the Bosphorus but 1500 horse and 20,000 foot marched from Tortosa to Jerusalem.

Godfrey of Bouillon was chosen king by his fellowwarriors; but he refused to bear that title in the kingdom of the Son of David: the land was partitioned into fiefs, and a code of feudal regulations, called the Assizes of Jerusalem, drawn up for the administration of it. Two religious military orders were afterwards formed for its farther defence. Before the time of the crusade there had been a society for attending sick pilgrims in the A. D. hospital of St. John. Hugo des Payens, of the house 1118. of Champagne, Godfrey of St. Adomer, and seven other knights formed themselves into an order named Templars, from their house near the site of the temple of Solomon. Their vows before the patriarch were to defend pilgrims against robbers, obedience, celibacy, and poverty. St. Bernard, at the desire of the king of France and other lords and princes, drew up a rule for them. In battle they vowed to be the first in action, the last in retreat: this example was followed by the brethren of the Hospital; and a new order, the Teutonic, was soon added to these military and religious associations. The Christian empire at this period extended from the borders of Armenia to those of Egypt; but it was feeble, and encompassed by powerful enemies. Its population, though brave, was few; and its reliance, an unstable one, was on the West.

CHAP. VI.

THE PAPAL POWER AT ITS GREATEST HEIGHT.

Italy-the Popes.

FROM the time of Gregory VII. his successors faithfully adhered to his principle of extending the power of the holy see. After him no pope dreamed of waiting for

the imperial confirmation. It was even hinted that the emperor should, in right, be confirmed by the pope. In their intercourse with the German emperors, the pope and his legate used language respecting the imperial dignity which seemed to imply that it was a fief of the holy see; and Adrian, when granting Ireland to Henry II., spoke of all islands as being the property of St. Peter.

This last and other monarchs made a resolute opposition to the exorbitant claims of the pontiffs; but the latter knew so well how to take advantage of circumstances, and had such a well-disciplined army in the clergy, and so powerful a machine to work with in the gross superstition of the laity, that they were seldom foiled in any of their measures. The pontiff who car

ried his pretensions the highest, and exercised them most effectually, was Innocent III., who, of noble birth, lofty A. D. and powerful mind, and in the prime of life, ascended 1194. the papal throne in 1194. Availing himself of the em

barrassments of the Saxon emperors of Germany, of the ambition and interestedness of Philip Augustus of France, and of the vices and cowardice of the infamous John, and the feebleness and folly of his son Henry III. of England, Innocent raised the papal power to a height scarcely dreamed of by his predecessors. He acquired independent sovereignty in Italy, established the control over temporal princes, and supremacy over the church.

The popes, in consequence of real or pretended grants from Constantine, Pepin and his son, and Louis, had always laid claim to extensive dominions; but in reality they possessed hardly any. In Rome the imperial prefect and the turbulent spirit of the people held them in check, and all the little places about Rome were as independent as in the days of Romulus. The countess Matilda, the great friend of Gregory VII., had left the reversion of her large possessions to the holy see. These were the imperial fiefs of Tuscany, Mantua, and Modena, of which she had certainly no right to dispose: the re

mainder, the duchy of Spoleto, and the march of Ancona, she held under a somewhat different title, and might appear to have more power over. However, the emperors disregarded the claims of the pontiffs, and disposed of Spoleto and Ancona as parts of the empire. Frederic 1177 Barbarossa promised to restore them after fifteen years; but Henry VI granted them away as imperial fiefs. At his death, a disputed succession engaging the Germans in civil war, Italy was left to herself; and Innocent now put forth the claims of the holy see, and produced a true or false will of Henry VI. in its favour. The cities of these states had, like those of Lombardy, become independent, but were harassed by German partisans settled in Italy by the emperors, and they gladly put themselves under the protection of the holy see. Thus Spoleto and Ancona submitted, and, a few years afterwards, Innocent, not feeling himself strong enough to hold them, prudently granted Ancona in fief to the marquis of Este. At home he forced the prefect to swear allegiance to him, and not to the emperor, and curbed as far as he was able the spirit of the people. Thus the holy see became a temporal power.

The

The superiority of the pontifical over the royal power was strongly put forth by Innocent: the kingdoms of the earth were Christ's, and consequently, by the logic of those days, his vicar's; and the little, mean, selfish policy of the princes prompted them, on every occasion where they had any object to attain, to submit to and forward the pretensions of their common enemy. submission of Henry II. cannot be blamed: he struggled nobly, and had all the world against him. The baseness of John, in surrendering his kingdom, and receiving it back as a fief, is unparalleled. Peter II. of Aragon, it is true, did the same; but with certainly a better motive to secure it against ambitious neighbours. The pope was, in fact, become suzerain, censor, and conservator of the peace of Europe: his weapons were interdict and excommunication. These were effectual, and, when the interests of the holy see were not involved,

were often beneficially employed. Philip Augustus, for example, when in the zenith of his power, having divorced his wife, the Danish princess Ingeborg, under the pretext of consanguinity, and espoused another, Innocent, who, when his own interest was not concerned, loved social order, directed him to take back his queen. Philip demurred; France was laid under interdict, and Philip submitted. The papal thunder rolled over every kingdom in Europe, enjoining peace, and punishing public and private offences.

National churches had originally possessed a good deal of independence, and the clergy had shown every disposition to exercise a despotic power over the laity ; but the popes were bent to draw all power to themselves. It had been their policy to support bishops against their metropolitans, and thereby break the power of the latter: they now prohibited any bishop to exercise his functions till he had received confirmation from the holy see. Gregory forced bishops to appear in person at Rome, to receive the pallium, and all prelates were harassed with citations thither. Legates were stationed in every kingdom, as the representatives of the popes, with extensive powers. The popes levied taxes on the clergy to an enormous extent: they assumed the right of appointing to bishoprics, and all other benefices.

The chief bases on which the papal dominion rested were, after the gross superstition of the people, 1. The canon law, originating in the false decretals of Isidore, which had been brought forth, towards the end of the eighth century, with the view of lowering the authority of metropolitans, by allowing of appeals to Rome, and forbidding national councils to be held without its consent. These decretals purported to be the decrees of the early bishops of Rome. About 1140, Gratian, a monk, published his Decretum, in which the decretals of Isidore, and the rescripts of pontiffs and decrees of councils, were arranged under heads, like the Pandects: various additions were made to this; the civil law was followed; the papal power extolled, and, in the

professors of this law, a powerful body of partisans raised for the papacy. 2. The establishments of the mendicant orders, who by a greater strictness of manners, a professedly purer system of faith, and an abuse of the secular clergy, gained the esteem of the laity, always caught by these qualities. Devoted to the pontiffs, they were supported in return by them, and exempted from episcopal authority: for as the secular clergy became disaffected on account of the manner in which they were pillaged by the papacy, the latter was glad to raise up rivals to them. The great schoolmen, such as Thomas Aquinas, were of these orders, and they elevated the papal authority to the utmost. Two other causes increased the papal influence with princes and the great: 3. Dispensations of marriage. The ascetic maxims, which had so early gotten into the church, extended the prohibition of marriage to the seventh degree of consanguinity: this was afterwards extended to affinity, and then to spiritual affinity, or gossipship. The royal and great families were so connected with one another, that it was difficult for them to marry without the canonical limits; and hence all the divorces we read of under this pretext, but caused by passion or ambition. Innocent III. laid it down as a maxim, that he was empowered to dispense with the law: money soon flowed rapidly into the papal exchequer, and princes looked up to their spiritual father, who could allow them to gratify their passions. - 4. The dispensing power which legitimated bastards, and released men from their most solemn oaths and engagements, on the ground that oaths extorted by violence, or injurious to the church, are not binding.

Such was the papal power when at its zenith; a power, no doubt, not unfrequently exerted for beneficial purposes, but, from its very nature, prejudicial to the best interests of man. The world never will witness such another dominion; for it is hardly within the limits of possibility that such a state of society as the middle ages presented can return.