects
of the conference we are not informed; but in the autumn of the year 799
Leo returned to Rome under an escort sufficiently strong to insure his
personal safety. In the interim, the faction opposed to him had lost
ground, and he was received by the citizens with unusual tokens of joy
and affection.

Pope Leo was, as it appears, accompanied to Rome by two German prelates,
Hildebrand archbishop of Cologne, and Arno archbishop of Salzburg, as
_missi dominici_, or royal commissioners, charged to make due inquisition
into the offences imputed to the pope by his adversaries. The prelates
are said to have examined the evidence on both sides with great care
and minuteness, and at the close of it to have come to the conclusion
that nothing criminal had been established against the pope; upon which
decision his rebellious accusers were taken into custody and carried away
to France.

THE TRIAL OF THE POPE AND THE CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE

[Sidenote: [800 A.D.]]

Within the twelvemonth of the reinstatement of the pope, Charlemagne held
a great diet of the realm at Mainz. “There,” says the annalist,[m] “he
assembled his great nobles, his bishops, and his abbots all; and having
reported to them that there was now peace in all his borders, he called
to their minds the evils which the Romans had done to the apostolic
Leo; and he set his face to go into the parts of Rome, and thither he
accordingly proceeded.” This simple notice of the annalist of Moissac is
the only passage in any original chronicle in which a motive for this
fifth expedition of Charlemagne to Rome is assigned. The king arrived
at the gates of the city on the 24th of November, 800, and was received
by the pontiff under the porch of St. Peter’s church, outside the walls,
with all due devotion and honour. Seven days afterwards a solemn assembly
of the citizens was convoked, at which the king acquainted them with the
cause of his visit.

His next proceeding is not very intelligible. He assembled, we are told,
a solemn synod, still in the basilica of St. Peter, to inquire into the
crimes imputed to the pope; but whether the old or fresh inculpations is
not said. On this occasion the king and the pope sat beside each other,
surrounded by the nobility, the bishops, and the abbots of France and
Italy. The spiritual lords alone were seated; the inferior priests and
the laity of all ranks remained standing. Proclamation was then made
for the accusers to come forward and make their complaint; but no one
answered to the call. It is not apparent why this formality should have
been observed at all, inasmuch as the clergy had unanimously declared
themselves incompetent to sit in judgment upon a pontiff of the holy
see. The pope, however, intimated his intention to purge himself of all
the offences laid to his charge in the form established in like cases
by his predecessors. On the following day, therefore, he in full synod
took the books of the Gospels in his hands, and upon them he solemnly
protested his innocence; whereupon “the prelates and all the clergy burst
simultaneously into a hymn of thanksgiving, devoutly praising God, the
holy Virgin, St. Peter, and all the saints.”

Within the first month of the residence of Charlemagne in Rome nothing
took place indicative of any ulterior purpose. During all that time the
king had appeared to be absorbed in regulating the political affairs of
the church and city. But on Christmas Day of the year 800, while he and
the pope devoutly knelt together at the altar of St. Peter’s church,
engaged in the preliminary prayer before mass, the pontiff, as if moved
by a sudden impulse of inspiration, placed upon his head an elaborately
wrought and very costly imperial crown. At the same time the people,
as if prepared for the incident, simultaneously and as with one voice
exclaimed, “Long life to Charles, augustus, the great and peace-giving
emperor of the Romans, whom the hand of God hath crowned!” The salutation
was twice repeated; after which, according to imperial custom, he was
enthroned and anointed with holy oil, and worshipped by the pope.
“Whereby,” says the annalist,[m] “he was unanimously constituted emperor;
and dropping the title of patrician, he was thenceforth called ‘imperator
augustus.’”

Whether the crown was placed on his head with or without his consent, the
mode of conferring it was intended to imply that the king was a passive
party, that he accepted it as a boon or gift at the hands of the pope
without claim or pretence of right on his own part. The material crown
itself was of papal procurement and fabrication; the act of coronation
was that of the pontiff; he gave the crown, the Roman people ratified the
act and proclaimed the emperor. The transaction bears the character of a
joint act, in which Leo and the Romans performed the part of spontaneous
electors and sovereign depositaries of imperial power. The adoration was
a simple ceremony of recognition; it was unaccompanied with any new oath
of allegiance; the rights of the new emperor still resting upon the oath
of obedience to him as patrician. Ultimately the participation of the
people was no doubt considered as wholly accessory to the papal decision;
and the pope might well hold himself out to the world as the sole
depositary and dispenser of imperial authority. Upon this ground, indeed,
the papacy cast anchor, and for all future ages held on with amazing
pertinacity and success.

[Sidenote: [800-824 A.D.]]

On the other hand, Charlemagne and his subjects did not concern
themselves with any curious inquiry into the origin of the powers which
the imperial crown brought along with it. Yet, in conformity with their
general notion of government, they believed that Rome and her pontiff had
taken upon them the relation of subjects to the emperor whom they had
crowned and anointed. It is certain that Charlemagne regarded himself
as the sovereign of Rome, if not of the pope; he was emperor in his
own right as fully as if he had placed the crown upon his own head. In
conformity with the opinion and practice of his age, he grounded that
right upon possession. In the mind of the warrior there was no place for
any other derivation of title; and Charlemagne and his successors took as
little distinction between the possession and the sovereignty of Rome and
its appurtenant territories as they did in the case of his newly acquired
dominions in Germany, Lombardy, or Spain.

A few days after the coronation of Charlemagne, he directed the persons
implicated in the plot of the preceding year against the life and
government of the pope to be brought before him for judgment; and, as
supreme judge, he condemned them to the death of traitors. This exercise
of supreme criminal judicature indicates at least the assumption of
a power understood in that age to be a distinguishing attribute of
sovereign authority. The condemned criminals were indeed respited at the
intercession of the pope, and their punishment was commuted for exile;
but nothing occurred to indicate any jealous feeling on the part of the
pontiff; and throughout the winter of the year 801 Charlemagne continued
to exercise every prerogative of imperial power in Rome with as free a
hand as when he set up his migratory throne upon the banks of the Seine,
the Rhine, or the Elbe.

In the year 806 he executed a provisional settlement of the succession to
his vast dominions among his then surviving sons. During the whole course
of his life Charlemagne was anxious to invest his more important acts
with the sanction of religion. The settlement of 806, though provisional
only, was solemnly enacted and sworn to by his sons and the estates of
the realm assembled in diet at Thionville; and was soon afterwards sent
by the hand of the emperor’s secretary to Rome for the approval and
signature of the pope--a step which lay open to a construction probably
far beyond the intent of Charlemagne.[d]

PAPAL AMBITION AFTER CHARLEMAGNE

Almost immediately after Charlemagne’s death, Leo assumed to himself a
degree of authority which could not be exercised without equal injury to
the state and to the sacerdotal character. Stephen IV, his successor,
took the oath of allegiance, together with the whole of the people, as
soon as he ascended the pontifical throne; and announced to the monarch,
Louis the Pious, that he would attend him at whatever place he should
appoint. But the Christian meekness of the pontiff was exceeded by that
of the sovereign, who, on receiving his visit at Rheims, prostrated
himself three times at his feet. There is evidence, however, to prove
that it still required a man of equally powerful and ambitious mind
to take full advantage of the means of aggrandisement afforded by the
present position of the church. During the short reigns of several
successive popes, we see the power of the emperor distinctly at work, and
his right acknowledged, in the management of ecclesiastical affairs.

[Sidenote: [824-847 A.D.]]

In the year 824, and under the pontificate of Eugenius I, Louis sent his
son Lothair to Rome, to inquire into the truth of the complaints made by
the citizens against their sacerdotal chiefs; and when Gregory IV visited
France, for the purpose of effecting a reconciliation between Louis and
his son, the bishops of France, whom he appears to have threatened with
his censures, proudly dared him to a trial of his power, by informing
him that if he did aught against the canons, he should himself be
excommunicated or deposed. The pernicious counsel of one of his advisers
taught him to answer this intimation by fresh assertions of authority,
and he dared to commence the practice, which subsequently proved such
a fruitful source of disorder and scandal in Christendom, of declaring
the sovereign deposed because of his quarrel with the ruler of the Roman
church. The emperor Lothair was sufficiently tenacious of his authority
to issue especial orders, on the election of Sergius II without his being
consulted, that for the future no candidate for the papal throne should
be consecrated till he had given his assent to the election.

[Illustration: AN EXTRACT FROM BEZA’S TESTAMENT OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

In the midst of these events, the victorious Saracens were pursuing their
conquests over the most fertile provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
While Calabria was overrun by one division of the Saracens, Rome itself
was threatened by another. In vain did the terrified Romans look to the
descendants of Charlemagne for help; in vain did they proffer again their
broken allegiance to the emperor of the East. Neither the one nor the
other was in a condition to render the required assistance, and the city
appeared doomed to destruction. The venerable churches of St. Peter and
St. Paul, which inspired a feeling of devotion by their antiquity, and
of wonder by the magnificence of their shrines, were situated a short
distance from the walls; and the unfortunate citizens witnessed from
the ramparts the spoliation of these, the most sacred of their temples,
without the means of making a single effort for their defence. But the
rage produced by this spectacle, combined with the terror with which the
entrance of the enemy into the city was contemplated, roused them to
attempt some measure of resistance. The death of Sergius just at this
juncture greatly contributed to promote their success. In electing Leo IV
to the vacant office, they provided themselves with a skilful counsellor
and an energetic leader. The invader, after various assaults, was obliged
to retreat, in order to make the conquest of places less skilfully
defended.

The death of Leo was succeeded by much confusion, and in this period
of excitement and difficulty, the vacant chair was said to have been
ascended by a woman, the celebrated papess Joan.[c]

THE MYTH OF THE WOMAN POPE

[Sidenote: [847-855 A.D.]]

Joan was the name given to a female pope, now regarded as a fictitious
personage, who under the title of John VII or VIII was said, according
to the most general accounts, to have occupied the papal chair between
the pontificate of Leo IV and Benedict III, although various other dates
are given. Tradition represents her as of English descent, but born in
Ingelheim or Mainz. By some her original name is given as Gilberta,
by others as Agnes. She was credited with having fallen in love with
a young Benedictine monk, and with having on that account assumed the
male monastic habit and lived for some time in the monastery of Fulda.
Her lover, it is affirmed, died while they were pursuing their studies
together at Athens, and after his death she went to Rome, where,
according to the most approved version of the story, she became a very
successful professor. So high indeed became her reputation for piety and
learning that the cardinals with one consent elected the supposed young
monk the successor of Pope Leo IV. In this position she comported herself
so as to entirely justify their choice, until the catastrophe of giving
birth to a male child during a procession to the Lateran palace suddenly
and irrevocably blasted her reputation. She is said to have died in
childbirth or to have been stoned to death.

The story of the pontificate of Joan was received as fact from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century, but it has been discredited by later
researches. The circumstantial evidence around which it clung, and which
may have aided in suggesting it, was the observance of a circuit by the
papal processions so as to avoid passing through a certain street (a
statue at one time standing in that street, said to represent a woman and
child, with a monumental stone near it having a peculiar inscription),
and the use of a pierced seat at the enthronement of the popes. Of these
facts other and more credible explanations have, however, been given,
although there is no sufficient evidence to demonstrate beyond dispute
the manner in which the story originated. According to Dr. Döllinger,[e]
the tradition finds no support in the original text either of Marianus
Scotus,[n] Sigebert of Gemblours,[o] or Otto of Freysing.[p] She is first
mentioned by Stephen de Bourbon,[q] who died in 1261, and who took his
information probably from the chronicle of the Dominican Jean de Mailly,
no copy of which is now known to be in existence. The story is not found
in any of the original manuscripts of Martinus Polus,[r] and according to
Döllinger was interpolated in that chronicle some time between 1278 and
1312. He attributes the propagation of the myth chiefly to its insertion
in Martinus Polus, from which it was copied into the _Flores Temporum_,
a chronicle founded on Martinus, and its real originators he supposes
to have been the Dominicans and Minorites, who had a grudge against the
papacy on account of the persecutions they were experiencing at the
hands of Benedict VIII. So rapidly did the tradition spread that in 1400
a bust of the papess was placed in the cathedral of Siena along with
other popes, having the inscription, “John VIII, a woman from England.”
The statue occupied this position till the beginning of the seventeenth
century.[f]

[Sidenote: [847-867 A.D.]]

The eight years of Leo’s papacy were chiefly occupied in strengthening,
in restoring the plundered and desecrated churches of the two apostles,
and adorning Rome. The succession to Leo IV was contested between
Benedict III, who commanded the suffrages of the clergy and people, and
Anastasius, who, at the head of an armed faction, seized the Lateran,
stripped Benedict of his pontifical robes, and awaited the confirmation
of his violent usurpation by the imperial legates, whose influence he
thought that he had secured. But these commissioners, after strict
investigation, decided in favour of Benedict. Anastasius was expelled
with disgrace from the Lateran, his rival consecrated in the presence of
the emperor’s representatives. Anastasius, with unwonted mercy, was only
degraded to lay communion. The pontificate of Benedict III is memorable
chiefly for the commencement of the long strife between Ignatius and
Photius for the see of Constantinople. This strife ended in the permanent
schism between the Eastern and Western churches.

Nicholas I, the successor of Benedict, was chosen rather by the favour of
the emperor Louis and his nobles than that of the clergy (858). He has
been thought worthy to share the appellation of the Great with Leo I,
with Gregory I, with Hildebrand, and with Innocent III. At least three
great events signalised the pontificate of Nicholas I--the strife of
Photius with Ignatius for the archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople;
the prohibition of the divorce of King Lothair from his queen Theutberga;
and the humiliation of the great prelates on the Rhine, the successful
assertion of the papal supremacy even over Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims.
In the first two of these momentous questions, the contest about the see
of Constantinople, and that of Lothair, king of Lorraine, with his wife
Theutberga, Nicholas took his stand on the great eternal principles of
justice, humanity, and sound morals. These were no questions of abstruse
and subtle theology nor the assertion of dubious rights. In both cases
the pope was the protector of the feeble and the oppressed, the victims
of calumny and of cruelty. The bishop of Constantinople, unjustly
deposed, persecuted, exiled, treated with the worst inhumanity, implored
the judgment of the head of western Christendom. A queen, not only
deserted by a weak and cruel husband, but wickedly and falsely criminated
by a council of bishops, obtained a hearing at the court of Rome; her
innocence was vindicated, her accusers punished, the king himself
compelled to bow before the majesty of justice, made more venerable by
religion. If in both cases the language of Nicholas was haughty and
imperious, it was justified to the ears of men by the goodness of his
cause. The lofty supremacy which he asserted over the see of Byzantium
awoke no jealousy, being exerted in behalf of a blameless and injured
prelate. If he treated the royal dignity of France with contempt, it had
already become contemptible in the eyes of mankind; if he annulled by
his own authority the decree of a national council, composed of the most
distinguished prelates of Gaul, that council had already been condemned
by all who had natural sympathies with justice and with innocence. Yet,
though in both cases Nicholas displayed equal ability and resolution in
the cause of right, the event of the two affairs was very different.
The dispute concerning the patriarchate of Constantinople ended in the
estrangement, the alienation, the final schism between the East and West.
It was the last time that the pope was permitted authoritatively to
interfere in the ecclesiastical affairs of the East. The excommunication
of the Greek by the Latin church was the final act of separation. In the
West Nicholas established a precedent for control even over the private
morals of princes. The vices of kings, especially those of France, became
the stronghold of papal influence; injured queens and subjects knew to
what quarter they might recur for justice or for revenge. And on this
occasion the pope brought not only the impotent king, but the powerful
clergy of Lorraine, beneath his feet. The great bishops of Cologne and of
Trèves were reduced to abject humiliation.

RIVALRY OF NICHOLAS AND PHOTIUS

[Sidenote: [860-867 A.D.]]

The contention for the patriarchate of Constantinople was, strictly
speaking, no religious controversy--it was the result of political
intrigue and personal animosity. Ignatius, who became the patriarch,
was of imperial descent. In the revolution which dethroned his father,
Michael Rhangabé, he had taken refuge, under the cowl of a monk, from the
jealousy of Leo the Armenian. Photius was chosen as his successor. Rival
councils met, and the two patriarchs were alternately excommunicated by
the adverse spiritual factions.

Photius was the first to determine on an appeal to Rome. The pope, he
thought, would hardly resist the acknowledgment of his superiority, with
the tempting promise of the total extirpation of the hated iconoclasts.
Not merely did the pope address two lofty and condemnatory letters to the
emperor and to Photius, but a third also to “the faithful in the East,”
at the close of which he made known to the three Eastern patriarchs
his steadfast resolution to maintain the cause of Ignatius, to refuse
the recognition of the usurper Photius. The restoration of Ignatius
was commanded even in more imperious language, and under more awful
sanctions. “We, by the power committed to us by our Lord through St.
Peter, restore our brother Ignatius to his former station, to his see, to
his dignity as patriarch, and to all the honours of his office. Whoever,
after the promulgation of this decree, shall presume to disturb him in
the exercise of his office, separate from his communion, or dare to judge
him anew, without the consent of the apostolic see, if a clerk, shall
share the eternal punishment of the traitor Judas; if a layman, he has
incurred the malediction of Canaan; he is excommunicate, and will suffer
the same fearful sentence from the eternal Judge.”

Never had the power of the clergy or the supremacy of Rome been asserted
so distinctly, so inflexibly. The privileges of Rome were eternal,
immutable, anterior to, derived from no synod or council, but granted
directly by God himself; they might be assailed, but not transferred;
torn off for a time, but not plucked up by the roots. An appeal was open
to Rome from all the world, from her authority lay no appeal. The emperor
and Constantinople paid no regard to these terrible anathemas of the
pope.

SYNOD AT CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [867 A.D.]]

In the year 867 Photius had summoned a council at Constantinople; the
obsequious prelates listened to the arraignment, and joined in the
counter excommunication of Pope Nicholas. Photius drew up eight articles
inculpating in one the faith, in the rest the departure, of the see of
Rome from ancient and canonical discipline. Among the dreadful acts
of heresy and schism which were to divide forever the churches of the
East and West were: (1) the observance of Saturday as a fast; (2) the
permission to eat milk or cheese during Lent; (4) the restriction of
the chrism to the bishops; (6) the promotion of deacons at once to the
episcopal dignity; (7) the consecration of a lamb, according to the hated
Jewish usage; (8) the shaving of their beards by the clergy. The fifth
only of the articles objected to by Photius, the procession of the Holy
Ghost from the Father and the Son, was an error so awful as to deserve a
thousand anathemas. The third, condemning the enforced celibacy of the
clergy, was alone of high moral or religious importance. “From this usage
we see in the West,” says Photius, “so many children who know not their
fathers.” These, however, were but the pretexts for division. The cause
lay deeper, in the total denial of the papal supremacy by the Greeks;
their unequivocal assertion that with the empire that supremacy had
passed to Constantinople.

The decree of the council boasted the signature of the emperor (obtained,
it was said, in an hour of drunkenness); of Basil the Macedonian,
averred (most improbably) to have been forged; of the three eastern
patriarchs; of the senate and the great officers; of abbots and bishops
to the number of nearly one thousand. But the episcopal messenger who
was to bear to Rome this defiance of the church of Constantinople
and the counter-excommunication of the pope, had proceeded but a
short way on his journey when he was stopped by the orders of the new
emperor. A revolution in the palace was a revolution in the church of
Constantinople. The first act of Basil the Macedonian was to depose
Photius. Photius is said to have refused the communion to the murderer
Basil. From this time a succession of changes agitated the empire;
Photius rose or fell at each successive change.

Leo the Philosopher, the son of Basil, once more ignominiously expelled
him from his throne. Yet, though accused of treason, Photius was
acquitted and withdrew into honoured retirement. He did not live to
witness or profit by another revolution. Though the schism of thirty
years, properly speaking, expired in his person, and again a kind of
approximation to Rome took place, yet the links were broken which united
the two churches. The articles of difference, from which neither would
depart, had been defined and hardened into rigid dogmas. During the dark
times of the papacy which followed the disruption, even the intercourse
became more and more precarious. The popes of the next century were too
busy in defending their territories or their lives to regard the affairs
of the East. The darkness which gathered round both churches shrouded
them from each other’s sight.

[Sidenote: [860-867 A.D.]]

Nicholas the Great had not lived to triumph even in the first fall of
Photius. In the West his success was more complete; he had the full
enjoyment of conscious power exercised in a righteous cause. Not merely
did he behold one of Charlemagne’s successors prostrate at his feet,
obliged to abandon to papal censure and to degradation even his high
ecclesiastical partisans, but in succession the greatest prelates of
the West, the archbishop of Ravenna, the archbishops of Cologne and
Trèves, and even Hincmar, the archbishop of Rheims, who seemed to rule
despotically over the church and kingdom of France, were forced to bow
before his vigorous supremacy.

The matrimonial cause which for many years distracted part of France,
on which council after council met, and on which the great prelates of
Lorraine came into direct collision with the pope, and were reduced to
complete and unpitied humiliation under his authority, was that of King
Lothair and his queen Theutberga, as elsewhere described. He threatened
the king with immediate excommunication if he did not dismiss the
concubine Waldrada, and receive his repudiated queen. He then betook
himself to Attigny, the residence of Charles the Bald. He peremptorily
commanded the restoration of the bishop Rothrad, who had been
canonically, as it was asserted, deposed by Hincmar his metropolitan,
and was now irregularly, without inquiry or examination, replaced by the
arbitrary mandate of the pope. Hincmar murmured and obeyed; the trembling
king acquiesced in the papal decree.

But Nicholas did not live to enjoy his perfect triumph; he died in
November, 867 A.D.--a pontiff who, if he advanced no absolutely
unexampled pretensions to supremacy in behalf of the Roman see, yet, by
the favourable juncture and auspicious circumstances which he seized to
assert and maintain that authority, did more than all his predecessors to
strengthen and confirm it. During all his conflicts in the West with the
royal and with the episcopal power, the moral and religious sympathies of
mankind could not but be on his side. If his language was occasionally
more violent, even contemptuous, than became the moderation which, up
to this time, had mitigated the papal decrees, he might plead lofty and
righteous indignation; if he interfered with domestic relations, it was
in defence of the innocent and defenceless, and in vindication of the
sanctity of marriage; if he treated kings with scorn, it was because
they had become contemptible for their weakness or their vices; if he
interfered with episcopal or metropolitan jurisdiction, the inferior
clergy, even bishops, would be pleased to have a remote, and possibly
disinterested tribunal, to which they might appeal from prelates, chosen
only from aristocratic connections, barbarians in occupation and in
ferocity; if he was inexorable to transgressors, it was to those of
the highest order, prelates who had lent themselves to injustice and
iniquity, and had defied his power; if he annulled councils, those
councils had already been condemned for their injustice, had deserved the
reproachful appellation with which they were branded by the pope, with
all who had any innate or unperverted sentiment of justice and purity.
Hence the presumptuous usurpation even of divine power, so long as it was
thus beneficently used, awed, confounded all, and offended few. Men took
no alarm at the arrogance which befriended them against the oppressor and
the tyrant.

But this vast moral advancement of the popedom was not all which the
Roman see owes to Nicholas I; she owes the questionable boon of the
recognition of the _False Decretals_ as the law of the church.

THE _FALSE DECRETALS_

[Sidenote: [858-869 A.D.]]

Nicholas I not only saw during his pontificate the famous _False
Decretals_ take their place in the jurisprudence of Latin Christendom; if
he did not promulgate, he assumed them as authentic documents; he gave
them the weight of the papal sanction; and with their aid prostrated at
his feet the one great transalpine prelate who could still maintain the
independence of the Teutonic church, Hincmar archbishop of Rheims.

Up to this period the decretals, the letters or edicts of the bishops
of Rome, according to the authorised or common collection of Dionysius,
commenced with Pope Siricius, towards the close of the fourth century.
To the collection of Dionysius was added that of the authentic councils,
which bore the name of Isidore of Seville. On a sudden was promulgated,
unannounced, without preparation, not absolutely unquestioned, but
apparently overawing at once all doubt, a new code, which to the former
authentic documents added fifty-nine letters and decrees of the twenty
oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades (Miltiades), and the donation of
Constantine; and in the third part, among the decrees of the popes and
of the councils from Silvester to Gregory II, thirty-nine false decrees,
and the acts of several unauthentic councils. In this vast manual of
sacerdotal Christianity the popes appear from the first the parents,
guardians, legislators of the faith throughout the world. The _False
Decretals_ do not merely assert the supremacy of the popes--the dignity
and privileges of the bishop of Rome--they comprehend the whole dogmatic
system and discipline of the church, the whole hierarchy from the highest
to the lowest degree, their sanctity, and immunities, their persecutions,
their disputes, their right of appeal to Rome.

But for the too manifest design, the aggrandisement of the see of Rome
and the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in subordination to the see of
Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of history, which betrays itself in
glaring anachronisms, and in the utter confusion of the order of events
and the lives of distinguished men--the former awakening keen and jealous
suspicion, the latter making the detection of the spuriousness of the
whole easy, clear, irrefragable--the _False Decretals_ might still have
maintained their place in ecclesiastical history. They are now given up
by all; not a voice is raised in their favour; the utmost that is done by
those who cannot suppress all regret at their explosion, is to palliate
the guilt of the forger, to call in question or to weaken the influence
which they had in their own day, and throughout the later history of
Christianity.

The author or authors of this most audacious and elaborate of pious
frauds are unknown; the date and place of its compilation are driven
into such narrow limits that they may be determined within a few years,
and within a very circumscribed region. The _False Decretals_ came not
from Rome; the time of their arrival at Rome, after they were known
beyond the Alps, appears almost certain. In one year Nicholas I is
apparently ignorant of their existence, the next he speaks of them with
full knowledge. They contain words manifestly used at the Council of
Paris (829 A.D.), consequently are of later date; they were known to the
Levite Benedict of Metz, who composed a supplement to the collection
of capitularies by Adgesil, between 840-847 A.D. The city of Metz is
designated with nearly equal certainty as the place in which, if not
actually composed, they were first promulgated as the canon law of
Christendom.

The state of affairs in the divided and distracted empire might seem
almost to call for, almost to justify, this desperate effort to
strengthen the ecclesiastical power. All the lower clergy, including
some of the bishops, were groaning, just at this time, under heavy
oppression. By the constitution of Charlemagne, which survived under
Louis the Pious, and, so long as the empire maintained its unity,
asserted the independence of the transalpine hierarchy of all but the
temporal sovereign, the clergy were under strict subordination to the
bishop, the bishop to the metropolitan, the metropolitan only to the
emperor. Conflicting popes, or popes in conflict with Italian enemies, or
with their own subjects, had reduced the papacy to vassalage under the
empire. Conflicting kings, on the division of the realm of Charlemagne,
had not yet, but were soon about to submit the empire to the Roman
supremacy. All at present was anarchy. The Germans and the French were
drawing asunder into separate rival nations; the sons of Louis were
waging an endless, implacable strife. Almost every year, less than every
decade of years, beheld a new partition of the empire; kingdoms rose and
fell, took new boundaries, acknowledged new sovereigns; no government was
strong enough to maintain the law; might was the only law.

The hierarchy, if not the whole clergy, had taken the lead in the
disruption of the unity of the empire; they had abased the throne of
Louis; they were for a short disastrous period now the victims of that
abasement. Their wealth was their danger. They had become secular
princes, they had become nobles, they had become vast landed proprietors.
But during the civil wars it was not the persuasive voice, but the strong
arm, which had authority; the mitre must bow before the helmet, the
crosier before the sword. Not only the domains, the persons of the clergy
had lost their sanctity. The persecution and oppression of the church and
the clergy had reached a height unknown in former times.

[Illustration: AN EXTRACT FROM ST. AUGUSTINE’S PSALTER]

It might occur to the most religious that for the sake of religion; it
might occur to those to whom the dignity and interest of the sacerdotal
order were their religion, that some effort must be made to reinvest the
clergy in their imperilled sanctity. There must be some appeal against
this secular, this ecclesiastical tyranny; and whither should appeal
be? It could not be to the Scriptures, to the Gospel. It must be to
ancient and venerable tradition, to the unrepealed, irrepealable law
of the church; to remote and awful Rome. Rome must be proclaimed in an
unusual, more emphatic manner, the eternal, immemorial court of appeal.
The tradition must not rest on the comparatively recent names of Leo the
Great, of Innocent the Great, of Siricius, or the right of appeal depend
on the decree of the Council of Sardica. It must come down from the
successors of St. Peter himself in unbroken succession. The whole clergy
must have a perpetual, indefeasible sanctity of the same antiquity. So
may the idea of this, to us it seems, monstrous fiction have dawned
upon its author; himself may have implicitly believed that he asserted
no prerogative for Rome which Rome herself had not claimed, which he
did not think to be her right. It is even now asserted, perhaps can
hardly be disproved, that the _False Decretals_ advanced no pretensions
in favour of the see of Rome which had not been heard before in some
vague and indefinite, but not therefore less significant, language. The
boldness of the act was in the new authority in which it arrayed these
pretensions. The new code was enshrined, as it were, in a framework
of deeply religious thought and language; it was introduced under the
venerated name of Isidore of Seville; it was thus attached to the
authentic work of Isidore, which had long enjoyed undisputed authority.
Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, as the most powerful, so, perhaps, the
most learned transalpine ecclesiastic, who might at once have exposed
the fiction, which he could hardly but know to be a fiction, co-operated
more than anyone else to establish its authority. So long as he supposed
it to advance or confirm his own power, he suppressed all intrusive
doubts; he discovered too late that it was a trap (a mousetrap is his
own undignified word) to catch unwary metropolitans. Hincmar was caught,
beyond all hope of escape. In the appeal of Rothrad, bishop of Soissons,
against Hincmar, metropolitan of Rheims, Pope Nicholas I at first alleges
no word of the new decretals in favour of his right of appeal; he
seemingly knows no older authority than that of Innocent, Leo, Siricius,
and the Council of Sardica. The next year not merely is he fully master
of the pseudo-Isidorian documents, but he taunts Hincmar with now calling
in question, when it makes against him, authority which he was ready to
acknowledge in confirmation of his own power. Hincmar is forced to the
humiliation of submission. Rothrad, deposed by Hincmar, deposed by the
Council of Senlis, is reinstated in his see.

This immediate, if somewhat cautious, adoption of the fiction,
unquestionably not the forgery, by Pope Nicholas, appears less capable of
charitable palliation than the original invention. Nor did the successors
of Nicholas betray any greater scruple in strengthening themselves by
this welcome, and therefore only unsuspicious aid. It is impossible to
deny that, at least by citing without reserve or hesitation, the Roman
pontiffs gave their deliberate sanction to this great historic fraud.

Nor must be overlooked, perhaps, the more important result of the
acceptance of the pseudo-Isidorian statutes as the universal, immemorial,
irrepealable law of Christendom. It established the great principle
which Nicholas I had before announced, of the sole legislative power of
the pope. Every one of these papal epistles was a canon of the church;
every future bull therefore rested on the same irrefragable authority,
commanded the same implicit obedience. The papacy became a legislative
as well as an administrative authority. Infallibility was the next
inevitable step, if infallibility was not already in the power asserted
to have been bestowed by the Lord on St. Peter, by St. Peter handed down
in unbroken descent, and in a plenitude which could not be restricted or
limited, to his successors.

ADRIAN II

Nicholas was succeeded (November, 867) by Adrian II, a rigid and lofty
churchman, who, though his policy at first appeared doubtful, resolutely
maintained, but not with equal judgment and success, the principles of
his predecessor. Adrian (he was now seventy-five years old) had been
married before he became a priest. At the intercession of the emperor
Louis, he took off the ban of excommunication from Waldrada, and restored
her to the communion of the church. By this lenity he might seem to lure
King Lothair to the last act of submission. The king of Lorraine arrived
in Italy. The pope seemed to yield to the influence of Louis and the
empress Ingelberga; at least he accepted the munificent presents of the
king.

[Sidenote: [869-876 A.D.]]

From Monte Cassino, where they first met, Lothair followed the pope to
Rome. There, instead of being received as a king, and as one reconciled
with the see of Rome, when he entered the church all was silent and
vacant; not one of the clergy appeared; he retired to a neighbouring
chamber, which was not even swept for his reception. The next day was
Sunday, and he hoped to hear the mass chanted before him. The pope
refused him this honour. He dined, however, the next day with the pope,
and an interchange of presents took place. At length Adrian consented to
admit him to the communion.

Pope Adrian seized the occasion of the contest for the kingdom of Lothair
to advance still more daring and unprecedented pretensions. But the
world was not yet ripe for this broad and naked assertion of secular
power by the pope, his claim to interfere in the disposal of kingdoms.
Directly he left the strong ground of moral and religious authority, from
which his predecessor Nicholas had commanded the world, he encountered
insurmountable resistance. With all that remained of just and generous
sympathy on their side popes might intermeddle in the domestic relations
of kings; they were not permitted as yet to touch the question of royal
succession or inheritance. The royal and the episcopal power had quailed
before Nicholas; the fulminations of Adrian were treated with contempt or
indifference: and Hincmar of Rheims in this quarrel with Adrian regained
that independence and ascendency which had been obscured by his temporary
submission to Nicholas.

Nicholas I and Adrian II thus, with different success, imperiously
dictating to sovereigns, ruling or attempting to rule the higher
clergy in foreign countries with a despotic sway, mingling in the
political revolutions of Europe, awarding crowns, and adjudging kingly
inheritances, might seem the immediate ancestors of Gregory VII, of
Innocent III, of Boniface VIII. But the papacy had to undergo a period
of gloom and degradation, even of guilt, before it emerged again to its
height of power.

The pontificate of John VIII (872) is the turning-point in this gradual,
but rapid and almost total change; among its causes were the extinction
of the imperial branch of the Carlovingian race and the frequent
transference of the empire from one line of sovereigns to another;
with the growth of the formidable dukes and counts in Italy, which
overshadowed the papal power and reduced the pope himself to the slave
or the victim of one of the contending factions. The pope was elected,
deposed, imprisoned, murdered. In the wild turbulence of the times not
merely the reverence but the sanctity of his character disappeared. He
sank to the common level of mortals; and the head of Christendom was as
fierce and licentious as the petty princes who surrounded him, out of
whose stock he sprang, and whose habits he did not break off when raised
to the papal throne.

John VIII, however, still stood on the vantage ground occupied by
Nicholas I and Adrian II. He was a Roman by birth. He signalised his
pontificate by an act even more imposing than those of his predecessors,
the nomination to the empire, which his language represented rather as
a grant from the papal authority than as an hereditary dignity; it was
a direct gift from heaven, conveyed at the will of the pope. Already
there appear indications of a French and German interest contending for
the papal influence which grows into more and more decided faction, till
the Carlovingian empire is united, soon to be dissolved forever, in the
person of Charles the Fat. John VIII adopted the dangerous policy of a
partial adherence to France. But the historians are almost unanimous as
to the price which Charles was compelled to pay for his imperial crown.
He bought the pope, he bought the senators of Rome; he bought, if we
might venture to take the words to the letter, St. Peter himself.

[Sidenote: [876-878 A.D.]]

The imperial reign of Charles the Bald was short and inglorious. The
whole pontificate of John VIII was a long, if at times interrupted, agony
of apprehension lest Rome should fall into the hands of the unbeliever.
The reign of the late emperor Louis had been almost a continual warfare
against the Mohammedans, who had now obtained a firm footing in southern
Italy. He had successfully repelled their progress, but at the death of
Louis Rome was again in danger of becoming a Mohammedan city. The pope
wrote letter after letter in the most urgent and feeling language to
Charles the Bald soon after he had invested him with the empire. “If all
the trees in the forest,” such is the style of the pope, “were turned
into tongues, they could not describe the ravages of these impious
pagans; the devout people of God are destroyed by a continual slaughter;
he who escapes the fire and the sword is carried as a captive into
exile. Cities, castles, and villages are utterly wasted, and without an
inhabitant. The bishops are wandering about in beggary, or fly to Rome as
the only place of refuge.”

Yet, if possible, even more formidable than the infidels were the petty
Christian princes of Italy. “The canker-worm eats what the locust has
left.” In many parts of Italy had gradually arisen independent dukedoms;
and none of these appear to have felt any religious respect for the
pope, some not for Christianity. On the vacancy after the death of Pope
Nicholas, Lambert of Spoleto had occupied and pillaged Rome, respecting
neither monastery nor church, and carrying off a great number of young
females of the highest rank. Adelchis, the duke of Benevento, had dared
to seize in that city the sacred person of the emperor Louis. He was
only permitted to leave the city after he had taken a solemn oath to
Adelchis--an oath in which his wife, his daughter, and all his attendants
were compelled to join--that he would neither in his own person nor by
any other revenge this act of insolent rebellion. No sooner, however,
had Louis reached Ravenna in safety than he sent to the pope to absolve
him from his oath. Adrian II, then pope, began to assert that dangerous
privilege of absolution from solemn and recorded oaths.

The bishop-duke of Spoleto did not scruple to return to the unhallowed
policy of his brother. He entered into a new league with the Saracens,
gave them quarters, and actually uniting his troops with theirs, defeated
the forces of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, and opened a free passage
for their incursions to the gates of Rome.

The imperial crown was again vacant, and claimed by the conflicting
houses of France and Germany. But Carloman, son of Ludwig of Germany,
had been acknowledged as king of Italy. Probably as partisans of the
German, and to compel the pope to abandon the interest of the French
line, to which he adhered with unshaken fidelity, Lambert, duke of
Spoleto, that antichrist, as the pope described him, with his adulterous
sister, Richildis, and his accomplice, the treacherous Adalbert, count
of Tuscany, at the head of an irresistible force, entered Rome, seized
and confined the pope, and endeavoured to starve him into concession,
and compelled the clergy and the Romans to take an oath of allegiance to
Carloman, as king of Italy. For thirty days the religious services were
interrupted; not a single lamp burned on the altars.

[Sidenote: [878-891 A.D.]]

No sooner had they retired than the pope caused all the sacred treasures
to be conveyed from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, covered the altar of
St. Peter with sackcloth, closed the doors, and refused to permit the
pilgrims from distant lands to approach the shrine. He then fled to
Ostia, and embarked for France.

When he reached the shores of Provence, John VIII felt himself in another
world. Instead of turbulent and lawless enemies (such were the counts and
dukes of Italy) whose rapacity or animosity paid no respect to sacred
things, and treated the pope like an ordinary mortal, the whole kingdom
of France might seem to throw itself humbly at his feet. No pope was more
prodigal of excommunication than John VIII. Of his letters (above three
hundred) it is remarkable how large a proportion threaten, inflict, or at
least allude to this last exercise of sacerdotal power.

The indefatigable pope returned over the Alps by the Mont Cenis, to
Turin and Pavia; but of all whom he had so commandingly exhorted, and
so earnestly implored to march for his protection against the Saracens,
and no doubt against his Italian enemies, none obeyed but Duke Boson
of Provence. The Saracens, in the meantime, courted by all parties,
impartially plundered all, made or broke alliances with the same facility
with the Christians, while the poor monks, even of St. Benedict’s own
foundation, lived in perpetual fear of spoliation. The last days of
John VIII were occupied in writing more and more urgent letters for aid
to Charles the Fat, in warfare, or providing means of war against his
Saracen and Christian foes, or dealing excommunications on all sides; yet
facing with gallant resolution the foes of his person and his power. This
violent pope is said (but by one writer only) to have come to a violent
end; his brains were beaten out with a mallet by some enemy, covetous of
his wealth and ambitious of the papal crown.

The short pontificate of Marinus (Marinus I or Martin II) was followed by
the still shorter rule of Adrian III, which lasted but fourteen months.
That of Stephen V, though not of longer duration, witnessed events of far
more importance to the papacy, to Italy, and to Christendom. On the death
of Charles the Fat, the ill-cemented edifice of the Carlovingian Empire,
the discordant materials of which had reunited, not by natural affinity
but almost by the force of accident, dissolved again and forever. The
legitimate race of Charlemagne expired in the person of his unworthy
descendant, whose name, derived from mere physical bulk, contrasted
with the mental greatness, the commanding qualities of military,
administrative, and even intellectual superiority which had blended with
the name of the first Charles the appellation of the Great.

POPE FORMOSUS

[Sidenote: [891-897 A.D.]]

The death of Stephen, September, 891, and the election of Formosus to the
papacy, changed the aspect of affairs, and betrayed the hostilities still
rankling at Rome. By the election of Formosus was violated the ordinary
canonical rule against the translation of bishops from one see to another
(Formosus was bishop of Porto), which was still held in some respect.
There were yet stronger objections to the election of a bishop who had
been excommunicated by a former pontiff, excommunicated as an accomplice
in a conspiracy to murder the pope. The excommunicated Formosus had
been compelled to take an oath never to resume his episcopal functions,
never to return to Rome, and never to presume but to lay communion. The
successor of John had granted absolution from these penalties, from this
oath.

This election must have been a desperate measure of an unscrupulous
faction. Nor was Formosus chosen without a fierce and violent struggle.

The suffrages of a party among the clergy and people had already fallen
upon Sergius. He was actually at the altar preparing for the solemn
ceremony of inauguration, when he was torn away by the stronger faction.
Formosus, chosen, as his partisans declared, for his superior learning
and knowledge of the Scripture, was then invested in the papal dignity.

When Pope Formosus died, May 23rd, 896, the election fell to Boniface
VII. The new pontiff laboured under the imputation of having been
twice deposed for his profligate and scandalous life, first from the
subdiaconate, afterwards from the priesthood. Boniface died of the gout
fifteen days after his elevation. The Italian party hastened to the
election of Stephen VI.

Probably the German governor had withdrawn before Stephen and his faction
proceeded to wreak their vengeance on the lifeless remains of Formosus.
Fierce political animosity took the form of ecclesiastical solemnity. The
body was disinterred, dressed in the papal habiliments, and, before a
council assembled for the purpose, addressed in these words: “Wherefore
wert thou, being bishop of Porto, tempted by ambition to usurp the
Catholic see of Rome?” The deacon who had been assigned as counsel for
the dead maintained a prudent silence. The sacred vestments were then
stripped from the body, three of the fingers cut off, the body cast into
the Tiber. All who had been ordained by Formosus were reordained by
Stephen. Such, however, were the vicissitudes of popular feeling in Rome,
that some years after a miracle was said to have asserted the innocence
of Formosus. His body was found by fishermen in the Tiber, and carried
back for burial in the church of St. Peter. As the coffin passed, all the
images in the church reverentially bowed their heads.

[Illustration: A MONK OF THE MIDDLE AGES]

The pontificate of Stephen soon came to an end. A new revolution revenged
the disinterment of the insulted prelate. And now the fierceness
of political rather than religious faction had utterly destroyed
all reverence for the sacred person of the pope. Stephen was thrown
into prison by his enemies, and strangled. The convenient charge of
usurpation, always brought against the popes whom their adversaries
dethroned or put to death, may have reconciled their minds to the impious
deed, but it is difficult to discover in what respect the title of Pope
Stephen VI was defective.

[Sidenote: [897-911 A.D.]]

Pope now succeeded pope with such rapidity as to awaken the inevitable
suspicion, either that those were chosen who were likely to make a speedy
vacancy, or they received but a fatal gift in the pontificate of Rome.
Romanus and Theodore II survived their promotion each only a few months.
The latter, by his restoration of Formosus to the rights of Christian
burial, and by his reversal of the acts of Stephen VI, may be presumed
to have belonged to that faction. The next election was contested with
all the strength and violence of the adverse parties. John IX was
successful; his competitor Sergius, according to some accounts formerly
the discomfited competitor of Formosus, and his bitter and implacable
enemy, fled to the powerful protection of the marquis of Tuscany. Sergius
was excommunicated, with several other priests and inferior clergy, as
accessory to the insults against the body of Formosus. Sergius laughed to
scorn the thunders of his rival, so long as he was under the protection
of the powerful house of Tuscany. With John IX, who died July, 901,
closed the ninth century of Christianity; the tenth, in Italy at least
the iron age, had already darkened upon Rome; the pontificate had been
won by crime and vacated by murder.

This iron age, as it has been called, opened with the pontificate of
Benedict IV (900-903), the successor of John IX. The only act recorded
of Benedict IV was the coronation of the unfortunate Louis of Provence,
the competitor of Berengar for the empire. Louis, according to imperial
usage, set up his tribunal and adjudged causes at Rome. On the death of
Benedict, the prudent precautions established by John IX to introduce
some regularity and control over the anarchy of an election by a clergy
rent into factions by a lawless nobility, and still more lawless people,
during this utter helplessness and the abeyance, or the strife for the
empire between rival princes, fell into utter neglect or impotency. The
papacy became the prize of the most active, daring, and violent. Leo V
won the prize; before two months he was ejected and thrown into prison by
Christopher, one of his own presbyters and chaplains. The same year, or
early in the next, Christopher was in his turn ignominiously driven from
Rome.

It was under the protection of the powerful Tuscan prince Berengar that
the exiled Sergius, at the head of a strong force of Tuscan soldiers,
appeared in Rome, deposed Christopher, who had just deposed Leo V, and
took possession of the papal throne. Sergius had been seven years an
exile in Tuscany; for seven years he ruled as supreme but not undisputed
pontiff. This pope has been loaded with every vice and every enormity
which can blacken the character of man. Yet as to his reign there is
almost total obscurity. The only certain act which has transpired is his
restoration of the Lateran palace, which had fallen into ruins; an act
which indicates a period of comparative peace and orderly administration,
with the command of a large revenue. In these violent times Sergius
probably scrupled at no violence; but if he drove a pope from the throne
of St. Peter, that pope had just before deposed his patron, and with
great cruelty.

THEODORA IN POWER

But during the papacy of Sergius rose into power the infamous Theodora,
with her daughters Marozia and Theodora, the prostitutes who, in the
strong language of historians, disposed for many years the papal tiara,
and not content with disgracing by their own licentious lives the chief
city of Christendom, actually placed their profligate paramours or
base-born sons in the chair of St. Peter. The influence obtained by
Theodora and her daughters, if it shows not the criminal connivance
of Pope Sergius, or a still more disgraceful connection with which he
was charged by the scandal of the times, proves at least the utter
degradation of the papal power in Rome. It had not only lost all
commanding authority, but could not even maintain outward decency.
Theodora was born of a noble and wealthy senatorial family, on whom
she has entailed an infamous immortality. The women of Rome seem at
successive periods seized with a kind of Roman ambition to surpass their
sex by the greatness of their virtues and of their vices. These females
were to the Paulas and Eustochiums of the younger and severer age of
Roman Christianity, what the Julias and Messallinas of the empire were to
the Volumnias and Cornelias of the republic.

[Sidenote: [911-928 A.D.]]

It must be acknowledged that if the stern language of Tacitus and Juvenal
may have darkened the vices of the queens and daughters of the cæsars,
the bishop of Cremona,[s] our chief authority on the enormities of
Theodora and her daughters, wants the moral dignity, while he is liable
to the same suspicion as those great writers. Throughout the lives of
the pontiffs themselves we have to balance between the malignant license
of satire and the unmeaning phrases of adulatory panegyric. On the other
hand it is difficult to decide which is more utterly unchristian--the
profound hatred which could invent or accredit such stories; the utter
dissoluteness which made them easily believed; or the actual truth of
such charges.

Liutprand[s] relates that John, afterwards the tenth pope of that name,
being employed in Rome on some ecclesiastical matters by the archbishop
of Ravenna, was the paramour of Theodora, who not only allowed but
compelled him to her embraces. John was first appointed to the see of
Bologna; but the archbishopric of Ravenna, the second ecclesiastical
dignity in Italy, falling vacant before he had been consecrated, he was
advanced by the same dominant influence to that see. But Theodora bore
with impatience the separation of two hundred miles from her lover.
Anastasius III had succeeded Sergius (911) and occupied the papacy for
rather more than two years; after him Lando for six months (913). On the
death of Lando (914) by a more flagrant violation of the canonical rule
than that charged against the dead body of Formosus, John was translated
from the archiepiscopate of Ravenna to the see of Rome. But Theodora, if
she indeed possessed this dictatorial power, and the clergy and people of
Rome, if they yielded to her dictation, may have been actuated by nobler
and better motives than her gratification of a lustful passion, if not by
motives purely Christian. For however the archbishop of Ravenna might be
no example of piety or holiness as the spiritual head of Christendom, he
appears to have been highly qualified for the secular part of his office.
He was a man of ability and daring, eminently wanted at this juncture to
save Rome from becoming the prey of Mohammedan conquest, organising a
powerful confederacy of neighbouring dukes to accomplish this purpose.

He placed himself at the head of the army, and for the first time the
successor of St. Peter, the vicar of the Prince of peace, rode forth
in his array to battle. And if success, as it doubtless was, might be
interpreted as a manifestation of divine approval, the total discomfiture
of the Saracens and the destruction of the troublesome fortress on the
Garigliano seemed to sanction this new and unseemly character assumed by
the pope. Even the apostles sanctioned or secured by their presence the
triumph of the warlike pope.

For fourteen years (914-928), obscure as regards Rome and the
pontificate, this powerful prelate occupied the see of Rome. If he gained
it (a doubtful charge) by the vices and influence of the mother Theodora,
he lost it, together with his life, by the no less flagrant vices and
more monstrous power of the daughter Marozia.

THE INFAMOUS MAROZIA

[Sidenote: [925-931 A.D.]]

Theodora disappears; and Pope John X is found engaged in a fierce
contest for the mastery of Rome with Marozia and her lover or husband,
the marquis Alberic, by whom she had a son of the same name, afterwards
tyrant of the city. The vigorous and martial pontiff succeeds in
expelling Alberic from the city; Alberic probably met his death soon
after (925). It is said that he was murdered by the Romans in revenge
for some secret alliance entered into with the Hungarians, who were then
wasting Italy, and had reached the very frontiers of Calabria.

The death of her husband increased rather than weakened the power of
Marozia. Her personal charms, and her unscrupulous use of them, are said
to have multiplied to an infinite extent her adherents. Her paramours
made a strong party. The empire was vacant. There was no potentate to
whom the pope could appeal. Marozia seized the castle of St. Angelo, and
with this precious dowry, which commanded Rome, she sought to confirm
her power by some splendid alliance. Guido, the duke of Tuscany, the son
of Adalbert the marquis, did not disdain the nuptials with a profligate
woman who brought Rome as her marriage portion.

John X was left to contest alone the government of Rome with Marozia and
her Tuscan husband. Neither Rome nor the mistress of Rome regarded the
real services rendered by John X to Christendom and to Italy. The former
lover, as public scandal averred, of her mother, the saviour of Rome from
the Saracens, was surprised in the Lateran palace by this daring woman.
His brother Peter, as it appears, his great support in the contest for
the government of Rome, and therefore the object of peculiar hatred to
Guido and Marozia, was killed before his face. The pope was thrown into
prison, where some months after he died (929) either of anguish and
despair, or by more summary means. It was rumoured that he was smothered
with a pillow. No means were too violent for Marozia to employ even
against a pope.

Marozia did not venture at once to place her son on the papal throne.
A Leo VI was pope for some months; a Stephen VII for two years and one
month. That son may as yet have been too young even for this shameless
woman to advance him to the highest ecclesiastical dignity; her husband
Guido may have had some lingering respect for the sacred office, some
struggling feelings of decency. But at the death of Stephen, Marozia
again ruled alone in Rome; her husband Guido was dead, and her son
was pope. John XI (according to the rumours of the time, of which
Liutprand,[s] a follower of Hugo of Provence, may be accepted as a
faithful reporter) was the offspring of Marozia by the pope Sergius; more
trustworthy authorities make him the lawful son of her husband Alberic.
But the obsequious clergy and people acquiesced without resistance in the
commands of their patrician mistress; the son of Marozia is successor of
St. Peter.

But the aspiring Marozia, not content with having been the wife of a
marquis, the wife of the wealthy and powerful duke of Tuscany, perhaps
the mistress of one, certainly the mother of another pope, looked still
higher in her lustful ambition; she must wed a monarch. She sent to offer
herself and the city of Rome to the new king of Italy, Hugo of Provence,
who was not scrupulous in his amours, lawful or unlawful. Through policy
or through passion he was always ready to form or to break these tender
connections. The cautious Marozia would not allow his army to enter the
city, but received her royal bridegroom in the castle of St. Angelo.
There was celebrated this unhallowed marriage.

REBELLION OF ROME

[Sidenote: [931-953 A.D.]]

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE TENTH CENTURY]

But though the Romans would brook the dominion of a Roman woman, they
would not endure that of a foreigner. The coarse vices, the gluttony of
the soldiers of Hugo offended the fastidious Italians. The insolence of
Hugo himself provoked a rebellion. The nobles were called upon to perform
menial offices, usual probably in the half feudal transalpine courts but
alien to Italian manners. Alberic, the son of Marozia, was commanded
to hold the water in which King Hugo washed his hands. Performing his
office awkwardly or reluctantly, he spilled the water, and received a
blow on the face from the king. Already may Alberic have been jealous
of the promotion of his brother to the popedom, and have resented this
devotion of his mother to her new foreign connections. He was a youth of
daring; he organised a conspiracy among the nobles of Rome; he appealed
to the old Roman pride: “Shall these Burgundians, of old the slaves of
Rome, tyrannise over Romans?” At the tolling of the bell the whole people
flocked to his banner, and attacked the castle of St. Angelo before Hugo
could admit his own troops. Alberic remained master of the castle, of his
mother, and of the pope. These two he cast into prison, defied the king
of Italy, who made an ignominious retreat, and from that time remained
master of Rome.

For four years Pope John XI lingered in fact a prisoner, at least
without any share in the government of Rome, only permitted to perform
his spiritual functions. Alberic ruled undisturbed. King Hugo attempted
to bribe him to the surrender of Rome, by the offer of his daughter in
marriage; the more crafty Alberic married the daughter, and retained
possession of Rome. After the death of John a succession of popes,
appointed, no doubt, by the sole will of Alberic, Leo VII, Stephen IX,
Marinus II (or Martin III) Agapetus II, pass over the throne of the
popedom, with hardly a sign of their power in Rome, no indication of
their dignity, still less of their sanctity. They are still Popes beyond
the Alps. Nor was the supreme pontiff alone depressed in these turbulent
times. The great ecclesiastics are mingled in most of the treacherous and
bloody transactions of the period. Individual energy gave the bishops
of the city great power, but as they acted with as little restraint, so
these prelates were treated with as little reverence as secular princes.

During the whole reign of Hugo of Provence, notwithstanding the open or
treacherous assaults of that king, Alberic, whether as an armed tyrant
commanding Rome from the castle of St. Angelo, or as the head of a
republic and recognised by the voice of the Roman people, had maintained
his authority. He had ruled for twenty-two years; he bequeathed that
authority, on his death (953), to his son Octavian.

POPE JOHN XII

[Sidenote: [953-963 A.D.]]

Octavian, though only nineteen years old, aspired to unite, in his own
person, the civil and spiritual supremacy. He was already in holy orders;
two years after the death of his father Alberic, the pope Agapetus II
died; and Octavian, by the voluntary or enforced suffrages of the clergy
and the people, was elected pope. He was the first of the Roman pontiffs
who changed, or rather took a second ecclesiastical name; the civil
government seems to have been conducted in that of Octavian; the church
was administered under that of John XII.

In the meantime had arisen in Germany a monarch more powerful than had
appeared in Europe since the death of Charlemagne, Otto (Otho) the Great.
Otto made some disposition for a visit to Rome to receive the imperial
crown from the hands of the pope Agapetus. All Italy looked for the
coming of the new Charlemagne. On his appearance resistance vanished.
Berengar and Adalbert shut themselves up in their strongest fortresses.
It was a triumphal procession to Pavia--to Rome. At Pavia Otto the Great
was crowned king of Italy, at Rome the pope anointed him as emperor
(962). Thenceforth the king of Germany claimed to be Western emperor.
Otto swore to protect the church of Rome against all her enemies, to
maintain her rights and privileges, to restore her lands and possessions,
when he should have recovered them, and to make no change in the
government of Rome without the sanction of the pope. John XII and the
Roman people took the oath of allegiance to the emperor; they swore more
particularly to abandon all connection with Berengar and his son. The
oath was taken on the body of St. Peter.

Yet no sooner had the emperor returned to Pavia, than the perfidious
John, finding that he had unwarily introduced a master instead of an
obsequious ally, began to enter into correspondence with Adalbert, who,
driven from every Italian city, had found refuge with the Saracens.
Rumours of this treason reached the emperor. The noble German would not
believe the monstrous perfidy; he sent some trustworthy officers to
inquire into the truth; they returned with a fearful list of crimes, of
license, and cruelty, with which the son of Alberic, who seems entirely
to have sunk the character of pope in that of the young, warlike, secular
prince, was charged by the unanimous voice of Rome. In July, 963, Otto
marched upon the capital; the pontiff had reckoned on the cordial support
of the people; they recoiled; the pope and Adalbert fled together from
Rome.

TRIAL OF THE POPE

[Sidenote: [963-964 A.D.]]

The emperor summoned an ecclesiastical council; it was attended by the
archbishops of Aquileia (by deputy), of Milan, of Ravenna, and Hamburg;
by two German and two French metropolitans; by a great number of bishops
and presbyters from Lombardy, Tuscany, and all parts of Italy. The whole
militia of Rome assembled as a guard to the council round the church of
St. Peter. The proceedings of the council mark the times. Inquiry was
made why the pope was not present. A general cry of astonishment broke
forth from the clergy and the people: “The very Iberians, Babylonians,
and Indians have heard the monstrous crimes of the pope. He is not a
wolf who condescends to sheep’s clothing; his cruelty, his diabolical
dealings are open, avowed, disdain concealment.” The calmer justice
of the emperor demanded specific charges. The cardinal presbyter rose
and declared that he had seen Pope John celebrate mass without himself
communicating. Another, that he had ordained a bishop in a stable; that
he had taken bribes for the consecration of bishops, and had ordained a
bishop of Todi who was but ten years old. “For his sacrileges, all eyes
might behold them;” they alluded, probably, to the dilapidation of the
churches, which were open to the weather, and so much out of repair that
the worshippers could not assemble from fear lest the roofs should fall
on their heads.

Darker charges followed, mingled with less heinous, in strange confusion,
charges of adultery, incest, with the names of the females, one his
father’s concubines, another a widow and her niece; he had made the
Lateran palace a brothel; he had been guilty of hunting; charges of
cruelty, the blinding of one dignified ecclesiastic, the castrating
another, both had died under the operation; he had let loose fire and
sword, and appeared himself constantly armed with sword, lance, helmet,
and breast-plate. Both ecclesiastics and laymen accused him of drinking
wine for the love of the devil; of invoking, when gambling, heathen
deities, the devils Jove and Venus. He had perpetually neglected matins
and vespers, and never signed himself with the sign of the cross.

The emperor could speak only German; he commanded the bishop of Cremona
to address the assembly in Latin. Liutprand warned the council, he
adjured them by the blessed Virgin and by St. Peter, not to bring vague
accusations, nor such as could not be supported by accredited testimony,
against the holy father. Bishops, deacons, clergy, and people with one
voice replied, “If we do not prove these and more crimes against the
pope, may St. Peter, who holds the keys of heaven, close the gates
against us; may we be stricken with anathema, and may the anathema be
ratified at the day of judgment!” They appealed to the whole army of
Otto, whether they had not seen the pope in full armour on the other side
of the Tiber; but for the river he had been taken in that attire.

Letters were sent summoning the pope to answer to these accusations;
accusations some of them so obscene that they would have been thought
immodest if made against stage-players. If the pope dreaded any assault
from the enraged multitude, the emperor answered for the security of his
person. The pope’s reply was brief, contemptuous: “John, the servant of
God, to all the bishops. We hear that you design to elect a new pope; if
you do, in the name of Almighty God, I excommunicate you; and forbid you
to confer orders or to celebrate mass!”

Thrice was Pope John cited before the council. Messengers were sent to
Tivoli; the answer was, “The pope was gone out to shoot.” Unprecedented
evils demand unprecedented remedies. The emperor was urged to expel this
new Judas from the seat of the apostle, and to sanction a new election.
Leo, the chief secretary of the Roman see, was unanimously chosen, though
a layman, in the room of the apostate John XII.

But the army of Otto, a feudal army, and bound to do service for
a limited period, began to diminish; part had been injudiciously
dispersed on distant enterprises; the Romans, as usual, soon grew weary
of a foreign, a German yoke. The emissaries of Pope John watched the
opportunity; a furious insurrection of the people broke out against the
emperor and his pope. The valour of Otto, who forced the barricades
of the bridge over the Tiber, subdued the rebellion (964). He took a
terrible revenge. The supplications of Leo with difficulty arrested
the carnage. Otto soon after left Rome, and marched towards Camerino
(Camerinum) and Spoleto in pursuit of King Adalbert. The king Berengar
and his wife Willa were taken in the castle of St. Leo, and sent into
Germany.

[Sidenote: [964-966 A.D.]]

Hardly, however, had Otto left the city when a new rebellion, organised
by the patrician females of Rome, rose on the defenceless Leo, and opened
the gates of the city to John. Leo with difficulty escaped to the camp of
Otto. The remorseless John re-entered the city, resumed his pontifical
state, seized and mutilated the leaders of the imperial party; of one he
cut off the right hand, of another the tongue, the nose, and two fingers;
in this plight they appeared in the imperial camp. An obsequious synod
reversed the decrees of that which had deposed John. The Roman people had
now embraced the cause of the son of Alberic with more resolute zeal;
for the emperor was compelled to delay till he could reassemble a force
powerful enough to undertake the siege of the city. Ere this, however,
his own vices had delivered Rome from her champion or her tyrant,
Christendom from her worst pontiff. While he was pursuing his amours in a
distant part of the city, Pope John XII was struck dead (May 14th, 964),
by the hand of God, as the more religious supposed; others, by a more
natural cause, the poniard of an injured husband.

But it was a Roman or Italian, perhaps a republican feeling which had
latterly attached the citizens to the son of Alberic, not personal love
or respect for his pontifical character. They boldly proceeded at once,
without regard to the emperor, to the election of a new pope, Benedict V.
Otto soon appeared before the walls; he summoned the city, and ordered
every Roman who attempted to escape to be mutilated. The republic was
forced to surrender. Benedict, the new pope, was brought before the
emperor. The cardinal archdeacon, who had adhered to the cause of Leo,
demanded by what right he had presumed to usurp the pontifical robes
during the life-time of Leo, the lawful pope. “If I have sinned,” said
the humbled prelate, “have mercy upon me.” The emperor is said to have
wept. Benedict threw himself before the feet of Otto, drew off the sacred
pallium, and delivered up his crosier to Leo. Leo broke it, and showed it
to the people. Benedict was degraded to the order of deacon and sent into
banishment in Germany. He died at Hamburg.

The grateful, or vassal pope, in a council, recognises the full right of
the emperor Otto and his successors in the kingdom of Italy, as Adrian
that of Charlemagne, to elect his own successors to the empire and to
approve the pope. This right was to belong forever to the king of the
Roman Empire, and to none else.

Early in the next year the emperor Otto recrossed the Alps. Leo VIII died
March, 965, and a deputation from Rome followed the emperor to Germany
to solicit the reinstatement of the exiled Benedict to the popedom.
But Benedict was dead also. The bishop of Narni (John XIII), with the
approbation or by the command of the emperor, was elected to the papacy.

[Sidenote: [966-974 A.D.]]

Scarcely had John XIII assumed the pontificate than the barons and the
people began to murmur against the haughtiness of the new pontiff. They
expelled him from the city with one consent. The prefect Rotfred, not
without personal insult to the pope, assumed the government of Rome; for
ten months John XIII was an exile from his see, at first a prisoner,
afterwards in freedom. From his retreat in Campania he wrote with urgent
entreaty to the emperor. Otto made the cause of John his own; for the
third time he descended the Alps; the terror of his approach appalled
the popular faction. In a counter insurrection in favour of the pope,
Rotfred the prefect was killed, and the gates opened to the pontiff; he
was received with hymns of joy and gratulation. At Christmas Otto entered
Rome; and the emperor and the pope wreaked a terrible vengeance at that
holy season on the rebellious city. The proud Roman titles seemed but
worthy of derision to the German emperor and his vassal pope. The body
of the prefect who had expelled John from the city was dug up out of his
grave and torn to pieces. The consuls escaped with banishment beyond
the Alps; but the twelve tribunes were hanged; the actual prefect was
set upon an ass, with a wine-bag on his head, led through the streets,
scourged, and thrown into prison. All Europe, hardened as it was to acts
of inhumanity, shuddered at these atrocities.

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE TENTH AND ELEVENTH CENTURIES]

The rebellion was crushed for a time; during the five remaining years of
John’s pontificate the presence of Otto overawed the refractory Romans.
He ruled in peace. At his death the undisturbed vacancy of the see for
three months implies the humble consultation of Otto’s wishes (he had now
returned to Germany) on the appointment of his successor.

The choice fell on Benedict VI, as usual of Roman birth (January 19th,
973). The factions of Rome now utterly baffle conjecture as to their
motives, as to the passions, not the principles, which actuated their
leaders. Twice (the second time after an interval of ten years, during
which he was absent from Rome), the same man, a cardinal deacon, seizes
and murders two popes; sets himself up as supreme pontiff; but though
with power to commit these enormities, he cannot maintain on either
occasion his ill-won tiara.

The formidable Otto the Great died the year of the accession of Benedict
VI (December 25th, 967). Otto II, whose character was as yet unknown, had
succeeded to the imperial throne; he had been already the colleague of
his father in the empire. He had been crowned at Rome by Pope John XIII.

[Sidenote: [974-985 A.D.]]

The year after the accession of Otto II, on a sudden, Boniface, surnamed
Francone, described as the son of Ferruccio, a name doubtless well known
to his contemporaries, seized the unsuspecting pope Benedict and cast
him into a dungeon (July, 974), where shortly after he was strangled.
Boniface assumed the papacy, but he had miscalculated the strength of his
faction; in one month he was forced to fly the city. Yet he fled not with
so much haste but that he carried off all the treasures, even the sacred
vessels from the church of St. Peter. He found his way to Constantinople,
where he might seem to have been forgotten in his retreat. The peaceful
succession of Benedict VII, the nephew or grandson of the famous
Alberic, may lead to the conclusion that the faction of that family
still survived, and was opposed to that of Boniface. The first act of
Benedict, as might be expected, was the assembling a council for the
excommunication of the murderer and anti-pope Boniface. This is the first
and last important act in the barren annals of Pope Benedict VII. Under
the protection of the emperor Otto II, or by the strength of his Roman
faction, he retained peaceful possession of the see for nine years, an
unusual period of quiet. He was succeeded, no doubt through the influence
of the emperor, by John XIV, who was no Roman, but bishop of Pavia. But
in the year of John’s accession (983), Otto II was preparing a great
armament to avenge a terrible defeat by the Saracens. He had hardly fled
from the conquering Saracens, and made his escape from a Greek ship by
leaping into the sea and swimming ashore. He now threatened with all the
forces of the realm to bridge the Straits of Messina, and reunite Sicily
to the empire of the West. In the midst of his preparations he died at
Rome.

The fugitive Boniface Francone had kept up his correspondence with Rome;
he might presume on the unpopularity of a pontiff, if not of German
birth, imposed by foreign influence, and now deprived of his all-powerful
protector. With the same suddenness as before, he reappeared in Rome,
seized the pope, imprisoned him in the castle of St. Angelo, of which
important fortress he had become master, and there put him to death by
starvation or by poison (August 20th, 984). He exposed the body to the
view of the people, who dared not murmur. He seated himself, as it seems,
unresisted, in the papal chair. The holy see was speedily delivered from
this murderous usurper. He died suddenly. The people revenged themselves
for their own base acquiescence in his usurpation by cowardly insults on
his dead body; it was dragged through the streets, and at length buried,
either by the compassion or the attachment (for Boniface must have had
a powerful faction in Rome) of certain ecclesiastics. These bloody
revolutions could not but destroy all reverence for their ecclesiastical
rulers in the people of Rome.[g]

CHARLES KINGSLEY ON TEMPORAL POWER

A united Italy suited the views of the popes then no more than it does
now. Not only did they conceive of Rome as still the centre of the
western world, but more, their stock in trade was at Rome. The chains of
St. Peter, the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, the catacombs filled
with the bones of innumerable martyrs--these were their stock in trade.
By giving these, selling these, working miracles with these, calling
pilgrims from all parts of Christendom to visit these _in situ_, they
kept up their power and their wealth.

Having obtained what they wanted from Pepin and Charlemagne, it was
still their interest to pursue the same policy; to compound for their
own independence, as they did with Charlemagne and his successors, by
defending the pretences of foreign kings to the sovereignty of the
rest of Italy. This has been their policy for centuries. It is their
policy still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy. This fatal
gift of the patrimony of St. Peter--as Dante saw, as Machiavelli saw,
as all clear-sighted Italians have seen--has kept her divided, torn by
civil wars, conquered and reconquered by foreign invaders. Unable, as a
celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary
kingdom; unable as the hierophant of a priestly caste to unite his people
in the bonds of national life; unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer
the rest of Italy for himself, and form it into a kingdom large enough
to have weight in the balance of power, the pope was forced, again and
again, to keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes,
and calling in foreign arms; and the bane of Italy, from the time of
Stephen III to that of Pius IX, was the temporal power of the pope. But
on the popes, also, the Nemesis came. In building their power on the
Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter, they had
built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.

Having committed themselves to the false position of being petty kings of
a petty kingdom, they had to endure continual treachery and tyranny from
their foreign allies--to see not merely Italy, but Rome itself, insulted
and even sacked by faithful Catholics, and to become more and more, as
the centuries rolled on, the tools of those very kings whom they had
wished to make their tools.

True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and
courage. Their sources of power were two, the moral and the thaumaturgic,
and they used them both; but when the former failed, the latter became
useless. As long as their moral power was real; as long as they and their
clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous faults, the best men in
Europe, so long the people believed in them, and in their thaumaturgic
relics likewise. But they became by no means the best men in Europe.
Then they began to think that after all it was more easy to work the
material than the moral power--easier to work the bones than to work
righteousness. They were deceived. Behold! when the righteousness was
gone, the bones refused to work. People began to question the virtue of
the bones, and to ask, “We can believe that the bones may have worked
miracles for good men, but for bad men? We will examine whether they work
any miracles at all.” And then, behold, it came out that the bones did
not work miracles, and that possibly they were not saints’ bones at all;
and then the storm came; and the lie, as all lies do, punished itself.
That salt had lost its savour. They who had been the light of Europe,
became its darkness; they who had been first, became last; a warning to
mankind until the end of time, that on truth and virtue depends the only
abiding strength.[h]

FOOTNOTES

[91] Another ecclesiastic of the same name was elected by the people
immediately after the death of Zacharias; but he did not live to enjoy
his elevation. On the third morning after his election he was struck with
apoplexy, and as he had not been consecrated, he is sometimes omitted
in the pontifical calendar. See Platina,[i] p. 152, and Fleury.[j]
Baronius[k] appears to say that the omission of his name is wrong.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III. THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [985-1305 A.D.]]

During the minority of Otto III the Tuscan party exercised undisputed
sway in Rome, without any check from without. No sooner was Otto II dead
than Boniface VII reappeared from exile, and having seized his rival
John XIV, and put him to death by starvation, for two years occupied
unresisted the papal chair. Nevertheless Boniface VII was not a friend of
the Tuscan party. By the people his dead body was treated with insults.
Boniface’s successor, John XV, not proving as pliant as Crescentius the
consul desired, was driven from Rome and reduced to the necessity of
again appealing to the imperial authority. He was permitted to return.[b]

At his death, Otto III obliged the clergy and the people to elect
his nephew Bruno, a German, and only twenty years of age. But the
chief control of the city was at present in the hands of the senator
Crescentius (Cencius), a man whom the emperor could not fail to view
with feelings of fear and jealousy. On visiting Rome, therefore, for
the purpose of receiving consecration, he undertook measures for his
expulsion; but was prevented from putting them in practice by the
persuasions of his nephew, who had assumed the appellation of Gregory
V. The clemency of the pontiff was ill rewarded. Crescentius, on the
departure of the emperor, drove him from the city and bestowed the
pontifical dignity on a Greek, who took the name of John XVI. Gregory in
the meantime fled into Lombardy; and, having summoned the several bishops
to meet him at Pavia, he there excommunicated both Crescentius and John,
his sentence, it is said, being supported by nearly all Italy, Germany,
and France. The emperor, on his part, lost no time in proceeding to the
capital, where his appearance struck instant terror into the hearts of
the guilty Romans. John was apprehended when on the point of leaving
the city; and the officers of the emperor, dreading lest their master
should show any forbearance towards the culprit, immediately tore out
his tongue and his eyes. Crescentius suffered the gentler punishment of
decapitation; and Gregory, thus freed from his enemies, retained the
papal dignity till the year 999. He was succeeded by Gerbert, archbishop
of Ravenna, whom Otto caused to be elected in gratitude for the services
he had rendered him as his instructor.[c]

THE DREAM OF OTTO III

[Sidenote: [999-1046 A.D.]]

The emperor was victorious, and exercised undisputed sway in the city of
the cæsars. At this moment a grand scheme rose before his mental vision.
Rome was to occupy again her ancient place as the seat of empire. An
emperor was to sit on the throne of Constantine who would govern like
Constantine, and raise the empire once more to the pinnacle of power. A
truly apostolic pope was to be appointed, a second Silvester who would
reform the clergy and correct the infamous avarice and vice of the Roman
church.

On the death of Gregory V that scheme seemed about to be realised.
The decree issued by Otto III for the election of his tutor Gerbert,
who assumed the name of Silvester II, in allusion to the relations of
Constantine and Silvester I, declared Rome to be the capital of the
world, the Roman church to be the mother of churches; it described how
the dignity of the Roman church had been obscured by her neglectful
popes, how the property of the church had been squandered on the dregs of
mankind, how the prelates had made everything venal, and so despoiled the
very altars of the apostles. It denounced the donations of Constantine
and Charles the Bald as void and forgeries; it assumed the power not only
of electing, but, by God’s grace, of creating and ordaining the pope, and
it granted eight counties for his support. The millennial period of the
Christian era was to see all old abuses swept away, and the new régime
established. The new age was to begin with a new Constantine and a new
Silvester. The year 1000 was to inaugurate the change. But how vain are
the schemes of men! The looked-for year came. It found Otto III indeed at
Rome, with a palace built on the Aventine, with a regular administrative
system for the government of the capital established. It found his tutor,
Silvester II, on the chair of St. Peter to second and direct him. Before
three years both of them were dead.

The death of Otto put an end to all attempts at reform. For none but Otto
in that lawless age rose above his surroundings, to project a new era of
improvement. None but his tutor, Silvester II, could sympathise with his
projects. When, comet-like, these two luminaries had darted across the
heaven and disappeared, the darkness of night grew thicker than before.[b]

With the disappearance of these two eminent men the popedom relapsed into
its former degradation. The feudal nobility--that very “refuse” which, to
use the expression of a contemporary writer, it had been Otto’s mission
“to sweep from the capital”--regained their ascendency, and the popes
became as completely the instruments of their will as they had once been
of that of the Eastern emperor. A leading faction among this nobility was
that of the counts of Tusculum, and for nearly half a century the popedom
was a mere appanage in their family. As if to mark their contempt for
the office, they carried the election of Theophylact, the son of Count
Alberic, a lad scarcely twelve years of age, to the office. Benedict
IX (1033-1045), such was the title given him, soon threw off even the
external decencies of his office, and his pontificate was disgraced by
every conceivable excess. As he grew to manhood his rule, in conjunction
with that of his brother, who was appointed the patrician or prefect
of the city, resembled that of two captains of banditti. The scandal
attaching to his administration culminated when it was known that, in
order to win the hand of a lady for whom he had conceived a passion, he
had sold the pontifical office itself to another member of the Tusculan
house, John, the arch-presbyter, who took the name of Gregory VI
(1045-1046). His brief pontificate was chiefly occupied with endeavours
to protect the pilgrims to Rome on their way to the capital from the
lawless freebooters (who plundered them of their costly votive offerings
as well as of their personal property), and with attempts to recover by
main force the alienated possessions of the Roman church. Prior, however,
to his purchase of the pontifical office, the citizens of Rome, weary of
the tyranny and extortions of Benedict, had assembled of their own accord
and elected another pope, John, bishop of Sabina, who took the name of
Silvester III (rival pope, 1044-1046).

[Sidenote: [1044-1054 A.D.]]

In the meantime Benedict had been brought back to Rome by his powerful
kinsmen, and now reclaimed the sacred office. For a brief period,
therefore, there were to be seen three rival popes, each denouncing the
other’s pretensions and combating them by armed force. But even in Rome
the sense of decency and shame had not become altogether extinguished;
and at length a party in the Roman church deputed Peter, their
archdeacon, to carry a petition to the emperor Henry III, soliciting his
intervention. The emperor, a man of deep religious feeling and lofty
character, responded to the appeal. He had long noted, in common with
other thoughtful observers, the widespread degeneracy which, taking
example by the curia, was growing throughout the church at large, and
especially visible in concubinage and simony, alike regarded as mortal
sins in the clergy. He forthwith crossed the Alps and assembled a council
at Sutri. The claims of the three rival popes were each in turn examined
and pronounced invalid, and a German, Suidger (Suidgar or Suger), bishop
of Bamberg, was elected to the office as Clement II (1046-1047).

THE GERMAN POPES

The degeneracy of the church at this period would seem to have been in
some degree compensated by the reform of the monasteries, and from the
great abbey of Cluny in Burgundy there now proceeded a line of German
popes who in a great measure restored the dignity and reputation of
their office. But, whether from the climate, always ill adapted to the
German constitution, or from poison, as the contemporary chronicles not
unfrequently suggest, it is certain that their tenure of office was
singularly brief. Clement II died before the close of the year of his
election. Damasus II, his successor, held the office only twenty-three
days. Leo IX, who succeeded, held it for the exceptionally lengthened
period of more than five years (1049-1054). This pontiff, although a
kinsman and nominee of the emperor, refused to ascend the throne until
his election had been ratified by the voice of the clergy and the people,
and his administration of the office presented the greatest possible
contrast to that of Benedict IX or Sergius III.

[Sidenote: [1049-1064 A.D.]]

In more than one respect it constitutes a crisis in the history of the
popedom. In conjunction with his faithful friend and adviser, the great
Hildebrand, he projected schemes of fundamental church reform, in which
the suppression of simony and of married life (or concubinage, as it was
styled by its denouncers) on the part of the clergy formed the leading
features. In the year 1049, at three great synods successively convened
at Rome, Rheims, and Mainz, new canons condemnatory of the prevailing
abuses were enacted, and the principles of monasticism more distinctly
asserted in contravention of those traditional among the secular clergy.
Leo’s pontificate closed, however, ingloriously.

In an evil hour he ventured to oppose the occupation by the Normans,
whose encroachments on Italy were just commencing. His ill-disciplined
forces were no match for the Norman bands, composed of the best warriors
of the age. He was himself made prisoner, detained for nearly a
twelvemonth in captivity, and eventually released only to die, a few days
after, of grief and humiliation. But, although his own career terminated
thus ignominiously, the services rendered by Leo to the cause of Roman
Catholicism were great and permanent; and of his different measures
none contributed more effectually to the stability of his see than the
formation of the college of cardinals.

THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS

The title of “cardinal” was not originally restricted to dignitaries
connected with the church of Rome, but it had hitherto been a canonical
requirement that all who attained to this dignity should have passed
through the successive lower ecclesiastical grades in connection with
one and the same foundation; the cardinals attached to the Roman church
had consequently been all Italians, educated for the most part in the
capital, having but little experience of the world beyond its walls, and
incapable of estimating church questions in the light of the necessities
and feelings of Christendom at large. By the change which he introduced,
Leo summoned the leaders of the party of reform within the newly
constituted college of cardinals, and thus attached to his office a body
of able advisers with wider views and less narrow sympathies. By their
aid the administration of the pontifical duties was rendered at once more
easy and more effective.

The pontiff himself was liberated from his bondage to the capital, and,
even when driven from Rome, could still watch over the interests of both
his see and the entire church in all their extended relations; and the
popedom must now be looked upon as entering upon another stage in its
history--that of almost uninterrupted progress to the pinnacle of power.
According to Anselm[o] of Lucca, it was during the pontificate of Leo,
at the synod of Rheims above referred to, that the title of “apostolic
bishop” (_apostolicus_) was first declared to belong to the pope of Rome
exclusively.

The short pontificate of Nicholas II (1059-1061) is memorable chiefly
for the fundamental change then introduced in the method of electing to
the papal office. By a decree of the Second Lateran Council (1059), the
nomination to the office was vested solely in the cardinal bishops--the
lower clergy, the citizens, and the emperor retaining simply the right
of intimating or withholding their assent. It was likewise enacted that
the nominee should always be one of the Roman clergy, unless indeed no
eligible person could be found among their number. At the same time the
direst anathemas were decreed against all who should venture to infringe
this enactment either in the letter or the spirit.

The preponderance thus secured to the ultramontane party and to Italian
interests must be regarded as materially affecting the whole subsequent
history of the popedom. The manner in which it struck at the imperial
influence was soon made apparent in the choice of Nicholas’ successor,
the line of German popes being broken through by the election of Anselm,
bishop of Lucca (the uncle of the historian), who ascended the pontifical
throne as Alexander II (1061-1073) without having received the sanction
of the emperor. His election was forthwith challenged by the latter, and
for the space of two years the Roman state was distracted by a civil war,
Honorius II being supported as a rival candidate by the imperial arms,
while Alexander maintained his position only with the support of the
Norman levies. The respective merits of their claims were considered at
a council convened at Mantua, and the decision was given in favour of
Alexander. Cadalous, such was the name of his rival, did not acknowledge
the justice of the sentence, but he retired into obscurity; and the
remainder of Alexander’s pontificate, though troubled by the disputes
respecting a married clergy, was free from actual warfare. In these much
vexed questions of church discipline Alexander, who had been mainly
indebted for his election to Hildebrand, the archdeacon of the Roman
church, was guided entirely by that able churchman’s advice, and in 1073
Hildebrand himself succeeded to the office as Gregory VII (1073-1085).[d]

MILMAN ON THE MISSION OF THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1064-1073 A.D.]]

Hildebrand was now pope; the great contest for the dominion over the
human mind, the strife between the temporal and spiritual power,
which had been carried on for some centuries as a desultory and
intermitting warfare, was now to be waged boldly, openly, implacably,
to the subjugation of one or of the other. Sacerdotal, or rather papal
Christianity, had not yet fulfilled its mission, for, the papal control
withdrawn, the sacerdotal rule would have lost its unity, and with
its unity its authority must have dissolved away. Without the clergy,
not working here and there with irregular and uncombined excitement
on the religious feelings of man, awakening in one quarter a vigorous
enthusiasm, while in other parts of Europe men were left to fall
back into some new Christian heathenism, or into an inert habitual
Christianity of form; without the whole order labouring on a fixed
and determined system, through creeds sanctified by ancient reverence
and a ceremonial guarded by rigid usage; without this vast uniform,
hierarchical influence, where, in those ages of anarchy and ignorance, of
brute force and dormant intelligence, had been Christianity itself? And
looking only to its temporal condition, what had the world been without
Christianity?

The papacy has still the more splendid part of its destiny to accomplish.
It has shown vital power enough to recover from its seemingly
irrecoverable degradation. It might have been supposed that a moral and
religious deprivation so profound, would utterly have destroyed that
reverence of opinion which was the one groundwork of the papal power.
The veil had been raised; and Italy at least, if not Europe, had seen
within it, not a reflex of divine majesty and holiness, but an idol
not only hideous to the pure moral sentiment, but contemptible for its
weakness. If centuries of sanctity had planted deeply in the heart of
man his veneration for the successor of St. Peter, it would have been
paralysed (the world might expect) and extinguished by more than a
century of odious and unchristian vices. A spiritual succession must be
broken and interrupted by such unspiritual inheritors. Could the head of
Christendom, living in the most unchristian wickedness, perpetuate his
descent, and hand down the patrimony of power and authority, with nothing
of that piety and goodness which was at least one of his titles to that
transcendent power?

But that idea or that opinion would not have endured for centuries,
had it not possessed strength enough to reconcile its believers to
contradictions and inconsistencies. With all the Teutonic part of Latin
Christendom, the belief in the supremacy of the pope was coeval with
their Christianity; it was an article of their original creed as much
as the redemption; their apostles were commissioned by the pope; to him
they humbly looked for instruction and encouragement, even almost for
permission to advance upon their sacred adventure. Augustine, Boniface,
Ebbo, Anskar, had been papal missionaries. If the faith of Italy was
shaken by too familiar a view of that which the Germans contemplated
with more remote and indistinct veneration, the national pride, in Rome
especially, accepted the spiritual as a compensation for the loss of the
temporal supremacy; it had ceased to be the centre of the imperial, it
would not endure not to be that of ecclesiastical dominion. The jealousy
of a pope elected, or even born, elsewhere than in Italy, showed the
vitality of that belief in the papacy, which was belied by so many acts
of violence towards individual popes.

The religious minds would be chiefly offended by the incongruity between
the lives and the station of the pope; but to them it would be a part
of religion to suppress any rebellious doubts. Their souls were deeply
impressed with the paramount necessity of the unity of the church; to
them the papacy was of divine appointment, the pope the successor of St.
Peter; all secret questioning of this integral part of their implanted
faith was sin. However then they might bow down in shame and sorrow at
the inscrutable decrees of heaven, in allowing its vicegerent thus to
depart from his original brightness, yet they would veil their faces
in awe, and await in trembling patience the solution of that mystery.
In the Christian mind in general, or rather the mind within the world
of Christendom, the separation between Christian faith and Christian
morality was almost complete. Christianity was a mere unreasoning
assent to certain dogmatic truths, an unreasoning obedience to certain
ceremonial observances.

[Illustration: A POPE OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY

(Based on an effigy)]

Controversy was almost dead. In the former century, the predestinarian
doctrines of Gottschalk, in general so acceptable to the popular ear,
had been entirely suppressed by the sacerdotal authority. The tenets of
Berengar concerning the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, had been
restrained, and were to be once more restrained, by the same strong
hand; and Berengar’s logic was beyond his age. The Manichæan doctrines
of the Paulicians and kindred sects were doubtless spreading to a great
extent among the lower orders, but as yet in secrecy, breaking out now
in one place, now in another, yet everywhere beheld with abhorrence,
creating no wide alarm, threatening no dangerous disunion. In all the
vulgar of Christendom (and that vulgar comprehended all orders, all
ranks) the moral sentiment, as more obtuse, would be less shocked by that
incongruity which grieved and oppressed the more religious. The great
body of Christians in the West would no more have thought of discussing
the character of the pope than the attributes of God. He was to them
the apostle, the vicegerent of God, enveloped in the same kind of awful
mystery. They feared the thunders of the Lateran as those of heaven; and
were no more capable of sound discrimination as to the limits, grounds,
and nature of that authority than as to the causes of the destructive
fire from the clouds. Their general belief in the judgment to come was
not more deeply rooted than in the right of the clergy, more especially
the head of the clergy, to anticipate, to declare, or to ratify their
doom.

The German line of pontiffs had done much to reinvest the papacy in its
ancient sanctity. The Italian Alexander II had been at least a blameless
pontiff, and now every qualification which could array the pope in
imposing majesty, in what bordered on divine worship, seemed to meet in
Gregory VII. His life verified the splendid panegyric with which he had
been presented by Cardinal Hugo to the Roman people. He had the austerest
virtue, the most simple piety, the fame of vast theologic knowledge,
the tried ability to rule men, intrepidity which seemed to delight in
confronting the most powerful; a stern singleness of purpose, which,
under its name of churchmanship, gave his partisans unlimited reliance
on his firmness and resolution, and yet a subtle policy which bordered
upon craft. To them his faults were virtues; his imperiousness the due
assertion of his dignity; his unbounded ambition zeal in God’s cause; no
haughtiness could be above that which became his station. The terror by
which he ruled (he was so powerful that he could dispense with love), as
it was the attribute of the divinity now exclusively worshipped by man,
so was it that which became the representative of God on earth.

The first, the avowed object of Gregory’s pontificate, was the absolute
independence of the clergy, of the pope, of the great prelates throughout
Latin Christendom, down to the lowest functionary, whose person was to
become sacred; that independence under which lurked the undisguised
pretension to superiority. His remote and somewhat more indistinct
vision was the foundation of a vast spiritual autocracy in the person
of the pope, who was to rule mankind by the consentient but subordinate
authority of the clergy throughout the world. For this end the clergy
were to become still more completely a separate, inviolable caste; their
property equally sacred with their persons. Each in his separate sphere,
the pope above all and comprehending all, was to be sovereign arbiter of
all disputes; to hold in his hands the supreme mediation in questions
of war and peace; to adjudge contested successions to kingdoms; to be a
great feudal lord, to whom other kings became beneficiaries. His own arms
were to be chiefly spiritual, but the temporal power was to be always
ready to execute the ecclesiastical behest against the ungodly rebels who
might revolt from its authority; nor did the churchman refuse altogether
to sanction the employment of secular weapons, to employ armies in his
own name, or even to permit the use of arms to the priesthood.

For this complete isolation of the hierarchy into a peculiar and
inviolable caste was first necessary the reformation of the clergy in
two most important preliminary matters; the absolute extirpation of
the two evils, which the more rigid churchmen had been denouncing for
centuries, to the suppression of which Hildebrand had devoted so much of
his active energies. The war against simony and the concubinage of the
clergy (for under this ill-sounding name was condemned all connection,
however legalised, with the female sex), must first be carried to a
triumphant issue, before the church could assume its full and uncontested
domination.[92]

_Simony_

Like his predecessors, like all the more high-minded churchmen,
Hildebrand refused to see that simony was the inevitable consequence
of the inordinate wealth of the clergy. It was a wild moral paradox to
attempt to reconcile enormous temporal possessions and enormous temporal
power with the extinction of all temporal motives for obtaining, all
temptations to the misuse of these all-envied treasures. In the feudal
system, which had been so long growing up throughout western Europe,
bishops had become, in every respect, the equals of the secular nobles.
In every city the bishop, if not the very first of men, was on a level
with the first; without the city he was lord of the amplest domains.
Archbishops almost equalled kings; for who would not have coveted the
station and authority of a Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, rather than the
sovereignty of the feeble Carlovingian monarch?

Charlemagne himself had set the example of advancing his natural sons to
high ecclesiastical dignities. His feebler descendants, even the more
pious, submitted to the same course from choice or necessity. The evil
worked downwards. The bishop, who had bought his see, indemnified himself
by selling the inferior prebends or cures. What was so intrinsically
valuable began to have its money-price; it became an object of barter and
sale. The layman who purchased holy orders bought usually peace, security
of life, comparative ease. Those who aspired to higher dignities soon
repaid themselves for the outlay, however large and extortionate. The
highest bishops confessed their own guilt; the bishopric of Rome had too
often been notoriously bought and sold.

According to the strict law, the clergy could receive everything,
alienate nothing. But the frequent and bitter complaints of the violent
usurpation, or the fraudulent alienation by the clergy themselves of what
had been church property, show that neither party respected this sanctity
when it was the interest of both to violate it. While, on the one hand,
the clergy extorted from the dying prince or noble some important grant,
immunity, or possession, the despoiled heir would scruple at no means of
resuming his alienated rights or property. The careless, the profligate,
the venal, the warlike bishop or abbot, would find means, if he found
advantage, to elude the law; to surrender gradually and imperceptibly;
to lease out the land so as to annihilate its value to the church; to
grant in perpetuity for trifling compensations or for valueless service
the coveted estate; and so to relax the inexorable grasp of the church.
His own pomp and expenditure would reduce the ecclesiastic to the wants
and subterfuges of debtors and of bankrupts; and so the estates would,
directly or circuitously, return either to the original or to some new
owner.

_Celibacy of the Clergy_

With this universal simony was connected, more closely than may at
first appear, the other great vice of the age, as it was esteemed by
Hildebrand and his school, the marriage of the clergy. The celibacy of
the clergy was necessary to their existence, at the present period,
as a separate caste. Hereditary succession and the degeneracy of the
order were inseparable. Great as were the evils inevitable from the
dominion of the priesthood, if it had become in any degree the privilege
of certain families, that evil would have been enormously aggravated,
the compensating advantages annulled. Family affections and interests
would have been constantly struggling against those of the church. One
universal nepotism, a nepotism not of kindred but of parentage, would
have preyed upon the vital energies of the order. Every irreligious
occupant would either have endeavoured to alienate to his lay descendants
the property of the church, or bred up his still more degenerate
descendants in the certainty of succession to their patrimonial benefice.

Celibacy may be maintained for a time by mutual control and awe; by
severe discipline; by a strong corporate spirit in a monastic community.
But in a low state of morals as to sexual intercourse, in an order
recruited from all classes of society, not filled by men of tried and
matured religion; in an order crowded by aspirants after its wealth,
power, comparative ease, privileges, immunities, public estimation; in an
order superior to, or dictating public opinion (if public opinion made
itself heard); in a permanent order, in which the degeneracy of one age
would go on increasing in the next, till it produced some stern reaction;
in an order comparatively idle, without social duties or intellectual
pursuits; in an order not secluded in the desert, but officially brought
into the closest and most confidential relations as instructors and
advisers of the other sex, it was impossible to maintain real celibacy;
and the practical alternative lay between secret marriage, concubinage
without the form of marriage, or a looser and more corrupting intercourse
between the sexes.

Throughout Latin Christendom, throughout the whole spiritual realm of
Hildebrand, he could not but know there had been long a deep murmured,
if not an avowed doubt, as to the authority of the prohibitions against
the marriage of the clergy; where the dogmatic authority of the papal
canons was not called in question, there was a bold resistance or a tacit
infringement of the law. Italy has been seen in actual, if uncombined,
rebellion from Calabria to the Alps. The whole clergy of the kingdom of
Naples has appeared, under Nicholas II, from the highest to the lowest,
openly living with their lawful wives. The married clergy were still, if
for the present cowed, a powerful faction throughout Italy; they were
awaiting their time of vengeance. The memory of the married pope, Adrian
II, was but recent.

In Germany the power and influence of the married clergy will make
itself felt, if less openly proclaimed, as a bond of alliance with the
emperor and the Lombard prelates. The French councils denounce the crime
as frequent, notorious. Among the Anglo-Saxon clergy before Dunstan,
marriage was rather the rule, celibacy the exception.

GREGORY’S SYNOD AT ROME

[Sidenote: [1073-1074 A.D.]]

Almost the first public act of Gregory VII was a declaration of
implacable war against these his two mortal enemies, simony and the
marriage of the clergy. He was no infant Hercules; but the mature
ecclesiastical Hercules would begin his career by strangling these two
serpents--the brood, as he esteemed them, and parents of all evil.
The decree of the synod held in Rome (March 9th, 10th, 1074) in the
eleventh month of his pontificate is not extant, but in its inexorable
provisions it went beyond the sternest of his predecessors. It
absolutely invalidated all sacraments performed by simoniacal or married
priests; baptism was no regenerating rite; it might almost seem that
the eucharistic bread and wine in their unhallowed hands refused to be
transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. The communicants
guilty of perseverance at least in the sin shared in the sacerdotal
guilt. Even the priesthood was startled at this new and awful doctrine,
that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on their own sinlessness.
Gregory, in his headstrong zeal, was promulgating a doctrine used
afterwards by Wycliffe and his followers with such tremendous energy. And
this was a fearless, democratical provocation to the people; for it left
to notoriety, to public fame, to fix on anyone the brand of the hidden
sin of simony, or (it might be the calumnious) charge of concubinage; and
so abandoned the holy priesthood to the judgment of the multitude.[93]

But the extirpation of these two internal enemies to the dignity and the
power of the sacerdotal order was far below the holy ambition of Gregory;
this was but clearing the ground for the stately fabric of his theocracy.
If, for his own purposes, he had at first assumed some moderation in his
intercourse with the empire, over the rest of Latin Christendom he took
at once the tone and language of a sovereign. We must rapidly survey,
before we follow him into his great war with the empire, Gregory VII
asserting his autocracy over the rest of Latin Christendom.

[Sidenote: [1074-1076 A.D.]]

His letters to Philip I, king of France, are in the haughtiest, most
criminatory terms: “No king has reached such a height of detestable
guilt in oppressing the churches of his kingdom as Philip of France.”
He puts the king to the test; his immediate admission of a bishop of
Mâcon, elected by the clergy and people, without payment to the crown.
Either let the king repudiate this base traffic of simony, and allow fit
persons to be promoted to bishoprics, or the Franks, unless apostates
from Christianity, will be struck with the sword of excommunication, and
refuse any longer to obey him.

Hildebrand’s predecessor (and Alexander II did no momentous act without
the counsel of Hildebrand) had given a direct sanction to the Norman
conquest of England. Hildebrand may have felt some admiration, even awe,
of the congenial mind of the conqueror. He advances the claim to Peter’s
pence over the kingdom. William admits this claim; it was among the
stipulations, it was the price which the pope had imposed for his assent
to the conquest. But to the demand of fealty, the conqueror returns an
answer of haughty brevity: “I have not sworn, nor will I swear fealty
which was never sworn by any of my predecessors to yours.” And William
maintained his Teutonic independence--created bishops and abbots at
his will, was absolute lord over his ecclesiastical as over his feudal
liegemen.

To the kings of Spain, in one of his earliest letters, Pope Gregory
boldly asserts that the whole realm of Spain is not only within the
spiritual jurisdiction of the holy see, but her property. No part of
Latin Christendom was so remote or so barbarous as to escape his vigilant
determination to bring it under his vast ecclesiastical unity. While
yet a deacon he had corresponded with Sweyn, king of Denmark; on him he
bestows much grave and excellent advice. In a letter to Olaf, king of
Norway, he dissuades him solemnly from assisting the rebellious brothers
of the Danish king. Between the duke of Poland and the king of the
Russians he interposes his mediation. The son of the Russian had come to
Rome to receive his kingdom from the hands of St. Peter. The kingdom of
Hungary, as that of Spain, he treats as a fief of the papacy; he rebukes
the king Solomon for daring to hold it as a benefice of the king of the
Germans. He watches over Bohemia; his legates take under their care the
estates of the church; he summons the archbishop of Prague to Rome. Even
Africa is not beyond the care of Hildebrand. The clergy and people of
Carthage are urged to adhere to their archbishop--not to dread the arms
of the Saracens, though that once flourishing Christian province, the
land of Cyprian and Augustine, is so utterly reduced that three bishops
cannot be found to proceed to a legitimate consecration.

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY]

But the empire was the one worthy, one formidable antagonist to
Hildebrand’s universal theocracy, whose prostration would lay the
world beneath his feet. The empire must acknowledge itself as a grant
from the papacy, as a grant revocable for certain offences against the
ecclesiastical rights and immunities; it must humbly acquiesce in the
uncontrolled prerogative of the cardinals to elect the pope; abandon all
the imperial claims on the investiture of the prelates and other clergy
with their benefices; release the whole mass of church property from all
feudal demands, whether of service or of fealty; submit patiently to
rebuke; admit the pope to dictate on questions of war and peace, and all
internal government where he might detect, or suppose that he detected,
oppression. This was the condition to which the words and acts of Gregory
aspired to reduce the heirs of Charlemagne, the successors of the western
cæsars.

As a Christian, as a member of the church, the emperor was confessedly
subordinate to the pope, the acknowledged head and ruler of the church.
As a subject of the empire, the pope owed temporal allegiance to the
emperor. The authority of each depended on loose and flexible tradition,
on variable and contradictory precedents, on titles of uncertain
signification; each could ascend to a time when they were not dependent
upon each other. The emperor boasted himself the successor to the whole
autocracy of the cæsars, to Augustus, Constantine, Charlemagne: the pope
to that of St. Peter, or of Christ himself.[e] But all-powerful as was
the pope abroad, in Italy his authority was restricted. Even in Rome the
prefect Cencius dared to lay hands on Gregory VII, to tear him from the
sanctuary of a church during a riot, and afterwards held him some time a
prisoner. At Milan the citizens expelled Herlembald and his tool Atto,
who exercised actual tyranny in the city under pretext of carrying out
the pope’s reforms, and demanded an archbishop of Henry IV, who sent
them a noble from Castiglione. This was the commencement of the struggle
between sacerdotal and imperial power that culminated in one of the
greatest and most stirring dramas of all history.

Events began auspiciously for Gregory, many points of support being
promised him in Germany. Feudal rebellions had kept that country in a
state of agitation during the minority of Henry IV, who was but six years
old when his father died in 1056. The regency and even the person of
the young king had been wrested from the empress Agnes by the dukes of
Saxony and Bavaria. Once arrived at man’s estate, Henry IV set about
suppressing the revolt that had, as usual, arisen among the Saxons. An
important victory won in Thuringia seemed to promise him a continuance
of success, when suddenly the voice of the pope thundered down upon
him, ordering him, with unexampled audacity, to suspend all warlike
operations, and to leave to the holy see the right of decision in his
quarrel with the Saxons; furthermore, to abandon all pretensions to
ecclesiastical investiture, under pain of excommunication. To this the
legates joined the summons to appear at Rome to answer certain personal
charges that had been brought against him. Henry IV replied to this
furious attack with equal vigour, and in the synod of Worms, composed
of eighteen prelates, his partisans, he caused sentence of deposition
solemnly to be pronounced against Gregory VII (1076).

[Sidenote: [1076-1077 A.D.]]

This decree, instead of alarming the pope, but excited him to fresh
aggression. No sooner was he delivered by a popular movement from the
hands of his enemy, Cencius, the Roman prefect, than he began once more
to thunder forth denunciations; he hurled a bull of excommunication at
the emperor, in which he proclaimed him a rebel to the holy see, and
declared his vassals free from all allegiance to him. This bull was
mercilessly put into execution by the Saxons and Swabians, all enemies
of the house of Franconia. At their head was Rudolf of Swabia and the
Italian, Welf, of the house of Este, whom Henry himself had created duke
of Bavaria. They convoked a diet at Tribur, suspended the functions of
the emperor and menaced him with deposition if he did not win absolution
from the curse of Rome. Henry acceded humbly, and promised to assemble
a general diet at Augsburg, which he begged the pope to attend for the
purpose of absolving him. Alive, however, to the danger of allowing his
enemies to come together in a body, he resolved to anticipate the action
of the proposed diet and went himself to Italy to implore pardon of the
pope.

The price Gregory set upon this absolution was such as no other monarch
ever had to pay. The pope was inhabiting at the time the château of
Canossa, in the domains of the celebrated countess Matilda, a devout
adherent of the holy see and the most powerful sovereign in Italy,
since she included among her possessions the marquisates of Tuscany
and Spoleto, Parma, Piacenza, and several points in Lombardy, the
Marches, etc. Henry IV came to this castle to solicit an audience, but
was compelled to wait barefooted in the snow three days before he was
received. At last on the fourth day he was admitted and given absolution.
Gregory, however, too adroit to lay down arms at once, refused to decide
the question relative to the German crown, and deferred all consideration
of it to a special diet, thereby reserving to himself a means of
throwing Henry into fresh embarrassment. Could the king do other than
tremble before a man who was the acknowledged representative of divinity
on earth, and who believed himself so secure in the favour of heaven
that, taking half of a “host,” he adjured God upon it to annihilate
him instantly if he were guilty of the crimes imputed to him? When he
presented the second half of the “host” to the king, asking him to swear
a similar oath, Henry shrank back affrighted (1077).

By this timely bowing of the head Henry IV avoided the blow that was
about to be aimed at him by a coalition of his enemies; the moment of
danger once passed, he straightened up like a bow relieved from tension.
Indeed he had no alternative save definitively to relinquish his hopes
of the crown or again to risk all upon a single chance, since the German
rebels had undertaken to answer the question left open by Gregory, and
had appointed to the throne Rudolf of Swabia, who had purchased the
protection of the legates by promising to abjure investiture (1077), and
had been solemnly acknowledged by the pope.

[Sidenote: [1077-1125 A.D.]]

Having gathered around himself a body of partisans, Henry IV began to
wage war with success. The battle of Wolksheim, in which Rudolf was
slain by the hand of Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, who
carried the imperial standard, made him master of Germany (1080). He
determined to repeat this success in Italy, where a victory won by his
son had already paved the way; and the countess Matilda was stripped of
a part of her possessions, Rome was taken, and the archbishop of Ravenna
was appointed pope under the name of Clement III. Gregory himself would
have fallen into the hands of the man he had so deeply outraged, had not
Robert Guiscard and his Normans, faithful allies of the holy see, come
to his rescue. He died among them (1085) with the words: “For no other
reason than that I have loved justice and pursued iniquity, I must die in
exile.”

Up to the final moment he appeared to believe that universal dominance
was an inalienable right of the holy see, and his idea was certainly not
devoid of logic.

Gregory’s death came too soon; had he lived a few years longer he would
have seen his enemy expire in a condition far more miserable than that
in which he had been placed at Canossa. Urban II, made pope in 1088,
found his main support in the Normans, and conferred upon Roger, duke of
Sicily, the title of king. He revealed the papacy in all its grandeur
on the occasion of the First Crusade, and revived most of Gregory’s
old judgments against the emperor. After a transitory triumph Henry
IV was successively attacked by his two sons, whom the church had
armed against him, and after having been stripped of all the imperial
insignia, was made prisoner by his younger son. In vain he invoked the
succour of the king of France, who had been his “most faithful friend”;
all help was refused him, and he was reduced to soliciting the post of
under-choir-master in a church, “having a considerable knowledge of
music.” He died in 1106 at Liège in the depths of poverty, calling down
the “vengeance of God upon the parricide”; and his body remained five
years without sepulture.

It was, however, this very parricidal son Henry V who at last put a
stop to the quarrels resulting from the vexed question of investitures.
The decision was retarded some time by the opening of the succession of
Countess Matilda, who had bequeathed all her estates to the holy see.
Henry laid claim to the entire inheritance, to the fiefs as sovereign
of the empire, to the allodial lands as the countess’ nearest heir,
and succeeded in entering upon possession of them all. As can readily
be believed, this was a cause for fresh dissension in the future. The
opening dispute being provisorily settled, the two sides, recognising
that a struggle would but weaken them while it confirmed the independence
of the feudal lords and of the Italian middle classes, resolved to close
the matter by an equitable and, as nearly as possible, an equal division
of the rights under dispute. The Concordat of Worms (1122) was couched
in the following terms: “I agree,” said Pope Calixtus II to the emperor,
“that the elections of the bishops and abbots of the Teutonic kingdom
shall take place without violence or simony in your presence, so that in
case any difference shall arise you can give your sanction and protection
to the side having greater holiness, according to the judgment of the
metropolitan and the co-provincials. The elect shall receive from you the
prerogatives of his office, and, except that duty that he owes the Roman
church, shall render you obedience in all things.”

“I remit to the pope,” said the king, “all right to confer investiture
by ring and cross, and in the churches of my kingdom and my empire,
I authorise canonical elections and free consecration.” This wise
compromise, which vested the temporal and spiritual power respectively
in the temporal and spiritual rulers, was accompanied by words of
reconciliation. But the design of Gregory VII was not yet fulfilled; the
tie of vassalage that united the clergy to the prince was by no means
severed, and church remained a part of the state in its main portion at
least, if not in its outlying members.

The house of Franconia became extinct with Henry V (1125) after having,
by a provisory issue, dissolved the rivalry that existed between the
papacy and the empire. The reign of Lothair II, successor of Henry V, was
like an interlude between two acts of a drama; during the pause the stage
was cleared and reset for the scene that was to follow.[f]

BRYCE ON THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONCORDAT

The Concordat of Worms was in form a compromise designed to spare either
party the humiliation of defeat. Yet the papacy remained master of the
field. The emperor retained but one-half of those rights of investiture
which had formerly been his. At any moment his sceptre might be shivered
in his hand by the bolt of anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from
every convent and cathedral.

Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed.
The emperor was alienated from the church at the most unfortunate of
all moments, the end of the Crusades. The religious feeling which the
Crusades evoked turned wholly against the opponent of ecclesiastical
claims and was made to work the will of the holy see. A century and a
half later the pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against the
emperor himself.

Again, it was now the first seeds were sown of that fear and hatred
wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard the
encroaching Romish court. Branded by the church and forsaken by the
nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers of
Worms and Liège. It soon became a test of Teutonic patriotism to resist
Italian priestcraft.[g]

RIVAL CLAIMANTS

[Sidenote: [1119-1155 A.D.]]

On the death of Paschal (1118), the bishops of Porto, Ostia, and others
elected John of Gaeta, who was chancellor of Rome, to the vacant chair.
But his elevation was strongly opposed by the emperor’s minister, Cenzio
Frangipani, who, following him to the church where the investiture was
to take place, seized him by the throat, and after exposing him to every
species of violence from his attendants, dragged him by the hair of the
head to his house, and there left him chained, to await the orders of the
emperor. He subsequently made his escape to his native place, of which he
was made bishop; and Henry, in the meanwhile, raised Maurice Bourdin, by
the name of Gregory VIII, to the throne.

Gelasius, as John of Gaeta was called, attempted to recover his dignity,
but finding that he could not remain in Italy with safety, fled to
Provence, where he died the following year. The anti-pope Gregory,
though the way was now open for his accession to the throne, gained no
advantage by the death of his rival. Guido, archbishop of Ravenna, a man
of considerable powers of mind and vast influence, ascended the papal
chair as Calixtus II.[94] The contest which he was obliged to carry on
with Gregory ended completely in his favour; and the defeated pretender
died, after suffering innumerable miseries,[95] in a monastery. Calixtus
himself died shortly after (1124); and his successor, Honorius II, passed
a reign of five years in fruitless contention with Roger of Sicily, by
whom his troops were entirely defeated. Innocent II and Anacletus II both
pretended to the dignity at his death; and the former, before he could
establish his sole claim to the prize, had to spend several years as an
exile in France.

We pass over the obscure pontificates of his immediate successors. But in
1145, Bernard, abbot of St. Anastasius at Rome, and a favourite disciple
of the celebrated saint of the same name, was elected to the see as
Eugenius III. But whatever were the virtues of Eugenius, or the credit
due to him from his intimacy with a man so full of wisdom and holiness
as St. Bernard, the factious spirit which had long prevailed at Rome
broke out into new excesses at the period of his elevation. Urged on by
the popular eloquence of Arnold of Brescia, they were suddenly inflamed
with the desire of restoring the institutions and government of the
ancient capital; but the tumult which was commenced with this pretence
soon carried its authors to the commission of every species of violence;
and the dazzling vision of Rome, restored to its consular dignity, was
lost in the clouds and thick darkness which rose from the destruction of
some of its finest buildings. Eugenius, by a timely exertion of energy,
quelled these disorders; and his return to Rome was attended with all
the marks of a triumph. The signs, however, of sedition were still too
manifest on the faces of the Romans to allow of his remaining secure
among them, and he retired for some time into France. He came back to
Italy about the year 1153, and died almost immediately after, at his
residence in the town of Tibur.

ADRIAN IV _versus_ BARBAROSSA

[Sidenote: [1155-1158 A.D.]]

The successor of Eugenius was Adrian IV, by birth an Englishman,[96] and
strongly characterised by all the ruling passions of the dignified clergy
of this age.[97] Frederick Barbarossa had, in the meanwhile, ascended the
imperial throne, and his pride and ambition were fitting though dangerous
companions for the haughtiness of Adrian. It was not long before an
opportunity was afforded these two distinguished men to try the strength
of their resolution and principles. Frederick, having been crowned king
of the Lombards, hastened towards Rome; but before he arrived at the gate
of the city he was met by three cardinals, who acquainted him that the
pontiff could not hold any conference with a prince from whom he had as
yet received no assurance of obedience and of fidelity to the church.
The monarch readily accorded the required professions of allegiance; and
a chevalier appointed for the purpose swore solemnly in his name, and
on the holy relics, the cross and the Gospel, that he would preserve
in safety the life, the liberty, and honour of both the pope and the
cardinals. Adrian then intimated his readiness to crown him emperor, and
was conducted with great pomp towards the sovereign’s tent.

But here a new cause of contention arose. Frederick had too high a sense
of his imperial dignity to manifest any servile complaisance for papal
pride. Instead, therefore, of hastening, as some other princes had done,
to perform the part of an esquire to the pontiff, he quietly awaited him
in his pavilion; which so offended Adrian, that he positively refused
to grant him the kiss of peace, till he should perform the humiliating
ceremonies to which the pride of churchmen and the pusillanimity of
princes had given a species of legitimacy. A whole day was expended in
disputing whether the emperor should continue the practice or not. But
Adrian was inflexible; and the following morning the haughty Frederick in
the presence of his army, purchased the kiss of peace by standing like a
menial at the side of the pope’s horse, till he descended and freed him
from his degrading situation.

A powerful faction at Rome hailed with joy the approach of Frederick.
The desire of limiting the despotism of the pope, and the expectation of
drawing large sums as a largess from the imperial treasury, appear to
have exercised an almost equal influence on their minds at this time. In
their address to Frederick the deputies of this party assumed the station
of men who had an unconquered country to present as a free-will offering
to the valour and noble qualities of the prince they sought. They had,
however, greatly mistaken the ideas of the emperor on the state of Italy.
Frederick told them, and with a sternness which presaged a coming storm,
that their country had been long and often conquered; that he was truly
and lawfully their master. He took possession forthwith of the church
of St. Peter (1155), and Adrian placed the imperial crown on the head
of the sovereign with far greater willingness than he would have done,
had he not seen that his agreement with the prince was now essential to
his safety and to the preservation of the church. The populace, finding
themselves set at nought by both the pope and the emperor, rose in a
mass, and several of the German soldiers fell slaughtered in the aisles
of St. Peter. But their death was amply revenged; the emperor attacked
the Romans on all sides, and near one thousand citizens paid with their
lives the forfeit of their licentiousness or their indiscretion.

Restless and ambitious minds, like those of Adrian and Frederick
Barbarossa, could not remain long at peace, when the power and privileges
they possessed in their dependence upon each other were so ill defined.
The first cause of dispute, after the pacification above related, was a
letter which Adrian wrote to the emperor, accusing him of ingratitude for
the benefits he had enjoyed through his ministration.

Adrian found it necessary to appease the anger which both Frederick and
his subjects expressed at these instances of assumption, and tranquillity
was for a brief space restored. But scarcely had the angry feelings
generated in the late dispute subsided, when the pontiff again manifested
his inclination to oppose the views of the emperor by refusing to confirm
the archbishop of Ravenna, whom Frederick had elevated to that station,
in his appointment. The fierceness with which the pontiff spoke and wrote
on this occasion, threatened Christendom with a rupture as injurious
to its peace as that between the unfortunate Henry and Gregory VII.
But Frederick’s firmness was unshaken; and a barrier was thus erected
against the attempts of the pope, which, intended only as a protection
to particular rights, did, in reality, afford support to the universal
principles of civil government. To Adrian’s threat that he would deprive
him of his crown, he replied that he held his crown, not from him but
from his own royal predecessors. “In the days of Constantine,” he asked,
“had St. Silvester anything to do with the royal dignity? Yet this was
the prince to whom the church was indebted for its peace and its liberty:
and all that you enjoy as pope, whence comes it but from the emperors?
Render unto God that which is God’s, and to Cæsar the things that are
Cæsar’s. Our churches and our cities are shut against your cardinals;
because they are not preachers but robbers, they are not peacemakers
but plunderers; we see that instead of coming to preach the Gospel and
promote peace, their whole desire and endeavour is to amass gold and
silver. When we find that they are what the church would have them, we
will refuse them nothing good for their support. It is horrible that
pride, that monster so detestable, should be able to steal even into the
chair of St. Peter.”[c]

ADRIAN’S FIRMNESS

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY]

[Sidenote: [1158 A.D.]]

Peace became more hopeless. As a last resource, six cardinals on the
part of the pope, and six German bishops on that of the emperor, were
appointed to frame a treaty. But the pope demanded the re-establishment
of the compact made with his predecessor Eugenius. The imperial bishops
reproached the pope with his own violation of that treaty by his alliance
with the king of Sicily; the Germans unanimously rejected the demands
of the pope: and now the emperor received with favour a deputation from
the senate and people of Rome. These ambassadors of the republican party
had watched; had been present at the rupture of the negotiations. The
pope, with the embers of Arnold’s rebellions mouldering under his feet;
with the emperor at the head of all Germany, the prelates as well as the
princes; with no ally but the doubtful, often perfidious Norman, stood
unshaken; betrayed no misgivings. He threatened the emperor with a public
excommunication.

Did the bold sagacity of Adrian foresee the heroic resolution with which
Milan and her confederate Lombard cities would many years afterwards,
and after some dire reverses and long oppression, resist the power of
Barbarossa? Did he calculate with prophetic foresight the strength of
Lombard republican freedom? Did he anticipate the field of Legnano, when
the whole force of the Teutonic empire was broken before the carroccio
of Milan? Already was the secret treaty framed with Milan, Brescia, and
Crema. These cities bound themselves not to make peace with the emperor
without the consent of the pope and his Catholic successor. Adrian was
preparing for the last act of defiance, the open declaration of war,
the excommunication of the emperor, which he was pledged to pronounce
after the signature of the treaty with the republics, when his death put
an end to this strange conflict, where each antagonist was allied with
a republican party in the heart of his adversary’s dominions. Adrian
IV died at Anagni; his remains were brought to Rome, and interred with
the highest honours, and with the general respect if not the grief of
the city, in the church of St. Peter. Even the ambassadors of Frederick
were present at the funeral. So ended the poor English scholar, at open
war with perhaps the mightiest sovereign who had reigned in transalpine
Europe since Charlemagne.[e]

TWO RIVAL POPES

[Sidenote: [1158-1164 A.D.]]

The death of Adrian saved the church from the danger which had threatened
it during the government of that fierce and overbearing pontiff. But,
while delivered from one set of evils, it was surrounded by others little
less calculated to injure its interests. The cardinals, having assembled
to elect a new pope, chose by a large majority of their body Rolando,
a cardinal, and chancellor of the Roman church. Their vote, however,
was opposed by Cardinal Octavian, who had expected to be nominated by
his colleagues to the vacant dignity; and when Rolando, who assumed
the name of Alexander III, was invested with the pontifical cope, he
rudely and sacrilegiously pulled it from his shoulders, and, but for the
interference of the persons present, would have put it on himself. As
he was disappointed in this, he obtained, by signal, a cope of the same
kind, which he suddenly threw over his shoulders, placing, in his haste,
the hind part before. Loud laughter followed this mistake; but Octavian
felt no shame at the mingled ridicule and rebuke with which he was
assailed. Going forth from the assembly, which he awed into silence by a
band of armed men, he exercised, under the name of Victor IV, the part of
sovereign pontiff; and for some days kept Alexander in close confinement.

The emperor Frederick did not look with indifference on these
occurrences. A division in the church was equivalent to a great increase
in his own power; and he warmly espoused the cause of Octavian, chiefly,
as it appears, because he was the head of a faction. He at last, however,
summoned a council to consider the question between the rival popes. The
council assembled at Pavia, and Octavian was declared pope by the fifty
bishops, the numerous abbots, and other dignitaries, of whom the meeting
was composed. But Alexander was supported by the whole of that powerful
party which contended for the doctrine of papal supremacy; and despising
the decree of deposition passed against him at Pavia, he excommunicated
the emperor for the part he had taken, and absolved his subjects from
their oath of allegiance. Victor, on the other hand, was recognised as
lawful pope, not only in Germany, but in England and France; by the
monarchs of which countries he was received at Couci on the Loire, with
all the pomp and ceremony which had been demanded for his successors by
the haughty Adrian.

[Sidenote: [1164-1198 A.D.]]

He died in the year 1164; but the schism was continued by the immediate
election of Paschal III, who retained the semblance of authority about
three years. Alexander, on the death of Victor, had ventured to return
to Rome, which he did not dare to attempt during the life-time of that
ecclesiastic. A pestilence, which swept off the flower of Frederick’s
army, saved the pope from ruin; and the emperor, obliged as he was to
make his escape into Germany as he best might, at length expressed his
willingness to heal the schism which he had created in the church. Peace
was accordingly restored, and Alexander returned.

On the death of Alexander, Ubaldo, bishop of Ostia, was elected without
opposition, and assumed the name of Lucius III (1181-1185), and it has
been noted, that at his election the cardinals first appropriated the
right of choosing the supreme pontiff without the interference of the
people, or of the other orders of the clergy. Popular indignation was
loudly expressed. Obliged to seek safety by flight, he called upon the
great European states to furnish him with supplies for the support of his
rights against the disaffected citizens. His claims were allowed, and
the riches of England and other countries were poured freely into his
treasury. With these he made head against the insurgents; but such was
the fierceness with which they resisted him, that they tore out the eyes
of the clergy whom they met beyond the walls of the city; and obliged him
to fix his residence at Verona, where he died in 1185. Urban III, Gregory
VIII, and Clement III, passed their brief pontificates at a distance
from Rome. The last-named pope, however, made peace with the senate
and the people; and his successor, Celestine III, was enabled, by the
strength of his position, to exercise the most important of his assumed
privileges without interruption. Henry VI, who at one time received from
his hands[98] the imperial crown, was at another punished by him with the
ban of excommunication.[c] On his death he was succeeded by Innocent III.

INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: [1198 A.D.]]

Under Innocent III, the papal power rose to its utmost height.[99] The
thirteenth century is nearly commensurate with this supremacy of the
pope. Innocent III at its commencement calmly exercised as his right,
and handed down strengthened and almost irresistible to his successors,
that which, at its close, Boniface asserted with repulsive and ill-timed
arrogance, endangered, undermined, and shook to its base.

The essential inherent supremacy of the spiritual over the temporal
power, as of the soul over the body, as of eternity over time, as of
Christ over Cæsar, as of God over man, was now an integral part of
Christianity. Ideas obtain authority and dominion, not altogether from
their intrinsic truth, but rather from their constant asseveration,
especially when they fall in with the common hopes and fears, the wants
and necessities of human nature. The mass of mankind have neither leisure
nor ability to examine them; they fatigue, and so compel the world into
their acceptance; more particularly if it is the duty, the passion, and
the interest of one great associated body to perpetuate them, while it is
neither the peculiar function, nor the manifest advantage of any large
class or order to refute them.

The unity of the vast Christian republic was an imposing conception,
which, even now that history has shown its hopeless impossibility, still
infatuates lofty minds; its impossibility, since it demands for its head
not merely that infallibility in doctrine so boldly claimed in later
times, but absolute impeccability, in every one of its possessors; more
than impeccability, an all-commanding, indefeasible, unquestionable
majesty of virtue, holiness, and wisdom. Without this it is a baseless
tyranny, a senseless usurpation. In those days it struck in with the
whole feudal system, which was one of strict gradation and subordination;
to the hierarchy of church and state was equally wanting the crown, the
sovereign liege lord.

When this idea was first promulgated in all its naked sternness by
Gregory VII, it had come into collision with other ideas rooted with
almost equal depth in the mind of man, that especially of the illimitable
Cæsarian power, which though transferred to a German emperor, was still
a powerful tradition, and derived great weight from its descent from
Charlemagne. The humiliation of the emperor was degradation; it brought
contempt on the office, scarcely redeemed by the abilities, successes,
or even virtues of new sovereigns; the humiliation of the pope was a
noble suffering in the cause of God and truth, the depression of patient
holiness under worldly violence. In every schism the pope who maintained
the loftiest churchmanship had eventually gained the superiority which
the imperialising popes had sunk into impotence, obscurity, ignominy.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CRUSADES ON PAPAL POWER

[Sidenote: [1198-1201 A.D.]]

The Crusades, as elsewhere described, had made the pope not merely the
spiritual, but in some sort the military suzerain of Europe; he had the
power of summoning all Christendom to his banner; the raising the cross,
the standard of the pope, was throughout Europe a general and compulsory
levy, the _Heerbann_ of all who bore arms, of all who could follow an
army. That which was a noble act of devotion had become a duty; not to
assume the cross was sin and impiety. The Crusades thus became a kind
of forlorn hope upon which all the more dangerous and refractory of the
temporal sovereigns might be employed, so as to waste their strength, if
not lose their lives, by the accidents of the journey, or by the sword
of the Mohammedan. If they resisted, the fearful excommunication hung
over them, and was ratified by the fears and by the wavering allegiance
of their subjects. If they obeyed and returned, as most of them did,
with shame and defeat, they returned shorn of their power, lowered in
the public estimation, and perhaps still pursued, on account of their
ill success, with the inexorable interdict. It was thus by trammelling
their adversaries with vows which they could not decline, and from which
they could not extricate themselves; by thus consuming their wealth and
resources on this wild and remote warfare, that the popes, who themselves
decently eluded, or were prevented by age or alleged occupations from
embarkation in these adventurous expeditions, broke and wasted away the
power and influence of the emperors.

The Crusades, too, had now made the western world tributary to the
popedom; the vast subventions raised for the Holy Land were to a certain
extent at the disposal of the pope. The taxation of the clergy on his
authority could not be refused for such an object; a tenth of all the
exorbitant wealth of the hierarchy passed through his hands. An immense
financial system grew up; papal collectors were in every land, papal
bankers in every capital to transmit these subsidies.

But after all none of these accessory and, in some degree, fortuitous
aids, could have raised the papal authority to its commanding
height,[100] had it not possessed more sublime and more lawful claims to
the reverence of mankind. It was still an assertion of eternal principles
of justice, righteousness, and humanity. However it might trample on all
justice, sacrifice righteousness to its own interests, plunge Europe
in desolating wars, perpetuate strife in states, set sons in arms
against their fathers, fathers against sons, it was still proclaiming
a higher ultimate end. The papal language, the language of the clergy,
was still ostentatiously, profoundly religious; it professed, even if
itself did not always respect, even though it tampered with, the awful
sense of retribution before an all-knowing, all-righteous God. In his
highest pride, the pope was still the servant of the servants of God; in
all his cruelty he boasted of his kindness to the transgressor; every
contumacious emperor was a disobedient son; the excommunication was the
voice of a parent, who affected at least reluctance to chastise.

If this great idea was ever to be realised of a Christian republic
with a pope at its head--and that a pope of a high Christian character
(in some respects, in all perhaps but one, in tolerance and gentleness
almost impossible in his days, and the want of which, far from impairing,
confirmed his strength)--none could bring more lofty, more various
qualifications for its accomplishment, none could fall on more favourable
times than Innocent III. Innocent was Giovanni Lothario Conti, an
Italian of noble birth, but not of a family inextricably involved in the
petty quarrels and interests of the princedoms of Romagna. He was of
the Conti,[101] who derived their name in some remote time from their
dignity. The elevation of his uncle to the pontificate as Clement III
paved the way to his rapid rise. He was elevated in his twenty-ninth year
to the cardinalate under the title vacated by his uncle.

Celestine on his death-bed had endeavoured to nominate his successor; he
had offered to resign the papacy if the cardinals would elect John of
Colonna. But, even if consistent with right and with usage, the words of
dying sovereigns rarely take effect. Of twenty-eight cardinals, five only
were absent; of the rest the unanimous vote fell on the youngest of their
body, on the cardinal (Giovanni) Lothario. Lothario was only thirty-seven
years old, almost an unprecedented age for a pope.[102] The cardinals
who proclaimed him saluted him by the name of Innocent, in testimony of
his blameless life. In his inauguration sermon broke forth the character
of the man; the unmeasured assertion of his dignity, protestations of
humility which have a sound of pride. “Ye see what manner of servant
that is whom the Lord hath set over his people; no other than the
vicegerent of Christ, the successor of Peter. He stands in the midst
between God and man; below God, above man; less than God, more than man.
He judges all, is judged by none, for it is written, ‘I will judge.’ But
he whom the pre-eminence of dignity exalts is lowered by his office of
a servant, that so humility may be exalted, and pride abased; for God
is against the high-minded, and to the lowly he shows mercy; and he who
exalteth himself shall be abased. Every valley shall be lifted up, every
hill and mountain laid low!”

The letters in which he announced his election to the king of France,
and to the other realms of Christendom, blend a decent but exaggerated
humility with the consciousness of power; Innocent’s confidence in
himself transpires through his confidence in the divine protection.

The state of Christendom might have tempted a less ambitious prelate to
extend and consolidate his supremacy. Wherever Innocent cast his eyes
over Christendom and beyond the limits of Christendom, appeared disorder,
contested thrones, sovereigns oppressing their subjects, subjects in arms
against their sovereigns, the ruin of the Christian cause. In Italy the
crown of Naples on the brows of an infant; the fairest provinces under
the galling yoke of fierce German adventurers; the Lombard republics,
Guelf or Ghibelline, at war within their walls, at war or in implacable
animosity against each other; the empire, distracted by rival claimants
for the throne, one vast scene of battle, intrigue, almost of anarchy;
the tyrannical and dissolute Philip Augustus king of France, before long
the tyrannical and feeble John of England.

The Byzantine Empire is tottering to its fall; the kingdom of Jerusalem
confined almost to the city of Acre. Every realm seems to demand, or
at least to invite, the interposition, the mediation, of the head of
Christendom; in every land one party at least, or one portion of society,
would welcome his interference in the last resort for refuge or for
protection.

Nor did Innocent shrink from that which might have crushed a less
energetic spirit to despair; from the Jordan to the Atlantic, from the
Mediterranean to beyond the Baltic, his influence is felt and confessed;
his vast correspondence shows at once the inexhaustible activity of
his mind; he is involved simultaneously or successively in the vital
interests of every kingdom in the western world.[e]

THE AUTOCRACY OF INNOCENT III

In order to secure Sicily for her son, the empress Constantia, pressed
hard by parties, was obliged to accept the papal investment under the new
conditions prescribed by the pontiff. After Constantia’s death (the 27th
of November, 1198) Innocent ruled over all Sicily in the character of
guardian. Still further the disputed imperial election, by which Germany
was divided between Philip, duke of Swabia, and Otto, duke of Saxony,
encouraged the pope to a larger extension of his power. Immediately after
his accession, Innocent had already taken the oath of fealty to the
imperial _præfectus urbis_; now he dislodged the vassals of the empire
from the territory of Matilda, and established in Tuscany a civic league.

[Sidenote: [1201-1216 A.D.]]

After he had thus consolidated his power in Italy, he commenced an
energetic interference in German politics; for he forthwith claimed the
right to decide on a disputed imperial election. He must naturally have
been inclined rather to the Guelf than to the Hohenstaufen candidate,
so maintaining his pretensions he actually decided (1201) in favour of
Otto IV. However, he was resisted with great energy by Philip’s party,
and the flame of discord only burned so much the brighter in Germany.
As Philip continued to gain more decisive advantages over his enemy,
Innocent began negotiations with him, which seemed fraught with danger
to Otto. Meanwhile Philip was murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach in Bamberg
(1208). Otto IV was then universally recognised as emperor, and after he
had satisfied the pope’s demands in all points he was crowned by him. But
so soon as Otto had reached this goal of his wishes, he began again to
vindicate the imperial rights in Italy, and to overthrow the pope’s new
creations, without suffering himself to be turned from his path by the
sentence of excommunication and dethronement which the deluded Innocent
pronounced against him in November, 1210. Now he himself encouraged the
canvass of the only surviving Hohenstaufen. Frederick appeared in Germany
in 1212, and, upheld as he was by the pope and the king of France, he
quickly won most of all ranks to his side. On the 25th of July, 1215, he
received the German king’s crown at Aachen, and Otto down to his death
(1218) had to content himself with his ancestral territories in Brunswick.

UNIVERSAL SWAY OF THE POPE

On every side, the thunder of Rome broke over the heads of princes. A
certain Swero is excommunicated for usurping the crown of Norway. A
legate, in passing through Hungary, is detained by the king: Innocent
writes in tolerably mild terms to this potentate, but fails not to
intimate that he might be compelled to prevent his son’s accession to the
throne. The king of Leon had married his cousin, a princess of Castile.
Innocent subjects the kingdom to an interdict. When the clergy of Leon
petition him to remove it, because when they ceased to perform their
functions the laity paid no tithes and listened to heretical teachers
when orthodox mouths were mute, he consented that divine service with
closed doors, but not the rites of burial, might be performed. The king
at length gave way, and sent back his wife.

But a more illustrious victory of the same kind was obtained over Philip
Augustus, who, having repudiated Ingeborg of Denmark, had contracted
another marriage. The conduct of the king, though not without the usual
excuse of those times, nearness of blood, was justly condemned; and
Innocent did not hesitate to visit his sins upon the people by a general
interdict. This, after a short demur from some bishops, was enforced
throughout France; the dead lay unburied, and the living were cut off
from the offices of religion, till Philip, thus subdued, took back his
divorced wife. The submission of such a prince, not feebly superstitious,
like his predecessor Robert, nor vexed with seditions, like the emperor
Henry IV, but brave, firm, and victorious, is perhaps the proudest trophy
on the scutcheon of Rome.

Compared with this, the subsequent triumph of Innocent over the
pusillanimous John seems cheaply gained, though the surrender of a
powerful kingdom into the vassalage of the pope may strike us as a proof
of stupendous baseness on one side and audacity on the other.

A disputed election furnished Innocent with an opportunity of thrusting
forward the cardinal Stephen Langton into the archbishopric of
Canterbury against the king’s will. When John resisted with anger,
the pope laid England under an interdict, in 1208, and afterwards
excommunicated the king; the latter sought by reckless cruelty to avenge
himself on the clergy, and by severe oppression to make sure of his
vassals. At last Innocent deposed him from his kingdom, and handed it
over to the king of France. But while he was arming himself for the
conquest, John, unable to trust his vassals, yielded in all points, and
even received his kingdom in fee from the pope under circumstances of the
greatest humiliation. Now was England yielded up to the discretion of an
arbitrary pope and a contemptible king; this united the prelates and the
barons to wrest Magna Charta from the king in 1215. In vain the pope with
spiritual and the king with temporal weapons strove to effect its repeal;
John’s death, however, in 1216, quickly put an end to internal discord.

Still greater prospects seemed to open themselves before the pope in
Constantinople. Although the enthusiasm for crusades was already much
diminished, nevertheless Innocent had succeeded, by unwearied efforts, in
collecting a new army at Venice in 1202. The crafty doge, Enrico Dandolo,
notwithstanding all papal admonitions, had first made use of the army for
the reconquest of Zara (Jadera); it was then induced by the magnificent
promises of a Greek prince, Alexius, to undertake an expedition against
Constantinople; and when the reinstated emperor Isaac Angelus was
unable to fulfil these promises, Constantinople was conquered, and a
Latin empire established there, by the exaltation of Baldwin, count
of Flanders, to the throne. Thus the church of Constantinople seemed
now to be brought into subjection to the Roman see. However, even now,
no one doubted the precariousness of this acquisition. For the new
empire already contained the germ of dissolution; on the other hand it
completely foiled the powerful enterprise in behalf of Palestine.

In the latter year of his life Innocent devoted especial attention to
the Holy Land: King Frederick took the cross even at his coronation;
and at the Lateran council of the year 1215, one of the most brilliant
which had ever been held, the accomplishment of another crusade was one
of the chief ends in view. The enthusiasm for the Holy Land was indeed
by no means extinct; but in Germany the continuance of the twofold reign
of Frederick and Otto led to many unfavourable opinions of the Roman
see, which necessarily obstructed its readiness to undertake a fresh
crusade.[k]

MILMAN’S ESTIMATE OF INNOCENT III

[Sidenote: [1198-1216 A.D.]]

In the full vigour of his manhood died Innocent III, 1216. He, of all
the popes, had advanced the most exorbitant pretensions, and those
pretensions had been received by an age most disposed to accept them
with humble deference. The high and blameless, in some respects wise and
gentle, character of Innocent might seem to approach more nearly than
any one of the whole succession of Roman bishops to the ideal height
of a supreme pontiff; in him, if ever, might appear to be realised the
churchman’s highest conception of the vicar of Christ.

Gregory VII and Boniface VIII, the first and the last of the aggressive
popes, and the aged Gregory IX, had no doubt more rugged warfare to
encounter, fiercer and more unscrupulous enemies to subdue. But in
all these there was a personal sternness, a contemptuous haughtiness;
theirs was a worldly majesty. The pride of Innocent was calmer, more
self-possessed; his dignity was less disturbed by degrading collisions
with rude adversaries; he died on his unshaken throne, in the plenitude
of his seemingly unquestioned power. Yet if we pause and contemplate,
as we cannot but pause and contemplate, the issue of this highest,
in a certain sense noblest and most religious contest for the papal
ascendency over the world of man, there is an inevitable conviction of
the unreality of that papal power. With all the grandeur of his views,
with all the persevering energy of his measures, throughout Innocent’s
reign, everywhere we behold failure, everywhere immediate discomfiture,
or transitory success which paved the way for future disaster. The
higher the throne of the pope the more manifestly were its foundations
undermined, unsound, unenduring.

Even Rome does not always maintain her peaceful subservience. Her
obedience is interrupted, precarious; that of transient awe, not of deep
attachment, or rooted reverence. In the empire it is impossible not to
burden the memory of Innocent with the miseries of the long civil war.
Otto without the aid of the pope could not have maintained the contest
for a year; with all the pope’s aid he had sunk into contempt, almost
insignificance; he was about to be abandoned, if not actually abandoned,
by the pope himself. The casual blow of the assassin alone prevented
the complete triumph of Philip. Already he had extorted his absolution;
Innocent was compelled to yield, and could not yield without loss of
dignity. The triumph of Otto leads to as fierce, and more perilous
resistance to the papal power than could have been expected from the
haughtiness of the Hohenstaufen. The pope has an irresistible enemy in
Italy itself. Innocent is compelled to abandon the great object of the
papal policy, the breaking the line of succession in the house of Swabia,
and to assist in the elevation of a Swabian emperor. He must yield to the
union of the crown of Sicily with that of Germany, and so bequeath to his
successors the obstinate and perilous strife with Frederick II.

[Illustration: A THIRTEENTH CENTURY MONK]

In France, Philip Augustus is forced to seem, yet only seem, to
submit; the miseries of his unhappy wife are but aggravated by the
papal protection. The death of Agnes of Méran, rather than Innocent’s
authority, heals the strife. The sons of the proscribed concubine succeed
to the throne of France.

In England the barons refuse to desert John when under the interdict of
the pope; when the pope becomes the king’s ally, resenting the cession
of the realm, they withdraw their allegiance. Even in Stephen Langton,
who owes his promotion to the pope, the Englishman prevails over the
ecclesiastic; the Great Charter is extorted from the king when under the
express protection of the holy see, and maintained resolutely against the
papal sentence of abrogation; and in the Great Charter is laid the first
stone of the religious as well as the civil liberties of the land.

Venice, in the crusade, deludes, defies, baffles the pope. The crusaders
become her army, besiege, fight, conquer for her interests. In vain the
pope protests, threatens, anathematises; Venice calmly proceeds in the
subjugation of Zara. To the astonishment, the indignation of the pope,
the crusaders’ banners wave not over Jerusalem, but over Constantinople.
But for her own wisdom, Venice might have given an emperor to the capital
of the East; she secures the patriarchate almost in defiance of the pope;
only when she has entirely gained her ends does she submit to the petty
and unregarded vengeance of the pope.

Even in the Albigensian war the success was indeed complete; heresy was
crushed, but by means of which Innocent disapproved in his heart. He had
let loose a terrible force, which he could neither arrest nor control.
The pope can do everything but show mercy or moderation. He could not
shake off, the papacy has never shaken off, the burden of its complicity
in the remorseless carnage perpetrated by the crusaders in Languedoc, in
the crimes and cruelties of Simon de Montfort. A dark and ineffaceable
stain of fraud and dissimulation too has gathered around the fame of
Innocent himself.[103] Heresy was quenched in blood; but the earth sooner
or later gives out the terrible cry of blood for vengeance against
murderers and oppressors.

The great religious event of this pontificate, the foundation of
the Mendicant orders, that which perhaps perpetuated, or at least
immeasurably strengthened, the papal power for two centuries, was
extorted from the reluctant pope. Both St. Dominic and St. Francis were
coldly received, almost contemptuously repelled. It was not till either
his own more mature deliberation or wiser counsel, which took the form
of divine admonition, prevented this fatal error and prophetically
revealed the secret of their strength and of their irresistible influence
throughout Christendom, that Innocent awoke to wisdom. He then bequeathed
these two great standing armies to the papacy; armies maintained without
cost, sworn, more than sworn, bound by the unbroken chains of their own
zeal and devotion to unquestioning, unhesitating service throughout
Christendom, speaking all languages. They were colonies of religious
militia, natives of every land, yet under foreign control and guidance.
Their whole power, importance, perhaps possessions rested on their
fidelity to the see of Rome, that fidelity guaranteed by the charter of
their existence. Well might they appear so great as they are seen by the
eye of Dante, like the cherubim and seraphim in paradise.[e]

FREDERICK II AT WAR WITH THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1216-1244 A.D.]]

Honorius III, previously called Cencio Savelli, who succeeded Innocent,
1216, and governed the Roman church more than ten years, did not
perform so many deeds worthy of being recorded; yet he was very careful
that the Romish power should receive no diminution. Pursuing this
course, he had a grievous falling out with the emperor Frederick II,
a magnanimous prince, whom he himself had crowned at Rome in the year
1220. Frederick, imitating his grandfather, laboured to establish and
enlarge the authority of the emperors in Italy, to depress the minor
states and republics of Lombardy, and to diminish the immense wealth and
power of the pontiffs and the bishops; and to accomplish these objects,
he continually deferred the crusade, which he had promised with an
oath. Honorius, on the other hand, continually urged Frederick to enter
on his expedition to Palestine; yet he secretly encouraged, animated,
and supported the cities and republics that resisted the emperor, and
raised various impediments to the latter’s increasing power. Still, this
hostility did not, at present, break out in open war.

But under Gregory IX--whose former name was Ugolino, and who was elevated
from the bishopric of Ostia to the pontificate, 1227, an old man, but
still bold and resolute--the fire, which had been long burning in secret,
burst into a flame.[104] In the year 1227 the pontiff excommunicated the
emperor, who still deferred his expedition to Palestine; but without
proceeding in due form of ecclesiastical law, and without regarding the
emperor’s excuse of ill health. In the year 1228 the emperor sailed with
his fleet to Palestine; but instead of waging war as he was bound to
do, he made a truce with Saladin on recovering Jerusalem. While he was
absent the pontiff raised war against him in Apulia, and endeavoured to
excite all Europe to oppose him. Therefore Frederick hastened back, in
the year 1229, and after vanquishing his enemies, made his peace with
the pontiff in the year 1230. But this peace could not be durable, as
Frederick would not submit to the control of the pontiff. Therefore, as
the emperor continued to press heavily on the republics of Lombardy,
which were friendly to the pontiff, and transferred Sardinia, which the
pontiff claimed as part of the patrimony of the church, to his son Enzio;
and wished to withdraw Rome itself from the power of the pontiff; and did
other things very offensive to Gregory--the pontiff, in the year 1239,
again laid him under anathemas; and accused him to all the sovereigns
of Europe of many crimes and enormities, and particularly of speaking
contemptuously of the Christian religion.

The emperor, on the other hand, avenged the injuries that he received,
both by written publications and by his military operations in Italy,
in which he was for the most part successful; and thus he defended his
reputation, and also brought the pontiff into perplexity and difficulty.
To rescue himself, in some measure, in the year 1240 Gregory summoned a
general council to meet at Rome, intending to hurl the emperor from his
throne by the united suffrages of the assembled fathers. But Frederick,
in the year 1241, captured the Genoese fleet, which was carrying a great
part of the fathers to the council at Rome, and seizing as well their
treasures as themselves, he cast them into prison. Broken down by these
calamities, and by others of no less magnitude, Gregory shortly after
sank into the grave.

The successor of Gregory, Goffredo Castiglione of Milan, who assumed the
name of Celestine IV, died before his consecration; and after a long
interregnum, in the year 1243, Senibaldi, a Genoese, descended from the
counts Fieschi, succeeded under the pontifical name of Innocent IV, a
man inferior to none of his predecessors in arrogance and insolence of
temper. Between him and Frederick there were at first negotiations for
peace; but the terms insisted on by the pontiff were deemed too harsh
by the emperor. Hence Innocent, feeling himself unsafe in any part of
Italy, in 1244 removed from Genoa to Lyons in France; and the next year
assembled a council there, in the presence of which, but without its
approbation (whatever the Roman writers may affirm to the contrary), he
declared Frederick unworthy of the imperial throne.

[Sidenote: [1244-1274 A.D.]]

This most unrighteous decision of the pontiff had such influence upon the
German princes, who were infected with the superstition of the times,
that they elected first Henry, landgraf of Thuringia, and on his death
William, count of Holland, to the imperial throne. Frederick continued
the war vigorously and courageously in Italy, and with various successes,
until a dysentery terminated his life in Apulia, on the 13th of December,
1250. On the death of his foe, Innocent returned to Italy in the year
1251. From this time especially (though their origin was much earlier)
the two noted factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines, of which the former
sided with the pontiffs and the latter with the emperors, most unhappily
rent asunder and devastated all Italy.

Alexander IV, whose name as count of Segni and bishop of Ostia was
Rinaldo, became pontiff on the death of Innocent (1254) and reigned six
years and six months. Excepting some efforts to put down a grandson of
Frederick II, called Conradin, and to quiet the perpetual commotions of
Italy, he busied himself more in regulating the internal affairs of the
church than in national concerns. The mendicant friars, Dominicans and
Franciscans, are under especial obligations to him. Urban IV, before his
election to the pontificate in 1261, was James, patriarch of Jerusalem,
a man born of obscure parentage at Troyes. He distinguished himself more
by instituting the festival of the Body of Christ than by any other
achievement. He indeed formed many projects: but he executed few of them,
being prevented by death, in the year 1264, after a short reign of three
years. Not much longer was the reign of Clement IV, a Frenchman and
bishop of Sabina, under the name of Guido Fulcodi (Guy Foulques), who
was created pontiff in the year 1265. Yet he is better known on several
accounts, but especially for conferring the kingdom of Naples on Charles
of Anjou, brother to Louis IX, the king of France. Charles is well known
to have beheaded Conradin, the only surviving grandson of Frederick II,
after conquering him in battle, and this, if not by the counsel, at least
with the consent of the pontiff.[105]

On the death of Clement IV[106] there were vehement contests among the
cardinals, respecting the election of a new pontiff; which continued till
the third year, when, at last, 1271, Teobaldo of Piacenza, archdeacon of
Liège, was chosen, and assumed the name of Gregory X. He had been called
from Palestine, where he had resided; and having witnessed the depressed
state of the Christians in the Holy Land, nothing more engaged his
thoughts than sending them succour.

COUNCIL AT LYONS

[Sidenote: [1274-1294 A.D.]]

Accordingly, as soon as he was consecrated, he appointed a council to be
held at Lyons in France, and attended it in person in the month of May,
1274. The principal subjects discussed were the re-establishment of the
Christian dominion in the East, and the reunion of the Greek and Latin
churches. This has commonly been reckoned the fourteenth general council,
and is particularly noticeable for the new regulations it established for
the election of Roman pontiffs, and the celebrated provision which is
still in force requiring the cardinal electors to be shut up in conclave.
Neither did the pontiff, though of a milder disposition than many others,
hesitate to repeat and inculcate that odious maxim of Gregory VII, that
the pontiff is supreme lord of the world, and especially of the Roman
Empire. For in the year 1271 he sent a menacing letter to the princes
of Germany, admonishing them to elect an emperor, and without regarding
the wishes or the claims of Alfonso, king of Castile; otherwise he would
appoint a head of the empire himself. Accordingly, the princes assembled,
and elected Rudolf I, of the house of Habsburg.

Gregory X died in the year 1276, and his three immediate successors were
all chosen and died in the same year. Innocent V, previously Pietro di
Tarantaisia, was a Dominican monk, and bishop of Ostia. Adrian V was a
Genoese, named Ottoboni, and cardinal of St. Adrian. John XXI, previously
Pedro, bishop of Tusculum, was a native of Portugal. The next pontiff,
who came to the chair in 1277, reigned longer. He was Giovanni Gaetano,
of the family of Ursini, a Roman, and cardinal of St. Nicholas, who
assumed the title of Nicholas III. He greatly enlarged what is called the
patrimony of St. Peter; and, as his actions show, had formed other great
projects, which he would undoubtedly have accomplished, as he was a man
of energy and enterprise, had he not prematurely died in the year 1280.

His successor, Martin IV, elected by the cardinals in 1281, was a French
nobleman, Simon de Brion, a man of equal boldness and energy of character
with Nicholas. For he excommunicated Michael Palæologus, the Greek
emperor, because he had violated the compact of union with the Latins,
which was settled at the Council of Lyons. Pedro of Aragon he deprived
of his kingdoms and of all his property, because he had seized upon
Sicily; and he bestowed them gratuitously on Charles, son to the king of
France. He was projecting many other things, consonant with the views of
the pontiffs, when he was suddenly overtaken by death in 1285. His plans
were prosecuted by his successor, Giacomo Savelli, who was elected in
1285 and took the name of Honorius IV. But a distressing disease in his
joints, of which he died in 1287, prevented him from attempting anything
further. Nicholas IV, previously Girolamo d’Ascoli, bishop of Palestrina,
who attained to the pontifical chair in 1288, and died in 1292, was able
to attend to the affairs both of the church and of the nations with
more diligence and care. Hence he is represented in history sometimes
as the arbiter in the disputes of sovereign princes, sometimes as the
strenuous asserter of the rights and prerogatives of the church, and
again as the assiduous promoter of missionary labours among the Tatars
and other nations of the East. But nothing lay nearer his heart than the
restoration of the dominion of the Christians in Palestine, where their
cause was nearly ruined. In this he laboured strenuously indeed, but in
vain; for death intercepted all his projects.

After his death the church was without a head till the third year, the
cardinals disagreeing exceedingly among themselves. At length, on the
5th of July, 1294, they unanimously chose an aged man, greatly venerated
for his sanctity--Pietro, surnamed di Murrhone, from a mountain in which
he led a solitary and very austere life; he assumed the pontifical name
of Celestine V. But as the austerity of his life tacitly censured the
corrupt morals of the Romish court, and especially of the cardinals, and
as he showed very plainly that he was more solicitous to advance the
holiness of the church than its worldly grandeur, he was soon considered
as unworthy of the office which he had reluctantly assumed. Hence some
of the cardinals, and especially Benedict Cajetan, persuaded him very
easily to abdicate the chair, in the fourth month of his pontificate.
He died, 1296, in the castle of Fumone, where his successor detained
him a captive, lest he should make some disturbance. But afterwards
Clement V enrolled him in the calendar of the saints. To him the sect
of Benedictine monks who were called, after him, Celestines, owed its
origin; a sect still existing in Italy and France, though now nearly
extinct, and differing from the other Benedictines by their more rigid
rules of life.

ACCESSION OF BONIFACE VIII

[Sidenote: [1294-1301 A.D.]]

He was succeeded in 1294 by Benedict, Cardinal Cajetan, by whose
persuasions he had been chiefly led to resign the pontificate, and who
now assumed the name of Boniface VIII. This was a man formed to produce
disturbance both in church and state, and eager for confirming and
enlarging the power of the pontiffs, to the highest degree of rashness.
From his first entrance on the office he arrogated to himself sovereign
power over all things sacred and secular; overawed kings and states by
his fulminations; decided important controversies at his will; enlarged
the code of canon law by new accessions, namely, by the sixth book of
_Decretals_; made war, among others, particularly on the noble family
of Colonna, which had opposed his election--in a word, he seemed to
be another Gregory VII at the head of the church. At the close of the
century, he established the year of jubilee, which is still solemnised at
Rome.

That the governors of the church, as well of highest rank as of inferior,
were addicted to all those vices which are the most unbecoming to men
in their stations, is testified most abundantly. As for the Greek and
oriental clergy, many of whom lived under oppressive governments, we
shall say nothing; although their faults are sufficiently manifest.
But of the faults of the Latins silence would be the less proper, in
proportion to the certainty that from this source the whole community
was involved in the greatest calamities. All the honest and good men
of that age ardently wished for a reformation of the church, both in
its head and in its members, as they themselves expressed it. But to so
desirable an event there were still many obstacles. First, the power of
the pontiffs was so confirmed by its long continuance that it seemed to
be immovably established. In the next place, extravagant superstition
held the minds of the majority of the people in abject slavery. And
lastly, the ignorance and barbarism of the times quickly extinguished the
sparks of truth that appeared from time to time. Yet the dominion of the
Roman pontiffs, impregnable and durable as it seemed to be, was gradually
undermined and weakened in this century, partly by the rash insolence
of the pontiffs themselves and partly by the occurrence of certain
unexpected events.

PHILIP THE FAIR OVERPOWERS THE PAPACY

[Sidenote: [1301-1305 A.D.]]

The commencement of this important change must be referred to the contest
between Boniface VIII, who governed the Latin church at the beginning
of this century, and Philip the Fair, king of France. This high-minded
sovereign first taught the Europeans what the emperors had in vain
attempted--that the Roman bishops could be vanquished, and be laid
under restraint. In a very haughty letter addressed to Philip, Boniface
maintained that all kings and persons whatever, and the king of France
as well as others, by divine command, owed perfect obedience to the
Roman pontiff, and this not merely in religious matters, but likewise
in secular and human affairs. The king replied with extreme bitterness.
The pontiff repeated his former assertions with greater arrogance, and
published the celebrated bull called _Unam sanctam_; in which he asserted
that Jesus Christ had granted a twofold power or sword to his church, a
spiritual and a temporal; that the whole human race was subjected to the
pontiff; and that all who dissented from this doctrine were heretics, and
could not expect to be saved. The king, on the contrary, in an assembly
of his nobles, in 1303, through the famous lawyer, Guillaume de Nogaret,
publicly accused the pontiff of heresy, simony, dishonesty, and other
enormities; and urged the calling of a general council to depose from his
office a pontiff so very wicked. The pontiff, in return, excommunicated
the king and all his adherents the same year.

Soon after receiving this sentence, Philip again, in an assembly of the
states of his kingdom, entered a formal complaint against the pontiff,
by men of the highest reputation and influence; and appealed to the
decision of a future general council of the church. He then despatched
Guillaume de Nogaret, with some others, into Italy, to rouse the people
to insurrection, and to bring the pontiff prisoner to Lyons, where he
wished the council to be held. Nogaret, who was a resolute and energetic
man, having drawn over to his interest the Colonna family, which was
at variance with the pontiff, raised a small force, suddenly attacked
Boniface, who was living securely at Anagni, made him prisoner, wounded
him, and, among other severe indignities, struck him on the head with his
iron gauntlet. The people of Anagni, indeed, rescued the pontiff from the
hands of his furious enemy; but he died shortly after, at Rome, in the
month of October, from rage and anguish of mind.

Benedict XI, previously Nicolo of Trevigio, the successor of Boniface,
profiting by his example, restored the king of France and his kingdom to
their former honours and privileges, without even being solicited; but he
was unwilling to absolve from his crime Nogaret, who had so grievously
offended against the pontifical dignity. This daring man, therefore,
prosecuted strenuously the suit commenced against Boniface in the Romish
court; and, in the name of the king, demanded that a mark of infamy
should be set upon the deceased pontiff.

Benedict XI died in the year 1304; and Philip, by his secret
machinations, caused Bertrand d’Agoust, a Frenchman, and archbishop of
Bordeaux, to be created pontiff at Rome, on the 5th of June, 1305. For
the contest of the king against the pontiffs was not yet wholly settled,
Nogaret not being absolved, and it might easily break out again. Besides,
the king thirsted for revenge, and designed to extort from the court of
Rome a condemnation of Boniface; he also meditated the destruction of the
Templars, and other matters of great importance which he could hardly
expect from an Italian pontiff. He therefore wished to have a French
pontiff, whom he could control according to his pleasure, and who would
be in a degree dependent on him. The new pontiff, who took the name of
Clement V, remained in France, as the king wished, and transferred the
pontifical court to Avignon, where it continued for seventy years. This
period the Italians call the Babylonian Captivity.[n]

HALLAM ON THE CLIMAX OF PAPAL POWER

[Sidenote: [1198-1305 A.D.]]

The noonday of papal dominion extends from the pontificate of Innocent
III inclusively to that of Boniface VIII; or, in other words, through the
thirteenth century. Rome inspired during this age all the terror of her
ancient name. She was once more the mistress of the world, and kings were
her vassals. In her long contention with the house of Swabia, she finally
triumphed. After his deposition by the Council of Lyons, the affairs of
Frederick II went rapidly into decay. With every allowance for the enmity
of the Lombards and the jealousies of Germany, it must be confessed, that
his proscription by Innocent IV and Alexander IV was the main cause of
the ruin of his family.

This general supremacy effected by the Roman church over mankind in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, derived material support from the
promulgation of the canon law. By means of her new jurisprudence Rome
acquired in every country a powerful body of advocates who, though many
of them were laymen, would, with the usual bigotry of lawyers, defend
every pretension or abuse, to which their received standard of authority
gave sanction.

Next to the canon law, we should reckon the institution of the mendicant
orders among those circumstances which principally contributed to the
aggrandisement of Rome. By the acquisition, and in some respects the
enjoyment, or at least ostentation of immense riches, the ancient
monastic orders had forfeited much of the public esteem. No means
appeared so efficacious to counteract this effect as the institution of
religious societies, strictly debarred from the insidious temptations of
wealth. These new preachers were received with astonishing approbation by
the laity, whose religious zeal usually depends a good deal upon their
opinion of sincerity and disinterestedness in their pastors. And the
progress of the Dominican and Franciscan friars in the thirteenth century
bears a remarkable analogy to that of the English Methodists. Aware of
the powerful support they might receive in turn, the pontiffs of the
thirteenth century accumulated benefits upon the disciples of Francis
and Dominic. They were exempted from episcopal authority; they were
permitted to preach or hear confessions without leave of the ordinary, to
accept of legacies, and to inter in their churches. It was naturally to
be expected that the objects of such extensive favours would repay their
benefactors by a more than usual obsequiousness and alacrity in their
service. Accordingly, the Dominicans and Franciscans vied with each other
in magnifying the papal supremacy.

We should not overlook, among the causes that contributed to the dominion
of the popes, their prerogative of dispensing with ecclesiastical
ordinances. The most remarkable exercise of this was as to the canonical
impediments of matrimony. Such strictness as is prescribed by the
Christian religion with respect to divorce was very unpalatable to
the barbarous nations. They in fact paid it little regard; under the
Merovingian dynasty, even private men put away their wives at pleasure.
In many capitularies of Charlemagne, we find evidence of the prevailing
license of repudiation and even polygamy. The principles which the church
inculcated were in appearance the very reverse of this laxity; yet they
led indirectly to the same effect. Marriages were forbidden, not merely
within the limits which nature, or those inveterate associations which we
call nature, have rendered sacred, but as far as the seventh degree of
collateral consanguinity, computed from a common ancestor. Not only was
affinity, or relationship by marriage, put upon the same footing as that
by blood; but a fantastical connection, called spiritual affinity, was
invented in order to prohibit marriage between a sponsor and godchild. A
union, however innocently contracted, between parties thus circumstanced,
might at any time be dissolved, and their subsequent cohabitation
forbidden. Innocent III laid down as a maxim that out of the plenitude
of his power he might lawfully dispense with the law; and accordingly
granted, among other instances of this prerogative, dispensations from
impediments of marriage to the emperor Otto IV. Similar indulgences were
given by his successors, though they did not become usual for some ages.
The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 removed a great part of the restraint
by permitting marriages beyond the fourth degree, or what we call third
cousins; and dispensations had been made more easy when it was discovered
that they might be converted into a source of profit. They served a more
important purpose by rendering it necessary for the princes of Europe,
who seldom could marry into one another’s houses without transgressing
the canonical limits, to keep on good terms with the court of Rome,
which, in several instances that have been mentioned, fulminated its
censures against sovereigns who lived without permission in what was
considered an incestuous union.

The dispensing power of the popes was exerted in several cases of a
temporal nature, particularly in the legitimation of children for
purposes even of succession. This Innocent III claimed as an indirect
consequence of his right to remove the canonical impediment which
bastardy offered to ordination; since it would be monstrous, he says,
that one who is legitimate for spiritual functions should continue
otherwise in any civil matter. But the most important and mischievous
species of dispensations was from the observance of promissory oaths. Two
principles are laid down in the _Decretals_--that an oath disadvantageous
to the church is not binding; and that one extorted by force was of
slight obligation, and might be annulled by ecclesiastical authority.
As the first of these maxims gave the most unlimited privilege to the
popes of breaking all faith of treaties which thwarted their interest or
passion, a privilege which they continually exercised, so the second was
equally convenient to princes, weary of observing engagements towards
their subjects or their neighbours.

It must appear to every careful inquirer that the papal authority, though
manifesting outwardly more show of strength every year, had been secretly
undermined and lost a great deal of its hold upon public opinion, before
the accession of Boniface VIII, in 1294, to the pontifical throne. The
clergy were rendered sullen by demands of money, invasions of the legal
right of patronage, and unreasonable partiality to the mendicant orders;
a part of the mendicants themselves had begun to declaim against the
corruptions of the papal court; while the laity, subjects alike and
sovereigns, looked upon both the head and the members of the hierarchy
with jealousy and dislike. Boniface, full of inordinate arrogance and
ambition, and not sufficiently sensible of this gradual change in human
opinion, endeavoured to strain to a higher pitch the despotic pretensions
of former pontiffs. As Gregory VII appears the most usurping of mankind
till we read the history of Innocent III, so Innocent III is thrown into
shade by the superior audacity of Boniface VIII. But independently of the
less favourable dispositions of the public, he wanted the most essential
quality for an ambitious pope--reputation for integrity.

The sensible decline of the papacy is to be dated from the pontificate
of Boniface VIII, who had strained its authority to a higher pitch than
any of his predecessors. There is a spell wrought by uninterrupted
good fortune, which captivates men’s understanding, and persuades them,
against reasoning and analogy, that violent power is immortal and
irresistible. The spell is broken by the first change of success. In
tracing the papal empire over mankind, we have no marked and definite
crisis of revolution. But slowly, like the retreat of waters or the
stealthy pace of old age, that extraordinary power over human opinion
has been subsiding for five centuries. As the retrocession of the
Roman terminus under Adrian gave the first overt proof of decline in
the ambitious energies of that empire, so the tacit submission of the
successors of Boniface VIII to the king of France might have been hailed
by Europe as a token that their influence was beginning to abate.
Imprisoned, insulted, deprived eventually of life by the violence of
Philip, a prince excommunicated, and who had gone all lengths in defying
and despising the papal jurisdiction, Boniface had every claim to be
avenged by the inheritors of the same spiritual dominion. When Benedict
XI rescinded the bulls of his predecessor, and admitted Philip the Fair
to communion without insisting on any concessions, he acted perhaps
prudently, but gave a fatal blow to the temporal authority of Rome.[l]

FOOTNOTES

[92] [In the enforcement of celibacy, the emperors and a large part of
the laity were not unwilling to join. But when Gregory declared it a sin
for the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a
layman, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority.[g]]

[93] Floto (II, pp. 45 _et seqq._) has well shown the terrible workings
of this appeal to the populace. The peasants held that an accusation of
simony or marriage exempted them from the payment of tithe.

[94] [“Calixtus,” says Milman,[e] “though by no means the first
Frenchman, was the first French pontiff who established that close
connection between France and the papacy which had such important
influence on the affairs of the church and of Europe.”]

[95] [He was tied backwards on a camel and carried in the triumphal
procession of Calixtus, who had just previously excommunicated the
emperor. It was in his pontificate that the Concordat of Worms took place
as described previously.]

[96] [His name was Nicholas Breakspeare, and he was the only Englishman
who ever filled the papal chair.]

[97] [Under him Arnold of Brescia was robbed of his popularity and forced
into exile. He was captured by officers of Barbarossa and turned over
to the pope, who had him executed and his ashes cast into the Tiber.
Of him Milman[e] says: “Arnold of Brescia had struck boldly at both
powers; he utterly annulled the temporal supremacy of the pope; and if he
acknowledged, reduced the sovereignty of the emperor to a barren title.”]

[98] [Or rather, from his feet, according to Roger of Hoveden’s[h]
doubtful chronicle, which represents the pope as seated with his feet on
the crown and spurning it with a kick toward the kneeling emperor.]

[99] [Reichel[b] calls him “Greatest without exception among the great
popes of the Middle Ages.”]

[100] It may be well to state the chief points which the pope claimed
as his exclusive prerogative: (1) General supremacy of jurisdiction, a
claim, it is obvious, absolutely illimitable; (2) Right of legislation,
including the summoning and presiding in councils; (3) Judgment in
all ecclesiastic causes arduous and difficult. This included the
power of judging on contested elections, and degrading bishops, a
super-metropolitan power; (4) Right of confirmation of bishops and
metropolitans, the gift of the pallium. Hence, by degrees, rights of
appointment to devolved sees, reservations, etc.; (5) Dispensations; (6)
The foundation of new orders; (7) Canonisation. Compare Eichhorn, II, p.
500.

[101] The Conti family boasted of nine popes--among them Innocent III,
Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Innocent XIII; of thirteen cardinals, according
to Ciacconius.[j]

[102] Walter von der Vogelweide, who attributes all the misery of the
civil war in Germany to Innocent, closes his poem with these words
(modernised by K. Simrock):

“_Ich hörte fern in einer Klaus_
_Ein Jammern ohne Ende:_
_Ein Klausner rang die Hände;_
_Er klagte Gott sein bittres Leid;_
_O weh, der Papst ist allzu jung, Herr Gott, hilf deiner Christenheit._”

[103] It is remarkable that Innocent III was never canonised. There were
popular rumours that the soul of Innocent, escaping from the fires of
purgatory, appeared on earth, scourged by pursuing devils, taking refuge
at the foot of the cross, and imploring the prayers of the faithful.

[104] Milman[e] says: “The empire and the papacy were now to meet in
their last mortal and implacable strife. Cæsar would bear no superior,
the successor of St. Peter no equal.”

[105] [“With Conradin’s death,” says Mullinger,[d] “the long contest of
the empire with the popedom came to an end.”]

[106] [Of Clement IV, Milman[e] says: “It is his praise that he did
not exalt his kindred, that he left in obscurity the husbands of his
daughters. But the wonder betrayed by this praise shows at once how
Christendom had been offended; it was prophetic of the stronger offence
which nepotism would hereafter entail upon the papal see.”]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV. FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY

[Sidenote: [1305-1513 A.D.]]

The period in the papal history has arrived which in the Italian writers
is called the Babylonish Captivity; it lasted more than seventy years
(from 1305 to 1376). Rome is no longer the metropolis of Christendom;
the pope is a French prelate. The successor of St. Peter is not on St.
Peter’s throne; he is environed with none of the traditionary majesty
or traditionary sanctity of the Eternal City; he has abandoned the holy
bodies of the apostles, the churches of the apostles. It is perhaps the
most marvellous part of its history that the papacy, having sunk so low,
sank no lower; that it recovered from its degradation; that, from a
satellite, almost a slave of the king of France, the pontiff ever emerged
again to be an independent potentate; and, although the great line of
mediæval popes, of Gregory, of Alexander III, and the Innocents, expired
in Boniface VIII, he could resume even his modified supremacy. There
is no proof so strong of the vitality of the papacy as that it could
establish the law that wherever the pope is, there is the throne of St.
Peter; that he could cease to be bishop of Rome in all but in name, and
then take back again the abdicated bishopric.

Never was revolution more sudden, more total, it might seem more enduring
in its consequences. The close of the last century had seen Boniface VIII
advancing higher pretensions, if not wielding more actual power than any
former pontiff; the acknowledged pacificator of the world, the arbiter
between the kings of France and England, claiming and exercising feudal
as well as spiritual supremacy over many kingdoms, bestowing crowns as in
Hungary, awarding the empire; with millions of pilgrims at the jubilee in
Rome, still the centre of Christendom, paying him homage which bordered
on adulation and pouring the riches of the world at his feet. The first
decade of the new century is not more than half passed; Pope Clement V is
a voluntary prisoner, but not the less a prisoner in the realm, or almost
within the precincts of France; struggling in vain to escape from the
tyranny of his inexorable master, and to break or elude the fetters wound
around him by his own solemn engagements. He is almost forced to condemn
his predecessor for crimes of which he could hardly believe him guilty;
to accept a niggardly, and perhaps never-fulfilled penance from men
almost murderers of a pope; to sacrifice, on evidence which he himself
manifestly mistrusted, the Templars, one of the great military orders of
Christendom, to the hatred or avarice of Philip. The pope, from lord over
the freedom of the world, has ceased to be a free agent.[b]

CLEMENT V

[Sidenote: [1305-1311 A.D.]]

The pontiffs being at a distance, the Ghibelline faction in Italy, which
was hostile to the pontiffs, assumed greater boldness than formerly, and
not only invaded and laid waste the territories of St. Peter, but also
assailed the pontifical authority by their publications. Hence a number
of cities revolted from the popes; Rome itself became the parent and
fomenter of tumults, cabals, and civil wars; and the laws and decrees
sent thither from France were publicly treated with contempt, and not
merely by the nobles but also by the common citizens. A great part of
Europe followed the example of Italy; and numberless examples show that
the people of Europe attributed far less power to the fulminations and
decrees issued from France than to those issued from Rome. Various
seditions, therefore, were raised in one place and another against the
pontiffs, which they were unable to subdue and put down, notwithstanding
that the inquisitors were most active in the discharge of their functions.

As the French pontiffs could derive but little revenue from Italy, which
was rent into factions, seditious, and devastated, they were obliged
to devise new modes of raising money. They, therefore, not only sold
indulgences to the people more frequently than formerly, to the great
indignation of kings and princes, but they likewise required enormous
prices to be paid for their letters or bulls of every kind. In this thing
John XXII showed himself peculiarly adroit and shrewd; for though he did
not first invent the regulations and fees of the apostolic chancery, yet
the Romish writers admit that he enlarged them and reduced them to a
more convenient form. He also is said to have imposed that tribute which
under the title of _annates_ is customarily paid to the pontiffs; yet
the first commencement of it was anterior to that age. Moreover, these
French pontiffs, subverting the rights of election, assumed the power of
conferring all sacred offices, whether high or low, according to their
own pleasure; by which means they raised immense sums of money. Hence,
under these pontiffs, those most odious terms reservation, provision,
and expectative, rarely used before, were now everywhere heard, and they
called forth the bitterest complaints from all the nations of Europe;
and these complaints increased immeasurably when some of the pontiffs,
John XXII, Clement VI, Gregory XI, publicly announced that they had
reserved all churches to themselves, and that they would provide for all
without exception, by virtue of the sovereign right which Christ had
conferred on the vicars, or in the plenitude of their power. By these and
other artifices for filling their treasury and amassing property these
indiscreet pontiffs heaped additional odium on the apostolic see, and
thus weakened very considerably the papal empire, which began to decline
from the time of Boniface.

Clement V was governed all his life by the will and pleasure of Philip
the Fair, king of France. Guillaume de Nogaret, the implacable foe of
Boniface VIII, though excommunicated, resolutely prosecuted his own
cause and that of King Philip against Boniface in the papal court; a
transaction which, we believe, is without a parallel. Philip wished to
have the body of Boniface disinterred and publicly burned. With great
difficulty Clement averted this infamy by his entreaties and advice; but
in everything else he had to obey the king. Accordingly he abrogated the
laws enacted by Boniface, granted the king five years’ tithes, absolved
Nogaret from all crime, after imposing on him a slight penance, which
he never performed; restored the inhabitants of Anagni to their former
reputable and good standing, and held a general council at Vienne, 1311,
that Philip’s pleasure might be gratified in the suppression of the
Templars.[c]

THE FATE OF THE TEMPLARS

[Sidenote: [1311-1313 A.D.]]

The end of Clement himself and of Clement’s master, the king of France,
drew near. But the pope and the king must be preceded into the realm of
darkness and to the judgment-seat of heaven by other victims. The tragedy
of the Templars had not yet drawn to its close.[107] The four great
dignitaries of the order, the grand-master De Molay, Guy the commander
of Normandy, son of the dauphin of Auvergne, the commander of Aquitaine
Godfrey de Gonaville, the great visitor of France Hugues de Peraud, were
still pining in the royal dungeons. It was necessary to determine on
their fate. The king and the pope were now equally interested in burying
the affair forever in silence and oblivion. So long as these men lived
uncondemned, undoomed, the order was not extinct. A commission was named.
The grand-master and the rest were found guilty, and were to be sentenced
to perpetual imprisonment.

Six years of dreary imprisonment had passed over their heads; of their
valiant brethren the most valiant had been burned alive, the recreants
had purchased their lives by confession; the pope in a full council had
condemned and dissolved the order. If a human mind, a mind like that
of De Molay, not the most stubborn, could be broken by suffering and
humiliation, it must have yielded to this long and crushing imprisonment.
The cardinal-archbishop of Albi ascended a raised platform; he read the
confessions of the knights, the proceedings of the court; he enlarged
on the criminality of the order, on the holy justice of the pope, and
the devout, self-sacrificing zeal of the king; he was proceeding to the
final, the fatal sentence. At that instant the grand-master advanced;
his gesture implored silence; judges and people gazed in awe-struck
apprehension.

In a calm, clear voice De Molay spoke: “Before heaven and earth, on the
verge of death, where the least falsehood bears like an intolerable
weight upon the soul, I protest that we have richly deserved death, not
on account of any heresy or sin of which ourselves or our order have been
guilty, but because we have yielded, to save our lives, to the seductive
words of the pope and of the king; and so by our confessions brought
shame and ruin on our blameless, holy, and orthodox brotherhood.”

The cardinals stood confounded; the people could not suppress their
profound sympathy. The assembly was hastily broken up; the provost was
commanded to conduct the prisoners back to their dungeons: “To-morrow we
will hold further council.”

But on the moment that the king heard these things, without a day’s
delay, without the least consultation with the ecclesiastical
authorities, he ordered them to death as relapsed heretics. On the island
in the Seine, where now stands the statue of Henry IV, between the
king’s garden on one side and the convent of the Augustinian monks on the
other, the two pyres were raised (two out of the four had shrunk back
into their ignoble confessions). It was the hour of vespers when these
two aged and noble men were led out to be burned. Both, as the smoke
rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to their vital parts, continued
solemnly to aver the innocence, the Catholic faith of the order. The king
himself beheld this hideous spectacle.

[Sidenote: [1313-1316 A.D.]]

The wonder and the pity of the times which immediately followed not only
arrayed De Molay in the robes of the martyr, but gave him the terrible
language of a prophet. “Clement, iniquitous and cruel judge, I summon
thee within forty days to meet me before the throne of the Most High.”
According to some accounts this fearful sentence included the king, by
whom, if uttered, it might have been heard. The earliest allusion to this
awful speech does not contain that striking particularity which, if part
of it, would be fatal to its credibility--the precise date of Clement’s
death. It was not till the year after that Clement and King Philip passed
to their account. The poetic relation of Godfrey de Paris simply states
that De Molay declared that God would revenge their death on their
unrighteous judges. The rapid fate of these two men during the next year
might naturally so appal the popular imagination as to approximate more
closely the prophecy and its accomplishment. At all events it betrayed
the deep and general feeling of the cruel wrong inflicted on the order;
while the unlamented death of the pope, the disastrous close of Philip’s
reign, and the crimes of his family seemed as declarations of heaven as
to the innocence of their noble victims.

The health of Clement V had been failing for some time. From his court,
which he held at Carpentras, he set out in hopes to gain strength from
his native air at Bordeaux. He had hardly crossed the Rhone when he was
seized with mortal sickness at Roquemaure. The papal treasure was seized
by his followers, especially his nephew; his remains were treated with
such utter neglect that the torches set fire to the catafalque under
which he lay, not in state. His body, covered only with a single sheet,
all that his rapacious retinue had left to shroud their forgotten master,
was half burned (not, like those of the Templars, on his living body)
before alarm was raised. His ashes were borne back to Carpentras and
solemnly interred.

Clement left behind him evil fame. He died shamefully rich. To his nephew
(nepotism had begun to prevail in its baleful influence) he bequeathed
not less than 300,000 golden florins, under the pretext of succour to
the Holy Land. He had died still more wealthy but that his wealth was
drained by more disgraceful prodigality. It was generally believed
that the beautiful Brunisand de Foix, countess of Talleyrand Périgord,
was the pope’s mistress; to her he was boundlessly lavish, and her
influence was irresistible even in ecclesiastical matters. Rumour ran
that her petitions to the lustful pontiff were placed upon her otherwise
unveiled bosom. Italian hatred of a transalpine pope, Guelfic hatred of
a Ghibelline pope, may have lent a too greedy ear to these disreputable
reports; but the large mass of authorities is against the pope; in his
favour, hardly more than suspicious silence.[b]

JOHN XXII TO URBAN V

[Sidenote: [1316-1333 A.D.]]

On the death of Clement, 1314, there were violent contests among the
cardinals respecting the election of a successor, the French demanding a
French pontiff and the Italians an Italian. After two years the French
gained the victory; and in 1316, Jacques d’Euse of Cahors, cardinal of
Porto, was made head of the church, and assumed the pontifical name of
John XXII. He was not destitute of learning, but was crafty, insolent,
weak, imprudent, and avaricious, as even those who honour his memory do
not positively deny. He rendered himself notorious by many imprudent and
unsuccessful enterprises, but especially by his unfortunate contest with
the emperor, Ludwig of Bavaria. There was a contest for the empire of
Germany between Ludwig of Bavaria and Frederick of Austria, each being
chosen emperor by a part of the electors in the year 1314. John declared
that the decision of this controversy belonged to him. But Ludwig, having
conquered his rival in battle and taken him prisoner, in the year 1322,
assumed the government of the empire, without consulting the pontiff, and
refused to submit a cause which had been decided by the sword to another
trial before the pontiff.

John was greatly offended at this, and in the year 1324 divested the
emperor of all title to the imperial crown. Ludwig, in return, accused
the pontiff of corrupting the faith, or of heresy; and appealed to the
decision of a council. Exasperated by this and other things, the pontiff,
in the year 1327, again divested the emperor of all his authority and
power, and laid him under excommunication. In revenge for this injury
the emperor, in the year 1328, at Rome, publicly declared John unworthy
of the pontificate; and substituted in his place Pietro di Corvara, a
Franciscan monk, and one of those who disagreed with the pontiff; and
he, assuming the name of Nicholas V, crowned Ludwig emperor. But in the
year 1330, this imperial pontiff voluntarily abdicated his office, and
surrendered himself into the hands of John, who kept him a prisoner at
Avignon till his death. Thus John continued to reign in spite of the
emperor, as did the emperor in spite of the pontiff.

[Illustration: A PRIEST OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

On the side of Ludwig stood the whole mass of the Fratricelli, the
Beghards (or Beguins) of every description, and the Spirituals, or more
rigid among the Franciscans; and these, being scattered over a large
part of Europe, and supported by the protection of Ludwig, everywhere
assailed John with reproaches and criminations, both orally and in
books, and charged him with religious apostasy. The pontiff, however,
was not greatly injured by these private attacks; but towards the close
of his life he fell under the disapprobation and censure of nearly the
whole church. For in the years 1331 and 1332, he taught in some public
discourses that departed souls would indeed behold Christ, but would not
see the face of God or the divine nature until their reunion with the
body at the last day. With this doctrine, Philip VI, the king of France,
was highly displeased; the theologians of Paris condemned it in 1333; and
both the friends and the foes of the pontiff were opposed to it. For it
appeared to them that the pontiff detracted much from the blessedness
of departed spirits. To so great opposition John, though naturally
pertinacious, had to give way. He therefore first apologised for the
doctrine; and afterwards, when near the point of death, 1334, he did not
indeed abandon it, but he qualified it by saying that he believed souls
in the intermediate state saw the divine essence, as far as the state and
condition of the disembodied spirit would permit. But this declaration
did not satisfy his adversaries. Hence, after various disputes, his
successor Benedict XII terminated the controversy, according to the
decision of the Parisian doctors, by declaring the true faith to be
that the souls of the blessed, when separate from the body, fully and
perfectly behold the divine nature, or God himself. Benedict could do
this without impeaching his predecessor; for John, when dying, submitted
his opinion to the judgment of the church, lest, perhaps, he should after
death be classed among heretics.

[Sidenote: [1333-1362 A.D.]]

On the death of John, 1334, new contests between the French and the
Italians, respecting the choice of a pontiff, divided the college of
cardinals. But near the close of the year, Jacques de Nouveau called
Fournier, a Frenchman, cardinal of St. Prisca, was chosen, and assumed
the name of Benedict XII. Historians allow him the praise of being an
upright and honest man, no less free from avarice than from the lust of
rule. During his reign the controversy with the emperor Ludwig was at
rest. For although he did not restore him to church communion, being
prevented, as is reported by the king of France, yet he did not attempt
anything against him. He saw the existing evils in the church, and some
of them, as far as he could, he removed; in particular he laboured to
reform by decrees and ordinances the orders of the monks, both mendicant
and opulent. But death removed him, when he was contemplating more and
greater changes, in 1342. Overlook superstition, which was the common
fault of his age, and we shall find nothing to prevent us from declaring
this pontiff to have been a right-spirited man.

Of a different spirit was his successor, Clement VI, who was likewise
a Frenchman, named Pierre Roger, and cardinal of St. Nereus and St.
Achilles. To say nothing of his other deeds, that are little to be
commended, he trod in the steps of John XXII by his provisions and
reservations of churches, which was evidence of a shameful avarice;
further, he conferred the most important spiritual offices on foreigners
and Italians, which produced controversies between him and the kings of
France and England; and, lastly, he demonstrated the arrogance and pride
of his heart, among other things, by renewing the war with Ludwig the
Bavarian. For, in the year 1343, he hurled new thunders at the emperor;
and finding these to be contemned by Ludwig, in the year 1346, he devoted
him again to execration; and persuaded the princes of Germany to elect
Charles IV, grandson of Henry VII, for their emperor. A civil war would
now have broken out in Germany, had not the death of Ludwig, in 1347,
prevented it. Clement followed him to the grave, in 1352, famous for
nothing but his zeal for exalting the majesty of the pontiffs, and for
adding Avignon, which he bought of Joanna queen of Naples, to St. Peter’s
patrimony.

[Sidenote: [1362-1378 A.D.]]

There was more moderation and probity in Innocent VI, or Etienne
d’Albert, a Frenchman, previously bishop of Ostia, who governed the
church ten years, and died in 1362. He favoured his own relatives too
much; but in other respects encouraged the pious and the well-informed,
held the monks to their duty, abstained from reserving churches, and did
many things worthy of commendation. His successor, Guillaume de Grimoard,
abbot of St. Victor, at Marseilles, who assumed the name of Urban V,
was also free from great faults, if we except those which are almost
inseparable from the office of a pope. Overcome by the entreaties of
the Romans, he removed to Rome in the year 1367, but returned again to
Avignon in 1370, in order to make peace between the king of England and
the king of France, and died there the same year.

He was succeeded by Pierre Roger, a Frenchman of noble birth, under
the pontifical name of Gregory XI. He was inferior to his predecessors
in virtue, but exceeded them in energy and audacity. Under him great
and dangerous commotions disturbed Italy and the city of Rome. The
Florentines, especially, waged fierce war with the Romish church, and
were successful in it. To restore the tranquillity of Italy, and recover
the territories and cities taken from the patrimony of St. Peter,
Gregory, in the year 1376, transferred his residence from Avignon to
Rome. One Catherine, a virgin of Siena, whom that credulous age took
to be a prophetess divinely inspired, came to Avignon, and by her
exhortations greatly contributed to this measure. But Gregory soon
after repented of his removal; for by their long absence from Italy the
authority of the pontiffs was so fallen there that the Romans and the
Florentines had no scruple to insult and abuse him in various ways. He
therefore purposed to return to Avignon, but was prevented by death,
which removed him from among living men in the year 1378.

After the death of Gregory XI, the cardinals being assembled to provide a
successor, the Roman people, fearing lest a Frenchman should be elected
who would remove to Avignon, demanded, with furious clamours and threats,
that an Italian should be placed at the head of the church without delay.
The terrified cardinals proclaimed Bartolommeo Prignani, who was a
Neapolitan by birth, and archbishop of Bari, to be elected pontiff; and
he assumed the name of Urban VI. This new pontiff, by his coarse manners,
his injudicious severity, and his intolerable haughtiness, alienated the
minds of all from him, but especially the cardinals. These, therefore,
withdrew to Fondi, a city in the kingdom of Naples, and there created
another pontiff, Robert count of Geneva, who took the name of Clement
VII, alleging that Urban was elected only in pretence, in order to quiet
the rage of the people of Rome. Which of these was the legitimate and
true pontiff still remains uncertain, nor can it be fully ascertained
from the records and documents which have been published in great
abundance by both parties. Urban continued at Rome; Clement removed to
Avignon in France.

Thus the unity of the Latin church, as existing under one head, came to
an end at the death of Gregory XI; and that most unhappy disunion ensued,
which is usually denominated “the great schism of the West.” For during
fifty years the church had two or three heads; and the contemporary
pontiffs assailed each other with excommunications, maledictions, and
insidious measures. The calamities and distress of those times are
indescribable. For besides the perpetual contentions and wars between
the pontifical factions, which were ruinous to great numbers, involving
them in loss of life or of property, nearly all sense of religion was
in many places extinguished, and wickedness daily acquired greater
impunity and boldness. The clergy, previously corrupt, now laid aside
even the appearance of piety and godliness, while those who called
themselves Christ’s vicegerents were at open war with each other; and the
conscientious people, who believed that no one could be saved without
living in subjection to Christ’s vicegerents, were thrown into the
greatest perplexity and anxiety of mind. Yet both the church and the
state received very considerable advantages from these great calamities.
For the very sinews of pontifical power were cut by these dissensions,
and no art could heal them any more; kings, too, and princes, who had
before been in a sense the servants of the pontiffs, now became their
judges and masters. Moreover, great numbers, possessing some measure of
discernment, despising and disregarding pontiffs, fighting for dominion,
committed themselves and their salvation to God alone, in full assurance
that the church and religion might be safe and continue so, although
without any visible head.[c]

THE GREAT SCHISM OF THE WEST (1378-1417 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1378-1389 A.D.]]

Clement was immediately recognised as pope in Scotland, Savoy, and
Lorraine, afterwards in Castile (1381), Aragon (1387), and Navarre
(1390). On the other hand Germany, England, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and
Prussia remained on Urban’s side.

The war between the two popes was not only waged with sentences of
excommunication, but in Italy with secular weapons also. Urban declared
that Queen Joanna, by her secession from his side, had forfeited the
kingdom of Naples, and granted it in fee to Charles, duke of Durazzo. On
the other hand Joanna, under Clement’s influence, took Louis, duke of
Anjou, at that time regent of France, for her adopted son and successor
(1380). Charles meanwhile in a short time made himself master of the
whole kingdom, took Joanna prisoner in 1381, and had her put to death,
when Louis appeared in Italy at the head of an army (1382). Charles
continued to maintain his ascendency, and Louis’ death (1384) would
have been decisive as regards Naples in favour of Urban and Charles
forever, had not differences forthwith arisen between the two latter,
which increased to such a degree, when the headstrong pope went in
person to Naples, that Urban pronounced sentence of dethronement and
excommunication against Charles, and was consequently besieged by him in
the castle of Lucera at Salerno (1385). He escaped to Genoa (September,
1385) without becoming wiser. By the cruel execution of five cardinals
he made himself still more hateful. After Charles’ death (1386) by his
impolitic refusal to invest his son Ladislaus (or Lancelot) with Naples,
he exposed this kingdom afresh to the danger of falling under the
dominion of France. The capital city was already conquered for the young
Louis of Anjou (1387), and the whole kingdom would have fallen to him and
the French pope, had not Urban’s successor, Boniface IX, at the right
moment, invested Ladislaus (1390) and rendered him his powerful support.
With a view to secure the states of the church against Louis, Boniface
granted many towns and castles in fee to powerful nobles, and thus roused
afresh in Rome a struggle for independence, which kept him long in
banishment from the city. True, Louis was forced to quit Italy altogether
(1400), and Ladislaus remained king of Naples. But this restless
agitation in Rome increased, and was even supported by Ladislaus, who
wished to make himself master of the city.

[Sidenote: [1389-1409 A.D.]]

As the schism lessened the revenues of the popes and increased their
expenses, so it caused a fresh aggravation of those church oppressions
which were already intolerable. The French pontiff, Clement VII, was
obliged indeed to exercise the right of presentation to ecclesiastical
offices, to which now also were added the _gratiæ exspectativæ_,
according to the nod of the French court, upon which he was quite
dependent; but in return for this the church of France, so long as her
grievances were not too loudly expressed, was delivered over as a prey to
his extortions. Tithes _vacantiæ_ and _annates_ were now the standing
income of the papal cabinet. In addition to these Clement laid claim to
the spoils of deceased prelates. His successor, Benedict XIII, wherever
it was possible, surpassed him in these systems of impoverishment.

So long as Urban VI lived, the Roman curia was advantageously
distinguished in this respect from that of Avignon. His successor,
Boniface IX, on the contrary, imitated all the extortions of his rivals
in France, but he far surpassed them in the simony which was practised
quite publicly by himself and the members of his curia, and was even
defended without any sense of shame. Thus at the end of this period both
obediences were groaning under the weight of persecution. England alone
repeatedly threw off every papal oppression, and in 1404 Hungary also
followed her example.

In consequence of these church oppressions, which were the result of the
schism, the religious scruples which were entertained with regard to it
were strengthened, and earlier steps demanded for its settlement. The
university of Paris in particular laboured with unshaken perseverance
to bring the schism to a close. After she had long waited in vain for a
sound agreement of the two popes betwixt themselves, she at last obtained
permission from the court of France to interpose her opinion upon these
events (1394). Benedict XIII, notwithstanding his promise made before
his election, showed even less inclination than his predecessor to take
serious steps to close the schism. To the urgent proposals of a French
national synod in 1395 he returned only an evasive answer. The university
nevertheless persevered in her endeavour, and at length contrived that
Charles VI, king of France, should join with the emperor Wenceslaus in
forcing both the popes to resign (1398).

The latter was in very truth too weak to keep his word; moreover he
was himself deposed by the secret machinations of his pope Boniface IX
(1400). On the other hand, by the decree of a new national synod France
withdrew from the obedience of Benedict; Castile followed her example
(1398), and this pope was kept a prisoner at Avignon. It was not till
after the lapse of many years, and the breach of express engagements,
that Benedict succeeded in regaining the church of France to his
obedience (1403) by the help of the duke of Orleans, who at that time
had won the ascendency at court. It was quickly manifest how little
he meant to keep these promises; but as the Italian cardinals imposed
similar engagements upon their new pope Innocent VII, on his election
in 1404, even only with a view to save appearances, it was necessary to
open negotiations. The fruitlessness of this proceeding increased the
general discontent; France threatened her pope with a fresh withdrawal
of allegiance (national council of January, 1407), when at length both
the popes agreed upon a personal interview at Savona in September, 1407.
Benedict appeared there in person; however, Gregory XII went only as far
as Lucca, and opened fresh negotiations for another place of congress.
This public breach of promise roused the Roman cardinals; they forsook
their pope Gregory, and renounced their allegiance to him, at the same
time that France withdrew from the obedience of Benedict. Benedict
indeed escaped the imprisonment with which he was threatened, by flight
to Perpignan; but the cardinals of both obediences united at Livorno
(Leghorn) and summoned a general council at Pisa in March, 1409, with a
view to the termination of the schism.

[Sidenote: [1378-1417 A.D.]]

The schism with its church oppression furnished the impulse, the weakness
of the papal see gave the long desired opportunity for an unbiased trial
of the existing state of the church; it led men to opinions which had
hitherto only been mooted in violent struggles with the popes, and so not
without an appearance of passion and party spirit; but now they struck
root so deeply, even among the most faithful adherents of the church,
that they could never again be entirely suppressed. Many an anxious gaze
was turned backwards to the earlier and better ages of the church, in
order to discover in its constitution the remedy for the scandals of
the present. This was a problem of learning. Its representatives, the
universities, particularly that of Paris, were listened to with eager
attention, and attained an influence which was formidable even to the
popes. This comparison of the present with the earlier ages of the church
could not but lead to many convictions unfavourable to the papal see.

True there were but isolated individuals who advanced so far upon this
line of thought as to wish the papacy quite removed from the church
as the source of all her evils. But even its truest adherents now
acknowledged the immoderate extension of papal power, and the monstrous
exaggeration of the papal dignity. They discovered in the bent of the
papacy to secular power the prime cause of all mischief, and even to
the schism, and they wished the times back again when the emperors
could convoke synods by their own authority to strangle a schism at its
birth. No less general was the discontent expressed against the papal
church oppressions, and the wish to remove them by limitations of the
papal power. Hitherto only adversaries of the popes, at open war with
them, had appealed to a general council as a higher authority, but
during the schism circumstances led to a general acknowledgment that
such a council must rank above the pope. After the Council of Pisa was
summoned to terminate the contest between the two popes, and set a
limit to the abuses of papal power, the canonists vied with each other
in demonstrating this new opinion so injurious to the papacy, of the
superiority of general councils to the pope, and thus the papal system of
the last century seemed to be threatened with total overthrow.

RELATION OF THE NATIONAL CHURCHES TO THE STATE

[Illustration: A BISHOP OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY]

The jealousies betwixt the ecclesiastical and secular tribunals arising
from the immoderate extension of ecclesiastical jurisdiction still
continued, but they began more and more to result in favour of the
latter. In Germany the fundamental principle that secular causes belonged
only to secular tribunals had been recognised long before, even by
the prelates, who were themselves temporal lords of the land; it was,
as a general rule, always maintained, though in individual cases the
ecclesiastical tribunals continually overstepped their limits. But during
the schism, the emperor Wenceslaus could only execute his decisions in
things temporal, against the higher orders of the clergy, by deeds of
violence. The cities continued to tax the excessive revenues of the
ecclesiastical sovereignty. They either forbade altogether the increase
of church property, or decreed that all fresh acquisitions should be
alienated again in a year and a day, or required from the new revenues
the customary taxes. Now that the parish priests, by their management
of people’s wills, provided too well for themselves and for the church,
it was determined that wills should only be made before the secular
authorities. Paderborn even prohibited the multiplication of masses for
souls. Still the popes wished to maintain a good understanding with the
cities, and bind them to themselves by means of privileges.

During the schism many concessions were made to the nobles also; thus
Boniface IX, in 1399 allowed Albert IV, duke of Austria, the _jus
primarum precum_. The free Swiss by the priests’ law (_Pfaffenbrief_) in
1370 put an end to the encroachments of the ecclesiastical tribunals. In
Italy the operation of the ecclesiastical tribunals, like the condition
of the whole country, was very fluctuating. Under Ghibelline lords they
were often quite suppressed. In France ecclesiastical jurisdiction had
reached its greatest extension; the kings connived at it, because they
wished to keep their bishops well inclined to themselves, and knew how to
tax any irregularities of the ecclesiastical tribunals. On the other hand
the barons were continually at issue with the prelates on this point,
and from both sides there were unceasing complaints of usurpation. The
remarkable negotiations which were instituted by command of King Philip
of Valois with the prelates summoned before parliament (1329), owing to
the king’s political aims, failed of their intended result. Immediately
afterwards the clergy sought to establish their jurisdiction still firmer
by decrees of councils. On the other hand a powerful resistance to these
proceedings was being developed in parliament, which was now transforming
itself into a standing corporation; this was especially manifest from
the time of Charles V. Henceforth ecclesiastical jurisdiction was not
only confined to its proper limits, but parliament claimed a certain
degree of superintendence over it, and drew to itself the right of
decision upon many points, which were at that time universally held to be
ecclesiastical.

The earlier encroachments of the popes upon episcopal rights were still
further increased by the fact that they now took to themselves entirely
the appointment to ecclesiastical offices, and exercised the right of
exemption in the highest degree, particularly during the schism. Thus
the importance of the bishops in the church was small; they compensated
themselves for this by secular honours and worldly enjoyment. The
oppression which fell upon them from above they knew how to discharge
upon those below, and so the lower orders of the clergy groaned beneath
intolerable burdens.

MORAL CONDITION OF THE CLERGY

The moral condition of the clergy could not fail to degenerate still more
in this period, in consequence of the manner in which ecclesiastical
offices were generally bestowed, the example which the papal court
gave, and the method in which the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was
administered. In the chapters, where the stalls were for the most part
benefices reserved for the nobles, as well as among the parochial
clergy, there prevailed a depth of ignorance and an immorality which
awakened indignation. The continued struggle of the synods against
the dissoluteness of priests remained quite fruitless. The laity were
only too glad to secure their wives and daughters from the sacerdotal
ravishers, and accordingly favoured, at times even demanded, fixed
alliances of their priests with concubines. Thus in many countries
concubinage was publicly allowed among the priests, who were supposed to
be too sacred for a matrimonial connection. The fines with which these
excesses were visited by many synods were quickly changed into a welcome
gratuity to the avarice of the bishops. Nevertheless, every attempt of
the secular power to check these scandals was resisted by the church as
an invasion of her rights.[d]

THE GREAT COUNCILS OF PISA AND CONSTANCE; JOHN HUSS

[Sidenote: [1409-1429 A.D.]]

The Council of Pisa, which was designed to heal the wounds of the divided
church, unexpectedly inflicted upon her a new wound. On the 5th of June
it passed a heavy sentence on each of the pontiffs; for it declared them
both to be heretical, perjured, contumacious, unworthy of any honour, and
no longer members of the church. As the next step, the council created
Pietro Philarghi of Candia sovereign pontiff in their place, on the 26th
of June; and he assumed the name of Alexander V. But the two pontiffs
spurned the decrees of this council, and continued still to perform
their functions. Benedict held a council at Perpignan, and Gregory
assembled another at Austria, near Aquileia; but fearing the resentments
of the Venetians, he went first to Gaeta, where he threw himself upon
the protection of Ladislaus, king of Naples, and then fled, in 1412, to
Rimini.

The church was thus divided among three pontiffs, who fiercely
assailed each other with reciprocal excommunications, reproaches, and
maledictions. Alexander V, who was elected in the Council of Pisa, died
at Bologna in 1410. The sixteen cardinals, who were present in the
city, immediately filled his place with Baltasare Cossa, a Neapolitan,
who took the name of John XXIII, a man destitute of principle and of
piety. From this war of the pontiffs vast evils arose which afflicted
both the church and the state. Hence the emperor Sigismund, the king
of France, and other kings and princes of Europe, spared no pains nor
expense to restore harmony and bring the church again under one head.
From the pontiffs it was found quite impossible to obtain any personal
sacrifice for the peace of the church; so that no course remained but to
assemble a general council of the whole church, to take cognisance of
this great controversy. Such an assembly John XXIII, being prevailed on
by the entreaties of Sigismund and hoping that it would favour his cause,
appointed to be held at Constance in 1414. In this council were present
the pontiff John, the emperor Sigismund, many princes of Germany, and
ambassadors from the absent kings and princes of Europe, and from the
republics.

The principal object of this great council was to extinguish the discord
between the pontiffs; and this business was accomplished successfully.
For having established by two solemn decrees, in the fourth and fifth
sessions, that a pontiff is subject to a council of the whole church,
and having most carefully substantiated the authority of councils,
the fathers, on the 29th of May, 1415, removed John XXIII from the
pontificate on account of various offences and crimes; for he had pledged
himself to the council to resign the pontificate, and yet withdrew
himself by flight. Gregory XII voluntarily resigned his pontificate on
the 4th of July in the same year, through Carlo Malatesta. And Benedict
XIII, on the 26th of July, 1417, was deprived of his rank as a pontiff
by a solemn decree of the council. After these transactions, on the 11th
of November, 1417, Otto Colonna was elected pontiff by the unanimous
suffrages of the cardinals, and assumed the name of Martin V. Benedict
XIII, who resided at Perpignan, resisted indeed, and claimed the rights
and the dignity of a pontiff till his death, 1423; and after the death
of this obstinate man, under the auspices of Alfonso, king of Sicily,
Ægidius (Giles) Nuños, a Spaniard, was appointed to succeed him, by only
two cardinals. He assumed the name of Clement VIII, and wished to be
regarded as the legitimate pontiff; but in the year 1429 he was persuaded
to resign the government of the church entirely to Martin V.

[Sidenote: [1407-1416 A.D.]]

The things done in this council for the repression and extirpation of
heretics are not equally commendable; some of them, indeed, are quite
inexcusable. Before the council sat, great religious commotions had
arisen in several countries, but especially in Bohemia. There lived and
taught at Prague, with much applause, an eloquent and learned man, by
name John Huss, who acted as a professor of theology in the university
and as a minister of holy things in the church. Vehemently did he declaim
against priestly vices of every kind; which was generally done in that
age, and no good man disapproved it. He likewise endeavoured, after the
year 1408, to detach the university from acknowledging as pontiff Gregory
XII, whom Bohemia had hitherto obeyed. This gave great offence to the
archbishop of Prague and to the rest of the clergy, who were devoted
partisans of Gregory. Hence arose great hostility between Huss and the
archbishop, which the former kept up and increased by his discourses
against the Romish court and the vices of the clergy.

To these first causes of hatred against Huss, which might easily have
been surmounted, others were added of greater magnitude. First, he took
the side of the Realists in philosophy, and, therefore, according to the
usage of the age, goaded and pressed the Nominalists to the utmost of
his power; yet their number was very considerable in the university of
Prague, and their influence was not small. Afterwards, in the year 1408,
he brought it about that, in the controversy between the Germans and the
Bohemians respecting the number of votes, the decision was in favour
of the Bohemians. By the laws of the university it was ordained that
in academic discussions the Bohemians should have three votes, and the
other three nations but one. The university was then divided into four
nations, but the Bavarian, Polish, and Saxon were comprehended under the
general name of the German nation. The usage had been that the Germans,
who far exceeded the Bohemians in numbers, gave three votes and the
Bohemians but one. Huss, therefore, either from partiality to his country
or from hatred of the Nominalists, whom the greatest part of the Germans
preferred to the Realists, obtained, by means of the vast influence at
court which his eloquence gave him, a decree that the Germans should be
deprived of the three votes and should be bidden to content themselves
with one. This result of a long contest so offended the Germans that
a great multitude of them, with the rector of the university, Johann
Hofmann, at their head, left the university of Prague and retired
to Leipzig, where Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, founded a
university on their account in the year 1409. This event contributed
much to increase the odium against Huss and to work his ruin. The Germans
being ejected from Prague, Huss inveighed more freely than before against
the vices of the clergy, and also publicly preached and recommended the
opinions and the books of John Wycliffe, the Englishman. [See the history
of England.] Being accused before John XXIII, in the year 1410, he was
excommunicated by that pontiff. Spurning this thunderbolt, he continued,
with general applause, first by word of mouth, afterwards in various
writings, to lash the sores of the Roman church and of the priest of
every degree.

This good man, who was in love with real piety, but perhaps had sometimes
too much warmth and not sufficient prudence, being summoned to the
Council of Constance, went thither on the faith of a safe-conduct given
by the emperor Sigismund, with a view to demonstrate his innocence
and prove them liars who talked of him as an apostate from the Roman
church. And certainly he had not departed in things of any moment from
the religion of his times; but had only inveighed severely against the
pontiffs, the court of Rome, the more considerable clergy, and the monks;
which in fact had the sanction of his times, and was daily done in the
Council of Constance itself. Yet his enemies, who were numerous both in
Bohemia and in the council, managed the procedure against him so artfully
and successfully that, in violation of the public faith, he was cast into
prison; and when he would not, according to the council’s order, confess
himself guilty, he was adjudged a heretic, and burned alive, on the 6th
day of July, 1415. Full of faith and the love of God, he sustained this
punishment with admirable constancy. The same unhappy fate was borne with
the same pious fortitude and constancy by Jerome of Prague, the companion
of John Huss, who had come to Constance to support and aid his friend. He
yielded at first through fear of death to the mandates of the council,
and renounced those opinions which the council had condemned in him; but
being retained still in prison, he resumed courage, again avowed those
opinions, and was, therefore, committed to the flames on the 30th of May,
1416.

Before Huss and Jerome were condemned by the council, John Wycliffe, who
was considered, and not altogether without reason, as their teacher,
had been pronounced infamous, and condemned by a decree of the fathers.
For on the fourth day of May, 1415, the council declared a number of
opinions extracted from his writings to be abominable; and ordered all
his books to be destroyed, and his bones to be burned. Not long after,
on the 14th of June, they passed the famous decree that the sacred
supper should be administered to the laity under one kind of bread only,
forbidding communion under both kinds. For in the preceding year, 1414,
Jacobellus (James) of Mies, incumbent of St. Michael’s church at Prague,
by the instigation of a Parisian doctor, Peter of Dresden, had begun to
celebrate the communion under both kinds, at Prague; which example many
other churches followed. The subject being brought before the council
by one of the Bohemian bishops, it considered a remedy to be required
even for this heresy. By this decree at Constance, the communion of the
laity under one kind obtained the force and authority of law in the Roman
church.

[Sidenote: [1407-1431 A.D.]]

In the same year, the council placed among execrable errors, or heresies,
an opinion of Jean Petit, a Parisian theologian, that tyrants might be
lawfully slain by any private person. The party however, from whom this
opinion came was not named, because he was supported by very powerful
patrons. John duke of Burgundy employed assassins, in the year 1407, to
murder Louis duke of Orleans. A great contest now arose, and Petit, an
eloquent and ingenious man, pleaded the cause of John of Burgundy at
Paris; and in order to justify his conduct he maintained that it is no
sin to destroy a tyrant, without a trial of his cause, by force or fraud,
or in any other manner, and even if the persons doing it are bound to him
by an oath or covenant. By a tyrant, however, Petit did not understand
the sovereign of a nation, but a powerful citizen, who abused his
resources to the ruin of his king and country. The university of Paris
passed a stern and severe sentence upon the author of so dangerous an
opinion. The council, after several consultations, struck at the opinion,
without naming its author. The new pontiff, however, Martin V, from fear
of the Burgundian power, would not ratify even this mild sentence.

After these and some other transactions the council proceeded avowedly to
the subject of a reformation of the church, in its “head and members,”
as the language of that age was. For all Europe saw the need of such a
reformation, and most ardently wished for it. Nor did the council deny
that chiefly for this important object it had been called together.
But the cardinals and principal men of the Romish court, for whose
interest it was, especially, that the disorders of the church should
remain untouched, craftily urged and brought the majority to believe
that a business of such magnitude could not be managed advantageously,
until after the election of a new pontiff. The new head of the church,
however, Martin V, abused his power to elude the design of reformation;
and manifested by his commands and edicts that he did not wish the church
to be purged and restored to a sound state. The council, accordingly,
after deliberating three years and six months, broke up on the 22nd of
April, 1418, leaving the matter unaccomplished, and putting off that
reformation, which all good men devoutly wished, to a council which
should be called five years afterwards.

[Illustration: A PRIEST IN HIS MANTLE OF OFFICE, 1400]

[Sidenote: [1431-1439 A.D.]]

Martin V, being admonished on the subject, after a long delay appointed
this other council to be held at Pavia; and afterwards removed it to
Siena, and lastly to Bâle. But at its very commencement, on the 21st
February, 1431, he died; and was succeeded, in the month of March, by
Gabriel Condolmieri, a Venetian, and bishop of Siena, who took the name
of Eugenius IV. He sanctioned all that Martin had decreed about holding
the council at Bâle; and accordingly it commenced on the 23rd of July,
1431, under the presidency of Cardinal Julian, as representative of the
pontiff. Two objects especially were assigned to this celebrated council:
first, a union between the Greeks and the Latins; and secondly, the
reformation of the church, both in its “head and its members,” according
to the resolution adopted in the Council of Constance. Now that the
head, namely the sovereign pontiff, and all the members of the church,
that is the bishops, priests, and monks, were in a very unsound state no
one doubted. But when the fathers, by the very form of the council, by
its mode and order of proceeding, and by its first decrees, showed an
intention of performing in earnest what was expected of them, Eugenius
IV became uneasy for a corrupt church under such physicians, and twice
attempted to dissolve the council. This the fathers most firmly resisted;
and they showed by the decrees of the Council of Constance, and by other
arguments, that the council was superior in authority to a pontiff. This
first contest between the pontiff and the council was brought to a close
in the month of November, 1433; for the pontiff silently gave up the
point, and in the month of December, by letters sent from Rome, gave the
council his approbation.

After this the council prosecuted with energy the business upon which it
had entered. The legates of the Roman pontiff were now admitted; but not
until they had promised under oath to obey the decrees of the council,
and particularly the decrees of the Council of Constance, asserting the
dominion and jurisdiction of councils over the pontiffs. These very
decrees of Constance, so odious to the pontiffs, were renewed in a public
meeting of the fathers on the 26th of June, 1434. And on the 9th of
June, 1435, annates, as they were called, were abolished, the pontifical
legates in vain opposing it. On the 25th of March, 1436, a profession of
faith was read, intended for the pope himself on the day of his election.
The number of cardinals was reduced to twenty-four; and expectatives,
reservations, and provisions were abolished.

Other things coming on little agreeable to the pontiff, Eugenius
concluded that this very audacious and troublesome council must either be
removed into Italy or be curbed by another council in opposition to it.
Therefore, when these fathers decreed, on May 7th, 1437, that on account
of the Greeks the council should be held either at Bâle, or Avignon, or
in some city of Savoy, the pontiff, on the contrary, by his legates,
decided that the council should be held in Italy. Neither party would
revoke its decision. Hence a violent conflict, from this time onward,
existed between the pontiff and the council. On the 26th of July, 1437,
the council ordered the pontiff to appear before them at Bâle, and
give account of his conduct. The pontiff, on the other hand, dissolved
the council, and appointed another at Ferrara. But the fathers, with
the approbation of the emperor, the king of France, and other princes,
continued their deliberations at Bâle; and on the 28th of September of
the same year pronounced the pontiff contumacious for not obeying the
decree of a council.

On the 10th of January of the next year, 1438, Eugenius IV, in person,
opened the council which he had summoned to meet at Ferrara; and in
the second session of it excommunicated the fathers assembled at Bâle.
The chief business of this council was to negotiate a union between
the Greeks and Latins. The Greek emperor himself, Joannes Palæologus,
the patriarch of Constantinople, Joseph, and the principal theologians
and bishops of the nation had come personally to Italy, in order to
facilitate the success of this important negotiation. For the Greeks,
now reduced to extremities by the Turks, indulged the hope that if their
disagreements with the Roman pontiff were removed the Latins would afford
them succour. The business proceeded tardily, and with little success at
Ferrara; but afterwards rather better at Florence. For Eugenius in the
beginning of the year 1439, on account of the pestilence at Ferrara, had
ordered the council to remove to Florence. The fathers at Bâle, provoked
by these and other acts of Eugenius, proceeded on the 25th of June, 1439,
to deprive him of the pontificate; but this bold procedure of theirs was
not approved by the kings and princes of Europe. Eugenius, on the 4th
of September, by a very severe bull anathematised the Basilian fathers
and rescinded all their acts. Despising these thunders, on the 17th of
September, 1439, they elected a new pontiff, Amadeus, duke of Savoy, who
then led a retired life at Ripaille on the Leman Lake (Lake of Geneva).
He assumed the name of Felix V.

[Sidenote: [1439-1449 A.D.]]

Thus the lamentable schism, which had been extinguished after so much
labour and toil at Constance, returned with new and greater misfortunes.
For there were not only two pontiffs mutually condemning each other, but
likewise, what was worse, two opposing councils, that of Bâle and that of
Florence. The greater part of the church, indeed, adhered to Eugenius;
but most of the universities, and particularly the first among them,
that of Paris, as well as some kingdoms and provinces, chose to follow
Felix V. The Council of Bâle continued to deliberate and to pass laws
and decrees till the year 1443, notwithstanding all the opposition of
Eugenius and his adherents. And although the fathers separated in that
year, they nevertheless publicly declared that the council was not at an
end, but would assemble again at a proper time, either at Bâle, or Lyons,
or Lausanne. The Council of Florence was chiefly occupied in settling
the disputes between the Latins and the Greeks. This great business was
committed to selected individuals of both parties. The principal one
on the part of the Greeks was Bessarion, a very learned man, who was
afterwards admitted into the order of cardinals in the Roman church. This
man, being gained by the favours bestowed on him by the pontiff, exerted
his influence, and the pontiff employed rewards, threats, and promises to
induce the other Greeks to accede to the proposed terms of accommodation,
and to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit proceeded also from the Son,
that departed souls undergo a purgation by fire before they are admitted
to the vision of God, that bread which is without leaven may be used in
the sacred supper, and lastly, what was most important of all, that the
Roman pontiff is the head and the judge of the church universal. One of
the Greeks, Mark of Ephesus, could not be persuaded, by entreaties or by
bribes, to give his assent. After all, this peace, which was extorted
by various artifices, was not stable. For the Greeks, on returning to
Constantinople, stated to their fellow-citizens that everything had been
carried at Florence by fraud, and they resumed their hostility. The
Council of Florence itself put an end to its deliberations on the 26th of
April, 1442. There were also negotiations in this council for bringing
the Armenians, and the Jacobites, but especially the Abyssinians, into
union with the Romish church; which were attended with the same result as
those respecting the Greeks.

[Sidenote: [1447-1455 A.D.]]

The author of this new pontifical schism, Eugenius IV, died in the month
of February, 1447, and was succeeded in the month of March by Nicholas V,
who was previously Tommaso Parentucelli of Sarzana, bishop of Bologna,
a man of learning himself and a great patron of learning, and likewise
moderate in temper and disposed for peace. Under him, by means of the
persevering labours and efforts of the kings and princes of Europe,
especially of the king of France, tranquillity was restored to the Latin
church. For Felix V, on the 9th of April, 1449, himself resigned the
supremacy of the church, and retired to his former quiet at Ripaille; and
the Basilian fathers, being assembled on the 16th of April at Lausanne,
ratified his voluntary abdication, and by a solemn decree directed
the whole church to obey Nicholas only. On the 18th of June Nicholas
promulgated this pacification; and, at the same time, confirmed by his
sanction the acts and decrees of the Council of Bâle. This Nicholas was
particularly distinguished for his love of literature and the arts, which
he laudably exerted himself to advance and encourage in Italy, especially
by means of the Greeks that came from Constantinople. He died on the 24th
of March, 1455, principally from grief, occasioned by the capture of
Constantinople by the Turks.[c]

At this date Milman closes his splendid work on _The History of Latin
Christianity_. It will be profitable to quote his summing up of the point
reached by Nicholas V, eight and a half centuries after Gregory the
Great.[a]

MILMAN ON NICHOLAS V AND THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [1447-1458 A.D.]]

The pontificate of Nicholas V is the culminating point of Latin
Christianity. The papal power indeed had long reached its zenith. From
Innocent III to Boniface VIII it had begun its decline. But Latin
Christianity was alike the religion of the popes and of the councils
which contested their supremacy. It was as yet no more than a sacerdotal
strife whether the pope should maintain an irresponsible autocracy, or be
limited and controlled by an ubiquitous, aristocratic senate. The most
ardent reformers looked no further than to strengthen the hierarchy. The
prelates were determined to emancipate themselves from the usurpations
of the pope, as to their elections, their arbitrary taxation by Rome,
the undermining of their authority by perpetual appeals; but they had no
notion of relaxing in the least the ecclesiastical domination. It was
not that Christendom might govern itself, but that themselves might have
a more equal share in the government. They were as jealously attached
as the pope to the creed of Latin Christianity. The council, not the
pope, burned John Huss. Their concessions to the Bohemians were extorted
from their fears, not granted by their liberality. The Vulgate was their
Bible, the Latin service their exclusive liturgy, the Canon Law their
code of jurisprudence.

Latin Christianity had yet to discharge some part of its mission. It
had to enlighten the world with letters, to adorn it with arts. It had
hospitably to receive (a gift fatal in the end to its own dominion) and
to promulgate to mankind the poets, historians, philosophers of Greece.
It had to break down its own idols, the schoolmen, and substitute a new
idolatry, that of classical literature. It had to perfect Christian art.
Already Christian architecture had achieved some of its wonders. The
venerable Lateran and St. Paul’s without the Walls, the old St. Peter’s,
St. Mark’s at Venice and Pisa, Strasburg and Cologne, Rheims and Bourges,
York and Lincoln, stood in their majesty. Christian painting, and even
Christian sculpture, were to rise to their untranscended excellence.

The choice of Nicholas V was one of such singular felicity for his time
that it cannot be wondered if his admirers looked on it as overruled by
the Holy Spirit. “Who would have thought in Florence,” so said Nicholas
to his biographer Vespasiano,[e] “that a priest who rang the bells should
become supreme pontiff?” Yet it seems to have been a happy accident.
In Nicholas V, in three short years, the pope had become again a great
Italian potentate. The pilgrims carried back throughout Europe accounts
of the resuscitated majesty of the Roman pontificate, the unsullied
personal dignity of the pope, the re-enthronement of religion in the
splendid edifices, which were either building or under restoration.
Nicholas V was to behold, as it were, the final act of homage to the
popedom, from the majesty of the empire. He was to be the last pontiff
who was to crown at Rome the successor of Charlemagne; Frederick III the
last emperor who was so to receive his crown from the hands of the pope.

[Sidenote: [1452-1455 A.D.]]

Now came that event which, however foreseen by the few wiser prophetic
spirits, burst on Europe and on Christendom with the stunning and
appalling effect of absolute suddenness--the taking of Constantinople
by the Turks. On no two European minds did this disaster work with more
profound or more absorbing terror than on Pope Nicholas V and Æneas
Sylvius (Enea Silvio Piccolomini); nor could anyone allege more sound
reasons for that terror than the pope and the bishop of Siena. Who
could estimate better than Æneas, from his intimate knowledge of all
the countries of Europe, of Italy, Germany, France, England, the extent
of the danger which impended over the Latin world? Never since its
earlier outburst might Mohammedanism seem so likely to subjugate if not
to swallow up distracted and disunited Christendom, as under the Turks.
By sea and land they were equally formidable. If Christendom should
resist, on what frontier? All were menaced, all in danger. What city,
what kingdom, would arrest the fierce, the perpetual invasion? From this
period throughout the affairs of Germany (at Frankfort he preached a
crusade) to the end of his legatine power, of his cardinalate, of his
papacy, of his life, this was the one absorbing thought, one passion, of
Æneas Sylvius. The immediate advance of the victorious Muhammed through
Hungary, Dalmatia, to the border, the centre of Italy, was stopped by a
single fortress, Belgrade; by a preacher, John Capistrano; by a hero,
John Hunyady. But it was not till, above a century later, when Don John
of Austria, at Lepanto by sea, and John Sobieski, before Vienna, by land,
broke the spell of Mohammedan conquest, that Europe or Christendom might
repose in security.

The death of Nicholas V was hastened, it was said, by the taking of
Constantinople. Grief, shame, fear, worked on a constitution broken
by the gout. But Nicholas V foresaw not that in remote futurity the
peaceful, not the warlike, consequences of the fall of Constantinople
would be most fatal to the popedom--that what was the glory of Nicholas V
would become among the foremost causes of the ruin of mediæval religion;
that it would aid in shaking to the base and in severing forever the
majestic unity of Latin Christianity.

Nicholas V aspired to make Italy the domicile, Rome the capital, of
letters and arts. No sooner was Nicholas pope than he applied himself
to the foundation of the Vatican library. Five thousand volumes were
speedily collected. The wondering age boasted that no such library had
existed since the days of the Ptolemies.

The scholars of Italy flocked to Rome, each to receive his task from
the generous pope, who rewarded their labours with ample payment. He
seemed determined to enrich the West with all that survived of Grecian
literature. The fall of Constantinople, long threatened, had been
preceded by the immigration of many learned Greeks. France, Germany, even
England, the Byzantine Empire, Greece, had been ransacked by industrious
agents for copies of all the Greek authors. No branch of letters was
without its interpreters.

[Illustration: A POPE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

To Nicholas V, Italy, or rather Latin Christianity, mainly owes her
age of learning, as well as its fatal consequence to Rome and to Latin
Christianity, which in his honest ardour he would be the last to foresee.
It was the splendid vision of Nicholas V that this revival of letters,
which in certain circles became almost a new religion, would not be
the bond-slave but the handmaid or willing minister of the old. Latin
Christianity was to array itself in all the spoils of the ancient world,
and so maintain (there was nothing of policy in his thought) her dominion
over the mind of man. But Rome under Nicholas V was not to be the centre
of letters alone; she was also to resume her rank as the centre of art,
more especially of architectural magnificence. Rome was to be again as of
old the lawgiver of civilisation; pilgrims from all parts of the world,
from curiosity, for business, or from religion, were to bow down before
the confessed supremacy of her splendid works.

The pope was to be a great sovereign prince, but above the sovereign
prince he was to be the successor of St. Peter. Rome was to be at once
the strong citadel, and the noblest sanctuary in the world, unassailable
by her enemies both without and within from her fortifications;
commanding the world to awe by the unrivalled majesty of her churches.
The Jubilee had poured enormous wealth into the treasury of the pope; his
ordinary revenues, both from the papal territory and from Christendom at
large, began to flow in with peace and with the revival of his authority.
That wealth was all expended with the most liberal magnificence. Already
had it dawned upon the mind of Nicholas V that the cathedral of the
chief of the apostles ought to rival, or to surpass, all the churches in
Christendom in vastness and majesty. It was to be entirely rebuilt from
its foundations. Julius II and Leo X did but accomplish the design of
Nicholas V.

Thus in Nicholas V closed one great age of the papacy. In Nicholas the
sovereign Italian prince and the pontiff met in serene and amicable
dignity; he had no temptation to found a princely family. But before
long the pontiff was to be lost in the sovereign prince. Nor was it less
evident that the exclusive dominion of Latin Christianity was drawing
to a close, though nearly a century might elapse before the final
secession of Teutonic Christianity, and the great permanent division
of Christendom. Each successive pontificate might seem determined to
advance, to hasten that still slow but inevitable revolution: the
audacious nepotism of Sixtus IV, the wickednesses of Alexander VI, which
defy palliation; the wars of Julius II, with the hoary pope at the head
of ferocious armies; the political intrigues and disasters of Clement
VII.[b]

POPES TO 1503

[Sidenote: [1458-1503 A.D.]]

Nicholas’ successor, Alfonso Borgia (Borja), a Spaniard, whose pontifical
name was Calixtus III, performed nothing great or splendid, if no account
be taken of his anxiety to urge Christian princes upon a war against the
Turks. He died in the year 1458. Much more celebrated was his successor,
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, bishop of Siena, who ascended the papal
throne in 1458, and took the name of Pius II, a man of superior genius,
and renowned both for his achievements and for his various writings and
publications.

Yet posterity would have accounted him a much greater man, if he had not
been guilty of gross inconsistency. For after strenuously maintaining the
rights of councils against the pontiffs, and boldly defending the cause
of the Council of Bâle against Eugenius IV, upon being made pontiff, he
apostatised from himself; and January 18th, 1460, denied that a council
is superior to a pontiff, and severely prohibited appeals to councils;
and in the year 1461 obtained from Louis XI, king of France, the
abrogation of the pragmatic sanction, which was favourable to councils;
and finally, April 26th, 1463, he expressed a public disapproval of all
that he had himself written in favour of the Council of Bâle, and decreed
that Pius II was to be heard and obeyed, but that Æneas Sylvius was to
be condemned. A short time after making this declaration he fell ill and
died in the month of July, 1464.

Paul II, previously Pietro Barbo, a Venetian, who was raised to the chair
of St. Peter in 1464, and died in 1471, performed some acts not unworthy
of commendation, at least according to the views of that age; but he also
did many things that are scarcely excusable, if they are so at all, among
the least important of which is that he made a jubilee year come once in
every twenty-five years, in 1470. Hence his reputation with posterity has
remained equivocal.

The subsequent pontiffs, Sixtus IV, previously Francesco Albescola della
Rovere, who died in 1484, and Innocent VIII,[108] previously Giovanni
Battista Cibo, a Genoese, who died in 1492, were of the middle kind,
being distinguished as popes neither for great virtues nor for great
faults. Each, fearing for Italy and for all Europe, from the power of
the Turks, both prepared himself for a war upon them and very earnestly
urged one on the kings of Europe. But each met with such obstacles as
disappointed an object so dear to his heart. Nothing else was done by
them with much pretension to true greatness.

The pontifical series of this century is closed by Alexander VI, a
Spaniard, whose true name was Rodrigo Borgia. He may not improperly be
called the Nero of pontiffs. For the villainies, crimes, and enormities
recorded of this man are so many and so great as to make it seem clear
that he was destitute, we will not say of all religion, but even of
decency and shame. Among the things charged upon him, though some may be
false and others overstated, by his enemies, yet so many remain which
are placed beyond all dispute as are sufficient to render the memory
of Alexander execrable in the view of all who have even a moderate
share of virtue. A large part of his crimes, however, originated from
his excessive partiality for his children; for he had four sons by a
concubine, among whom was the notorious Cesare Borgia, infamous for his
enormous vices, and likewise one daughter named Lucrezia; and he was
intent solely on bringing forward and enriching these, without regarding
honesty, reason, or religion.[c]

ALEXANDER VI, THE BORGIA

[Sidenote: [1492-1503 A.D.]]

The great object of Alexander through his whole life was to gratify his
inclination for pleasure, his ambition, and his love of ease. When at
length he had attained to the supreme spiritual dignity, he seemed also
to have reached the summit of happiness. Spite of his advanced years, the
exultation he felt seemed daily to impart to him a new life. No painful
thought was permitted to disturb his repose for a single night. His only
care was to seize on all means that might aid him to increase his power,
and advance the wealth and dignity of his sons; on no other subject did
he ever seriously bestow a thought. This one consideration was at the
base of all his political alliances, and of those relations by which the
events of the world were at that time so powerfully influenced. How the
pope would proceed, in regard to the marriages, endowments, and advance
of his children, became a question affecting the politics of all Europe.

The son of Alexander, Cæsar Borgia, followed close on the footsteps of
Riario. He began from the same point, and his first undertaking was to
drive the widow of Riario from Imola and Forlì. He pressed forward to the
completion of his designs with the most daring contempt of consequences;
what Riario had only approached, or attempted, Cæsar Borgia carried
forward to its utmost results. Let us take a rapid glance at the means by
which his purposes were accomplished.

The ecclesiastical states had hitherto been divided by the factions of
the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the first represented in Rome by the family
of Orsini, the second by the house of Colonna. The popes had usually
taken part with one or the other of these factions. Sixtus IV had done
so, and his example was followed by Alexander and his son, who at
first attached themselves to the Guelf, or Orsini party. This alliance
enabled them very soon to gain the mastery of all their enemies. They
drove the house of Sforza from Pesaro, that of Malatesta from Rimini,
and the family of Manfredi from Faenza. They seized on those powerful,
well-fortified cities, and thus commenced the foundation of an extensive
lordship. But no sooner had they attained this point, no sooner had
they freed themselves from their enemies, than they turned every effort
against their friends. And it was in this that the practice of the
Borgias differed from that of their predecessors, who had ever remained
firmly attached to the party they had chosen; Cæsar, on the contrary,
attacked his own confederates, without hesitation or scruple. The duke of
Urbino, from whom he had frequently received important aid, was involved,
as in a network, by the machinations of Cæsar, and with difficulty saved
his life, a persecuted fugitive in his own dominions. Vitelli, Baglioni,
and other chiefs of the Orsini faction, resolved to show him that at
least they were capable of resistance. But Cæsar Borgia, declaring that
“it is permitted to betray those who are the masters of all treasons,”
decoyed them into his snares with profoundly calculated cruelty, and
mercilessly deprived them of life. Having thus destroyed both parties, he
stepped into their place, gathered the inferior nobility, who had been
their adherents, around him, and took them into his pay; the territories
he had seized on were held in subjection by force of terror and cruelty.

The brightest hopes of Alexander were thus realised--the nobles of the
land were annihilated, and his house about to found a great hereditary
dominion in Italy. But he had already begun to acquire practical
experience of the evil which passions, aroused and unbridled, are capable
of producing. With no relative or favourite would Cæsar Borgia endure
the participation of his power. His own brother stood in his way; Cæsar
caused him to be murdered and thrown into the Tiber. His brother-in-law
was assailed and stabbed, by his orders, on the steps of his palace.
The wounded man was nursed by his wife and sister, the latter preparing
his food with her own hands to secure him from poison; the pope set
a guard upon the house to protect his son-in-law from his son. Cæsar
laughed these precautions to scorn. “What cannot be done at noonday,”
said he, “may be brought about in the evening.” When the prince was on
the point of recovery, he burst into his chamber, drove out the wife and
sister, called in the common executioner, and caused his unfortunate
brother-in-law to be strangled. Towards his father, whose life and
station he valued only as means to his own aggrandisement, he displayed
not the slightest respect or feeling. He slew Peroto, Alexander’s
favourite, while the unhappy man clung to his patron for protection, and
was wrapped within the pontifical mantle. The blood of the favourite
flowed over the face of the pope.

For a certain time the city of the apostles, and the whole state of the
church, were in the hands of Cæsar Borgia. He is described as possessing
great personal beauty, and was so strong that in a bull-fight he would
strike off the head of the animal at a single blow; of liberal spirit,
and not without certain features of greatness, but given up to his
passions, and deeply stained with blood. How did Rome tremble at his
name! Cæsar required gold, and possessed enemies; every night were the
corpses of murdered men found in the streets, yet none dared move; for
who but might fear that his own turn would be next? Those whom violence
could not reach were taken off by poison. There was but one place on
earth where such deeds were possible--that, namely, where unlimited
temporal power was united to the highest spiritual authority, where the
laws, civil and ecclesiastical, were held in one and the same hand.
This place was occupied by Cæsar Borgia. Even depravity may have its
perfection. The kindred of the popes have often distinguished themselves
in the career of evil, but none attained to the eminence of Cæsar Borgia.
He may be called a virtuoso in crime. Was it not in the first and most
essential tendencies of Christianity to render such a power impossible?
And yet, Christianity itself, and the very position of the supreme head
of the church, were made subservient to its existence.

There needed, then, no advent of a Luther, to prove to the world that
these things were in direct opposition to the spirit of Christianity.
Even at that time men complained that the pope was preparing the way
for antichrist, and labouring for the interest of Satan rather than the
kingdom of God. We do not follow the history of Alexander in its minute
details. He once purposed, as is but too well authenticated,[109] to
destroy one of the richest cardinals by poison; but the latter contrived
to win over the pope’s chief cook by means of promises, entreaties, and
gifts. The confection, prepared for the cardinal, was set before the
pontiff himself; and Alexander expired from the effects of that poison
which he had destined for another.[f]

_Estimates of Alexander VI_

It is the pastime of historians to practise their technic impartially
in besmirching the sanctified reputations of the saints of popular
belief and in whitewashing the traditional villains. Alexander VI is
too historic a monster to escape the efforts of some apologist, and
in recent years Dr. Richard Garnett[g] and Frederick Baron Corvo[i]
have come to his rescue. The former praises his great shrewdness, his
learning and vigour, and finds him no worse than his times, which is at
best damning with faint praise one who stood for St. Peter on earth. Dr.
Garnett after his defence is however compelled to admit the following
flaws in the pope’s character:[a]

“Cardinal Borgia had simply bought up the Sacred College. Although
Alexander’s election was without question the most notorious of any for
the unscrupulous employment of illegitimate influences, it is difficult
to affirm that it was in principle more simoniacal than most of those
which had lately preceded it or were soon to follow. Men said that
Alexander had bribed the French ministers; probably he had. He had
been tortuous, perfidious, temporising under stress of circumstances.
Unrestrained by moral scruples, or by any spiritual conception of
religion, he was betrayed into gross sensuality of one kind, though in
other respects he was temperate and abstemious. In the more respectable
guise of family affection it led him to outrage every principle of
justice. The general tendency of investigation, which utterly shattering
all idle attempts to represent him as the model pope, has been to relieve
him of the most odious imputations against his character. There remains
the charge of secret poisoning from motives of cupidity, which indeed
appear established, or nearly so, only in a single instance, but this may
imply others.”

In the same work Henry C. Lea[h] is more severe. “It is no wonder that
Rome had become a centre of corruption whence infection was radiated
throughout Christendom. In the middle of the fourteenth century Petrarch
exhausts his rhetoric in describing the abominations of the papal city
of Avignon, where everything was vile; and the return of the curia to
Rome transferred to that city the supremacy in wickedness. In 1499
the Venetian ambassador describes it as the sewer of the world, and
Machiavelli asserts that through its example all devotion and all
religion had perished in Italy. In 1490 it numbered 6000 public women--an
enormous proportion for a population not exceeding 100,000. The story is
well known, how Cardinal Borgia, who, as vice-chancellor, openly sold
pardons for crime, when reproved for this, replied, that God desires not
the death of sinners but that they should pay and live. If the diary of
Infessura[j] is suspect on account of his partisanship, that of Burchard
is unimpeachable, and his placid recital of the events passing under
his eyes presents to us a society too depraved to take shame at its own
wickedness. The public marriage, he says, of the daughters of Innocent
VIII and Alexander VI set the fashion for the clergy to have children,
and they diligently followed it; for all, from the highest to the lowest,
kept concubines, while the monasteries were brothels.”

And John Addington Symonds has been quite as emphatic:

“To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as
unrestrained as Nero’s, were relieved against the background of flames
and smoke which Christianity had raised for fleshly sins, is justifiable.
An epigram gained currency: ‘Alexander sells the keys, the altars,
Christ. Well, he bought them; so he has a right to sell them.’ Having
sold the scarlet to the highest bidder, he used to feed his prelate with
rich benefices. When he had fattened him sufficiently, he poisoned him,
laid hands upon his hoards, and recommenced the game. His traffic in
church dignities was carried on upon a grand scale, twelve cardinals’
hats, for example, were put to auction in a single day. This was when
he wished to pack the conclave with votes in favour of the cession of
Romagna to Cesare Borgia. Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of
this pope throughout his life. His relations to Vanozza Catanei and to
Giulia Farnese were open and acknowledged. These two sultanas ruled
him during the greater portion of his career, conniving meanwhile at
the harem, which, after true oriental fashion, he maintained in the
Vatican.”[l]

JULIUS II

[Sidenote: [1503-1513 A.D.]]

A pope followed who made it his object to assume a position in direct
contrast with that of the Borgias; but who pursued the same end, though
he took different, and from that very circumstance successful, means
for his purpose. Julius II (1503-1513 A.D.) enjoyed the incalculable
advantage of finding opportunity for promoting the interests of his
family by peaceable means; he obtained for his kindred the inheritance
of Urbino. This done, he could devote himself, undisturbed by the
importunities of his kindred, to the gratification of that innate love
for war and conquest which was indeed the ruling passion of his life.
To this he was invited by the circumstances of the times, and the
consciousness of his eminent position; but his efforts were all for
the church--for the benefit of the papal see. Other popes had laboured
to procure principalities for their sons or their nephews; it was the
ambition of Julius to extend the dominions of the church. He must,
therefore, be regarded as the founder of the papal states.

[Illustration: A FRIAR OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

He found the whole territory in extreme confusion; all who had escaped
by flight from the hand of Cæsar had returned--the Orsini, the Colonna,
the Vitelli and Baglioni, Varani, Malatesta, and Montefeltri--everywhere
throughout the whole land were the different parties in movement;
murderous contests took place in the very Borgo of Rome. Pope Julius has
been compared with the Neptune of Virgil, when rising from the waves,
with peace-inspiring countenance he hushes their storms to repose. By
prudence and good management he disembarrassed himself even of Cæsar
Borgia, whose castles he seized and of whose dukedom he also gained
possession. The lesser barons he kept in order with the more facility
from the measures to this effect that had been taken by Cæsar, but he
was careful not to give them such cardinals for leaders as might awaken
the ancient spirit of insubordination by ambitious enterprise. The more
powerful nobles, who refused him obedience, he attacked without further
ceremony. His accession to the papal throne sufficed to reduce Baglioni
(who had again made himself master of Perugia) within the limits of due
subordination. Nor could Bentivoglio offer effectual resistance when
required to resign that sumptuous palace which he had erected in Bologna,
and whereon he had too hastily inscribed the well-known eulogy of his
own good fortune; of this he saw himself deprived in his old age. The
two powerful cities of Perugia and Bologna were thus subjected to the
immediate authority of the pontifical throne.

But with all this, Julius was yet far from having accomplished the end
he had proposed to himself. The coasts of the papal states were in great
part occupied by the Venetians; they were by no means disposed to yield
possession of them freely, and the pope was greatly their inferior in
military power. He could not conceal from himself that his attacking them
would be the signal for a commotion throughout Europe. Should he venture
to risk this?

Old as Julius now was, worn by the many vicissitudes of good and evil
fortune experienced through a long life; by the fatigues of war and
exile, and most of all by the consequences of intemperance and licentious
excess, he yet knew not what fear or irresolution meant; in the extremity
of age, he still retained that grand characteristic of manhood, an
indomitable spirit. He felt little respect for the princes of his time,
and believed himself capable of mastering them all. He took the field in
person, and having stormed Mirandola, he pressed into the city across
the frozen ditches and through the breach; the most disastrous reverses
could not shake his purpose, but rather seemed to waken new resources
within him. He was accordingly successful; not only were his own baronies
rescued from the Venetians, but in the fierce contest that ensued, he
at length made himself master of Parma, Piacenza, and even Reggio, thus
laying the foundation of a power such as no pope had ever possessed
before him. From Piacenza to Terracina the whole fair region admitted his
authority.

PREVALENCE OF SECULARISM IN THE CHURCH

[Sidenote: [1471-1503 A.D.]]

It was an inevitable consequence that the whole body of the hierarchy
should be influenced by the character and tendencies of its chief, that
all should lend their best aid to the promotion of his purposes, and
be themselves carried forward by the impulse thus given. Not only the
supreme dignity of the pontiff, but all other offices of the church, were
regarded as mere secular property. The pope nominated cardinals from no
better motive than personal favour, the gratification of some potentate,
or even, and this was no unfrequent occurrence, for actual payment of
money! Could there be any rational expectation that men so appointed
would fulfil their spiritual duties? One of the most important offices
of the church, the Penitenziaria, was bestowed by Sixtus IV on one of
his nephews. This office held a large portion of the power of granting
dispensations; its privileges were still further extended by the pope,
and in a bull issued for the express purpose of confirming them, he
declares all who shall presume to doubt the rectitude of such measures,
to be a “stiff-necked people and children of malice.” It followed as a
matter of course that the nephew considered his office as a benefice,
the proceeds of which he was entitled to increase to the utmost extent
possible.

A large amount of worldly power was at this time conferred in most
instances, together with the bishoprics; they were held more or less as
sinecures according to the degree of influence or court favour possessed
by the recipient or his family. The Roman curia thought only of how
it might best derive advantage from the vacancies and presentations;
Alexander extorted double annates or first-fruits, and levied double, nay
triple tithes; there remained few things that had not become matter of
purchase. The taxes of the papal chancery rose higher from day to day,
and the comptroller, whose duty it was to prevent all abuses in that
department, most commonly referred the revision of the imposts to those
very men who had fixed their amount. For every indulgence obtained from
the datary’s office, a stipulated sum was paid; nearly all the disputes
occurring at this period between the several states of Europe and the
Roman court arose out of these exactions, which the curia sought by
every possible means to increase, while the people of all countries as
zealously strove to restrain them.

Principles such as these necessarily acted on all ranks affected by the
system based on them, from the highest to the lowest. Many ecclesiastics
were found ready to renounce their bishoprics; but they retained the
greater part of the revenues, and not unfrequently the presentation to
the benefices dependent on them also. Even the laws forbidding the son
of a clergyman to procure induction to the living of his father, and
enacting that no ecclesiastic should dispose of his office by will,
were continually evaded; for as all could obtain permission to appoint
whomsoever he might choose as his coadjutor, provided he were liberal of
his money, so the benefices of the church became in a manner hereditary.
It followed of necessity that the performance of ecclesiastical duties
was grievously neglected. In this rapid sketch, we confine ourselves to
remarks made by conscientious prelates of the Roman court itself.

In all places incompetent persons were intrusted with the performance
of clerical duties; they were appointed without scrutiny or selection.
The incumbents of benefices were principally interested in finding
substitutes at the lowest possible cost, thus the mendicant friars
were frequently chosen as particularly suitable in this respect. These
men occupied the bishoprics under the title (previously unheard of
in that sense) of suffragans; the cures they held in the capacity of
vicars. Already were the mendicant orders in possession of extraordinary
privileges, and these had been yet further extended by Sixtus IV, who
was himself a Franciscan. They had the right of confessing penitents,
administering the Lord’s Supper, and bestowing extreme unction, as also
that of burying within the precincts, and even in the habit of the order.
All these privileges conferred importance as well as profit, and the
mendicant friars enjoyed them in their utmost plenitude; the pope even
threatened the disobedient secular clergy, or others, who should molest
the orders, more particularly as regarded bequests, with the loss of
their respective offices.

The administration of parishes as well as that of bishoprics being
now in the hands of the mendicant orders, it is manifest that they
must have possessed enormous influence. The higher offices and more
important dignities were monopolised, together with their revenues, by
the great families and their dependants, shared only with the favourites
of courts and of the curia; the actual discharge of the various duties
was confided to the mendicant friars who were upheld by the popes.
They took active part also in the sale of indulgences, to which so
unusual an extension was given at that time, Alexander VI being the
first to declare officially that they were capable of releasing souls
from purgatory. But the orders also had fallen into the extreme of
worldliness. What intrigues were set on foot among them for securing the
higher appointments! what eagerness was displayed at elections to be rid
of a rival, or of a voter believed unfavourable! The latter were sent
out of the way as preachers or as inspectors of remote parishes; against
the former, they did not scruple to employ the sword, or the dagger,
and many were destroyed by poison. Meanwhile the comforts men seek from
religion became mere matter of sale; the mendicant friars, employed at
miserably low wages, caught eagerly at all contingent means of making
profit.

While the populace had sunk into almost heathen superstition, and
expected their salvation from mere ceremonial observances, but half
understood, the higher classes were manifesting opinions of a tendency
altogether anti-religious. How profoundly astonished must Luther have
been, on visiting Italy in his youth! At the very moment when the
sacrifice of the mass was completed, did the priests utter blasphemous
words in denial of its reality! It was even considered characteristic
of good society, in Rome, to call the principles of Christianity in
question. “One passes,” says P. Ant. Bandino,[m] “no longer for a man
of cultivation, unless one put forth heterodox opinions regarding the
Christian faith.” At court, the ordinances of the Catholic church, and of
passages from Holy Scripture, were made subjects of jest--the mysteries
of the faith had become matter of derision.

We thus see how all is enchained and connected--how one event calls
forth another. The pretensions of temporal princes to ecclesiastical
power awaken a secular ambition in the popes, the corruption and decline
of religious institutions elicit the development of a new intellectual
tendency, till at length the very foundations of the faith become shaken
in the public opinion.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[107] [For an account of the origin of the order of Templars and its
destruction see the previous history of the Crusades.]

[108] See Muratori,[e] _ad ann._ 1478. Innocent VIII had lived so
shamefully before he mounted the Romish throne that he had sixteen
illegitimate children to make provision for. Yet on the papal throne
he played the zealot against the Germans, whom he accused of magic, in
his bull _Summis desiderantes affectibus_, etc., and also against the
Hussites, whom he well-nigh exterminated.

[109] [Though Von Ranke[f] and others believe that Alexander VI was
poisoned, Dr. Garnett[g] says: “His decease became the nucleus of a
labyrinthine growth of legend and romance. Modern investigation has
dispelled it all and left no doubt that his death was natural.”]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN AND RISE OF THE PAPACY

[b] H. H. MILMAN, _History of Latin Christianity_.

[c] LEOPOLD VON RANKE, _History of the Popes_.

[d] VICTOR DURUY, _Histoire du Moyen Age_.

[e] O. J. REICHEL, _The See of Rome in the Middle Ages_.

[f] J. BASS MULLINGER, article on “Popedom,” in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_.

[g] HENRY STEBBING, _History of the Christian Church_.

[h] JOHN WM. DRAPER, _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_.

[i] GREGORY OF TOURS, _Annales Francorum_.

[j] ANDREAS THIEL, _Epistolæ Romanorum Pontificorum_.

[k] GREGORY THE GREAT, _Letters and Dialogues_.

[l] EDWARD GIBBON, _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

CHAPTER II. “THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY”--CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE GREAT

[b] O. J. REICHEL, _op. cit._

[c] H. STEBBING, _op. cit._

[d] THOMAS GREENWOOD, _Cathedra Petri_.

[e] J. J. I. DÖLLINGER, _Die Papst Fabel des Mittelalters_.

[f] Article on Pope “Joan,” in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[g] H. H. MILMAN, _op. cit._

[h] CHARLES KINGSLEY, _The Roman and the Teuton_.

[i] B. PLATINA, _Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_.

[j] C. FLEURY, _Histoire Ecclésiastique_.

[k] C. BARONIUS, _Annales Ecclesiastici_.

[l] EINHARD, _Vita Caroli Magni_.

[m] _Chronicles of Moissiac._

[n] MARIANUS SCOTUS, _Universal Chronicle from the Creation to the Year
1083_.

[o] SIGEBERT OF GEMBLOURS, _Chronique Universelle_.

[p] OTTO VON FREYSING, _Chronik_.

[q] STEPHEN DE BOURBON, _Chronicle_.

[r] MARTINUS POLONUS, _Chronicon de Summis Pontificibus_.

[s] LIUTPRAND, _Antapodosis_.

CHAPTER III. THE HIGH NOON OF THE PAPACY

[b] O. J. REICHEL, _op. cit._

[c] H. STEBBING, _op. cit._

[d] J. B. MULLINGER, _op. cit._

[e] H. H. MILMAN, _op. cit._

[f] V. DURUY, _op. cit._

[g] JAMES BRYCE, _The Holy Roman Empire_.

[h] ROGER OF HOVEDEN, _Historia post Bedam_.

[i] K. F. EICHHORN, _Deutsche Staats und Rechtsgeschichte_.

[j] CIACCONIUS (CHACON), _Vitæ Pontificanum_.

[k] J. C. L. GIESELER, _Compendium of Ecclesiastical History_ (translated
by J. W. Hull).

[l] HENRY HALLAM, _The State of Europe during the Middle Ages_.

[m] INNOCENT III, _Epistolarum liber I et ref._

[n] J. L. VON MOSHEIM, _Institutes of Ecclesiastical History_ (translated
from the Latin by James Murdock).

[o] ANSELMO DI LUCCA, _Defensio pro Gregorio VII_.

CHAPTER IV. FROM EXILE TO SUPREMACY

[b] H. H. MILMAN, _op. cit._

[c] J. L. VON MOSHEIM, _op. cit._

[d] J. C. L. GIESELER, _op. cit._

[e] MURATORI, _Annali d’Italia_ (including Vespasiano’s “Life of Nicholas
V”).

[f] L. VON RANKE, _op. cit._

[g] RICHARD GARNETT, on “Rome and the Temporal Power,” in _Cambridge
Modern History_.

[h] HENRY C. LEA, on “The Eve of the Reformation,” in _Cambridge Modern
History_.

[i] F. B. CORVO, _Chronicles of the House of Borgia_.

[j] S. INFESSIORA, “Diarium” in Eccard’s _Corpus Historicum Medii Ævi_.

[k] J. BURCARDUS, _Didrium_ (edited by L. Thuasne).

[l] J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS, _The Age of the Despots_.

[m] P. A. BAMBINO, in Carraciolo’s _Life of Paul IV_.

[Illustration: THE SARACEN EMPIRE

At the time of Charlemagne

BORMAY & CO.]

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 08 - Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy" ***

Home