son of the emperor Michael; but the youth had died, and his father been deposed. Robert affected to be the avenger of his friend: a pseudo-Michael appeared at Salerno, and was acknowledged by the wily duke and the able Gregory VII. An army was collected during two years, and assembled at Otranto. Robert landed near Vallona, at the head of 30,000 men, of whom the kernel were 1300 Norman knights. Siege was laid to Durazzo, which was vigorously defended. The Norman fleet suffered from a dreadful storm; it was defeated by that of Venice, and a reinforcement was thrown into Durazzo. The able emperor Alexius Comnenus advanced at the head of a large army; the English, who had left their country, now enslaved by the Normans, increased the number of the brave Varangians; with them were joined some companies of Latins or Western Europeans; and the rebels who had fled from Robert, and a body of Turkish horse, obeyed the commands of the Grecian emperor. Despair added to the courage of the Normans; the emperor injudiciously gave battle; the troops of Robert at first yielded; the Varangians, who occupied the van, imprudently advanced too far, and exposing their flanks to the lances of the Norman A. D. knights, they were slaughtered. The Turks fled, and 1081. Alexius now saw the battle was lost. On the valour of his own subjects he placed no reliance. 1082. Durazzo was taken by treachery.

Robert advanced through Epirus into Thessaly; but his army was reduced to a third. The cities of Apulia were in revolt. Henry king of Germany was advancing against him. He passed over to Apulia, leaving the command of the army to the gallant Bohemond, his son by his first wife. Bohemond besieged Larissa. Alexius collected another army; várious indecisive engagements took place; the counts betrayed and deserted Bohemond; his camp was pillaged, and he was forced to evacuate the country, and return to his father. Meanwhile Henry had entered Rome, and created an anti-pope. Gregory was besieged in the Vati1084. can: he invoked the aid of his Norman vassal. Robert

displayed the holy banner; 6000 horse and 30,000 foot marched beneath it to Rome. Henry retired, and Gregory was liberated. Thus Robert, in the space of three years, had the glory of making the emperors of the East and the West fly before him, and of delivering the greatest of the popes from captivity.

A. D.

Robert prepared again to attack the eastern empire. 1084. Alexius had collected a fleet to oppose him; the Venetians joined their vessels to those of the empire. The Norman troops were, however, landed in safety in Epirus, and then Robert, with twenty galleys, sought the allied navy. Three battles were fought off Corfu in the first two the Normans were repulsed; in the third their victory was complete. Winter came on. In the spring Robert renewed his operations, intending to turn his arms against Greece; but an epidemic disease seized him in Cefalonia, and he died in his tent in the 70th 1085. year of his age. The army dispersed and retired. Robert was succeeded by his second son; Roger Bohemond being regarded as illegitimate, as his father and mother had been within the prohibited degrees of kindred: his claims, however, disturbed the nation till the crusades drew him off to Asia.

Italy -The Popes.

The pretensions of the popes during this period advanced with rapid strides. In their contests with the emperors of the house of Franconia they had to rely on the aid of a strong party in Germany, of the great countess Matilda in the north of Italy, and of their Norman vassals in the south. Extent of the papal dominion, and emancipation from the superiority of the emperors, were the great objects in view the daring temper and lofty genius of Gregory VII. almost assured the victory.

Leo IX. and Stephen IX. had adorned the chair by their birth and virtues. In the pontificate of Nicholas II. it was established in a synod that the popes were to be chosen by the cardinal bishops (those whose sees

were near Rome), and approved of by the cardinal priests and deacons (ministers of the parish churches at Rome) and the people, and then presented for confirmation to the emperor. Hildebrand, archdeacon of Rome, was the author of this plan, the object of which was gradually to free the papacy from imperial control. On the death of Nicholas he had Alexander II. chosen and consecrated without waiting for the imperial sanction, and on the death of Alexander he was himself raised to the pontificate under the title of Gregory VII., yet he refused to be consecrated till he had obtained the emperor's consent.

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The emperor was Henry IV., a dissolute, arbitrary prince. The Saxons were in rebellion against him, and the princes in general disaffected. Gregory commenced his attack by excommunicating some of his ministers for simony he then published a decree against lay investitures, or the investing of spiritual persons with the ensigns of their rank by laymen. The ring and crosier were, it was said, the emblems of a power which monarchs could not bestow; and though the estates of the church might be temporal, yet, by their inseparable union with the spiritual office, they might be regarded as partaking of its sanctity.

The pope, after long treating with the disaffected party in Germany, saw he might advance a little, and he summoned Henry to appear at Rome. Henry was enraged he assembled at Worms a number of bishops and other vassals, and had a decree passed that Gregory should not be obeyed as pope. Gregory, when he heard this, summoned a council at the Lateran, excommunicated Henry, deprived him of the kingdoms of Italy and Germany, absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and commanded them not to obey him. Gregory acted advisedly in this unheard-of stretch of power. Henry's subjects rejoiced at being told that what was their inclination was also their duty: conspiracies ripened into rebellion; the bishops were terrified at the sentence of excommunication; and Henry found himself alone.

He adopted the resolution of going to Italy, and casting himself at the feet of the pontiff. In the midst of a severe winter he crossed the Alps, and travelled to the seat of the countess Matilda, at Canossa, near Reggio. Here, with naked feet, in the woollen shirt worn by penitents, he stood in the outer court for three days, exposed to the piercing cold. On the fourth, Gregory admitted and gave him absolution; but ordered him to appear at a certain time, to know whether he should be restored to his kingdom.

By this pusillanimous step Henry had disgusted his friends. He saw his imprudence, broke off the negotiation, and took to his arms, his friends rallied about him; he was victorious in Germany and Italy; and he drove Gregory to die in exile at Salerno. Urban II. and Pascal II. carried on the contest with him: they excited his children to rebellion, but gained nothing by the unnatural contest; for Henry V., who had rebelled for the popes against his father, when he ascended his throne, clung as obstinately to the right of investiture as he had done. Being on good terms with his vassals, it would not have been safe to try with him the measures which had been adopted against his father; and after a contest of fifteen years, the matter was settled by a a. d. compromise between him and pope Calixtus II. The 1122. emperor renounced the right of investing bishops with the ring and crosier, and recognised the liberty of elections; but the election was to take place in the presence of him or his officer, and he was to confer the temporalities by the sceptre. A similar contest had been carried on and was terminated in the same manner between Pascal II. and Henry I. of England.

The popes had a plausible pretext for thus seeking to free spiritual offices from lay influence. The grossest simony had been practised, and the church, as far as was possible in that age of gross superstition, thereby deprived of its sanctity. They had not the same pretext for their next measure, the injunction of celibacy. Mankind have always attached a mysterious effect to

this virtue.

We find it in religious honour in Peru and in Rome. The oriental doctrines early introduced a reverence for it into the church. It gradually was extolled and enjoined; but human nature was too strong for it, and marriage was generally practised among the clergy. Leo IX. set vigorously about enforcing it: his successors followed up his measures: the laity, as might be expected, took part against the married priests, who were the most virtuous of the order; but the abuse, as it was termed, could not be removed without tolerating greater evils. It is plain what a powerful engine this was calculated to make the clergy in the hands of a pope, by detaching them from all the ties of social life, and leaving them no attachment but to their order and its head. Yet we should err if we supposed all the popes to have been profound calculators or unprincipled graspers at power. Many of them were men of eminent virtue, and few of them saw clearly the ultimate effect of their projects. The growth of the papacy was like that of a plant, the necessary effect of predisposing causes; and, in the state of the human mind in the middle ages, its progress was as natural as that of any phenomenon in the physical world.

The arms employed by the popes to effect their purpose were excommunication and interdict. By the former an individual, no matter what his rank may have been, was cut off from society; it was sinful to hold any intercourse with him, and temporal disadvantages were annexed to the sentence. But this extended only to one person. Interdict visited the crime of one, usually a sovereign, on all in any way connected with him. When a state was laid under an interdict, the churches were closed, the dead unburied, the bells silent, no sacraments administered but baptism and extreme unction. The operation of this on the minds of a superstitious people, who attached such mysterious efficacy to masses and sacraments, may easily be conceived; and few monarchs had courage to dare this last effort of pontifical vengeance.